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Uslan speech

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The IU Media Relations page posted the Michael Uslan speech from Graduation in text format, in case anyone wanted to read it. I read through most of it again.

GRADUATED

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I finally hit the end of the road, so to speak. Yesterday morning, I woke up at the crack of dawn (7AM, which is insane for me) to get ready to go to Commencement. finally done!I didn’t really even plan on actually going until the day or so beforehand, but I suppose it was good to at least be able to say “I went to my college graduation.” We were told to get there an hour and a half before the actual ceremony started. Also, I somehow took a wrong turn in the parking lot, and unknowingly parked right next to the Fieldhouse where we were supposed to be lining up. At the time I thought I was just lucky for finding literally the closest spot possible, and I knew I wouldn’t have a problem since I have my handy DP parking pass. I found out later from Pat’s family that these were actually the VIP spots, which would explain why one of the attendants gave me an odd look as I parked. I didn’t get a ticket though, probably because they were slacking on the lot watching, or my DP just scared them off. Either way, I probably shouldn’t have parked there, but I did. So I got out of my car and strolled in.

“Lining up” for graduation was something that didn’t really require us to be there 45 minutes early, but I suppose it was just to play it safe. It basically just involved everyone getting into the Fieldhouse track area and getting into the correct roped-off areas according to the school they’re in. Not very tough. Sort of like wrangling cattle or some other equally dumb farm animal. I went to go to the business school corral, talked to some people I knew, and eventually they started sending us inwards to Assembly Hall. Graduates filled up almost 2/3 of the court/floor area, with the rest being an orchestra or something and the actual stage area. There were two large sections of graduates on the right and left sides of the seats as well. The rest of the place, pretty much to capacity, was filled with guests, other students, etc. I was pretty surprised that so many people were there for this. The 2006 graduating class is apparently somewhere around 7,500 people, although we were split up into 2 groups. I math would tell you there were a bit under 3,750 students there. I’m not sure what percentage of students actually come to commencement though.

As cheesy as it was, I kind of liked the whole procession and all the stupid costumes that people had to wear at the ceremony, especially on stage. I’m not exactly sure what all the different outfits and hats mean, but I swear it looked like I was watching either a really nerdy renaissance festival, or some kind of Harry Potter LARPing contest. But it was cool nonetheless. Michael Uslan, an IU grad and executive producer of all the Batman movies, gave a speech which was pretty typical I guess of a “graduation speech:” talking about stuff to do in the future, have high goals, believe in yourself, knowledge is power, blah blah blah. But I really did like his speech. I wish I would have tried to meet him or at least went to hear him speak when he was doing various things at TCOM this and last year. You can’t help but feel at least a little inspired by an IU grad whose entire life goal was to make a sweet Batman movie, and then he did it (let’s not think about Batman & Robin though). Also seeing the formality and all that of the Trustees, President, Provost, and other “high ups” from the University made me think that it wouldn’t be bad one day to come back to IU as an administrator or something. Probably not though.

So graduation is over, and so is school pretty much. I now have a BS in Business and a BA in East Asian Languages in Culture, with which I suppose you could call me edumucated. I have a somewhat big report I still need to wrap up (um..), then IUSTV work over the summer, and then I am completely done with this stage of life. I’m not completely sure what I’ll be doing in the summer besides living in Bloomington and working at the station until the end of July, but I’m thinking of getting a part time job somewhere to start saving up money for when I go to Japan in September to work as a teacher for AEON. On Tuesday, me, Pat, Brian, and Kyle are going to LA for almost a week, to bask in the glory that is E3. It’s odd to sit here on a Sunday afternoon, not really having anything to do but think about video games.

I’ll likely write more posts this summer looking back at IU. It will be weird next year living a completely different kind of life. Obviously just being in a different country will be a big change, but I’m talking more about working an actual job during the day (well, AEON is more like 11AM to 7PM), but then being done with work for the day. No having to work on stuff at night, no homework, no dealing with work-related stuff every waking hour of the day. As much as I loved school (I suppose) and IUSTV, it really was pretty taxing on me. The first thing I did in the morning was wake up to take care IUSTV e-mails, I would do IUSTV stuff pretty much all day every day, and on the rare occasion that I actually had school stuff to do I would usually cram it in somewhere in place of things like sleeping or eating. The last year has been one of the best and most fun years of my life ever, but I do have to admit that it will be nice to have a change of pace in the future.

Note: I just found out a reason why Michael Uslan is even cooler. I looked at his IMDB profile, and found out that in addition to Batman, he was the executive producer on Where in the World is Camen Sandiego?, the one that had Rockapella and everything. He now has my vote for the most successful IU Alumni EVER.

ついに

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At 8:05PM tonight, I finished the last final exam of my undergraduate career.

It’s about time! Woohoo! More blog to come later.

I have a feeling if I graphed out what time of day I write my blog entries, I would have over 75% between 1 and 3AM. Ah well. So today started off just about as easy as my days get. My “early” (ie, 2:30PM) class was cancelled for the day, so I had nothing to do until 4PM, my second class. I woke up around 11 or so, made am amazing Sakai-grade omelet, and watched both Family Matters and Boy Meets World on TV. Who knew that these stupid TGIF shows would still be airing on cable. I actually noticed a few weeks ago that all the shows on Nick at Nite are ones that I remember from my lifetime, which pretty much makes me feel old. I mean, I remember when Nick at Nite first started and they showed stuff like Dick Van Dyke and Welcome Back Kotter. Now, Fresh Prince of Bel Air apparently counts as “classic TV.” Wait, I guess it is. Yeesh.

So anyways, life has been good. Not that anything in particularly good has happened, I guess I’m just basing this on the fact that nothing particularly bad has happened. My classes are going somewhat well, although I need to get my online class assignments in on time (surprisingly this is the class that’s the most pain in my butt). My M405 Consumer Psychology class is turning into one of the best classes I’ve ever taken here at IU. It’s material that I actually am interested in, which I suppose helps out a lot. It’s funny hearing about psychological problems, etc (we really haven’t dealt much with marketing or business applications, but I think he’s doing that on purpose), then being able to so easily relate them to people I know. Things really do make a lot of sense; I knew I should have taken Intro to Psychology at some point. Oh well, I think this class probably covers most of that too. For the first time in a long while, I never get bored in class and actually enjoy listening to what’s going on. Weird, huh?

So I was in a pretty good mood after my one and only class of the day, and went to the office. Some issues there, nothing to really talk about. I’m starting to see a lot of hope for the organization next year. I hate to think that my role this year has been that of a segway in the life of IUSTV (from “creation” to “maturity”), but in some ways I think that’s true. Not to say that we’ve done a bad job this year, but we haven’t been growing and expanding as much as I would have hoped; too much other stuff had to be done. Overall, things are excellent and better than last year, which is indeed something to be happy about.

I’ve been on sort of a Retro Kick lately. This has been due to the website RetroJunk.com, which has pretty much killed many hours of my time, and to the rediscovery of classing NES and SNES games. Pat had both emulators on his XBox, so we played a lot last weekend. About 5 times this week after that, I’ve played SNES on my PS2 emulator, and seriously, these games are the greatest things ever made. Especially puzzle games. I really missed the competition and taunting that goes along with playing an otherwise kiddy game like Puyo Puyo or Tetris. I think I was raised this way, since as far back as I can remember both my parents (and my brothers) really get into these puzzle games. Games like Kirby’s Avalanche (same as Puyo Puyo), Tetris, Puzzle Fighter, Bomberman, etc have kept my family up many a night as we played games on end trying to beat and rematch each other. Good family memories. Some families beat each other; my family played Nintendo.

Old TV (especially theme songs) have been stuck in my head all week as well. Ninja Turtles and Heathcliff in particular. I have both songs on my phone now also. I remember watching TV as a kid, it was a lot different than now. Well, in some ways. In many ways I am still like a kid watching TV (ahem, Kamen Rider), but back then was still something different. That reminds me. I was telling this to Pat the other day, but I think the 4 Ninja Turtles really represent personality types pretty well (for males), at least in general. You can maybe tell a lot about how a person is going to act by finding out the order in which he liked the Ninja Turtles. Everyone had a favorite. The turtles were so different, so distinct. You could even go so far as to label people as “Raphael-types,” “Leonardo-types,” etc.

Personally, I liked Donatello the most, followed by Leonardo, then Raphael, then Michelangelo. Everyone post their turtle rankings (as comments). I shall call this the Leong Scale of Ninja Turtle Personalities. The exact scientific meaning will be discovered at a later date, I’m just claiming stake on the name. I’ll bet I can guess though which turtle was everyone’s favorite. Also this might not work as well for females, but give it a shot (especially if you watched the Ninja Turtles, which pretty much everyone did).

Stray Dog Strut

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Woke up around 11AM, somehow (had 3 alarm clocks set, only needed the first), after going to sleep around 6. It was painful indeed. I came out to the living room with my cover, and I think sat at my desk for about 30 minutes reeling in the pain of waking up. Eventually I got up for real. Did e-mail, phone calls, and dropped M419. 1PM is way too early for me, and this way I didn’t have to go today. I do, however, have to get the journalism credit in the books soon so that I can have 12 credit hours. It doesn’t really matter except for scholarships, which I checked and I do actually need 12 hours. Great.

My 2 classes today weren’t bad; M405 is actually really cool. However, since the weather was awesome today and the heat in the building was still on full power, both classrooms were way too warm. And this meant that I was even more sleepy that usual. During D302, I actually started the whole “pinch yourself” thing on my arms and legs to try and wake up, but it didn’t do anything but hurt. After class I went to the Jungle Room with Brian, Nick, Ho, and MSB (who is back and is like a half-Prof now). Sweet. Had a quick meeting at the Union, then went home. I was SO TIRED from sleeping so little that I gave up any hope (or desire) of going out tonight and went to sleep on my couch. This was at around 7:30, and I just woke up around 12:30. Oh well, I’m probably going to just try to sleep again sometime soon so that I can be up at a reasonable hour tomorrow.

Also, it’s Friday the 13th. Ooooooooooohhhhh!~

Asteroid Blues (Episode 1)

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Monday was the first day of classes here at IU. I slept until about 2:30PM, and watched TV most of the day. Yep, that’s right, no classes on Mondays for me. It’s looking like the best semester ever, and of course it’s the final countdown (yes, start humming that song). I’m taking 12 credit hours I think, but my schedule is pretty much perfect. I only have classes Tuesday and Thursday, and they don’t start until the afternoon. I don’t think there’s any way to have a schedule better than mine. Here’s a quick rundown of my classes and a wrap-up of Tuesday, which was the first day for me.

Business Marketing M419: Retail Management
I’m going to drop this course tomorrow morning, because I only need 1 more marketing class to graduate. Since I wanted to double check and get a feel for the class before I dropped it, I went to the first day. Note that this meant I had to wake up earlier than I normally would, since this one started at the wee hour of 1PM. Retail management might be useful if I was going to work somewhere like Sears, but I don’t know if I’ll be doing that right after graduation. I got to class on time (seriously, that’s a miracle), and it was in a computer lab that I’ve had several courses in before. That was a big plus; I love computer classes cause they’re usually pretty easy, and I sit there with Outlook and Firefox for web browsing. The class was pretty much all chicks, but the syllabus and prof make it sound like there will be a good amount of work required. Also 3 different groups to work in, which would mean a lot of out-of-class meeting. I don’t want to have to do more group meetings (I have enough meetings as it is). Also the prof mentioned she has a zero-tolerance policy against web browsing and e-mail during class. Uh-oh, no good for me. So yeah, I’m going to drop this as soon as possible. I would have done it earlier but I want to make sure I won’t mess up scholarships or student status when I drop under 12 credit hours. I’ll have 12 eventually, since I’m doing an independent study with the Journalism school. I just have to get that set up and in the books.

Business D302: Operations of International Enterprises
The prof for this class is Dan Li, so I was expecting a Chinese guy. I was right about the Chinese part, but it’s a female. Anyways, this is the continuation of the international business class I took last semester and was pretty un-involved from (still pulled a B). It was also the class that I was late to almost every day that I went to, bombed the tests, but saved myself with the miracle that is known as the “Toys R Us in Japan” paper, which I wrote in Minneapolis and Brian had to turn in for me. Seems like much of the same, but since I don’t have as many classes, I guess I might actually try to study or something. I’m just staying that, you know. I probably won’t do anything for it. Regardless, it’s a fairly straightforward course, much like the last one. A good amount of reading, and that’s that.

Business Marketing M405: Buyer Behavior
The night before going to class, I was looking at the syllabus. The prof’s name is Robert Smith. I was watching Big O on TV at the time and confused it with Roger Smith and thought to myself “sweet, maybe he has a giant robot.” SHOW-TIME! Anyway, this course is pretty much a psych class taught in the business school. It seems pretty interesting and I’m happy to have a class that’s a bit different than ALL the international and marketing-type courses I took last semester. I actually thought to myself the other day (before class) that I wish I had time in my class schedule to take something different, like psychology. Looks like I got my wish. The teacher seems pretty down to earth and relatable (he talked about how he goes to sleep at 3 or 4AM and wakes up at noon), so it should be a fun class. I have to remember not to sit next to the window/AC on Thursday, though, because it was a pain in the butt trying to hear what the prof was saying over the noise of the air conditioner (which was for some reason, blowing COLD air in the middle of January).

Those are the three classes I went to on Tuesday. I’m not going to M419 tomorrow since I’m going to drop it, so I only have class every Tues and Thurs from 2:30 to 5:15. Not too shabby, eh? I deserve this, I’m such a hard working student.

Now, aside from those I’m also taking the following, which will put me to a total of 12 credit hours.

Business X488 Globalization
I need one more class to finish my international business major, and at first I was planning on taking an international economics course or something, which would pretty much kill me. I’ve never done good in econ. Luckily, I got an e-mail in the fall about a new online course available for students studying abroad. Haha, I got in! So, I have a 3 credit hour online course that will finish that second business major, and I don’t have to actually get up and go anywhere. Sweet. It’s not going to be as ridiculous as I kind of hoped for an online course, but it should be better than taking econ nonetheless. I’ll have papers and stuff to do, but I think it should be interesting. Also it looks like a big part of the class is doing journals and “talking” to your classmates on an online message board.

Journalism Independent Research
I really don’t even need to do this, but I think it will be kind of fun and interesting. Also the 3 credit hours of (what will most likely be) A’s will do my GPA good. I’ll be working with a few other IUSTV staff members and the dean of the journalism school (who is new this year and very cool: has a strong interest in student TV) to research other student stations across the country. We’ll look at what makes the best stations the best, and then in turn try and bring new improvements and ideas to IUSTV. I pretty much would do this anyway, so I might as well get credit for it.

That’s the semester. It’s looking like it will be awesome. Fridays are as usual being reserved as IUSTV work days, but I still am undecided on Mondays and Wednesdays. I could spend both of those days doing IUSTV stuff also (which I’ll do to some extent), but I think I’ll finally have more free time in the semester to do what’s important: find a job, sleep, play video games, and watch TV. Life is good. Hope everyone has a good semester. And I hope everyone who is graduated finds a job (snake!).

今学期も夜露死苦、機械犬。

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