Brian's World

Today, Tomorrow, Yesteryear

Every once in a while I’m just trotting along doing my thing when I remember there are larger issues to worry about.  I thought I saw the Career Fair sign being hung over RPI’s footbridge a few days ago but I was able to successfully forget about it by the time I finished walking to my destination.  Today at the RPI TV meeting we were discussing upcoming productions and someone mentioned it happened to collide with the fair at RPI.  Hrm, I might want to start thinking about it again soon.

So I’m here, worried about where I’m going to be in 8 months after I graduate from RPI.  My typical approach might be to model my efforts after successful people I know who’ve graduate at RPI.  Let me think, I know of 3 people who’ve graduated and departed from RPI with similar degrees… of which 1 is fully employed, probably the person I have the least contact with as well.  I know plenty of people who’ve ‘extended’ their stays at the institute, be it to seek additional degrees or higher degrees, but I don’t know if that’s for me.  I think I’d rather be working, as I have yet to see an MS/PhD program interesting to me.

As such, I find myself updating something that looks like a resume and refreshing the list of cool and exciting projects I work on.  This ‘fair’ doesn’t look too promising.  I reviewed the list of companies in attendance and none of them particularly leaped out at me as a great place to work.  I’ve been consistently disappointed by RPI’s inability to get companies that interest me to come to campus.  Microsoft was here 2 years ago I think but they haven’t been back.  I’ve seen nothing from any other company that I recognize as a driving force on the web (sad face).  I don’t know who’s problem it is here at RPI.  Maybe this school isn’t just good enough, maybe the CS department is misguided in their curriculum, or maybe the people who run these fairs don’t knock on the right doors… like I said, I don’t know.

Things were always much easier when I always new the mission at hand and, almost as important, that another mission was always in the pipeline.  I might have taken for granted the fact that finishing earlier always meant I could jump quicker onto something new without having to wait around.  While the hours may have been grueling and the pay left something to be desired it was steady work, something that seems harder to find today.

But I can’t forget about the goings on of present.  Someone’s got to remember that indeed things need to get done for us to continue making progress.  Sometimes I wish progress left a more positive aftertaste in my mouth.  It seems 2009 has been a year where progress hasn’t flavored nearly as well as the past.  My taste buds have been burnt by indiscretions of others, my tongue distained with failure, and putrefied with poor communication.  What else is one to do?  I guess I should have employed some  strategic mouth wash early (and often) but it went against my belief in facilitating others happiness.  Now I’m left with what?  I guess I have left than I started, but that usually implies a large loss when I didn’t start out with very much at all.  I guess I’m left to build it up and see what happens.

Good night moon.