While I was MIA: Internship hunting struggles, Bearstock, reading, and China trip!

I realized that the less time I spend on my laptop, the less I blog. I guess it isn't that much of a surprise when I think about it. I mean, I don't really like to blog in public places, so it makes sense why I only blog on my laptop. However, I don't like to use my laptop as much anymore because it's so slow and laggy half of the time, which is why I use the school's computers a lot more in this past year.

And it sucks, because sometimes, I think about a something to blog about but then forget it by the time I get home. Or I completely forget to blog for a long time because I'm so busy doing homework and such on the computer instead.

Such is the way life is I suppose. :P Hopefully I will get more time to blog and have more interesting things to blog about!

So much has happened these past few months. I've been on the job hunt looking for internships this whole semester since it's a requirement to grade for my major, and this is the only summer I have available to intern if I want to do the 5th year graduate program at Mercer. For the past month, I've had interviews with Blue Bird, ESG, Goodwill, and AT&T.

I feel like, with every interview, I slowly got better. I know that I was totally unprepared for Blue Bird's interview, since it was my first one, so I wasn't surprised when I got rejected. Plus, Patrick, one of my friends in the major who is really good at graphic design, was way more qualified for the job.

Then ESG's interview was full of problems. I realized an hour before the interview that I had accidentally left my dress pants at home, so I was calling all of my friends to borrow some pants, but all of them were at work or off-campus, so I had to go to the mall and buy a pair of pants. By that time, and because of the extra time it took to go back on campus to change and get ready, there was traffic, so I was 15 minutes late to my interview. To make it worse, they gave all of the interviewees a homework assignment that was due a week from that day as well. We had to redesign one of their executive summaries in InDesign, and it was just a lot of effort in a little amount of time. I didn't get to spend as much time as I wanted to work on it, so I knew that they wouldn't pick me, which they didn't.

I didn't think that I made that nice of an impression for the Goodwill interview, but at least I was prepared, and the interviewer was impressed with my work. I guess that's why they wanted to hire me. That reminds me! I need to reject them tomorrow since I got hired by AT&T yesterday! :D

Since Spring Break, AT&T was looking for some Mercer instructional designers, because they heard great things about us. I actually missed the deadline to apply, but thanks to talking to Alejandro the day of his interview with them, he gave them my email when they told him that they were still looking for another instructional designer intern. After going through the application process, I was accepted yesterday! \o/ I still have to finish the paperwork and take a drug test, but I'm in! :D

So yeah, the internship struggle was so real, and I was so busy that I didn't apply to as many places as I would have liked, but I really lucked out with AT&T and am so grateful for the opportunity. I just know that I have to step up my game and do my best while interning with them, because they offer really awesome benefits that I want to keep.

Also, Bearstock was last weekend. Most of my friends weren't that excited for it since the headliners were Relient K and Timeflies. That, and because Shelle was the one driving that day, we kind of had to follow her around, and she didn't want to stay the whole time. 

We got there early to eat at Margarita's, and that was a long affair itself, lol. We told Meethu that we'd meet up with them at noon, but we didn't even get there until one. Then, one of my friends texted me to hangout since he didn't know his way around Mercer, so we spent the longest time trying to find him (he told us that he was at the tennis courts but didn't specify that he meant the tennis courts at the park, not at Mercer -__-"). Then Jackie, who drove separately, since she was running late, finally made it, and I had to instruct her on how to get to Marg's from the Stetson parking lot and meeting up with her near the end since she was getting confused, lol. Then we spent around an hour and a half eating and goofing off before finally leaving. XD

We walked around and bought Bearstock tank tops and shirts and listened to one of the day bands before going to the mall to buy Kyle some shorts and stopping by Sonic's, since it was happy hour and super hot. Then we went back home since we were all tired. It was a really hot day, okay, lol. I do kind of regret missing out of the rest of Bearstock, because I finally listened to Timeflies the next day and saw their Mercer free style rap on Facebook, and they were really good. But it's okay, I've been to four Bearstocks already, and I will probably go to the next two Bearstocks, since I'll still be attending Mercer. :P

I've also been spending an inordinate amount of time with my usability group working on our usability test this semester. We've done work for over seven hours at a time before! There's so much stuff to do for that class! We needed to write a test plan, administer usability tests, give a presentation, and write a formal report. Now we have to do all of that again minus the presentation, and all within one month instead of two like the last one. D:

And in between all of that stuff, I've been spending as much time as I can with Dahveed, because I love him and stuff, lol. It's just fun and relaxing being with him. I can't believe how much of a sap I've become because of him, lol. We've been competing on the sappiest pet names for each other lately. XD

I also got my read on during the middle of Spring Break, lol. I started reading The Iron King by Julie Kagawa during the second half of the break, and continued to read the series once school started up again, but now that things have become even busier, I've stopped reading again. :\ Hopefully I'll start reading again when I'm on the plane to China. 

Oh yeah, I don't think I've ever mentioned it: I'm going to China with my class! We leave the day after the last day of finals and are going to be there for two weeks! It's going to be so fun! We're going to be staying at a couple different cities and touring lots of places. But yeah, the plane tickets have been bought for a while now, and our visas came in a few weeks ago, so we're pretty much set!

So there you have it! Everything that has happened in the past few months! I'll try to keep you updated better, lol.