I spent today on a day trip in Plano for a job interview. The process of finishing college and the requisite job application process has been slightly eye-opening, but the conclusions are honestly some that needed to happen earlier. At least, if I wanted to do anything about them.
I probably shouldn’t post this publicly, but I think I’m aiming for the wrong industry.
I originally started a Computer Science degree because it felt the right thing to do. College was a given for me, and my standout choices for major were this and Music. I had been playing clarinet for seven years, with moderate success, but the college band setup didn’t seem the right place for me. I had taken a lax attitude toward playing, and my success was more from a good innate sense of rhythm rather then a mastery of the instrument. I figured this attitude would bite me in the ass if I tried playing on the college level, but rather than work harder toward being mastering the instrument, I looked for alternate degree plans.
Despite being my favorite teachers in high school, I always fought my Language Arts teachers when it came to writing assignments, so English was out for me. Anything else just didn’t carry much interest to devote full study toward. But computers were interesting enough. To be honest, I wasn’t sure what to expect out of a CS degree, other than the fact that programming would be involved at some point. My only experience with anything remotely related to programming before this were a crash course in JavaScript I had for a web design class, and RPG Maker.
It turns out that “CS = Programming” is an incredibly common misconception. I’ll leave out the why; it doesn’t actually factor in here. Suffice it to say that while the classes have been interesting, the field hasn’t been something I’d want to contribute research to, for example. And this brings me back to the conclusion. CS doesn’t interest me as a career choice. I don’t even enjoy side coding as a hobby. I think the process of stamping out some code is fun, in a sense, but it’s not something I perform with gusto. It’s not something I’ve taken too far outside class. (I say “too far” because, well, I have done something, I guess. It’s not impressive as far as a project I can talk to outside parties about, though.)
This is complicated by another thing I probably shouldn’t post publicly. None of the companies who went to my college’s job fair looking for CS students were places I felt excited applying for. Also, not many companies went to my college’s job fair to look for CS students. Last semester, I still applied to several companies, but the failure that resulted from that has left me in a torpor this semester. Which is great since it’s my last.
But this leads to a question: what do I want to do? I’m going to get lofty and/or generic here, because at the core, I’m not sure. The feasible choices from my current degree that still interest me would be teaching and working on a DAW of some kind. Unfortunately, teaching at the college level (where I’d probably want to wind up teaching) requires performing research, which as mentioned above, isn’t what brings me to the position. And companies that create DAWs are either too small to take on new grads, too huge to want to take on new grads for that project specifically, or not companies in the first place, and thus don’t want to hire anyone.
But what if I ignore my degree? Well, the content of my YouTube channel, my most visited website, the accounts I’ve been following on Twitter recently (there’s a lot more music ones outside vgm, and honestly I included Headhunterz for fun), my favorite anime, and the way I spend my free time (click the first link again) point to something. I’d honestly love to do something with music. My hobby has been downcoverting songs into chiptune, but there’s not much a career path in that. So I’ve been trying to punch through the inevitable creative slump where you hate your work, but it’s not in a habit yet, and honestly, when I get the time, I no longer have the effort to create something original. So I’m thankful for some recent events on the FamiTracker fora, but those seem to operate too slowly for me to get something settled before I absolutely need to have something set up (i.e. graduation day).
In essence, what I want is more time to pursue my hobbies so I can develop them into something I can do something with. Unfortunately, with the end of my college career looming, this observation came too late to make something out of it. I’ll do what I can, but my customary “wait and see” pattern definitely will not work here, and that sucks royally.
tl;dr: boo hoo, Bryan is sad. Look for the sentences containing “shouldn’t post this publicly”, and the last paragraph with a ton of links in it.
(So I should have a Tumblr where I repost YouTube links, but I don’t think this one would be a good fit for it. Also, it would probably languish and die like my YouTube channel has. And this Tumblr did.)
“
If you’ve never programmed a computer, you should. There’s nothing like it in the whole world. When you program a computer, it does exactly what you tell it to do. It’s like designing a machine — any machine, like a car, like a faucet, like a gas-hinge for a door — using math and instructions. It’s awesome in the truest sense: it can fill you with awe.
A computer is the most complicated machine you’ll ever use. It’s made of billions of micro-miniaturized transistors that can be configured to run any program you can imagine. But when you sit down at the keyboard and write a line of code, those transistors do what you tell them to.
Most of us will never build a car. Pretty much none of us will ever create an aviation system. Design a building. Lay out a city.
Those are complicated machines, those things, and they’re off-limits to the likes of you and me. But a computer is like, ten times more complicated, and it will dance to any tune you play. You can learn to write simple code in an afternoon. Start with a language like Python, which was written to give non-programmers an easier way to make the machine dance to their tune. Even if you only write code for one day, one afternoon, you have to do it. Computers can control you or they can lighten your work — if you want to be in charge of your machines, you have to learn to write code.
” — Cory Doctorow, in the novel “Little Brother”
I invite you to read this article before continuing, as that is the subject here. Also brush up on “Everybody Draw Muhammad Day” if you don’t know about it.
In summary: A German woman, inspired by the slightly malicious reaction by a certain community to a couple episodes of South Park depicting the Prophet in a bear suit, decided to start an event called “Everybody Draw Muhammad Day” in which she wanted the Internet to do just that. The intent was to call out that community to action when the entire Internet criticized Islam. She shortly backed away from the event (and even when she started, she used a pseudonym), but it gained a fairly large page on Facebook before they took it down due to prodding from the Pakistani government.
The linked article details how Pakistani lawyers wish to prosecute the creators of Facebook as well as the starter of the event under a line in the penal code which states “Use of derogatory remark, etc, in respect of the Holy Prophet, … shall be punished with death, or imprisonment for life.” Authorities have apparently launched a First Information Report against these four people, which essentially launches a criminal investigation.
Summary over. So let me get this straight. These lawyers, and/or whomever paid them, want to prosecute (and kill/lock up) the founders of Facebook for merely hosting the page for the event? I believe FB had no official hand in creating the page. It was taken down in any case. Isn’t there something that prevents a site hosted in one country from being held against the law in another? That’s how The Pirate Bay kept existing, right?
And on another note, I find it personally wrong that Islam is woven into the law there, but having been raised in America, I’ve been conditioned to like Freedom Of ReligionTM. It’s strange to me that anyone found to disrespect Islam - even a tourist, I’d think - is punishable under the law. It breeds a certain fanatical zealotry which leads to…
The events leading up to “Everybody Draw Muhammad Day” included more than South Park. Each time someone published a political cartoon poking fun at Islam - an action I’m certain they’ve tried on other major religions - they’d get a malicious (or worse, violent) reaction from the more vocal Islamic community berating the cartoonist for even thinking of the action. This occurred a number of times in quick succession which inspired the creation of the event.
Bleh. I’ve lost my steam, but the thoughts I wanted to communicate have been written down.
Tonight’s Disheartening Event requires some context. “So there’s this girl.” A good friend of mine whom I have known since my freshman year in high school, and probably one of the reasons I’m more socially capable than the stereotypical nerd. We’ve been talking on and off through that span of time, and I was sure I was ‘friend-zoned’ (hell, she’s been married and divorced in the time we’ve known each other, and I started as the naive quiet nerd, so I made the realization after I started caring) until this Spring Break, when we actually hit it off. I vocally nixed the idea of a long-distance-relationship (she in Amarillo and I in Lubbock), because my tendency toward apathy and “being two hours away from a hug” (my words to her) seemed to be too much of a hindrance to this greenhorn.
The main reason I’m in Amarillo right now is to provide attention to my parent’s cat for a day while they’re in England for a week and a half. However, I was so willing to drive here because I would be able to see this friend and put some of my over-thinking (I’m an Intellection, it’s what I do) into action. We approach the Disheartening Event. Unfortunately for me, during our catching-up conversation, she let me know that someone else had been more pro-active than I. Apparently damn chivalrous, too, by her telling. To put it directly, she got an actual boyfriend.
I left out a bit of the pre-context, but that’s the gist. I’m sure I’m over-thinking again, and I need to let this pass. But my face is still flushed from when she got here three hours ago, even though she left an hour ago. If you’ll excuse me, I’m going to cheer myself up.
Post scriptum. I wanted to add that we didn’t have a falling out; tonight’s overall plan of anime-watching still occured, just with a different undertone than anticipated.
I’ve usually been mum about my thoughts on alcohol. I had plenty of occasion to comment a year and a half ago, but I kept (mostly) quiet for my own good and the good of my then-roommate.
Now I don’t live in a location where the mere presence of booze is verboten, and I also don’t live with my apathetic counter-part. Somehow, alcohol is not only present, but pushed upon me by a new roommate. So I think it’s time to make my opinion clear to those to whom it doesn’t matter:
I hate it. Not to the point of fanatic action, where I would call for Prohibition: The Sequel, mind you, but enough to decide against consuming it. I am of the opinion that I should enjoy the taste of whatever I consume. If I am to consume something for a reason other than to quell my hunger or quench my thirst, I am taking medicine.
This is to say nothing to those who drink their beverage of choice, whatever the choice, for the flavor. The problem is that this doesn’t happen in a college situation. Free from the prying eyes of their parent/guardian, fledgling students want to figure out how it feels to get wasted. So they get wasted. They find out they like the feeling of being ‘buzzed,’ so they continue to take their drink of choice. Along the way, they have convinced themselves that they enjoy their drink of choice in particular. (And they do enjoy it. To prefer one drink or one class of beverage is an actual preference, whatever the reason.)
What I don’t like is when I’m the lone teetotaler of a group and my incomplete reasons given provoke offerings. I don’t understand or like when people think that introducing me to the tamer drinks will cause me to like alcohol in general. I’m of the mindset that if you consume something to create the idea of a good time, you’re running away from a harsher reality. On the other hand, it’s not too much to loosen up after a long day and unwind, so long as you don’t get carried away.
On a mostly related note, I don’t like watching people make fools of themselves. I’m too much of an empath to laugh at another’s expense. Alcohol makes you try things that you otherwise wouldn’t; this occasionally (and often, given the right personality type) leads to activities your sober self might call dumb. Your drunken companions probably recognize grandstanding when they see it and respond in kind, possibly joining or even ridiculing.
To return to my context, I don’t want to tell my pushy roommate directly, because my sense of tact has determined that it’s too late to declare abstinence tastefully. Unfortunately, I’ll need to face up to it soon enough, because I have three months to go with these gentlemen.