Life is making my eye twitch.

My life consists of the following:

• Sorority (two positions)
• 15 units at school (Financial Accounting, Operations Management, Comparative Culture, Public Relations, and Managerial Economics)
• Interning 3 days a week with 2 different ongoing projects to multi-task through
• Remembering to call my parents twice a week
• Studying with my boyfriend
• Remembering people’s birthdays
• Trying to please and make time for friends
• Worrying about whether or not I should move my checking account from Washington Mutual to Bank of America
• Trying to gain a basic understanding for football
• Getting excited for the upcoming Warrior season
• Spending my Saturdays sleeping and catching glimpses of college football

I thought the reason for my left eye’s minor twitching was due to 40 hours of staring at a computer over the summer but my roommate says its due to lack of sleep.  That’s it; I’m spending my Saturdays catching up on sleep.  Except for this  Saturday–I need to pass JEPET.

And so summer bliss comes to an end // 911 Reflection

Granted I wouldn’t consider my summer blissful, but free time is definitely more limited now that the Fall semester has begun.  This is the first time since my second semester that I’m taking 15 units and I’m still interning for three full days.  The weekends can not come fast enough.

Random observations of San Francisco State University:

1. The bathrooms at Thorton Hall take three flushes to flush down a seat cover and rolled up toilet paper. 
2. There’s WAY too many people at school during the first week.  Now that we’re three weeks into the semester, it’s noticably not as packed.
3. Every single one of my classes were overcrowded, with a full waitlist and another 10 people trying to add the class.  Less classes, more  students.  Public school can be a bitch.
4. They raised the price of soda in a can to 95 cents.  Holy shit that’s a lot compared to how much they sell soda at the vending machines at work (25 cents).
5. My Asus Eee PC 1000h is perfect for the ridiculously small desks I have in every single one of my classes.
6. Some teachers really SUCK at teaching, IE my Managerial Economics professor.
7. Some of my pool hall friends are changing.  And I don’t know what to make of it.

A more random, longer thought on SFSU:

Obviously, yesterday was the seven-year anniversary of the 9/11 attacks.  The Republicans group set up an event held at Malcolm X Plaza between 12-2, the busiest time on campus.  I was right by the door, inside of the Student Center and I looked out as they were starting.  They were playing the Star-Spangled Banner and about 5% of the people outside were respectfully standing up, or at the very least NOT talking, walking around, doing whatever whatever. 

I don’t find myself being a political person in any way, but it broke my heart to see the kind of indifference people were publicly showing to this moment, to see that people really didn’t give a fuck.  Remembering what happened seven years ago doesn’t mean you have to support the decisions that were made after it or even the College of Republicans, but a little respect for the moment that truly shook Americans as a whole for even just one day wouldn’t hurt.  Even if you really couldn’t care less about what happened or feel any sense of patriotism for America, then at least have the decency to go on about your business and talk about clothes and shoes and bullshit somewhere else on campus.  I have never felt so disgusted with my own peers until yesterday.

Things like this always strike at my heart though so I don’t expect too many people to feel the same way I do.  But I cried for the first three anniversaries of 911, I cried after Columbine’s anniversary, and most recently after the one-year anniversary of the V-Tech shooting.  It’s wierd; it’s completely against my self-absorbed mindset.

Love’s not always in the air

In the episode of Sex & the City where Carrie tells Mr. Big “I love you” for the first time after he buys her an ugly duck statue, he responds by giving her a look and telling her he’ll be having his cigar outside while she finishes getting ready.

Carrie discusses with her friends about how he either has to say it back or they have to break up and I always wondered why that was.  Sometimes it happens when one person falls in love before the other one does.  There shouldn’t be any added pressure for the other person to say it back if they don’t really feel that way.

It sucks to finally understand how Carrie was feeling.

Feeling Thirsty on a Thursday

I wouldn’t be surprised if I was the youngest person at my company.  While I enjoy the experience my internship is giving me, sometimes I go crazy being in a quiet office environment and not being able to relate to anyone for 40 hours a week. 

There are a few “young folks” in the office, at least in the Marketing department.  The block of cubicles that I belong to seems to be where they put us.  There’s me, the timid intern; Mey, three years out of college and on the verge of getting married; Allan, the budget analyst who doesn’t know anything about Marketing; and Chuck, who works with partners and my only friend for awhile thanks to New Hire Orientation back in June.

Allan sent out an email to a couple people requesting a “Thirsty Thursday.”  I thought about how awkward it was going to be to drink with co-workers but I couldn’t say no; talk about getting shunned.

Last night after work, a couple the “young folks” in Marketing gathered at Medjool, a restaurant by evening, a club by later evening.  I admit, I am not a big drinker so my knowledge on alcoholic beverages is limited.  I was too embarressed to order my usual Fuzzy Navel so I said the first thing that came to mind:  a Long Island Iced Tea.

“For someone who doesn’t drink, you had to get the strongest drink at the bar, huh?” my direct supervisor, Peter, said with a laugh.

I was buzzing off one drink but another round was bought (on the company credit card) along with some appetizers.  Oh my God, this meat that someone ordered was probably the best thing I’ve ever eaten.  You’ll see a picture of it if you go to the website’s menu page on the bottom left hand (www.medjool.comsf). 

I had an overall great time.  Overall, the people that I share an office with for the majority of my time are actually some really cool people.  At times I noticed the age gap, but for the most part I didn’t have a chance to even think of it, not with the constant discussion on office politics, secret office romance, the closet party heads, and regular need-to-knows about San Francisco.

I came home drunk like an idiot though.  Missed out on Holy Cow with my girls due to passing out at 9:30.  What can I say, I really am not that big of a drinker.

In Need Of a Second Life

At my internship, I’m part of the team that is responsible for the launch of a brand new internal marketing tool.  It’s a database that stores all our Reference Customers along with a list of their referenceable products.  At the moment, whenever a sales person needs to find a reference customer to close a deal, he blasts an e-mail to all of Sales Global (which for some reason includes me in the Customer Marketing department I guess) with a one-liner question.  With our new database, sales people can just type in keywords and will have the information right in front of them.  For an industry-leading company, I’m surprised it took them this long to start this kind of program.

As usual, I’m going off topic.

The internal launch for the marketing department is less than a month away and our biggest problem is making the launch for a not-so-exciting tool exciting.   The Consultant, Kelly, brought up that companies like Cisco are starting to use Second Life as an internal tool, but that was all she knew about it.  Her and my supervisor, Betsy, (both way over 40) turned to me with expecting eyes and I blushed as I had to remind them once again that my technology knowledge was limited (sometimes I can’t believe I actually got this internship in the first place).  They shrugged and were happy enough to give the research to me as a project.

So here I am, reading up on the “virtual reality” craze that has companies like IBM, Cisco, and Oracle jumping on the bandwagon and I’m getting pretty juiced.  Even though we were only planning for the launch, I started to think about how it could benefit the company as a whole.  Using a virtual world is like putting IM, LiveMeeting, and phone conferencing all under one screen and something that would definitely be used to its advantage here.  My daydreaming thoughts began to wander as I envisioned myself presenting this to my supervisor’s boss and him falling in love with the idea thus offering me a permanent position even without a degree.  Hey, a girl can dream, right?

Unfortunately, I haven’t gotten as far as even setting foot into the “in world” due to technical problems that I can’t seem to understand for the life of me.  I don’t get it; I’m registered and logged in, but after uninstalling and reinstalling the Second Life software three times, it still says that they haven’t recieved my “login packet.”  At every failed login attempt, my fantasy of instant permanent employment was diminishing.

I’ve got two days before my next meeting with Kelly and Betsy.  Hope I can find something else more promising by then.

And so it continues

I’m not going to lie; I’ve been part of the blogging world for quite some time now. 

I started with onlinediary.com in 2002 and quickly switched to TeenOpenDiary.com.  Found myself in BloopDiary and Xanga but as much as I loved the community at Bloop, I gave it up and focused on Xanga, blogging randomly on MySpace and LiveJournal every so often.

As a Marketing major, I understand the importance of blogs and if I’m going to try to get into the Public Relations field, I figured I might as well get a little bit more serious with this.  So here I am, with 3 semesters left in college and my Marketing internship extending into the Fall semester, to document my journey into “real life.”

And don’t worry; the goal is not to usually sound so self-absorbed (even though I half the time I can’t help that I am).

Cheers,
AJ