As L & D Ends....

I am very excited to finish this L and D phase. We all worked hard to get to this point and an internship is right around the corner. I want to share all of my tech skills during this phase for the soul purpose of hunting for feedback. I want to be the best I.T. specialist I can be and I have a lot to learn to get there. I see this internship as a major step up to this goal. I want to work in a casual office environment. I noticed that formal environments usually have no room for innovation from the population. They tend to leave the inventing and creationism to a select few. I want to be able to collaborate with my co-workers and managers. I want to really feel like my contribution to the company matters. I feel expendable in a formal work environment because these types of offices enforce that thought into their workforce.
I am scared of working in a formal work environment. I can be respectful and well-mannered but I am very uncomfortable feeling like a replaceable piece of the corporate machine. I want my individuality to shine and grow to be recognized as an asset to a company. My style, intelligence and sense of humor got me through the door in Year Up, Inc. and my persistence got me my seat. I want to be free to do the same thing in my internship. I want to stand out by being comfortable with being myself at work.

After this internship I plan to hunt for work. All I want is a job.

My Geeky Winter Break

Over the winter break I have gotten plenty of rest. It felt very nice to catch up on rest that I have lost over time. I feel like a brand new man and I am full of energy. In a previous blog I wrote about how I would take advantage of my downtime for what it was. I definitely feel positive results from this. Apart from sleeping until my heart is content, I caught up on my favorite T.V. shows, did homework, clean installed windows on my sister’s computer and did a lot of web surfing. When my sister was away from home at work, I did a ton of machine maintenance and installed anti-virus. I discovered that there are viruses that install themselves into your web browser and I had to remove one shortly after the clean install. The virus came from a download that was installed in the machine. From this I learned that when you install something from the web, even if you run a customized install, you never actually know what you are allowing into your machine. After removing the malware virus, I discovered www.codeschool.com. I noticed before I went on my break that the LCC students at my school were using this web application to learn web scripting languages. The website offered free easy to understand courses where I get to practice my scripts and see what the results are from my writing. I haven’t finished any of the courses yet but I definitely will be using this website during most of my downtime from now on until I finish all of them. I am excited to get back to school and finish my third module. There isn’t much time left in Year Up’s learning and development phase. While this course has been one of the most challenging I have taken yet, it seems to me that it went by very quickly. I think I am having fun with this.

Hope

I lay in my bed dreaming of ruby on rails codes when the light turned on and my sleep was disturbed. It was New Year’s Eve and the sun was rising. My breath smelled horrible as it does when I first wake up, and the urge to grab some coffee overcomes me. Staring at the window, drinking my coffee, it dawns on me, I am still unemployed. Since my informal emancipation from my parents at the age of 16, I have had a few jobs but lately I haven’t been working. I am broke, beyond the economic jargon, and it is through this experience that I realize that in this life, it’s never what you know and always who you know. Whether or not that statement is a fact really does not matter to me. This is my personal experience and observation. Even today I am challenging this idea. I am told from family, friends, mentors and public figures, “Get a good education, work hard and you will get a good job”. Since this is one thing I have yet to achieve I decided to study computer sciences. Not only because this is a subject have I had a passion for but also because it is challenging and evolving. It takes a very smart individual to get a certificate in this subject. I want to prove to myself whether or not education trumps network. I am extremely frustrated with the infinite job hunt and getting shot down repeatedly. If there are people out there truly willing to help people like me I want to meet them.