Procrastination is Bad

But you already knew that.

If there's anything that I learned about high school-Sam from doing IB, it's that time management wasn't exactly his forte. I won't go too into detail, but let's just say that turning in your EE – a 5,000-word essay in the style of a baby master's thesis – on the day of the hard deadline (several months after the deadline your IB coordinator told you to turn it in) is inconsiderate, irresponsible, and in general just an awful, awful idea.

(Ironically enough, I applied to the IB program because my dad said it would help with my "time management skills." I guess I thought there'd be a class on time management or something, because I didn't realize that that really meant "We're gonna give you a ton of work, and you're gonna have to figure out how to do all of it on time." Lesson #1: Don't assume things.)

Don't worry, I've since updated to high school-Sam++. Not quite yet college-Sam, since I literally just started college a few months ago. But high school-Sam++ comes with a host of new features, including 23% more of the cheesy jokes you (don't) love, a 89% increase in salad tolerance, and an unspecified percentage increase in anti-procrastination techniques.

Of course, it's far from perfect. I mean, I've put off writing this blog post for over two weeks a month two months now. But hey, it's a work in progress.

Now, if you've ever read articles on tips for interview prep – particularly the ones that have a title along the lines of "How to Answer the 'What is Your Greatest Weakness?' Question on an Interview" – you've probably read that while you're not supposed to lie, you're also not supposed to be over-confessional to your interviewer. In light of this, it might seem like a bad idea to blog about how you've procrastinated in the past on super important assignments. On LinkedIn, of all things. You might as well send a software engineering portfolio with no comments and all the variables/classes/etc. named along the lines of "myVar1" using coding blocks.

Well, this isn't an interview. Plus, the reasons you're not supposed to be over-confessional in an interview are that 1.) the interview is short, so first impressions matter and 2.) the interview is short, so you don't have too much time to explain what you learned from that one time you did that one questionable thing that you definitely won't do again.

In my case, you haven't clicked away after reading the first few paragraphs and are thus more likely to take the time to read the rest of this, so it's also more likely that I can give you the full picture. And in terms of first impressions, I'd be lucky if you haven't already branded me in your mind as a wisecracking procrastinator that thinks people actually read his blog, so that's pretty much a lost cause.

I could've given this post a clickbait-y title like "5 Easy Tips To Avoid Procrastination That Are Guaranteed To Make You Successful!" and made you that much less likely to read my blog ever again, but for what it's worth, here are a few things I've done that have curbed my incessant compulsion to procrastinate:

1.) Use a calendar. 

During summer session, I started using a calendar to keep track of my classes, meetings, and events. This helped more than I thought it would; it cleared up the ambiguity of due dates in my mind (e.g. "Is the homework due today or tomorrow? At 5:00 PM or 9:00 PM?"), which relieved a significant amount of mental stress I hadn't realized I'd been subconsciously putting on myself. As it turns out, a lot of the reason behind my procrastination has to do with stress, whether it be from an external source or self-induced.

2.) Create a daily schedule. 

I've also begun to write down a daily agenda in the form of a checklist right when I wake up. The trick here is that I include both little things – like reading the news, checking my email, or even making my bed – that I can easily check off, as well as the heavier tasks – like studying, doing the first 10 problems of my math homework, or writing an essay for an application – that I might be dreading. Checking off tasks, however small, usually makes me feel more accomplished and motivated to do more. In addition, juxtaposing an easy task with a more difficult one in the same space makes the workload seem less daunting.

2.) Make downtime more productive. 

No, I'm not saying I've turned all my downtime into totally efficient nonstop working. Just read any other article with tips on avoiding procrastination and I can definitely for sure 100% guarantee without question that there (might) be something about how taking breaks is important for preventing you from burning out, because it's true.

What I have done is make small changes to the way I take my breaks and spend the few minutes I have between classes, after lunch, etc. For instance, whenever I feel like looking at Instagram or Snapchat, I take a look at my LinkedIn feed first for business news and job opportunities. Instead of playing video games, I work on my coding skills by making games. Instead of watching YouTube, I work on my Photoshop and MATLAB skills. These are small time investments that add up in the long run and are more fun than the work I'm taking a break from, at least for me.

Naturally, I sometimes have trouble moderating my breaks (you would not believe how many episodes of Adventure Time I've watched between writing the paragraphs of this post – talk about taking a break from a break). Like I said: it's a work in progress.

4.) Be aware of future dates. 

I'm talking about dates that are a few months or more in the future. For me, simply knowing these dates makes me feel like I'm ahead, which has a motivational effect similar to checking things off a list. 

I track these dates on my calendar as well, but the difference with events that are way in the future is that they don't contribute to the stress that trying to memorize more immediate dates does, since there's no remote possibility for it to creep up on me within the week, or even the month. However, it does maintain the benefit of keeping something in the back of my mind for when I might stumble across the time to work on it.

5.) Get a hobby.

I don't mean something that's just for fun. It has to serve some other stimulative purpose. In my case, it's doing this blog. For one, it gets me thinking and reflecting on things I've done, am doing, and will do, which is important for making and successfully executing my plans. It's like making a function for a few lines instead of just putting the lines in main. In investing a little time to think, I lay the groundwork for a net gain in productivity.

I also try to make sure there's an underlying message in each post; I never want to make a blog post just saying "Went to the beach and got some totes delish Korean BBQ over at Newport today!!! #bobatoo #beach #funtimes #relax #hashtag." If I do write about something fun I've done, it will be because I learned something from that experience that I want to share in the hopes that someone else can derive something useful from it. 

The most important thing about this is that I don't kid myself when it comes to determining what is and picking a "productive" hobby. Sure, I could say to myself "Playing video games helps me improve my... uh... hand-eye coordination and finger dexterity, which are important to... writing?" or "Watching hours of Korean variety shows increases my... cultural and global awareness?" when I'm really just trying to justify something I want to do for fun. But what do I gain? I'd pretty much be making excuses, which is, needless to say, never a good thing to get in the habit of. 

I still spend time doing things purely for fun – after all, work-life balance is important to being, well, a human person – but I try to substitute a portion of that time with a still-fun-but-more-productive hobby.

So that's the end of my straight-up unsolicited advice. Some of it might work for you, some of it might not. Most of it you've probably read somewhere in some form or another sometime in the past. But this is my take on it. If even one person can glean anything from this – something useful, or even a little chuckle – then I think it's more than worth spending the time to put my thoughts out there for others to read.

Besides, even if nobody did, this is my hobby. I enjoy writing with authenticity, with my voice present in every paragraph, every sentence, in a style that's distinctly mine. That's another thing I've learned from starting up this blog: it helps remind me of who I am, and it keeps me from losing my personality to the stress of collegiate life and becoming some stuck-in-the-library zombie that nobody would want to hire anyways. Plus, dinosaurs!

Without midterms and finals in the way, I can finally get back to blogging, and I thought it'd be a great way to get the gears turning after a relaxing winter break. Now that I'm fired up for the beginning of winter quarter, it's time to get down to business and get ahead on some schoolwork. Gotta work towards college-Sam, right? I might even have some time to start writing the next few weeks' blogs.

But I think I'll get to that part later. I promise. ∎

- - -

Too Many Thoughts: Procrastination is Bad

LinkedIn: https://bit.ly/2Vtnlw5

Doing the Laundry

And other short stories.

I do a lot of weird things. Like taking the time to fold the corner of each paper in a stapled packet to ensure that the packet has a clean 45° edge where the staple holds it together, even on my time-constrained midterms. And actively seeking out retractable pens with the point sticking out so I can do it the justice of clicking it closed. And dispensing ice cream directly onto my bare hand from the soft serve machine in the dining hall. And blogging about all the weird things I do.

The list goes on (just ask my younger brother). The point is, I can seem a little loopy to people that have met me in a non-professional setting, because that's where I'm more expressive of my quirks since there's no employer there to say "Yeah... that's weird. You're weird. Please don't apply to my company." It's not that I have something to hide; I just want to give peace of mind to people that rely on me to get things done by showing that I have the professional capacity to act professionally when it comes to professional things in my profession. You can't get more professional than writing "professional" and its conjugations in a paragraph so many times that it doesn't sound like a real word anymore.

Despite all this weirdness, I spend most of my time being serious, between classes and attending various activities like job fairs, but it's these little things that add spice to your life.

For instance, summer session was my first time living away from home by myself for an extended period of time. On move-in day, I was super proud with my setup: desk by the window, mattress in the corner... yeah, desk by the window and mattress in the corner. It was pretty sparse. Still, I was really happy with it. And it was on the first floor, which was an awesome bonus perk.

Well, except for one thing. I liked to keep my window open at night because it got hot really easily even if it was cold outside. So there I was, sitting down at my desk, enjoying the cool air as I browsed memes on Google, when I noticed a droplet of water on the window screen. Then, all of a sudden, a stream of water came jetting from the window like I was being assailed in some urban-warfare water gun fight. I was lucky enough to save my laptop, but everything else on my desk got soaked. You know how when you're at your desk and you accidentally spill a glass of water or whatever you're drinking and it's the worst because there's a ton of papers and stuff on it? That's what happened, except instead of being one-and-done with a glass emptying its contents that gradually spread across the surface, it was like there was a shower head constantly spewing out water from an infinite reservoir that could only be turned off by a switch that wasn't there. And the corner where my mattress was also was in range of the window, so my beddings got wet too.

Really, why does the path of the sprinkler include a direct shot into the window? There aren't even any plants in there. Regardless, it's still a fun story to tell, and part of what's made college exciting for me so far.

In a separate episode, I found a cricket in my room while I was doing my homework. At first, I had no idea what to do. I considered just ignoring it, but then I realized that I really didn't particularly like the idea of a cricket crawling on me in my sleep, or worse, me accidentally crushing it while rolling over and leaving a stain on my bed on top of being guilty of insect manslaughter. Insectslaughter? Whatever. I couldn't just leave it. I didn't have a cup on hand, and even if I did, I figured the jump range on a cricket at a few centimeters off the ground was larger than the radius of any cup, so I looked around and saw the pot lid from the cooking stuff I brought from home (that I never actually used, now that I think about it) and spent about 20 minutes chasing the cricket around my room before I finally got it under the lid.

I still had to get it outside. I didn't have any thin, rigid surface to slide under the lid that actually spanned the vertical projection of its outer curvature, so I nudged the lid with the cricket inside over the folder I'd been given at the beginning of summer session. I then crawled on the floor, gradually pushing the lid and the folder all the way out my room, across the kitchen, and out the front door. Woohoo! I felt accomplished; figuring out how to move a cricket out of my room with limited resources was definitely more productive than staring at a screen of image macros with text in Impact font. I subsequently turned around and saw that the other person that was living with me, who was someone who had just finished grad school, had seen the whole thing and had a look on his face that clearly said "What even... well, you're a freshman I guess."

I think one of the weirdest things I've done so far (in college), though, was sleep in the dryer. Yes, the public dryer in the laundry room on the first floor of my dorm.

How did I end up there? Well, a little context: being the procrastinator that I am – come on, everyone is to some degree – I put off doing some online assignments on a Sunday night when I was staying in Irvine for the weekend. Everyone else had gone to bed and it was about 4 in the morning. I had a lot on my mind, mostly because I was overthinking some small decision as per usual. Should I go lie down in my bed? On one hand, it's cold and lying down is nice. Plus, I'm tired, and I could use a break. On the other hand, I'll probably fall asleep and not get my work done. Well, it's not due until 11 AM, so if I wake up a couple hours before then I'll have time. But will I wake up early? Probably not. But my bed has a blanket, and I like blankets. Then again, it's just physics, so I can probably finish it quickly now and be able to sleep in peace. Then again, it's just physics, so I can probably finish it quickly tomorrow and be able to sleep now. What about lying down with the laptop so I can rest my body but also do the assignment? Nah, I'll probably just fall asleep, so we're back to the first question. I guess sleeping now isn't so bad. But then I won't be able to sleep worry-free. But is there such thing as worry-free? There's always work to be done, and too little time to do it. And aren't all of our fates sealed to the slow decay of our bodies, cell by cell, molecule by molecule, as they succumb to the grips of time until the finality that is the end of our days?

Whoa, that escalated quickly. </stream_of_consciousness>

After pausing to think about what I had just thought about and concluding that taking an arbitrary philosophical approach probably wasn't the best way to come to a decision, the idea of using an economic approach popped into my head. I'm taking microeconomics right now, and I couldn't help but think of drawing out a production possibility frontier (PPF), so I did. It was bowed out, since this was a case of increasing opportunity cost. Naturally, this meant that I should've sought a middle ground to balance out the benefits of both options while maximizing efficiency, but again, that would lead back to the "lie down and work" option, which didn't seem likely to happen. I proceeded to write down opportunity costs – like time and energy – of each option and eventually had the whole back side of one of my old physics quizzes covered in random econ stuff. I often think about times like this and of how dumb it is that I do extra work I do to avoid doing other work.

Then I remembered I had to do the laundry, so I put my clothes and Tide Pods in the wash and ate some of the Tide Pods went back upstairs. I finally decided to do my physics homework, since I was already locked in to being awake to finish doing the laundry. While I was doing it, I contemplated whether that was the most efficient decision, constantly worrying that I wouldn't wake up on time and looking up articles on REM sleep and Circadian rhythms to see if I could find a way to determine a time at which to set my alarm guaranteed to wake me up (unfortunately, I found no such method).

Once I was about halfway done with my physics homework, I went back down to throw my stuff in the dryer. I went upstairs to continue doing my homework, and in between problem's I'd look at one of the many PPF curves I'd drawn and mentally mark where on the graph I was. For you econ people out there, I'll just say I was inside the bounds of the curve and Vilfredo Pareto would not be proud.

Finally I finished the homework, and I went downstairs to get my stuff from the dryer. I had no idea what time it was, but there was already faint blue light illuminating the blinds on the windows in the laundry room. When I opened the dryer and grabbed some clothes, it felt warm. You know the feeling: pleasant, comforting, cozy. I'd gotten used to how cold it was, so the warmth felt even better. It was like my reward for finishing my homework (albeit at the last minute). On top of that, I was mentally exhausted for simultaneously doing a physics assignment and arguing with myself over economic and philosophic principles. So I stuck my head in the dryer and hugged all the warm clothes. Before I knew it, I'd fallen asleep. I am so glad it was at such an odd time in the morning that there was no one there to see that. I mean, just imagine coming down to the laundry room in the morning and seeing some kid sleeping in the dryer. Like I said: weird.

While all these events might seem like small, trivial things that have no bearing on what I'm going to do with my life, thinking about them in retrospect does make me more appreciative of them. Especially for college students, it's important to enjoy the little things when you're swamped with classes, clubs, work, and side projects. It's important to unwind a little, be weird, and have some fun. And having stories like these in your memory to tell your friends and family to laugh over or just think about when you're in the mood for it is essential to staying happy.

I've probably made my life sound super boring to you by writing almost 1,000 words about how I did my laundry that one time at 5 in the morning, but that's because these are the things that nobody writes about. You might see something about how going to parties or taking a vacation on a cruise or going to Disneyland helps you stay composed when your life starts seeming too hectic, but like I said, I think the little things that you might not think twice about are what ultimately keep us afloat when we're stranded in a sea of stress between islands of determinedly significant times of relaxation. That, or college has just made me that crazy. ∎

- - -

Too Many Thoughts: Doing the Laundry

LinkedIn: https://bit.ly/2z6py74

Music to My Ears

My mind, body, and soul, too.

There have been times when I've resented being able to play the violin. Like every Monday, Wednesday, and Thursday during high school when I had to go to rehearsal or lessons even though I was already tired from being brutally abused doing drills during wrestling practice. Or on Saturdays when I had concerts, because tuxedos are not comfortable. Or pretty much any time when I had to go play violin somewhere and I had an online assignment due that night, because, let's face it, there was no way I was going to start homework early. That is not the way of the IB student.

Bad procrastination habits aside, violin – or, more generally, music – has been an integral part of my life that I couldn't imagine being without.

I thought that the start of college for me would be the end of my days as a violinist. This saddened me, because I really liked being able to whip my violin out and play Darude - "Sandstorm" on random occasions where I'm with a group of people in a non-musical context and have my violin on hand, which actually happens a lot more than you'd think. However, making the transition to college actually had the opposite effect: more often than before I've found myself cracking open my case and just fiddling around on my instrument (is that where the expression comes from?) while I'm reading something online, watching a video, debugging some code, hanging out with friends in the common room, have nothing to do, or have something to do but would rather procrastinate.

As a kid, I grew up with music that's become an essential contributor to the fondness of certain memories. I remember Saturday mornings when I'd wake up and hear my dad playing classical music from The Best Classical Album in the World... Ever! while cooking breakfast. Whenever we saw True Lies on T.V., we'd wait for and watch the scenes where they were doing the tango to a string quartet playing "Por una cabeza" just because we liked the song. And it wasn't just classical music: my dad also had a mixtape (before it was cool) of Burt Bacharach's greatest hits and some other songs, which he'd play in the car every time we'd make the drive over to L.A. to visit our cousins. My older brother, who usually sat shotgun as we dropped off our older siblings to school before my younger brother and I were in school, would play Smashing Pumpkins or Weezer over the radio in our green 1999 Chevy Astro.

When I started playing violin, it was because my older brother had played violin before college and I thought it was super cool when he played Canon in D at our cousin's wedding. During my first few years of playing, my end goal was to be able to play Canon in D. Now, if you've played violin before, you probably know that it's a pretty easy piece to play, but back then, I didn't get the concept of a song being melodic and sweet but not very technically challenging. So once I had learned it, I became bored with violin and only stuck with it as a means to an end, the end being – what else? – having another thing to put on my résumé, though back in middle school I didn't even know what a résumé really was; I pretty much just knew that a résumé was a thing you put things on.

My interest in playing the violin was initially revived when I became involved in theater performances, most significantly in joining the Temecula Valley Players' production of The Fiddler on the Roof as the Fiddler and playing as a pit musician for Fine Arts Network's production of Spamalot. As a soloist in a non-classical setting, I found that I had a lot more creative freedom with my playing style; there was no conductor to yell at me for not playing it according to their interpretation of centuries-old music, the music itself wasn't very technically demanding, and, most importantly, I wasn't stuck in a tux.

What made it more rewarding was the people I was playing for. Fellow actors and actresses certainly got a kick out of hearing music that wasn't prerecorded and played over some speakers. The audience was receptive too. These people were not the classically trained, snobbishly judgmental critics of the stereotypical stuffy concert hall; they were theater folk, who came to enjoy a good theatrical performance. For them, any live music was just a pleasant addition to the content they'd come to watch, which meant they were more conscious of the craft behind what they were listening to. Small things like people personally complimenting me on my playing after a showing of Fiddler or coming down to the pit to applaud all of us after Spamalot really made my day, and it reminded me that even if I didn't think I was particularly good at playing myself, it provided enjoyment for others, and that's what mattered the most.

After a dry spell without theater performances, I experienced a renewed interest in playing when I took a music class in high school. Because I still had the mindset that I wouldn't be playing violin anymore once I started college, I'd known for a while that if I wanted to actually get good at it, I only had until senior year, and on top of that, I had to submit solo recordings for the class, which meant people would be judging my playing. And those people definitely weren't going to be casual theatergoers.

I'll let you in on a secret that you can't tell my private teacher or symphony conductor: before that music class, I didn't practice at home. I was just too lazy busy with school and extracurriculars like wrestling to pick up my violin. But I was determined to improve: my dad's favorite classical piece was (and still is) something from The Best Classical Album in the World... Ever! – "Winter" by Antonio Vivaldi – and I wanted to be able to play it. In the span of a few weeks, playing the violin became what I did in my spare time, not just because I liked the fact that I was getting better at it, but I was actually enjoying playing. Something about the combination of things involved – the finger placement, the vibrato, the bowing, the shifting – had a therapeutic effect that couldn't be compared to. I have no idea why I didn't enjoy these aspects of playing before. It might or might not have had to do with the fact that in the back of my mind I knew that playing was actually getting academic me credit for once, but hey. I still liked playing.

In my senior year of high school, I'd bring my violin every Thursday because I had lessons right after school. I'd pull it out while my math teacher was lecturing and silently place my fingers on the fingerboard, and between classes and on breaks I'd grab the bow and start playing random songs. And by random songs I mean selections from my meme repertoíre – "Sandstorm," "We Are Number One," the Nyan Cat song, "All Star," and many other songs that have ascended to legendary meme status – because I liked making people laugh. To this day, I have no idea why my math teacher tolerated all that.

Apart from meme songs on the violin, I do enjoy other kinds of music. I always play my older brother's CD of the Blue Album whenever I'm driving in the green van, because it reminds me of the times when he'd put Weezer on the radio in the and drive places using the green van. Like a lot of people, I also listen to music when I go to the gym, because it gives me something to focus on other than the fact that I've been totally out of shape since I stopped wrestling. And I absolutely love video game music, especially orchestral pieces; it really completes the immersion of the game. Most recently, I've been trying out Destiny 2, and the sad violin music that plays after the opening sequence, in which the characters' world is pretty much turned upside-down and destroyed, perfectly captures the mood of the game. Of course, sometimes the music turns intense when I get spotted by an enemy that I don't even notice until I get killed because the music causes me to panic and frantically look around, but other than that, it adds to the enjoyment and experience of the game.

I also developed a guilty pleasure in K-Pop during the summer session (and you can decide whether or not it's a coincidence that it was in Irvine). It's what I'd listen to when I didn't bring my scooter and I had to walk home without it, and it's probably a good thing that it was at night, since there were less people around to witness me ridiculously bobbing my head to lyrics I didn't understand but still would try to sing to myself. I still listen to K-Pop, which is something I don't really like to advertise to people. Then again, I just wrote that. And you just read that. And this is on the Internet for anyone to see. Oh well. Good thing nobody really reads this blog.

When I was starting to get involved on LinkedIn, I read an article by Jack Weast, Senior Principal Engineer & Chief Systems Architect of the Automated Driving Group at Intel, about how important it is to strengthen the link between the arts and sciences, detailing his own experience as a classical musician growing up and how it's shaped his career and him as a person. It was great article that I read all the way through, not just because I was thinking "Man, I really want to work at a company like Intel" in the back of my mind while reading it, but because his story and message resonated so well with me. I was reminded that violin and classical music were still what I enjoyed listening to the most, and as the fall quarter approached, I realized that I couldn't just stop playing violin, so I set up an audition for the university symphony and began practicing.

It was going well until I went on the website after a while and saw that the music I'd been practicing was the audition repertoíre for the year before, so that was cool. Thankfully, though, the new music was not only easier, but also a lot more fun to play. I did end up making it in (much to my surprise), and we recently had a weekend-long retreat at Alpine Meadows Retreat Center where we rehearsed the music for our next concert. There was extremely limited Internet access, which was why I posted late last week, and definitely not because I procrastinated too hard to write the post early and have it auto-post on Hootsuite. But the retreat itself was nice, and it provided a refreshing experience that reaffirmed my passion for playing the violin. The part that made it more than just a bunch of rehearsals was the fact that it was all I was doing; without Internet connection, I really could just focus on my music and unwind.

That kind of calming focus, I've found, is what makes music so important: it gives you a chance to relieve your stresses by giving you time to recompose yourself, unburdened by the worries of external stimuli, and achieve that work-life balance that is so essential to living your best life. Ironically enough, though, I had to take out my earbuds while writing this, because K-Pop is just too addicting. ∎

- - -

Too Many Thoughts: Music to My Ears

LinkedIn: https://bit.ly/2PG4tK7

How to Look for a Job

Basically, don't be like me. (Please hire me though.)

As a first-year college student, I obviously don’t know much about anything. Just on Friday I learned that we have to buy our own Scantrons, and that I needed one for the midterm that day. And clearly I can’t keep to a schedule, because this is only the second blog and I’ve already been two days late on a post. (If we assume a linear trend and extrapolate that over the course of a few months, within the next few posts I'll be a week late, and if it's a week late, does that mean it'll technically be on time for the Saturday posting date?) It seems that all we freshman know how to do is let everyone know about all the AP and IB classes we took in high school and casually proclaim to the world our plans to pursue a quadruple major and graduate 5 years early.

Like any other arrogant incoming college kid, I didn’t initially set out to fix this, because I didn’t see it as a problem. But during the Freshman Edge summer program, we had to attend a certain number of college-readiness workshops to fulfill a requirement for the university studies class we had to take. Naturally, I only went to these at first because I was going to get credit for it. As I attended each one, though, I realized how ill-prepared I was for the real world, and started seriously getting involved with the services offered at the Division of Career Pathways here on campus.

Fortunately, I also learned how nice people can be about helping you with finding direction in your career. Faculty and volunteers alike were encouraging and happy to show me the ropes with Handshake, LinkedIn, and résumé building. I suppose part of that is because I'm a first year. They always say some form of the good old "It's good to start early!" line. It also might have had to do with the fact that I've always had a round face, so I sometimes look like a little kid. And everyone wants to help a little kid, right? My only worry is that I don't know if employers would want to hire someone who looks like they just learned how to write their name with a crayon.

What did I learn? Well, for one, I finally came to grips with the hard truth that nobody cares about your long laundry list of extracurriculars and menial accomplishments from high school. What people do want is that you do things with purpose, and that you actually care about the stuff you do. That’s something you read off of a PrepScholar article in your desperate rush to fill out your college applications and skim over dismissively with the “Okay, but what do they really want?” mentality, a mistake that too many people make, myself included. I saw it everywhere but didn’t believe it until I kept going to workshops and seeing for myself what the job application process – which, in many ways, is what the college application process is preparing you for – was really like.

Of course, that's an awfully cynical generalization. Plenty of people who apply to college really are passionate about what they do, and admissions officers see the genuine potential that those individuals have to become successful during and after their time at the college in question. Quite plainly, I just wasn’t one of those people back then. At least, not to that degree.

(Side note to readers that are/will be applying to college: Stay off College Confidential and similar sites. If you haven’t already noticed, it’s mostly just people that want to humble brag about their accomplishments under the guise of asking if they have a chance at getting into XYZ college, thinking that it’s obvious that they will get in and seeking validation from the envy of others. These people almost never end up where they want to be.)

I digress.

So, after a few months of doing the whole "building your personal brand" thing (going to workshops, crafting my LinkedIn/Handshake profiles, searching for internships, polishing my résumé, putting stuff in GitHub repositories, etc.), it was time to go to the career fair, which was this Thursday.

By then I'd known for a while that I didn't realistically stand a chance at landing any sort of technical internship, but I'd figured it was at least worth getting the experience. So I went, dressed in the same formal clothing I wore when I took my LinkedIn profile picture, except I wore slacks and dress shoes instead of pajama pants and flip-flops because, unlike in a head shot profile photo, you can actually see my legs in real life.

There were quite a few things that didn't go particularly well. For one, this was the general career fair; I'd already missed the STEM career fair that was the week before, and there weren't a lot of tech companies present. I was on a time crunch since I had to do homework that morning and print my résumé, so it was already almost 12:00 when I got there, and I had class at 1:00. I'd also sprained my ankle that Monday, so my foot was so swollen that it barely fit in the dress shoe, and it hurt just to walk around.

Most critically, I didn't come prepared. I didn't even know what companies would be there, so I had to spend some time limping around to manually look for tech companies. The first booth I went to was for Ultimate Software, which seemed right up my alley because of my coding and web development knowledge. I proceeded to approach one of the representatives there and stutter to come up with a question, ending up saying something like "Hey... what's up?" to her while she internally rolled her eyes and said that they didn't take résumés as I feebly held mine up. I kind of gave her an awkward wave and mumbled some parting words, completely embarrassed about what had just happened.

Now, a lot of that was in my head. It probably wasn't as bad as it seemed to me, but it was still pretty demoralizing, despite the fact that I went in knowing that in reality nobody wants a freshman. And despite that, my opening line was still "Hi, I'm Sam Bondoc, a freshman majoring in computer engineering." On top of having a baby face that said "I have no idea what I'm doing," I was outright telling them that I really had no idea what I was doing.

I ran into Karol Johansen, Associate Director at the UCI Division of Career Pathways, whom I'd met several times for résumé consultation and various workshops. Now, I'm usually a pretty outgoing person, often to the dismay of my friends as I'm walking with them and yell super cheesy jokes to random passersby. But, in my dampened spirits from the interaction with the Ultimate Software representative, when Karol asked if I needed anything, I nervously replied "Actually... I don't know what to do."

Her colleague that was with her literally said "Awww, that's so sweet!"

Karol told me that it was a numbers game and that I should just get to as many companies that interested me as possible. She also reassured me that I had a good résumé and that the personality that I had was something that companies always love to have and actively look for in their applicants. I was skeptical that anyone would want to hire an annoying freshman who makes jokes like "What is an energy necklace made of? Joules!" to random people on the street, but I was thankful for the morale boost and took her advice into consideration while heading to the Fujitsu booth.

This time, the person took my résumé! Success! Then I realized... I had just given someone the only copy of my résumé that I had. In a mild panic I went back to Karol and asked her what I should do, and internally facepalmed when she said that I should go and print more résumés. It was at that moment I knew for sure: it was going to be a long time before I would get an internship, much less a job.

After speeding back to the library on my scooter and printing out the copies I needed, I came back and looked for one more company to get in line for, since I only had about 20 minutes before my physics lab on the other side of campus.

I went to the CalAmp booth and spoke to one of the representatives. This time, I was prepared; I told her all about my interests, my programming background, involvement in research, and how it all tied back to the company's mission of connecting the world through telematics. Most importantly, I didn't open with "Hey there, I'm a freshman." I felt confident, and instead of my thoughts being clouded like they had been in my rush to get to the fair on time, my over-analytical thought processes started to kick in again. I noticed that when I was talking to her, she was nodding her head, alternating between eye contact and reading my résumé with a positive look on her face. She seemed impressed. That ignited a spark of hope inside that told me that I wasn't going to be totally worthless at life.

Then she said that she was the HR person and that she wasn't the best person to talk to about technical stuff, gesturing towards the other guy who had a huge line waiting to speak with him. I stood in line for a while, my ankle throbbing from putting weight on it while it was stuffed in a tight shoe for so long, and eventually bailed because I had to get to class. At that point I was just extremely frustrated and completely over the whole career fair thing.

But as I zoomed across Ring Road on my trusty steed, I thought about everything that had just happened at the career fair and realized that while I hadn't landed an internship position or interview as I'd hoped, I still fulfilled the original objective of going, which was to gain experience for the future. And I had definitely learned a lot: bring multiple copies of your résumé, don't say you're a freshman, and prepare, prepare, prepare. I've still got a long way to go, but it's reassuring to know that I'm improving.

There's still one thing that probably won't be changing, and it's the fact that I look like a little kid who can barely tie his shoe, much less debug data structure-processing algorithms, engineer Moore's law-defying nanotransistors, or demonstrate any of the skills that recruiters are looking for. But that's also what'll surprise them. ∎

- - -

Too Many Thoughts: How to Look for a Job

LinkedIn: https://bit.ly/2yEkR3U

What's in a Name?

It turns out, a lot.

The idea of having my own magazine or newspaper column like Joel Stein's "The Awesome Column" in TIME – that is, one where I'm able to casually speak my mind in the first person for anyone who would care to read about the things I have to say – has always interested me. 

Being a STEM guy, though, I've known for most of my career-conscious life that my future job will most likely be in a related industry, because that's where my aptitudes and interests lie. For me, writing is just one of those hobbies that you like in a casual sense but wouldn't necessarily want to pursue a career in, and as I began to think about how I could satisfy my periodic hankering to write, a blog started to seem more and more like the perfect way to do so: no externally-assigned deadlines, no exhaustingly long story/character planning, no (boring) research, no teacher critiquing my every word, no GPA-massacring grade on the line. I could really just be me. In a way as constructive and helpful to others as possible, that is.

To be completely frank, I originally had the idea to start a blog because I went to a LinkedIn Learning workshop presented by Ryan Zervakos, senior relationship manager and at LinkedIn, who said that LinkedIn is all about "putting yourself out there" professionally, and that sharing content is one of the best ways to do that.

Of course, being a stereotypically annoying eager freshman that doesn't want to seem like an annoying eager freshman to other people, I played it cool by asking him what I should start out with, even though I was already planning out what I would write about, how I would convey my message, the audience I would be targeting, the formatting style, what website would provide the optimal platform for sharing my ideas, and every other little detail I could think of that might be relevant to getting a blog up and running. Then he said "Posting videos is a great way to grab peoples' attention." Well, at least "blog" rhymes with "vlog," I guess. They're even the same word if I try to get one of my Filipino relatives to pronounce them.

But as I searched my LinkedIn feed, tech news, campus event calendars, and random Wikipedia articles for inspiration for my first post, I realized that in the hours I had spent planning out my blog, one of which was spent deciding whether to use Serif or Sans Serif (and you can only imagine how long it took to pick an actual font), I had no idea what I was going to call it. "Insights of a Student"? No... "Insights of a College Human"? Too long... "Insights of the Inexperienced"? I don't want to seem like too much of an idiot... "College Insights"? That has to be taken already... Just "Insights"? Doesn't "insight" imply something useful...?

Coming up with a name was a task I clearly couldn't do without inspiration, so I took to the all-knowing Google to start my blog-naming research odyssey. I got lost in so many blogs talking about how to write and name a blog that I got into that stage where you keep saying a word ("blog") over and over in your head until it doesn't even sound like a word anymore. Blog, blog, blog. Blog? Blog. Or blog? No, definitely blog. Blog, blog, blog...

Blag? I eventually got thinking about my favorite webcomic, xkcd (if you've never heard of it, go read it, it's pretty great), and since I was shooting for a blog style that incorporates the same kind of dry-but-profoundly-true humor, I thought that copying the quirkiness of having the title be "just a word with no phonetic pronunciation," as put by the webcomic's author Randall Munroe, would embody this kind of style as well as it does for xkcd.

However, as I was mashing random keys on my keyboard to see if the Chrome search bar (come on, I didn't want to spend the effort to open Word or Notepad just to type some random text) would spit out some cool phrase with no phonetic pronunciation, I began to think about just how computationally complex the deceivingly simple problem of coming up with such a phrase actually was. I even opened up IDLE and made a short script that spat out random combinations of consonants, but that still didn't help much with all the little nuances of the problem. What exactly should I consider phonetically pronounceable? How many characters long should it be? What should the flow of the phrase be? What is the optimal consonant-vowel ratio? Can I even have a vowel in there? How do I strike a balance between weird enough to remember but not obscure to the point where it really just becomes a jumble of letters?

There are 26ⁿ different combinations for letters of a phrase n characters long, and shaving that down to account for pronounceable letter combinations and reader-interest optimization would involve a lot of research on the statistics for things like the average time spent reading per character in different contexts and the average transient attention span for different demographics. In about 10 seconds of research (on Google, of course), I learned that the average attention span, according to a study by Microsoft Canada, is about 8 seconds. I was just 2 seconds away from claiming to have done research for this blog post and not having any numbers to show for it.

So I completely gave up on the idea of having the title be just a word with no phonetic pronunciation. It wouldn't have been original anyways, and unlike Randall, I don't have a degree in physics or experience working as a roboticist at NASA to make my blog seem cool even if it had a name like "xkcd" that people wouldn't even care about unless they found oddly obscure webcomic titles funny like I do.

Then I got philosophical. The phrase "What's in a Name?" popped in my head, and after contemplating for a split second and deciding that calling my blog "What's in a Name?" would leave the few readers (if any) of this blog with almost no clue what this blog as a whole would be about, in my desperation I asked Google "whats in a name" (with no regard to grammar, of course) and was presented with a quote from Romeo and Juliet.

Now, the first thing I thought was "That's a good quote, maybe if I'd actually read the book instead of using SparkNotes I would've remembered it and had something to write for that one Shakespeare essay back in freshman year." But after that, in my 4 AM delusion, I thought that maybe Juliet was right: it really didn't matter what the title was. I could even call it "Please Give Me a Job, I'm a Desperate College Student With Nothing On My Résumé and Homework Due In Less Than Two Hours!!!" if I wanted to.

I clearly wasn't thinking about the fact that I was taking advice from a fictional 13-year-old who wanted to marry someone they had just met less than 24 hours before. Man, did I dodge a bullet there. Then again, it's still in the post, so net gain of 0?

The end of the story of how I finally came up with the title for this blog is rather anticlimactic. The next day, I thought about how much brainpower I had expended the day before on coming up with something that would inevitably end up being a short phrase, a collection of characters that only has meaning because we as humans assigned meaning to it as a means of communicating meanings of things. I proceeded to think about thinking about things, which caused me to stop thinking about the thing I was supposed to be thinking about, which was thinking about how I could think about coming up with a title for my blog (which still doesn't sound like a word), and then I realized that I was probably totally overthinking things. I had way too many thoughts buzzing around in my mind to focus on coming up with a good title.

How about "Too Many Thoughts"? For one, I definitely was thinking about a lot of things; my mind does tend to wander a lot, as you've probably gathered by now. The title seemed short enough. It has a bit of self-deprecating humor in it, implying that there is something wrong with the amount of stuff that goes on in my head, because there is. This blog definitely is going to have to do with stuff I'm thinking about. And it even has 4 syllables, just like "xkcd." Perfect. The inflection might be wrong, but hey.

So ends the first post, perhaps of many, perhaps of only a few. If you've made it this far, I feel sorry that you've wasted precious time reading something written by some amateur writer who has pretty much no idea what he's talking about. At least you can claim that your attention span for overcomplicated, vaguely esoteric written material is longer than the transient attention span of the average Microsoft Canada study participant. And if I've learned anything from this experience, it's that sometimes overcomplicating things leads to ideas that end up being exactly what you needed for inspiration all along. That is, as long as it takes no more than 8 seconds. ∎

- - -

Too Many Thoughts: What's In a Name?

LinkedIn: https://bit.ly/2J9iCtA