Back to Classes

Anyone who has followed my blog for the last few months know I've been trying to figure out whether to go back to classes in the Fall or search for work. While I had applied for the Business After-Degree program, my friends warned me that it would take until mid-August until I would get accepted or rejected. It could be wise to job hunt in the scenario where I wouldn't be going back to school.

But while I was in Vancouver, I woke up to an email on my phone, an acceptance email. Huh, while I had no idea why they had sent this to me so early I wasn't complaining.

And then I rewarded myself by sleeping in way into the afternoon.

What's nice about the After-Degree is that all my courses are laid out. Take this, take this, shove this here, no thinking needed on my part. But I'm only able to take 4 courses. A majority of the courses I need to take have this one prerequisite, that's only offered in the fall.So that's just great.

So in standard Damian fashion I arranged my schedule haphazardly and came out fine otherwise on the other end. No classes before 11, and I never stay any later than 4PM.  It'll do. I mean, I'm used to having 4 day weekends from my previous terms but it's time to stop being so spoiled.

A big reason why I wanted to get into Business was because of the Co-op program. I wasn't able to get a Psychology internship due to a certain administrator and I'm still very bitter about it. I contacted the Business people and learned that I would only have one chance to apply because I was an After-Degree student due to my credit limits, my old nemesis.

Not a problem, let's get this done, I mean when is this thing due?

Oh crap the deadline is next week.

My resume hadn't been updated in months, I wasn't confident in the structure of my cover letter, and who could I find in time to look these over to make sure things were ok? I scrambled, deleting and rewriting entire chunks. I managed to get a friend to look things over the day before I had to submit but I wasn't confident in most of it.

Fast forward two weeks, and I get another email.

Another acceptance.

Man, everything is rolling my favour this summer.

Bella, I owe you another drink, you're a life saver.

Oh and while I'm at it, I'd like to leave a few words for that Psych admin that screwed me over many years ago.

HA.

TAKE THAT.

I GOT ACCEPTED INTO AN INTERNSHIP PROGRAM ELSEWHERE WITHOUT YOU OR YOUR HELP.

JASON WAS OVER BY 15 CREDITS AND YOU STILL LET HIM IN. I WAS ONLY OVER BY 3. I HOPE YOU CHOKE TO DEATH ON YOUR OWN TONGUE.

WHOOOOOOO!

Well, I haven't quite gotten an internship yet, but a series of orientations, seminars, and workshops being held in the next two weeks should help me prepare. The soonest I can get a placement is January. And one thing that they stress is that you may not get a placement within the city, I could end up going anywhere in the province.

Hence, it may be time for Damian to (temporarily) move out. Wouldn't that be nice? I mean, my sister Bree has moved out for the next 4 years. Surely as the older brother I should make an effort to leave the nest as well, even if it would only be for a year.

I have a clean slate, my old grades don't matter, it's a new year, full of opportunities, new people, and for the first time for as long as I can remember I'm looking forward to the future.

Come at me.

The Job Hunts

It's no secret that I've been looking for more work. Despite having both my fast food and my marketing job there are still massive chunks of my day that probably could be spent doing something that is guaranteed to give me a paycheque at the end of the day.

As much as I'd love to spend more time in bed, I should be more productive. My Mother has also been really pushing for me to get another job during the day. Mentioning that X is currently hiring and really desperate for workers. Y is currently hiring, you should send a resume.

I really would not want to work at Starbucks though.

Ideally, I want to spend all my daylight hours working and nighttime hours working on my online projects. So I have been looking for other jobs, or at least things that would look good on a resume. I've been in touch with a few friends and they've directed me to various places and after throwing my resume around I finally got a response.

It wasn't much, certainly didn't pay much besides a small bursary at the end of the summer, but it would look good. An association for Parkinson's needed a researcher, or rather, someone to read through a ton of papers and see if anything important was inside.

It was like I trained for this job my entire University career.

At least I'm putting my education to good use.

I had to bus, and I hate busing. I'm also fairly certain it looks odd to bus around wearing a tie. Even worse when it's windy and your tie whips around your face in the open. But so be it, how else was I going to make it to my interview? Walk the entire way?

Actually, I missed the final bus to get my interview. Google maps said it would take 20 minutes to get there on foot. So I did the only thing I could do, I started jogging in the general direction of the building with my tie flapping about in the wind. I was late, but at least I made it.

I thought the interview went well, better than any other interviews I've done in the past few years. And a few days later, I got another email saying that they wanted me.

I actually did it, I finally got an internship of some sort.

I go back next Thursday to finalize some details and sign some papers. But it's nice to have something go in my favor. Again, I don't get paid, all I get is a small government bursary but hey, I'll take what I can get.

I'm still waiting for replies from a few other emails. There's one opportunity I really want to hear back on because it sounds like it pays well is a great for work experience. Fingers crossed for me.

Preperations

Summer has only begun and already I'm sitting around trying to figure out things for after summer has come to an end. Can't afford to dawdle, because it's too easy to sit back, relax, and boom! All the time you suddenly had is gone. Also, it's also common for unexpected events to occur that suddenly eat up all your free time.

I wouldn't be surprised if my family decided to take another month long trip to Asia again. This time my Dad has been hinting at going to Korea. Most of us are fairly hesitant because of North Korea being absolutely crazy. But that might change and we'll head somewhere else, who knows.

In the meantime, one of the best motivational messages I've taken to heart as of late is the following:

And so I'll begin my work today. Starting with planning for my academic future. At the moment I have 3 options I'm considering: Graduate studies in Psychology, Speech Pathology, or something in Business.

Unfortunately if I want to continue doing Psychology, I'll have to abandon my province, probably head to Saskatchewan. As I've mentioned before the budget cuts have NOT been kind to anyone. Psychology has lost several support staff and I highly doubt they can afford another graduate student.

Though we fared better than Sociology and Anthropology which had to fuse together to stay afloat.

Speech Pathology is another one in which I'll probably have to abandon my province for as well and also to Saskatchewan. Again, the program in my city is extremely competitive and I doubt my GPA can withstand the scrutiny. Seriously, the only benefit I have is that I'm male, and maybe they'll let me in because of how saturated the field is with women.

Or maybe they're all sexist and that's why there are so few men.

Though I'm not sure Speech Pathology is such a good option. It would require me to take more Linguistics and while it wasn't that bad, my friend's girlfriend is a Linguistics major and she had only one piece of advice for me:

"Linguistics is terrible. Look at these notes, look at them. Don't subject yourself to this.".

Ok, so what about Business? An MBA (Master's in Business Administration) requires that I write not only the GMAT but also have 2 years of experience working full-time. Unfortunately as much as I'd like a well-paying full-time job, I haven't been that lucky. But who knows, maybe I'll run into something so good that I won't want to head back to class in the Fall.

In the meantime, a BCOM (Bachelor's in Commerce) while only a second undergraduate degree, only needs me to take Econ 101 and 102. It's only 2 years long. AND that opens me up to all the beautiful internships in the field. And from what I've seen, the Business students have no end of awesome internships.

Something that Psychology failed me on.

 This is relevant to my interests.

So I guess I'll be aiming at taking Econ 101, Econ 102, maybe a higher level Linguistics course? Maybe another Psychology course for interests sake? I don't want to take more than 3 courses, but we'll see what happens.

But the course registration site is always really iffy on the weekends so I'll have to wait until Monday to try and sign up. In the meantime, I have my projects to work on. I know that I'm vague on the works in progress but it's because I don't enjoy talking about things that aren't completed or unsuccessful. It's a pride thing.

I know I keep saying things look like they're about to work (Project Derp is especially notorious for this) and it's true. They show promise, but they all still need a lot work still before I would consider it a success. I think the best analogy I can come up with is finally being able to properly boil a pot of pasta. Good for you! But you still have a ways to go until this becomes acceptable spaghetti carbenera.

So I'll keep working on my projects, online profiles, job hunts, and my two part-time jobs. Especially my projects. I want to have an update where I have more to talk about as opposed to "STILL WORKING ON IT".

Resolutions Update 3

I still can't believe I'm following through with this. People generally stop trying or forget by this point but here I am trudging on. I deserve a gold star, a cookie, or something.

Even though I've been kind of too busy since the last update to have made much progress.

I'm giving myself a high-five anyways...

Goal #1:

Yeah... It's not easy to do push-ups when you're sleep deprived. I would know, I've tried. I'm still stuck on week 4 of the 100 push-ups challenge. I'm finding that my wrists are getting sore and that a way to get around this is to use fists instead of open palms.

The problem with this is that now the push-ups are significantly harder and my nails are digging into my palms. I guess I can alternate between the two methods until I find something better.

Oh, and I've joined up with a site called Fitocracy. Basically, you do various exercises, you get points for doing them, achievements, and level up. It works based on an honor system as no one can really prove that you've done the exercises but lying about it only hurts yourself. I find it's a good way to keep track of what you're doing and even though all I do is sporadic push-ups, it's still something.

You can follow me if you want. Just search for DWei and we can encourage each other in our bid to become more healthy.

Could be worse I guess.

Goal #2:

The job hunt has not gone well. There is virtually nothing for Psychology students. Nothing. I have looked all over and in my city, all they want are Engineers. You know it's bad when you search for "Psychology Internship" and the top results come back as "Engineer Internships".

Right now, this is the only kind of Engineer I want to see.

I've extended my search to neighboring cities and I'm even considering the Canadian Army. Apparently, if you have a degree that matters more to them and you start off better. So I've heard. I'll give more details into this as I look into it, my courses have been eating up a lot of my time.

A fellow Psychology student suggested that I look into Speech Pathology or a similar career route. All I'd be required to do is take a few more years of courses in Linguistics. I've never even considered this but I'll certainly look into it when time permits.

Also, has anyone else been getting paid significantly less from advertising? My traffic has gone up but my earnings have dwindled. Seeing as this blog is major part of my current income I'm a bit concerned.

Oh and current debt to parents is currently $5200 Canadian.

Goal #3:

Looks like I'm just really bad for finishing things. I have a project on hiatus with my friend Jean, my hollow book is almost done however, just need to make a few more cuts and I'll post pictures of the finished thing.

I've also decided to finally get my full driving license. I've had my probational one for long enough so I can take the test but I want to get more practice first. Getting the full driver's license counts for this goal as it is something I've wanted to do for a while.

And Theresa has been hinting that I should get it so I can drive her around. So yay, more encouragement. Though I won't take the test until after finals most likely.

And let's hope this doesn't happen.

Goal #4:

This is probably my worst goal so far. I've only done one book review so far and I haven't had time to finish other books or games thanks to my workload exploding. I'll probably make up for it in the future by doing two a month or something. Same applies to Goal #3.

And now I need to run off and continue studying for a midterm. I'll see you guys on Friday. A lot of people asked questions for my last post and I'll try and answer them as soon as I have a chance to properly read them all.

Internship Update

Welp, it's time about time I gave an update on my current status on the internship. After weeks and weeks of hassle, trying and hoping, the internship coordinator finally took at a look at my application to see if I'd be able to join the program.

I've been through a lot, such as nearly being kicked out of my degree and the constant stressing out. And so:

What's the final verdict?

Come on...

Rejection.

Rejection because I was over the course limit by about 3 courses.

I tried to discuss this with the coordinator and from what I can understand the reasoning behind this is that if a student didn't like their internship by having enough courses they could still potentially adjust things in the future and change their degree.

I'll be honest, I don't care if I get the worst internship ever, I just want the experience and the money. I'm pretty sure most people are like that at this stage in life. But this didn't matter to her, decision is final, and that's that.

So where does that leave me?

Sigh...

Well right now I'm trying to find other internships and job opportunities within my city. See, the nice about the Internship Program that I was vying for was that there would be the contact information for several dozen employers just sitting there, waiting for me to contact, no searching for me to do. Everything is nicely labelled and organized.

Right now, I've found barely a handful of potential jobs. Not surprising that Psychology Internships are hard to find, that's why that program was created, to help students like me. I've sent a few emails and applications, not holding my breath but what else can I do? I've already been turned down again for a few of them.

At least they were quick about it.

I don't give up easily but I'm starting to reach my breaking point here. I have 1 term left until I graduate, no viable career opportunities, I had no intentions of entering Graduate school until I had something to bolster my chances but right now maybe I should consider writing the GRE and then hoping for a miracle.

But we know how many miracles I've been getting.

Yeah, if you can't tell, I'm still kind of disheartened. I was better but after I started looking for other jobs and internships I realized how sparse they were. And then I started feeling miserable again.

And then I became even more so when I realized almost everyone around me seems to be advancing their careers just fine.

Hey guys, can I join?

In one of my earlier posts, I voiced my concerns about my peers being successful while I lagged behind. And it has just becomes more apparent with each passing day. The Med students are adjusting just fine to their hectic schedules, people are getting interviews to whatever positions they applied for whether it be medicine or grad school or job interviews. Even my younger sister recently got a job working at a Veterinary clinic which is perfect for her because she's going to Vet school in 2 years.

And then you have me. The guy who got rejected from 10 different places (5 if you only count the interviews), couldn't get into a program designed for students like him and no foreseeable future options. Back in August I was hoping for some answers or reassurance by this point but now I'm even more unsure of the future than when I started this blog.

I don't know what I'm doing wrong, I'm not sure how to proceed, and I feel like crawling into a corner and being depressing for the next 24 hours. And I'm sorry for being so depressing. I'll try and have something more positive for Friday.

Courses Update

Before we begin I'm going to apologize for not getting around to everyone's blogs this week. I've been busy and really stressed as I run around trying to fix things up. If you're not sure what I'm talking about just hop over to this post and skim it over.

Actually, can we pretend that that incident never happened?

Shoo!

So its been a hectic week to say the least. I've been running talking around to several coordinators, getting documents filled out and signed and of course, attending my new courses. I'm helping a psychology experiment with the lab I just joined and I've been reading papers for the other. Like really dense papers that are anywhere from 20 to 60 pages long.

I still need to prepare for 2 presentations and 2 midterms for next week though. Not looking forward to that.

Let's get started.

A big thank you to the head of the Undergraduate Psychology department. She wrote a letter to the Science department on my behalf explaining my situation and this probably went a long ways in getting me into these two courses.

In the meantime, this means my internship application can finally proceed seeing as I am still part of the Specialization program. I'm not completely safe yet. If for some reason I start failing my courses I could fail to meet the minimum GPA requirement. It's unlikely but who knows? I've never joined two courses half way through a term before.

Either way, this term got a lot more interesting, and a lot more difficult.

Let's hope I can stay conscious.

I Messed up Again

Who remembers my horrific scheduling mishap a few months ago? Nobody? Thank goodness. Because maybe now my second and even more horrific and stupid scheduling mishap will not look as bad.

And when I say bad, I mean, I screwed up my degree bad.

What am I even doing?

So to reiterate, I'm in the Psychology Specialization program. Unique to this Specialization is an Internship program which I'm also trying to get into. However, I exceeded the course limit for the Internship, so to compensate, I try to reapply and reduce the number of courses I'm currently taking per term so I don't exceed the course limit as much. Hopefully to increase my chances of getting the internship because they tell me the number of exceptions they make are quite high.

What I forgot though was that the Specialization Program had a minimum course requirement per term.

And I no longer met it.

I didn't have the requirements for my degree.

Out you go.

Let's be honest here. I'm kind of screwed. Everything I've worked for has been for naught. I've already missed the deadline for graduating, the deadline for adding courses was way back in January. The best I can hope for is graduating with a Major in Psychology in the Fall and scramble to find a minor in something else. The internship is like some distant dream at this point.


Unless.


Unless I wanted to do something that most people would consider crazy.

This will be be fun...

The coordinator gave me the following option:

• Talk to professors who you've worked with in the past. 
• See if you can take on a second research course with one.
• Join the class of another one.

The coordinator was willing to pull a few strings for me and make an exception again if the profs were willing to.

Note this would be in addition to everything I'm taking right now. Midterms are in less than 2 weeks, I have to start studying for my current 2 courses and prepare to launch an experiment for one lab. On top of this I'd have to catch up on everything taught in a new course and start running an experiment in the other lab.

So what did I do?

Of course I took her up on the offer. What choice did I have?

 

Basically.

This is do or die. I have invested too much time and effort into trying to get this internship to fail now let alone my degree. Employers want people who have actual work experience, if I want to have a chance at a job when I graduate, I need this internship. And to even have a chance to get the internship, I need to remain in the Specialization program.

I will succeed in taking on all of these courses or kill myself trying.

And it's going to take a lot more than a bloody course limit to stop me.

Resolutions Update

I was actually serious when I said I was going to keep track of how well I've been following my New Year's Resolutions. An update at the beginning of the month should be enough, let's see how I've been doing.

Goal 1:

So I've been following the push-up guide and it's coming along I think. I'm a bit behind schedule because I'm kind of a weakling and some days, I just can't do the required number of push-ups.

It's been way too long since I used a picture of Byran.

Thus I've had to repeat some days until my puny body is capable. If my math is correct I am currently able to do 100 nonconsecutive push-ups. This is coming from the guy who started out barely able to do 20 so that's an improvement. It's really not that hard to commit to this, I tend to do a set after a round of Starcraft, a chapter of studying, etc. etc..

Goal 2:

I found this goal of trying to earn more money to be too vague. I'm working twice a week now at my part-time job but I don't that really counts. I'm adding on paying back my parents for my tuition. At my last count it was at $5500. I have less than $3000 in the bank. I need to find a way to pay them back and still be able to buy things for myself.

I haven't been sitting around in January however, I've been reapplying for that internship and right now, it's pending. The application is sitting in some bureaucratic nonsense and the job list opens up in two weeks. I was told I'll probably get in but that's not helping my nerves, at all.

This van is "probably" legit.

Goal 3:

This goal has been going well. In January I not only tried to make a different soup, but I also semi-successfully baked brownies. I know a lot of people have asked on my progress on the hollow book and all I can say is that I'm almost done cutting.

If you find a neat guide or recipe feel free to suggest it on the comments. I seriously look through these and consider doing the ones that are within my ability.

Goal 4:

Believe it or not, I did read a book in January, I just never got around to doing a review of it. Expect a post on it sometime in the near future.

No it was not this book but I wish it could have been.

And that's my update so far, I'm on track at the moment. Yeah, my goals may not be the most amazing "I'm going to change the world and become the next Ghandi!" types, but they're realistic, and I'm actually following them.

How are the rest of you fairing?

New Year, New Term

I head back to class tomorrow. Really not looking forward to it. I didn't get to spend that much time with my girlfriend Theresa due to conflicting work shifts and other scheduling issues. My backlog of computer games is still massive and I don't like the idea of being unable to sleep in anymore.

This dog has no idea how lucky he is.

And how did I fare last term? Kind of odd actually. I found my Abnormal Psychology course to be interesting, the exams were picky but easy. My Developmental Psychology course I found was stupid and I messed up a lot of the earlier assignments due to careless errors.

So imagine my surprise when I did quite well in Developmental and completely screwed up Abnormal.

I don't even know what to say.

So this term I'm taking a course in Memory, another Developmental Psychology course, and more research. I'm really struggling with research as nothing I'm doing is working at the moment. The next stage of our experiment has been delayed for way too long but nothing I do seems to be working.

In the meantime I still need to send an appeal for that internship. Why is this internship so important to me? Several reasons. I want to get into grad school but thanks to a disastrous third year I'm not going anywhere fast.

There are two options for me: First would be to graduate and then do a 5th year to hopefully compensate for the third. This, isn't so great. I'm kind of tired of classes, losing money to tuition and studying for exams.

The second would be the internship. Work for a year, get money, experience, etc.. More importantly, there have been people in the past with much worse GPAs than me who got into grad school after they completed their respective internships. Coincidence? I think not.

Or it might be time for me to take off my tin foil hat.

Wish me luck, I don't think many people have read my first post and why I started this blog. But I think I know what I want to do now.

And getting this internship will make it that much easier for me.

Where I'm at Now

Long time readers will know I started this blog way back in August because I had no idea what I was doing with myself or my degree. And to be honest, I still don't really have a clear idea of what I'm going to do.

Remember when I tried to get a job? Yeah, that didn't work out too well. So much for delaying things for another year to buy me more time to figure out what to do. So, clearly the smart thing to do would be to try and find another job right away at the first opportunity.

What?

Hear me out. See, there's a Psychology Internship program that my University offers that would be awesome if I could get in. For one year, you'd work with other psychologists, get valuable field experience AND get paid at the same time.

Plus it be a really good break after so many non-stop years of classes. Jobs range anywhere from research to medical to judicial. Each year the co-coordinator contacts a ton of interested organizations and then students contact them and arrange for interviews.

What could possibly go wrong?

Brilliant.

Well for starters, I'm a 4th year student, this is a program for 3rd year people. No problem, no problem, they make exceptions.

To people who have not exceeded the course credit limit.

I exceeded that limit last term.

BUT if you can make a compelling case they sometimes will even make an exception for people in this category as well. I talked to a few people and thanks to my multiple interview failures I am now "more experienced in interviews" and I've done more research so more "research experience" is also a good thing to tell them.

If only it were like this.

Sadly, I won't be able to know the department will make an exception for me or not until January. Also, if I decide to do the internship I can't graduate in April. Also, also, I need to start talking with other co-coordinators to figure out my Winter schedule to improve my chances.

If I can get this internship I have a chance at getting a job somewhere that I've always dreamed of. But no comment on that yet, don't want to jinx myself. Let's see if I can even get accepted for the internship program to start with.