fall breakin' it!

The last weekend and first half of this week was UVA's Reading Days, or termed Fall Break by students. I find it rare actually that anyone ever actually spends the whole time studying, most people go home instead. *shrug*

I love having a car this year, because I took two friends up to DC for three days. Before we got there though, we went to the Virginia State Fair first (anyone go there?). It was actually the first time I'd been to a state fair, so I was pretty excited. Can we say cheddar nuggets anyone? Possibly my favorite food there. The fair was huge, apart from walking around and going on rides, we also watched pig racing and a demolition derby. Both of those were firsts for me, and really exciting! Especially in the demolition derby, it dragged on where one small, zippy car was trying to ram a big truck. There were many, many close calls until the truck finally t-boned, then rammed the small car's engine. (And then he promptly committed suicide by running the front of his car into the small one... of which I still don't understand).

Pig racing was hilarious (and I was ridiculously excited for it). Pigs are surprisingly fast! Although the the grossly overweight Oriental pigs that came at the end were... as expected, beyond slow.

I hadn't expected to have such a good time at the state fair, it almost makes me sad that I'd like to head to a big city like New York after graduation. Meh well, maybe I'll end up with a job in NOVA and be able to go to events like these all the time.

i have a bone to pick with uva.

Or rather, the systems that we switched to this semester. But more on that in a few moments, I have an Honor Loan applicant waiting for me.

As I was saying, I have a bone to pick with UVA (for once). Granted, it's no one's fault and there's always kinks with a new system, blahblahblah, but seriously, I'm really highly irritated with the new Student Integrated Systems that the entire school switched over to this year.

Not only is it confusing to use (students say I hate SIS instead of I hate ISIS now), but it's also caused massive troubles with financial aid. More than half the applicants I have (and my office hours are usually full every day, it's slightly ridiculous) stem from financial aid being delayed thanks to SIS acting up on student accounts. Seriously, I'd hate for it to be a month into school and still not have my financial aid because our computer systems can't get their act together.

That, and several other stories of annoyance and frustration is a bone that I've got to pick with UVa.

ooh, first blood!

Ooh, tonight marks the first of a special occasion... my first rejection of this year's recruiting season!

Yes, y'all might think I'm utterly nuts to use an exclamation point to say that I've been rejected from a company, but to be honest I'm grateful I got an interview at this company at all. I was the only non finance major interviewing for a finance position at this very prestigious company, and I personally think I did myself proud thinking on my feet at this interview. This rejection has just spurred my determination to give it my all for these next two months. I'm exciting for the types of people I'll met, the offices I'll be seeing, and the places I'll be travelling to. And no, this isn't sleep deprivation talking. =D

This is an entry about jobs primarily because tomorrow's the Commerce Career Day. Was it a year ago that I was blogging about attending CCD as a third year? As I put off doing prep work for tomorrow... here's what usually occurs at a career fair.

So the world of internships and jobs may seem like a hazy unknown to most people, especially considering most of you are trying to decide what college to attend. When you arrive on Grounds though, you immediately think of, "alright, I'm here. What's next?" The big bad scary real world, or graduate school for the lucky few. One thing that you'll need to learn how to do (and something that I feel our comm school does a great job of) is learn how to work a career fair and network with professionals.

What are the most important things you need to have when talking to employers? A 30 second elevator speech and some darned good questions.

A 30 second elevator speech is a quick, introductory speech that catches people's attentions. What if you met the single most influential person in your life in the elevator. What would you say? How would you act? Do you smile and try to crack a joke? Or do you act somber and mature? As I've mentioned a few times in other posts, your self introduction should really reflect your personality. If you're normally a funny person, definitely go for humor. Just try not to be what you're not. It's painfully obvious and makes for stilted, awkward conversations. You definitely don't want to be remembered for that.

As for questions, it's really a way to differentiate yourself from other people. Think about it, employers (and admissions officers), meet hundreds, if not thousands of people, over the course of a recruiting season. You want them to remember you and pull for you when your resume (or application) comes up in the pool. You could try to stick out through that killer joke, or that scintillating conversation on the future of the Euro. I like to think of unusual questions. Most people tend to ask the same or vague questions. You definitely make a big impression if your questions are atypical (in a good way!).

Seniors are probably hardcore doing applications right now, good luck! Drop me a comment if you have a question.

dancin' the night away...

Well, not quite. I just came back from the Taiwanese Students' Association dance practice for Culturefest.

Culturefest is the annual performance that all the cultural organizations put on during UVA's Parent's Weekend. Orgs usually sing a song in their native tongue, do a popular dance back home, or put on some type of martial arts display.

As you could tell from my opening line, I'm Taiwanese. I actually grew up in Taiwan for 15 years after spending the beginning of my life in NOVA. So.. it's quite complisticated where I'm from. For our performance at this year's Culturefest, we're doing a dance that I'm just... slightly ashamed to be doing. It's a very Taiwanese style of dancing... which is to say there's lots of random pontificating and hilarious movements. For those of you who are interested.. le sigh. Don't laugh too hard please.

TSA's girls dance for 2009.

DONE with the scary accounting project!

...that has consumed my life for the last two weeks. I've finally just wrapped up working around 15 hours for my "Accounting Information Systems" class. Woot. I'm so bleary right now.

Apparently AIS is the "scary" class in the accounting concentration. There's definitely been a lot of homework (which I think has helped weed out a lot of people), but I would honestly say that there's a lot of value in all the homework. As an accountant, or auditor, you really need to know how your systems work, where there's potential for fraud or where controls might fail. Yeah, I probably sound like your typical book devouring nerd right now. =P

School's been in session for roughly three weeks now, and I've gotten a much better handle on my classes. For those of you who enter the comm school, I highly recommend "Negotiations" with Professor Bass. He's an excellent professor with lots of experience, and we've been learning in the best way through doing actual negotiations. I'm slightly sad though, yesterday was the first time in which I didn't have a successful negotiation. I was an employer, and my partner was a student I'd just extended an offer to. We didn't come to an agreement because she wanted a much higher salary than I was willing to offer, and I realized through the course of our negotiations that she seemed to be in it for the short term, while I was looking to build a long term team. This incompatibility in goals really spurred my decision to not keep pursuing this deal. Hopefully the professor sees it that way too tomorrow, *shrug.

I also recommend Professor Porter's "Federal Taxation I" class. While it might seem like the boringest subject on earth and that you'd rather gouge your own eyeballs out before learning about tax, the professor actually makes it a really interesting subject. Her lecture outlines explain difficult concepts very clearly, and her method of teaching somehow manages to capture the class' interest.

I also had my first interview on, incidentally, the first day that interviews started. Kicking off this recruitment season was probably the hardest interview I had in my life. A lot of it had to do with my atypical background, and I definitely got drilled on some technical questions (and this was the interviewer being nice to me!). However, I have to say that it's been my most enjoyable one thus far, precisely because it was so challenging. I appreciated the questions and hope I rose to the occasion.

Morale of that story is, don't be in a hurry to pigeon hole yourself into a future career path when you come into college. My resume was probably one of the last things the interviewer expected to see, and yet I still received an interview offer. Things change, your interests change, and you end up finding out that your personality is actually better suited elsewhere. The world is your oyster, embrace it. =)