Welcome

Much of this year will probably be spent thinking about jobs and trying to find a job.

With my internship I thought what I wanted to do would become much clearer but it didn't. Unfortunately this is because I didn't get to do what I wanted to do on my internship which was very frustrating. I was really excited about my internship when I went out there but it did not live up to expectations. Work wise I wonder if I would have been better off in St. Louis.

Outside of work I am glad I went to California because I had a great time and met some really great people.

Tonight I worked on my resume adding my internship and AI work. I took some stuff off, debated on whether I should add other things. I don't really have anyone to review it so I'll probably just have to go with this one for the career fair on Monday and then fix it later.

Which brings me to my current dilemma as I was writing my objective. What do I want to do? I toyed with the PhD idea for a little while but I have decided that I do want to get a job and work for a while. Partially because I owe money from undergrad and grad school. Also because the professors who had the most impact on me had a good amount of work experience in the field.

But that brings me back to what do I want to do, what type of a job do I want to get? Do I want to do user research since I do enjoy doing research? Do I want to do more user interface design work? Where do I want to live? Do want to move to California, head back south, go toward the Texas, Nevada, New Mexico area? Do I consider trying to live with the snow for a good job? Do I want to do consulting? What about the downturn in the job market today? (http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/08/business/08econ.html?_r=1&ref=business&oref=slogin) When I graduated with my undergraduate degree I walked into a horrible job market and got lucky to find a really good job. I am a little afraid that is going to happen again. So it brings up all of these what ifs and not a lot of answers. Granted I do have until May, well technically August since that is when my lease in Bloomington is up, but not knowing where you are going to be in a more permanent sense in a year is a strange feeling that I haven't had in a little over 5 years. After I finished my undergrad I was pretty sure I wanted to stay in Florida which I did but now I don't know where I want to be.

My friend who is an MBA will most likely know where he is working by December at the latest. It which would be nice to have things squared away by then so all you would have to worry about is finishing up and moving.

I don't know of anyone last year who had a job by December in the second year group last year. I know I am getting way ahead of myself now since no one really hires for HCI people until after January but it still something that is going to be lingering in the back of my mind.

Where will I be this time next year? Only time will tell.

The semester started on August 27th with a whirlwind of activity. This semester I am working as an associate instructor for Introduction to Informatics which requires me to be in lecture on Monday's and Wednesdays, hold office hours twice a week for an hour, teach two labs and help teach one. Getting used to that along with my new class schedule has been interesting.

Plus last weekend I met a friend in Fort Wayne at the last minute. It was important that we see each other and this coming weekend was out of the question with grading for two classes due next week and meetings Sunday night.

Fort Wayne was about half way between where we live and that is the only reason it was chosen as a destination. We quickly discovered there is nothing to do in Fort Wayne so we ended up going to Berne, a Mennonite town outside of Fort Wayne. There wasn't much there either since it was a Sunday. We knew that going in but the options in Fort Wayne were non existent on a Sunday too. I was happy to see him again even if only for a brief time. I don't know when we will see each other again but hopefully this won't be the last time.

One of the silly things I wanted to do while in Indiana was see the birthplace of Jim Davis creator of Garfield. I have been a fan of Garfield almost all of my life. We are the same age. :) On my way to Fort Wayne I took a brief detour to Fairmount, Indiana, also the home of James Dean. I got there too late in the day to see the museum but I did take a photo of the Garfield statue out front.

This week was pretty normal. I am starting to see where I have time to work on things and where I will just be rushing to get from one place to the next. Next week I am going to work on using that free time a little better.