Howard University Entrepreneur's Society

So, yes, folks. I became an official member tonight with the submittal of the $10 payment of dues. I'm going to go pick up my t-shirt in the morning. I actually wasn't going to go because I was thinking "Ohhh I really need to study" but I'm very glad I did go. I met some new people, made some new connections, and talked. Damn. More on this later, though, gotta catch up with the study time I had to give up!

Right place, right time. I'm used to it.

So, tonight, while waiting on the shuttle, some issues came up with one of the people that was supposed to be working the front desk from the 12-4am shift. What was the problem? Aye, she didn't formally work, plus she left a pizza box in her place. Yeah. The GA (graduate assistant) went looking for her, but couldn't find her. I happened to be standing there during all of this. You sense an opportunity? Good--I sure did. So, after the GA was finished with all of his ranting and tirading, I slid in and just asked about the position...times, etc. Sounds like I can do it. It'll more than likely be two nights a week--the 12-8am shift. I can do that. I can just go to sleep right after I eat dinner.

My parents ought to be okay with this. I go to work right downstairs, and it's only two days a week--on the weekends. I usually don't go to sleep until crazy hours on the weekend anyway, so why not spend it getting paid?

HOO-AH!

Taxi! I need a Taxi!

So, at the last minute, I dragged Brandon out for a night on the town. Catching taxis. No, not really, but catching the metro to see the movie Taxi.

Come follow me. Come follow me.

Alright, folks, so here it is 7 something in the morning and I'm listening to Usher on my borrowed iPod courtesy of Brandon. I stopped studying for the advanced data structures midterm several hours ago. I don't know what to think. My head is in such a twirl that I don't know what to think besides "Put on clothing, eat breakfast, go spit allover this exam." Right now, I'm sitting here reading the Wall Street Journal and seeing all these ads for IBM.

It's funny how now I'm truly paying attention to them. I used to in the past, but now more than ever. Why? I'm looking to work with IBM on two fronts. More about that later, however. Now, I'm just interested in getting dressed, eating breakfast, and peeing allover that exam. Oy.

Software Students Create.

After writing less and less code in C++, I realize I have a mid-term in Advanced Data Structures on Friday. I don't believe I'll be in trouble, but I do know that it'll be a torrid inconvenience to have to go back to a language that you've been neglecting for quite some time for better alternatives. On the road to doing bigger and better things in software, I've been spending entirely too many waking hours at my desk working on Java.

I told Brandon about the web browser I built a couple of years of ago around the time I first started working with Java and he was amazed. It'd be nice if I still had any scraps of the code that I used to build that. A good portion of it would probably be deprecated by now anyhow, but haha, oh well. I'm starting to write it all over again anyway.

Right now I'm just up entirely too late because I don't have any obligations until 2pm today. Ordinarily, I'd be asleep right now in anticipation of making it to office hours in the morning for NSBE. That whole arrangement fell apart rather quickly though. So, I now just serve two hours of office hours on Thursdays. That's easier on me, plus I still contribute actively to the organization.

lol. Speaking of contributing, Jason and I are trying to get the website up by November 1st. If we are harshly persistent, it can be done. We're engineers though. How we have time for anything outside of strangely named mathematics and marathon programming sessions is beyond us. But, we're really trying to use the site, for right now, as a vehicle to get our chapter sponsored to attend nationals.

In the meantime, I'm going back to work on studying for the midterm on Friday, rebuilding the web browser, reading incessantly (something I've done a lot lately), and worrying about my worsening eyesight.

Yes, folks. My eyesight is not good anymore. I thinky my screen is too bright. Who knows. I've adjusted it to be significantly less in brightness, and wow, it worked wonders. Let's just hope I can transfer these same settings to the computers in the lab. Who knew that LCD's could be so damn bright?!

Also, I have to follow up with whatever happened to the recruiter that was supposedly so enthusiastic about getting me on at IBM for the summer. I'm ready for the big time now. In the meantime, I'll go back to reading boring books about sorting methods and preparing for exams. Maybe I'll eventually wash clothes too.

Hard.

Time management is increasingly important these days as a college student and a student leader on campus. Time demands make me wonder how many hours there actually are in a day. Thus, I've been forced to keep a panoply of lists and schedules and organization tools to keep me on track. Plus, I've been doing some reading. Lots of reading.

Conditional therapy.

So, yes, folks. This busy week of midterms, meetings, and infinite amounts of annoyance is over. To celebrate, I went to the mall with Brandon and we had some smokin' chicken. It was great.

Tighter.

I've got to be a tighter time manager. In retrospect, I realize that this weekend what should have taken place is the following: before lying around and not brushing my teeth, I should have done most of the assignments that would be due this week. Now, that that wasn't done, I am posting this at 4am. And, no, folks, I haven't been to sleep yet. Heh. And the week has just begun. God be with me.

A hectic week and three unproductive days.

Of course, folks. I'm back. After sitting around for three days contemplating what I'm going to write to land this IBM internship, I finally came up with something around 8pm. Yeah, that's after three days of contemplating and two rough drafts of what I may be able to turn into a personal statement a few months from now when I'm playing the venture capital game to pay for school.

Now, as I said before I haven't been doing anything for this whole weekend except sitting on my ass and pondering how I can do great stuff. Yeah, folks, that's a complete oxymoron. Doing great stuff involves getting off your ass. Those who shook the world up didn't do it by sitting on their asses. They got off their own asses, plus made others get off their asses, too. The only thing I'm doing is slightly falling behind. I've got this programming assignment due Wednesday (technically tomorrow) that I've made absolutely no real progress on. That's pretty disappointing.

In any case, I figure this week will go well as long as I fulfill some obligations that I have to some groups that I've joined such as NSBE and ACM. I know I have an executive board meeting on Thursday and office hours at 10am. I hate office hours. But, this time I'm going to really try to make some use of them. I remember a quote from a book I read about Stanford GSB. A lady told the entering class of I believe 1989 or so that they should not even waste ten minutes. I can have a full belief in that. Believing in something and actually doing it are two desperate things.

But, okay. This week was really something interesting. It was career week here at gracious old Howard University and we had over 150 companies come a-courting. Who am I now probably dating? IBM, Goldman Sachs, and various government agencies. I just re-emailed my personal statement and resume back to the recruiter from IBM, so hopefully he has something nice for me to pour over tomorrow. I'm really suddenly interested in IBM. I'd feel really great working with them. Hopefully, if I do work for them, I'll be able to work in Raleigh. They do have a corporate campus about 1.5 hours from my house. It's great.

Now, Goldman Sachs, on the other hand, that's a different kind of bread, butter, and cheesemelt. I've been following them since my junior year in high school. I know a lot about them, and I'd be willing to spend a summer with them, too. They were the folks I originally was scoping out for an internship, but I wanted to see what IBM was about. I mean, hey, my first laptop was an IBM. Plus, they really seem cool anyway. I'm hoping somehow, I can get into their Extreme Blue program. That's a really serious internship. If I can't do that this year, I would really start working toward that for next year.

I mean, lately, I've really become committed to having computer science really be my major. I've been reading a lot lately and doing a lot toward getting internships and building my resume. Plus, I've been doing things here and there to build up other folks in the school of engineering. The other night I was helping a friend do a program. It was fun when we finally finished. The whole process of programming and software engineering, to generalize it, is really fun and the discovery aspect of it is really great.

And then tonight, while putting up posters in the engineering building, something really interesting happened. While running from that prune, Eddie, I ran into this other guy that I really had a rather interesting conversation with. He's a chemical engineering student that goes by the name Seyi. Seyi really had been scoping me out (not in a romantic kind of way), but just had seen me around the building a lot. He noted that I seem to be always be studying and working. I thought it was a novel observation, and I really wondered what it could mean. Do I really work too hard (while not really accomplishing much)? Or do I just appear to be in a frenetic state of constant motion? I can't tell. Another thing I couldn't tell was who I was.

Seyi asked me the thing I dreaded in the Park Scholarship interview with NCSU. "Who is Tiffani?" And it's almost a shame that, maybe, two years after being asked that question, I still can't answer it. At least I didn't tell him I was "laid-back" like I told the scholarship committee. And truly, I couldn't answer it again. I just told him some stuff about community service and I guess that was alright.

He seemed to think in about five years I could be doing really big things. I hope this isn't another person that I let down. Hm.