More Thoughts About Graduate School

Lately, my thoughts are solely on what project I’m going to work on during the eight week intensive summer program for graduate school. I have so many ideas; I just have to pick one and focus it. Since I got in for sculpture, but I’ve mainly been a painter, I will try and combine the two into one project.
I haven’t heard back from the video rental store yet about setting up an interview. Maybe I’ll give them a call, but I’m not too worried about it. Since I got into grad school, the job search is much less important now. I would like to have some money coming in though so I can use it for art materials, especially once the program starts.
I’ve been reading through the graduate school booklet and I’m excited that I have to write a Master’s Thesis. As a former English student, any writing exercise is a welcome challenge. After reading through a thousand pages of Troilus and Crisede then writing a research paper on it, nothing they can throw at me will be too difficult.
I think the fact that I have an extensive background in education probably helped me get in. Once I get my MFA, I’ll probably start applying to colleges for jobs teaching art. But that time is far away because this graduate program is two and a half years long. That’s all for now, I will post again soon!

Dramatic Drama – Part 1 of 7: Magazines

It’s been about two weeks since I’ve written anything on the blogs and I thought I’d finish up the trilogy à la George Lucas before the story loses interest or gets sidetracked. I have had a lot of happenings in the past few weeks (I keep busy) and also I tend to be a writing perfectionist, but if the latter is true I would never get my blogs out. And so this is a good time to begin since College Recruiter just launched their new website design, another momentous occasion!
Since working with mail delivery, I’ve had a lot of time to think, and I mean a LOT. Consider it being stuck in a sort of prison, without all the benefits. Of course I didn’t always see it this way. Tomorrow, I will update you about work politics and drama and you’ll see what I mean.
See, what many college students don’t realize is that they have all these resources on campus and hardly ever use them all. Most barely use 1% of the libraries, networks, career services and what not.
So when I got out of college I was still pretty jaded by the fact that I was living independent without a care in the world. Soon as that ended, it was “Son, time to get a job. Too bad you never too advantage of that career services center on campus or went to any of those job fairs, eh…? a heh heh.”
So I dedicate Dramatic Drama this week not only to the struggling actors and students out there, but also most definitely to the post graduate students. The ones out there like myself that have gone “the wrong path” and put themselves into a hole whether because we make poor academic, financial, or life decisions. Or just we are born with bad luck. I give you this advice, “Only you can take control of your life. All the power for success already lies within you.” Because we all make “mistakes”, but they are never truly mistakes if you learn from them. They are just what makes you unique from everyone else.
My tip for today which I got from a career help site is this: stay up to date with your field with free magazines and books. Once you find a field you are truly interested, whether it be medicine, art, accounting, etc. you can usually find free publications online that are willing to send them to your door monthly for free or very little fee.
For instance, doctors, teachers, and computer scientists have an ever changing field and always need to stay updated and abreast with current information. Thus, this is a great way to always be “in the know.” Think about it.
I personally was able to do a search for free industry professional and trade magazines and find some goodies. If you are looking for acting resources, you’ll also find newsgroups to be an excellent source of information as they often have links to online books and links. Often these will also have insider information into jobs and internships.
Tomorrow I’ll also talk about my first lucky break and more about the power of online resources.

New Hockey Players Needed. So Is a Sense of Humor.

I’ve had quite the varied reaction to yesterday’s blog entry about a fictitious job posting for new hockey players for the USA men’s team. While several teams played below their expectations, it was Mike Modano and some of the other players on the American team that refused to admit that their failure to perform might have been primarily responsible for their failure to win more than one out of their four games.
Ever had an employee like Mr. Modano? Talented? Yes. Heart? Yes. Proves great leadership skills over a long period of time and with a wide variety of co-workers? Yes. Able to accept blame when there’s failure? Not a chance.

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CollegeRecruiter.com Goes For the Gold With Slap Shot Humor

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Minneapolis, Minnesota, February 25, 2006 – CollegeRecruiter.com is helping the students and recent graduates who use its site to reduce their college jitters with some Olympic humor. CollegeRecruiter.com is the highest traffic career site for job hunting students and recent graduates and the employers who want to hire them. So its staff has come up with a way of helping to reduce the stresses facing these candidates: they can apply on-line to replace the current group of hockey players for Team USA, some of which expended more energy complaining about having to make their own travel arrangements for their wives (the horrors!) than they did in trying to put the puck in the net.

Soon after walking down that aisle, college graduates realize that the “real world” isn’t so much fun. In today’s highly competitive job market environment, some recent college graduates can get caught in a downward spiral of increasing their efforts just to meet rising expectations yet are met with no job acceptance satisfaction. Being without a job affects every part of life from what time you get up in the morning, to whom you see and what you can afford to do. Until doors of opportunity are opened, stress can be chronically draining–both physically and mentally.

When you feel powerless, you’re prey to depression’s traveling companions, helplessness and hopelessness. In this case, the origin of stress cannot be changed immediately. Therefore, finding ways to help maintain optimal physical and mental health is essential. “Learning to relax and laugh is one of the easiest ways to reduce stress,” says Steven Rothberg, President and Founder of CollegeRecruiter.com. “Share a joke with a friend, watch a funny movie at home, read the comics or, in this case, check out the entertaining CollegeRecruiter.com U.S. Hockey Team joke job posting and put some of that humor back into your life.”

After taking a break from life’s hardships and reading the U.S. Hockey Team joke job posting, check out CollegeRecruiter.com’s network of career sites featuring tens of thousands of job openings and over 3,500 pages of employment-related articles, blog postings, and Ask the Experts questions and answers.

About CollegeRecruiter.com

CollegeRecruiter.com is the highest traffic career site used by job-hunting
students and recent graduates and the employers who want to hire them. Three
million visitors per month use the CollegeRecruiter.com network of career
sites to find part-time positions, summer jobs, internships and career
opportunities. CollegeRecruiter.com features tens of thousands of job
openings and over 3,500 pages of employment-related articles and Ask the
Experts questions and answers. Further information about
CollegeRecruiter.com is available at
http://www.CollegeRecruiter.com/pages/press-room.php.

CONTACT INFO:

CollegeRecruiter.com
Steven Rothberg
3109 W 50 St Ste 121
Minneapolis, MN 55410-2102
USA
Phone: 800-835-4989
Fax: 702-537-2227
Steven@CollegeRecruiter.com
http://www.CollegeRecruiter.com

Job Posting for Team USA Olympic Hockey Players

Do you have what it takes to be part of the next generation of hockey players for the U.S. men’s Olympic hockey team? Then apply today at CollegeRecruiter.com.

The Joy of Temping

When I was in college and had no money for the holidays, I would call into a temporary employment agency, and tell them when I was available to work. Usually they would have some stellar opportunity like manufacturing music stands (screwing the same one or two parts into each other for an eight-hour shift) or sorting through brown glass bottles for the ones with a certain code on the bottom. The pay was never great, but it was usually $1.50 above minimum wage.
For two weeks, in January of 1999 I worked for a company that went into fire-damaged homes, salvaged what they owned, cleaned, it and returned it to its original position once the house had also been fixed. We each had items that we preferred to move and clean. My specialty was wall hangings and photographs; checking out the photographs gave me the edge when it came to betting who in the family caused the fire. And no matter what the job was, I always met fascinating people, experienced a different sector of the working world, and got the money I needed to travel home (or to Vegas) for Thanksgiving.
But I never thought Temp Agencies could ever help my career; I thought they could only find warehouse jobs or paper shredding jobs –jobs you’d never want for life. The first several jobs I got through Temp Agencies, after moving to Los Angeles were no different. I sorted mail at Playboy Entertainment, filed archival paperwork for law firms, and evaluated teachers in training for a company called Testmasters. They pay their instructors $50/hour (not bad if you can score in the 99th percentile on the LSAT, which all of their instructors have). I, on the other hand, made $10/hour –the same as I made at the other temp jobs in L.A.
And so I’ve carried on. The old lady who supervises my filing has finally gotten off my back, and they’re paying me $14/hour. The Temp Agencies still haven’t found me a job doing what I want, but I can pay my bills and keep looking for the right job.

Indiana Jones: Not Unemployed

The New York job hunt is dragging on. It is a tiring process of honing and patience just a short step away from faith. It occurred to me that I know an expert, a prominent career counselor from my home-sweet-home town of Portland, Maine, who has spent years rubbing elbows with the newly educated. I asked her for an interview to see if we could reformulate the challenges faced by new graduates and make them easier to understand. I wanted a new way to measure my efforts. She graciously agreed to help and did one better by providing the metaphor of the chasm.

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Gen Y Choosing Entrepreneurship

Employers, already faced with the prospect of Boomers starting to retire in droves, are now also faced with the prospect that today’s college students and recent graduates, often referred to as Gen Y, are turning away from a life in the corporate world and toward entrepreneurship. As reported by the Boston Globe, 30 to 40 percent of those who graduate from colleges such as Harvard and Carnegie Mellon are choosing to start their own businesses.
My paternal grandfather was an entrepreneur. My father is an entreprenuer. I’m an entrepreneur. And I hope that my kids are too if it will make them and their families happy. I love the feeling of creating something out of nothing and continually making decisions that haven’t been made before. Yet running a small business can also be difficult as that business sometimes lacks the size or resources to be competitive against larger organizations which are in the same space. Fortunately, I was able to learn value of strategic partnerships pretty early on. Too many entrepreneurs don’t. They’re entrepreneurs first and foremost because they can’t or won’t work with others. Rather than collaborating, they internalize. Rather than looking for solutions beyond their own walls, they look for reasons why they can’t help a client with a particular need. Rather than assuming success, they assure failure.

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Will Work for Gear

I spent about a year after college working for an outdoor gear distributor. A few years back this would have been a dream job back in that small junior college town. I promised myself that I would work there just for a little bit. Buy all the tents, backpacks, water bottles, knifes and climbing gear that I needed. After a few months, I fell into the groove of waking up going to work, and hardly ever applying for better jobs when I got home.
It was easy to stay though; after all I was spending all my money on these really cool toys.
Trying to live on $8.00 dollars and hour is hard enough without having all of the temptation to spend it right there at work. Payment for this discounted gear could come straight out of the paycheck if I wanted it to, just like one of my good friends child support payments comes out of his paycheck. In the end I probably brought back enough money for gas and the occasional road trip. I had a truck full of gear that would last me more than a long time, but I learned quickly that buying gear soon turns into an addiction. The collection begins to grow into enormous proportions. Some deals are too hard to pass up, and you would be a fool not to buy at the lowest price. Enough to keep me busy, not enough to keep me interested. Eventually, I got to the position in the company where the wanted to get me out of the warehouse and onto the sales floor. About this same time, I was interviewing for a good job with another agency.
In the end I ended up leaving the company for a more interesting summer job. They were even gracious enough to let me keep the employee discount. I still find myself spending quite a bit of money buying things from their company. While picking up an order today, they asked me if I would come in and work the next day. There is something a little humiliating about working at a company you left. Then again I feel a little grateful for the work while I am in need. Something should be said for leaving a job on good terms.

Drug Dealer Advertises for Job Opening

Employers, are you listening? Struggling to find a bright, entrepreneurial, financial whiz with a knack for global trade and logistics? Look no further:

This is not a joke. I repeat. This is not a joke.