overqualified

i had an interview with mama earth organics on thursday afternoon.

yeah, i pretty much felt like this.

it was a standard one-on-one interview. he looked over my resume and asked me some questions about it. we talked about my education and previous work experience. but, he questioned whether the job was the right fit for me. as in, my postgrad in project management meant my goals and aspirations to eventually become a project manager were set too high and not applicable to the company.

he basically told me i was overqualified for the position, and also said that they don't want to hire students directly out of school. well, shit. so what employers do hire students from school? he said he would call on friday if he had other questions and to make a decision. there was no call, so i can assume i didn't get it. but my odds are getting better perhaps -- there were 40 applications, narrowed down to 5 people interviewed.

in the meantime, i apply to at least one new job every day. and in the last week, i've received plenty of rejection emails. so, y'know, things are swell on the job search like they always are for me and countless others!

in 11 days, i'll be finished my postgrad and i'll be one happy girl. my program is a complete joke and waste of time. the "internship" (a word i'm going to use extremely loosely here since it's not actually an internship) is not giving me any real world experience. yes, i can create a project based on sponsor requirements, but it doesn't officially help me get anywhere in work experience -- especially when ISO 14001 standards are pretty much obsolete. plus, being in a group with a dude who doesn't do anything isn't helpful either.

the main hope from completing this internship in the beginning was:
a) the possibility of getting a job with the company after completion and
b) using my sponsor as a reference
i definitely won't be doing either of those things. but i'll do a bigger review of the whole program once i'm finished.

look, i've been practicing. i made a pigeon-rat.

also, i'm pretty certain there are pigeons nesting on my balcony. they have woken me up with their noise on several occasions now and i try to scare them away by banging on the window. there's a bunch of leftover garbage from previous tenants on the balcony adjacent from my room that i never cleaned up. and the pigeons have nested on a pile of it. i can't get my door open now because  my parents sealed it shut for me in the winter. the cold draft and the wind blowing open the door sometimes were too much. i need somebody to help me open the door and destroy the pigeon habitat (in a nice, animal rights sort of way).

it's been a couple of weeks since i've seen charles the mouse hanging out in our apartment. i may have accidentally thrown him down the garbage chute one afternoon. i went to empty the garbage and felt something move. early in march, i saw a mouse running around in the laundry room. it seems the whole building must be infested. i hope they stay away with the warm weather now.

risk group project due tomorrow. internship report and presentation wednesday. GIS report wednesday. exams start the next week. risk and business exams on the monday, and civil infrastructure on wednesday, followed by my final GIS presentation and report on the thursday.

11 more days. that's all i need.

semester in review

it took about four months and the night before my project management exam to finally learn how to calculate net present value, earned value, and the critical path method. and it was all thanks to a dude in my program and youtube's SirGanttAlot. 

somehow, i figure if i'm learning more from youtube than the education i'm paying for, there might be a serious problem. i was rewarded today with my results and i'm pretty happy; ending with a C+ in project management is what i needed to achieve in order to stay in the program. of course, everything else was fine: B in law, B+ in environmental management, A in business, and A+ in english. yes, postgrad is a bit of a joke. i can only hope that it stays that way for next semester.

shit, did i really just finish my first four months and first semester in toronto already?

i've been home for the holidays since tuesday afternoon and i've likely spent more time with friends than my actual family. everyone was around for christmas dinner and opening gifts; i'm excited to play the new batman soon. i had to make a decision whether i should bring all my dirty clothes home or my xbox. i think i made the right decision.

i'm heading back to toronto on wednesday and figuring out something to do for new years eve but i don't know what that will be yet. school starts back up january 9th -- my schedule currently shows 3 more 8am classes. i'm very unhappy. nobody knows what's happening with the internship yet. they didn't tell us anything before we left, so i hope it's all sorted out by the time we get back.

i'm also thinking about applying to seneca's green business management postgrad program for september 2012. it looks more interesting than what i'm doing currently; more of a focus on the environment and sustainability plus an internship that seems to be much more organized than my program too. and it costs less. and it'll mean living in toronto for another year.

i'll go talk to them once i get back in january. originally, i was gonna go talk to someone after my last exam... but.. y'know.. i kinda started drinking at 11am when my exam finished. i figured it was a better use of my time.

happy holidays!

"so have a merry christmas, happy channukah, kwazy kwanza, a tip top tet, and a solemn, dignified ramadan.
..and now a word from my god; our sponsor."

living with stress

i've always felt i have the ability to manage my stress pretty effectively.

but that's probably only because it's in my nature to let all my stress build up to a point of no return. and with the amount of things i've had to face this semester between school and living here, it's beginning to get the best of me now that it's exam time.

several things happened yesterday that made me feel rather uncomfortable:

1. corey found a mouse in our garbage
now, i'll admit that sometimes our kitchen is not the cleanest. bur our garbage doesn't normally pile up or be left for significant periods of time. it rarely smells. and we keep all our recyclables on the island until someone decides to take them out. so where the fuck did this mouse come from?

well, it could be from the number of our interior/exterior doors that don't close properly. the little fucker could have came in through any one of them. corey was emptying the garbage last night and the mouse jumped out at him. it ran somewhere, either behind the stove or dishwasher. we don't know. there was so much mouse shit behind the garbage. now i'm more afraid that i'm going to get a late night mousey visitor while i'm asleep. we have moved our garbage from underneath the sink to the island counter in hopes that charles will leave our apartment. perhaps we may even catch him and keep him as a pet? 

2. water dripping from the bathroom vent
last night, there was this constant stream of water/pee flowing from the bathroom ceiling vent for a good... ten to fifteen minutes. luckily, the bathroom vent is mostly over the toilet; so the majority of the water/pee was going into the toilet. we're not sure why this was happening but eventually it did stop. 

3. bathroom ceiling starting to bend
this may be connected to the water dripping from the bathroom vent, but the ceiling around the vent is beginning to curve and bend, like what happens when there is water damage to a wall. it's been getting worse over the last few months.

again, i'm sure this has something to do with the renovations upstairs... but i still constantly hear people doing things.. like living and not renovating during the evening hours. i wonder what's actually happening up there. 

4. full garbage chutes 
the superintendent seems to disappear on weekends and is 'off duty'. this causes problems in the use of our garbage chute on the floor. it gets backed up to an insane degree and is not always resolved by monday morning. my neighbours either need to learn how to use a chute properly (and keep their recyclables like a normal person) or the garbage needs to be emptied on a daily basis, even on the weekend.

those are just my apartment troubles from last night.

my exam stress is 4 exams in 3 days, and a 5th exam on the 5th day. with the two most difficult on wednesday. my bigger problem is my professor who teaches two of my classes this semester who thinks that:
1. it's alright to fail me on the midterm by two marks and tell me he wouldn't look at it again.
2. it's alright to insult me by saying my handwriting is illegible (but yet, nobody in the class can ever read his writing).
3. it's alright to circle words on my midterm that he didn't agree with but mean the same thing and giving me zero or half marks.

it's not as if i asked to be on his bad side; i attended class and participated. i did well on quizzes and assignments... for the most part. if i can get an almost 90 in the multiple choice section of the midterm; fail the short answer section that is based off of the multiple choice questions because he "couldn't read my writing" or didn't agree with the words i used to describe my short answers; and bomb the problems section of the midterm.. there's seriously an issue with his marking and teaching. and when 95% of the class needs to approach the prof after the midterm to discuss marks... it is definitely not a student problem.

i need to at least pass his exam on wednesday in order to make sure i'll pass the course (despite passing and doing well on everything else in his class). so, i'm a bit stressed over that. but i'm studying. i just hope i won't freeze up wednesday morning.

tomorrow: open book law exam.
tuesday: ridiculously easy english exam.
wednesday: project managamenet exam (need to pass); business exam (study and i'll be fine).
friday: EMS exam (would appreciate doing better on the exam than the midterm.. but who knows with that prof).

is it friday at 10:30am yet?

what if

sometimes i wonder if i made the right choice.

i guess it really wasn't my choice to make. with the rejection from niagara and that being the only school i applied to for a post-grad, i was scrambling for something better. but it made me wonder and showed that it was almost fate that i didn't get in.

let's face it: 8 months at niagara would mean 8 more months of living at home and i definitely would not have been able to stand that. i doubt i would be learning anything about project management or getting 100% on assignments (okay, i don't know about the latter). still, i love every aspect of city life. the nightlife, the closeness, the transportation, the friends, the accessibility, and being on my own for sure rules.

i just imagine how things would be different if i didn't scramble to apply to seneca and get in -- even though it wasn't exactly what i wanted. but it's now shaping up to be something that could be beneficial to me in the long run.

i realized how different college life and university life are -- both through the atmosphere and the teaching/grading styles. yes, i'm post-grad, but fuck, if it's 8am and i just got up at 6am, i should have every right to show up in trackpants. fuck all of you for thinking otherwise. and the midterms. oh god, the midterms. i've written 4 so far with a 5th tomorrow. i fucking hate midterms. i didn't have any in my final year of university; i think the last time was in my 4th year. oh yeah, and what happened on that midterm? i scored 100% on short answer and essay questions. yeah. it was a good way to end my university midterm career. this also goes with final exams too --  i only had one final exam in my last year at brock and i did quite well.

i guess i'm just not a fan of testing. my memory, she ain't what she used to be and i find myself blanking on questions i should know... but don't. i prefer writing papers in order to collect my thoughts and ideas and apply them accordingly -- 'cause hell, i can express myself and argue my opinions pretty well! this seems no different in the marks i get from papers/reports/assignments so far. but, even my test scores are turning around. it's all just a matter of my focus at the time. if my mind is elsewhere (and it tends to be), i'm gonna do terrible. but if it's not, i'll more than likely be successful. hell week and a half is winding down to a close tomorrow and it's pretty much smooth sailing with only a few assignments to complete before final exams.

this seneca post-grad or a niagara post-grad was not what i intended. it's no applied master's, but it's going to have to work out.. for now. i just don't enjoy this all theory with no action thing. i want action with less theory!