Worus

I went to the career fairs the last two days. The Engineering Career Fair was alright. There were more companies for things that I was interested in there. Alas, I talked to fewer people. I did talk to Technology Services Group, the one company that Beth went to talk to. Beth looked at what they did and came back to me to tell me that she didn’t want to talk to them after all, but that I would really like to talk to them. I went and talked and they were really neat. The guy asked me if I wanted to maybe do an interview today and took my resume and phone number. I was incredibly excited. Unfortunately, he never called to set up an interview. We were getting along really well, too, and the discussion was going along like I was actually competent about what they did, which is sometimes rare when I talk to recruiters.

Today, I talked to what felt like a million people. I didn’t get any leads out of it, but these computer science jobs are more in the business field. While that’s okay with me, most of the companies are actually there to recruit students from the College of Business or at least those graduating in December. I jumped the gun a bit early this time, but I think that it was good practice and maybe some of the companies that I would like to work for will remember me in the spring. That was the plan, anyway.

I wasn’t going to stop by Alcoa today. Finally, right before I left I decided that the worst that could happen was that they tell me that I suck and that if that was the case at least I wouldn’t waste my time in the spring. Actually, the guy that I talked to from Alcoa was an incredible realist. When I asked what kinds of skills he was looking for he said that, more than anything, he just wanted to see that people were able to learn. He said that if people can learn, Alcoa can teach them to do anything that they need. He took my resume and looked at it and said that I had a pretty complimentary set of skills and that I had good grades. That was a huge ego-booster for me today. Alcoa wasn’t looking for anything in my area, but the guy said that he was only there for interns at the Quad Cities office, but that corporate might be more interested. I felt pretty good after that. No one has ever told me that I have a good set of skills or grades at a career fair, so it’s nice to know that I might be okay for the future after all.

My weekend was pretty relaxing. I spent most of mt time actually coding for fun. I learned how to code with Mono as well as with Gtk# and Glade#. I started to write a small Notepad-like application in C#. It was pretty neat. I seem to have a problem with Gtk# at the moment, though, where if a file opened is too large the program will crash randomly. I’m not sure if it’s a weakness in the library or my code. Everything I’ve done points to it being the library’s set of bindings’ fault, but then again, isn’t that always the case?

The API for Gtk# and Glade# is really slick, though. It fits in nicely with the C# goodness. I’m digging it.

I also downloaded the Super Metroid remix album that Ryan mentioned last week. It is an awesome album and I’m thankful that these people decided to share their music with the rest of the Internet. It’s a really cool flashback if you’ve ever played Super Metroid. Very ambient.

Sunday and Monday, I worked on another Towers of Hanoi problem using interfaces, delegates, and events. The whole thing was very confusing to start with, and still somewhat confusing at the moment. I have the program done, though, and it’s pretty cool. The way that simple code can be so elegantly integrated with a graphical user interface is a neat concept. I’m sure that I’ll grow to love delegates and events, but at the moment, I find them scary.

Today is the engineering career fair. I’m not sure what to think. Beth and I are going later to hand out resumes and generally whore ourselves off for work. My hope is that the job market will be much better for full-time positions than interns. I think I’m going to mostly limit myself to companies in Iowa today, minus some exceptions for anything that I think is cool. Seeing that it’s my first career fair for employment for my first computer science job and that I don’t particularly have anywhere that I absolutely have to live when I graduate, I don’t know that I’m exactly ready to completely whore myself off. I’d like to stay close at least for a little while, but if I don’t end up that way after I graduate, I won’t be devastated or anything. I like to think that I could live anywhere.