Life Updates

[Mike]

Neil inspired me in Stinsonians new thread... What's new in your life, or what's up these days with you?

For me?
I'm a senior in College, majoring in Political Science, with a double minor in Theology and History. I've wanted go to to Law School after college for the last three years, but unfortunately, that isn't looking too good ... because Suffolk, my desired school, is too expensive and I wouldn't be able to work, to afford an apartment in/around Boston ... or tuition. So I've put that on hold, unfortunately... It's really all I want to do. I wouldn't mind getting my STD in THeology (STD is similar to a doctorate in another study, just for theology), but I'm not theologically sound enough to get it, really... not well read enough. So that's a bummer.

I'm working as the Web Developer for Assumption College, my school, and my boss will be leaving some time next year, hopefully ... and so I hope to take his job as the head web developer. This would give me a decent mid-five's income, health and dental insurrance, which is what I really need. Additionally, if you work Full time for Assumption, they give you graduate classes for free ... and while they don't offer anything that I'm really interested in, I could get my MBA for free, which would be very nice and help bolster my resume for Law School... which would be great.

In my personal life ... I'm still dating my girlfriend, Brianne, of almost three years... and I'm actually starting to consider proposing to her ... It kinda makes me laugh as I say it because I wouldn't have imagined myself in this situation. It's cool

In cool news, EASports is giving me an all expenses paid trip to Vancouver on the 13th and 14th of December to preview MVP '06 College Baseball, their new baseball game set to come out next year. I'll be leaving Boston at like 4:30 AM, getting to Vancouver at about 12:00 PM, going to the EA Vancouver studios, interview them and play the game, go to the hotel, go back the next day, then fly out at like 8:00 PM on the 14th ... A lot of travelling over two days, but I'm excited about it.

I'm not reading any books right now, but I've read four in the last month, that I all mostly suggest:
1) THe Coffee Trader - Fiction, about a Jew in Amsterdam in the 1600s who is trying to corner the new coffee market for Europe, in the world's first commodoties trade. It's a very exciting, well written and excellent book ... and who'da thunk that the market could be that good?

2) An Empire of Wealth - Nonfiction, about the American empire of currency and commodity. It's the best history book I've ever read, has a lot of great anecdotal 'story tellings' of interesting, important, yet oft-overlooked parts of American history. It recounts, in detail, the growth of the American political order to where it has become the most economically powerful in the world, and throughout history.

3) The New American Militarism - Nonfiction, a recount of the Neoconservative movement and it's effects on the American military, since Vietnam. It's interesting ... not all accurate, but pretty good. Rather Anti-American, very Anti-neoconservative, but ... still good.

4) Anansi Boys - Fiction, Neil Gaiman's new book ... one that I don't particularly like, but still alright. If you've read American Gods, The Sandman, Neverwhere... or even Good Omens, you'll be disapointed with this one... but it'd be alright if it were written by anybody but Neil Gaiman.

As for what I'm doing RIGHT NOW...
Workig on three papers. A 12 - 15 page paper for one of my theology classes, doing a Biblical exegesis on like 6 lines from MAtthews gospel Sucks. Another 15 page paper for my Poli Sci seminar... using both New American Militarism and an Empire of Wealth, which is a decent thing... and then some shitty 6 page paper on The Road to Wigan Pier by Orwell ... it's a shitty paper and shitty topic.

Well that's my little life update.

[teensupernothing]

this sounds fun.

i'm a senior in high school, still figuring out where i want to go to college, i know i want to major in something art-based though. i'm still fencing like a maniac, and doing pretty well. i'm going to germany over x-mas break to fence, actually. i'm more or less on my own financially, so fencing paying for college is VERY nice.

i'm basically doing some custom sewing stuff for money right now, since i fence too much to hold a job with normal hours. it's gettin me through fencing season, but it's realy burning me out. in spring i'll go back to vitamin shoppe.

as far as the personal life goes, it doesen't. i'm not really seeing anybody because i don't have the time for a relationship. any free time i have basically goes to chilling with my friends, and making our senior year 100% kick-ass. it's going pretty damn well if you ask me.

i'm not really reading now, and i haven't read anything fantastic lately.... or really read anything i wasn't forced to read. so i'm not even going to try to do a little review.

cool news.... i get my liscense in...27 days, and a car in 28. pontiac torrent. brand-spankin new. my present to myself for getting full scholarship offers at my top choice schools. :-).

what i'm doing RIGHT now.. sitting in keyboarding class... doing nothing because i finished everything early.

[Liss]

I hate these things with a great passion. I still miss the days where all of us simply went to high school and spent the rest of our lives online. And look, now, everyone's getting married, or proposing, and finishing college and just being so grown up. It pisses me the fuck off. It's like seeing the kids I used to babysit suddenly working in the bar/ pizza place downtown, serving me food and dressing slutty to get good tips. Sigh.

Most everyone knows about me. For the past two years, with the exception of a semester in Africa, I've been piddling away at the local community college in a beach town in Alabama, trying to figure out a life plan and working at various restaurants in the area. In late December I am moving to Riverside, California, where I'll be a junior at UCR. I'm going to be majoring in Creative Writing with a concentration in creative nonfiction. I'm really excited because a lot of the professors are published authors and I think I'll really enjoy the curriculum. I'm scared shitless at the same time.

Right now I'm doing a lot of studying. I only have 2 weeks left before I finish my Associate of Arts degree in English, so finals are coming up quick and I'm trying to pass pre-calculus with a high enough grade to keep a 3.8 (this is basically an impossibility). I'm studying for a state Real Estate exam as well...I've been taking classes in Alabama and if I pass the test I can get a sales rep license and put it on inactive status in case one day I want to move back to the Gulf and work in that field. I also have a theatrical production next weekend so I'm rehearsing lines on my own over Thanksgiving, then we have a tight rehearsal schedule next week. (I play a senile old woman and it's SWEET).

As far as relationships go, I had to kick out a boyfriend a few months ago for excessive cheating. I recently did meet someone new. Unfortunately he lives in Alabama, I'm moving to California. We've been seeing a lot of each other, but the overall reality is, he has a girlfriend in the Peace Corps, stationed in Mongolia for 2 years. They're broken up due to distance, but I know that he's in love with her. When I move we won't see each other again I'm sure. That's sad. So we're making the best of things for now and will move on soon.

Tomorrow I'm cooking a giganto turkey-day dinner, then the next day I embark on a new 2200 mile journey back to Alabama. I've been doing a lot of travelling lately, back and forth, and I'm not done yet.

Mike, how did EASports come about giving you a free trip?

[heX]

no big plans in life.

dating my same gf for over about a year now. working at best buy for little over a year now. only moved one time over the last year.

all in all this has been the most stable normal year ive had since i was in 4th grade.

i wanna start school but i know i couldnt afford school while working a full time job to pay rent. although i now live with my mom again who knows how long that will last shes talking about moving out of our apt at the begining of next year. in wich case ill have to pay the full rent, utilities, car insurance, foods, ect. so i dont want to comit to paying loans when i dont know if ill be able to pay for my roof. wish i had half normal parents or atleast a better job. so i could go to school with out fear of going completely broke with no where to live.

[thecreeper]

another semester of college and i'm done. i still need to find an internship, i have one place interested right now but what they want me to do sounds way over my head. i wish college was another year longer and i went to a better college.

the last 2 weeks I have been sicker than I ever have in my life. i'm just now getting better. talking still is a bitch though.

i'm looking forward to starting good-evil again, i dont feel near as productive without having to do it every week.

me and the gf are at 3.5 years. woo!

i don't want to actually work for a living. i want me life to be office space.

games i played recently and recommend: silent hill 2, silent hill 3, kirby canvas curse, castlevania: aria of sorrow.

books i read recently and recommend if you have interest in history (IE i was forced to read these but they were good books): Execution by Hunger (about the starvation of non-collective farmers and collective farmers in the Soviet Union under Stalin) and Defying Hitler (the advent of Nazism through the eyes of a young citizen and his fight to survive).

music i've been listening to that i would recommend: silent hill 2 soundtrack, hum - you'd prefer and astronaut, anthrax - the greater of two evils, nine inch nails - the fragile, and the last 3 queens of the stone age albums

movies: walk the line was a pretty great movie. creepshow 2 was a shitt-tay sequel (what's the trashbag doing in the water!? oh my god, it's alive and it eats people!!).

[johnny]

my life is fairly boring and moving nowhere fast right now. but don't get me wrong, i'm enjoying it overall. it's basically just my job situation that is causing me stress..

i graduated back in may--with a 4.0 because i'm a fuckin' champ--but now i have a diploma in computer programming & analysis (specialist titles: software developer; java internet developer) and there never seems to be any entry-leve/junior openings in the information technology field. certainly not in toronto, at least. and i don't really want to move to another town right now, for a few reasons. so right now i work at a call centre phoning people who have registered for vacation promotions and ask if they would like to register for the vacation package. i'm still looking for a real job (or anything else that will pay better and get me off the goddamn phone really..) but i doubt that i'll get much consideration for programming work while i'm stuck mostly applying for jobs that require three to five years of experience, if not more. i sure hope something comes around soon; otherwise, odds are, i'll be trying to find the money to go back to school for something completely different, in the fall (though i would still program some shit as a hobby--i'm about to start up a project of my own pretty soon, actually. i think).

i also still play guitar in a band. we're called the visit, in case i hadn't mentioned it before. if you want to hear a tune check out the ol' myspace page and hit play. i think some of you might dig it. this weekend we're hitting the road to play shows in montreal (saturday) and ottawa (sunday). it should be a pretty damn wild event. two great things about montreal are: i) 99 cent cheese pizza slices at lots of different pizza joints, and ii) cheap 40 oz. bottles of molson export. we also have a gig coming up here in toronto, and it's a john lennon tribute show, so we're planning to play "i don't want to be a soldier," "give me some truth," and "well well well." and i must say, even though we have barely practised these songs at all yet, our renditions of them are already sounding pretty fuckin' stellar.

near the end of october i moved to a new apartment, considerably closer to the downtown toronto area. so now i live in greektown. it's a really cool neighbourhood. it seems to be a pretty popular area, though it totally doesn't have the attitude that some other areas of town sometimes have (for example, queen street west, not that you know where that is, eh). i like my new apartment. it is good. maybe i'll snap a few pictures later, but not until it's slightly more organized. i've been so damn lazy, since i absolutely hate packing and unpacking, so there are still a couple boxes that i have packed up sitting against a wall. i guess i don't actually need anything that is in them. and my furniture is still more or less in the places where i put it all the night that i moved in, in attempts to organize the place a little bit. but oh well, i'm sure my interior designs are terrible anyways, so it ought to do.

what else? oh, hockey has been back for a while, and i am still loving it.

[malta]

I've not been doing much but hanging out and working. I work at a resteraunt cooking food. I'm stilll at home but I'm waiting for some friends to move out so I can get out of here.

[malta]

^^^was pretty vauge. I'll blame it on being wicked fucked last night.

[Jesse]

I meant to post in this thread when I saw it a couple weeks ago, but, I didn't have time, then I forgot. But don't worry, I'll do it now.

At present, I'm 20, 21 in February. I'm in college, working towards a Bachelor's in Web Design. Last semester I was an Audio/Video production major, but, there was lots of work and studying involved, and the last thing I want to do in college is work and study. And since they had just launched a new web design program at my school, with a great teacher, I figured I'd go with that, being that it's been a hobby of mine for years.

Safe to say that I'm probably the best student in the program here. And the teacher is always really impressed by my work. And he's talked with me about the job opportunities at his web/software development company. So, I suppose my future could potentially be looking pretty good. Hopefully since I enjoy doing web design with my free time, I'll enjoy it as a career. You never know though.

Next semester I begin interactive design classes, with Flash and what not. Hopefully that'll really be my time to shine.

I haven't given much thought about internships yet, but I'm sure that I will eventually.

I have no job. It's hard to find a job with my piercings, and 2-tone dreadlocks. But, I'm not really complaining. I knew it'd be hard to get a job with this appearence. Maybe after college, when I really need to clean myself up, I will.

I sort of 'run' a street team for my favorite band, The Berzerker. As of now, it's just a MySpace group with about 250 members in it, but before the end of the year I want to build an offical website.

I suppose that's all until the next 'life updates' thread.

[sharkz]

let's see. i'm a freshman in highschool now. gah.

i go to school two days a week, and work at a software company taking screenshots for part of the day on the days when i'm home.

i've been behind on schoolwork, due to doing a lot of work with my band lately and also general poor management of my time [hell, i'm writing this right now]. but it's not something i'm really letting get me down.

but so yeah the band is a big part of my life. coming up on two years now. i sent our 3rd album off for duplication today. we're looking to become more of a live band. we've got a gig we're excited about on december 17th and we're hoping for a 45 minute set.

ha cha

[malta]

Oh yea, so my life sucks. I dropped out of college sometime last year and don't really intend to make much of my life ever. I cook and prepare food at a resteraunt for money. I live wiht my family and it it will probably stay that way until one of my deadbeat friends decides to move out of there house with me.