Forever-Digital is a look inside the life and mind of 
05.06.2008 | Decisions
I know, I know, I’m a huge blogging slacker. You know how it goes though - end of the school year, life as a Sun editor, sleep - it all adds up to subtracting from blogging time. I was doing so well too!
Since I kind of left everyone who doesn’t follow me on Twitter or know me in real life hanging, I thought I’d do a quick catch up on what became of my last post (my interview with Microsoft)…
As I mentioned, I did get an offer from Microsoft to be a UX (user experience) intern. I turned it down. Boy, let me tell you the looks I got from my friends. “Are you insane?!” Well, sometimes, yes. But this time? Not at all. I put a lot of thought into it. A LOT of thought. In the end though, I realized that it wasn’t the place for me at this time in my career. I was really looking for a UX position that involved research and working with users. I was looking for something that was different from last summer’s internship. The position I was offered involved web design, which is all well and good. I really enjoy designing sites. But as I realized last summer, I don’t really like doing it in a corporate setting. Maybe for a smaller company, or maybe on the side, but too many cooks in my Photoshop kitchen is just not how I work. The people I interviewed with were really nice and I would probably have really enjoyed working with them, but I felt like the internship was too similar to the one I’d already experienced and In the end, I realized that it just wasn’t the right time. I felt I could learn a lot more from the other opportunity I had on the table.
The other opportunity is staying here at Cornell for the summer. Again - “Are you insane?!” This time, probably yes. The current plan is to take 2 classes and do part-time research with one of my professors on collaboration and instant messaging. I was looking forward to a nice, relaxing summer here in Ithaca - free from all of my extracurriculars, from 2/3 of the classes I would normally take during a semester and would have the time to focus on tackling that stack of books I’ve been meaning to read for years or that AJAX or RoR that I’ve been meaning to learn for even longer. Not usually how I like to spend my summers, but hey, I’m flexible.
THEN I heard about this internship opportunity at Yahoo!. I read the description and my jaw dropped to the floor. It was as if they’d written it exactly for me. I sent my resume in immediately. You know that post I wrote last summer? The one about the perfect job for me and the subsequent page I made about my Dream Job? Well, this internship hits EVERY SINGLE POINT. Every one! It was too good to be true.
I had my first interview for it yesterday and I have another one coming up next week. If all goes well, I’ll be out in San Francisco again this summer. Fingers crossed, everyone!
04.09.2008 | Recapping the Last 7 Days
This time last week I was sitting in my hotel room with a burrito from Chipotle and an ever-wonderful gigantic Jamba Juice, vegging out on the bed with CSI on the TV. It was 9 PM. I had arrived in Seattle only a few hours earlier and was ready for a good night’s sleep.
“Seattle?” you say. Yes. Seattle. You see, two weeks ago I got a call from the Cornell recruiter at Microsoft. It seems my resume had made it through the black hole and had piqued the interest of some people there. They wanted to fly me out for interviews. “Please choose 4 possible dates. No Wednesdays.” 4 dates? Have you SEEN my schedule? Luckily, I managed to get my first choice, which meant I needed to be on a plane to the other coast 4 days later.
Awesome. A mid-semester trip to the coast I’ve come to love so much. I excitedly and exhaustedly boarded my plane to Newark, NJ (read: 10 minutes from where I grew up and visible from my high school) where I would meet my mom with the dress pants I had left at home. (You can imagine the TSA guard’s amusement at sending my pants through the x-ray machine for me to pick up on the other side). 6-3 hours later, thanks to the time change, I was settled into my hotel room with two queen sized beds, wifi, and a rental car to explore the area. It’s too bad I ended up falling asleep and not getting to the exploration part.
Fast forward to the next morning, I hopped in my car bright and early and made my way into Seattle (or “downtown” as they seem to call it in those parts). I was going to the Space Needle and Pikes Place without a doubt. I was also going to meet up with Shannon, Margot’s roommate from last year who happens to be going to Chiropractor school in Oregon. After getting lost in the more residential part of north-east Seattle, I finally found the Space Needle (just look up…it can’t be that hard, right?). I parked my car in some daily lot and set out with my camera. There’s nothing better for a photographer than going somewhere new. The photo opportunities seem endless! I walked around the Space Needle area for a bit to get my bearings and figure out where Shannon and I would meet and then made my way onto the monorail to head to Pikes Place. I’d heard the best time to go was in the early morning because you can see all of the vendors bringing in their wares and things.
Welcome to Pikes Place Market. Please don’t inhale unless you intend to suffocate from eau de smelly fish. Despite my extreme dislike of anything seafood-related, I wanted to go see them throw the fish around (who doesn’t!?). Turns out they only do that in this one tiny booth area, but I managed to get a few shots in. If they were selling MacBooks or something, I would have ordered one to watch them throw it around, but a fish? What would I do with a fish? I walked around and took in my surroundings. It reminded me a bit of Downtown Ithaca combined with a bit of Haight Street.
After I’d had my fill of Pikes Place and I’d stopped in a Starbucks to re-caffeinate and check my travel guide to make sure I hadn’t missed anything important, I headed back to the monorail and the Space Needle. The monorail runs through the Electronic Music Project which, until I was standing in front of it, was not a place I was interested in going into. The cool-factor of the building itself just pulls you right in! It’s definitely an interesting juxtaposition against the supposedly “futuristic” Space Needle.
I managed to kill a few hours in the EMP. It turns out that it’s not just a museum! You can go and bang on drums and play guitars and things. The geek in me was so overstimulated by the “social design” aspects of the place. It’s pretty awesome! I would have probably spent the entire day in there if Shannon hadn’t shown up. But Shannon’s arrival also meant I could FINALLY go into the Space Needle.
After a quick elevator ride to the top we walked in circles around the top of the Needle for a good 45 minutes just talking and catching up on life. Since I hadn’t eaten yet, we decided we would splurge and try out the rotating restaurant. I’d read about it in my travel guide and thought it might be fun. Despite the prices and the seemingly inevitable motion sickness, we got a window seat and took in the view. It was awesome. It was the first time either of us had eaten in a revolving restaurant and it did take a bit to get used to, but it was definitely unforgettable! Our food was spectacular. We both managed to clean our plates (something I rarely do because I’m so picky).
THEN! THEN came dessert. Our waiter was really nice and friendly. Shannon had mentioned that her drink was kind of gross and he felt bad because he recommended it. He felt so bad, in fact, that he gave us one of the best gifts ever: FREE DESSERT. Not just free dessert, but a LUNAR ORBITER. The coolest dessert I’ve ever had. Ever. So cool, I made a video tribute to it:
Soon after, Shannon had to be back on the road and I headed back to the hotel. It was only about 5PM, but I was dead tired. True to form, the first thing I did was download all of my photos from the day (there were over 400) and start to upload to Flickr. CSI, once again, served as my companion.
Sometime around 8PM hunger set in, but not so much that it beat out my exhaustion. Room service to the rescue. Delicious chicken over pasta and cheesecake, please! The food coma soon combined with the pre-existing exhaustion and I was sound asleep.
In comes Thursday. Interview day. The reason I was out there, after all. I was also flying out on Thursday night on the redeye. I got up at 6AM, packed up my things and hopped in my car: Microsoft-bound. I certainly wasn’t expecting there to be as much commuter traffic as there was, but I still managed to get in on time.
This is where the second coolest part of the trip comes in: The Microsoft Surface. It was convenient that we had just talked about them in my Tech in Collaboration class on Monday. Not to mention, they’re a UX person’s delight to poke around on. I took every single feature for a spin. I’ll save those reactions for another post (as they’ve already been documented in a paper I had to write for Tech in Collaboration, convenience again ;)).
Following my interviews, I had time to kill again, so I drove around Seattle for a bit and then decided to park myself with my laptop in the airport with a lovely bowl of nachos and a “Washington Apple”. Redeyes are not fun. Especially when the person behind you is in a miserable mood and keeps pushing your seat forward every time you try to recline. But hey, at least I got to sleep for once!
The interviews went well and I’ve already heard back with an offer. I’m not quite sure what I’m going to do yet… That’s a post for another day.
03.25.2008 | The Life of the 21st Century Student
Observations:
I’m currently sitting in my “New Media & Society” class. I’m surrounded by fellow Sun Editors and other friends in a class of 100 or so people. The thing is - no one is actually “here”. Sure, we’re all here physically - sitting in the seats, facing forward, and seemingly attentive, but in actuality, the people around me at least, are all busily managing something else. Blackberrys and other “smart phones” in hand, The Arts Editor in front of me is reading through his section in the paper today to make sure there weren’t any errors. The columnist next to him is managing her social network and the girl next to her is making sure the CUPB ads for Tracy Morgan are good to go. The News Editor two rows in front of me is checking on the coverage for an event tonight. Me? I’m simultaneously texting the photographers and Blackberry Messaging the Arts Editor in order to make sure an Arts assignment is covered while shuffling people around because only one of today’s photogs can work. (aside: my Prof just started singing Hot Hot Sex).
So what’s going on here? The interesting thing is: we don’t have Internet in this class. Wi-fi doesn’t reach this end of this ancient building. We’re all texting away on our Blackberrys, checking email, reading papers, typing on laptops or organizing our planners, all while appearing to pay attention to what our prof is saying. Class is just a venue for us to sit down and continue doing what we were doing before it started and what we will keep doing once it’s over - running things. Maybe it’s just because of the company I’m in in this particular class or that the fact that I’m a junior now and by this point my classmates and I have reached the leadership positions on campus that require us to re-prioritize our time or multitask more than ever, but it seems to be that thanks to the growth of Blackberrys and the like, student leaders like myself are better able to manage our roles, but at the expense of our “academic” selves.
A quick poll of the people around me shows that we can’t even remember the paper we wrote for this class just before spring break. What was the topic again? I vaguely remember writing the paper, or thinking about writing the paper, but did I actually do it? Some even handed it in late because they were stuck at The Sun until late and the all-nighter they pulled proved fruitless. The exam they have later today? They haven’t even begun to study.
Are we reaching a point where students are no longer students, but campus leaders who happen to go to class in their spare time or who go to class simply to have a place to sit down and grub the wi-fi? What’s the point of going to class is we’re not paying attention? I have no idea, but I know if I don’t get these text messages out soon, I’ll have a lot of angry Editors to fend off and a bunch of offensive emails to sort through tomorrow from some of The Sun’s thousands of readers if the paper comes out with below-par photos.
I know I’m paying an arm and a leg in tuition for each minute I sit here in this lecture hall, but the argument is also very strong for the experience I’m getting as the Photo Editor. I’ll be able to use the skills of time and people management for the rest of my life. The popularity of “Chocolate Rain” versus “Leave Britney Alone” or the number of people who watch American Idol online versus live on TV? That information will only be useful in certain settings. While there is certainly a lot I can get out of this class - after all, I am planning to have a career in something Internet-related and knowing the demographics and sociology surrounding it is surely important, what good is it if I can’t get a job because my resume isn’t diverse enough?? If a Google search for my name doesn’t show me in a good light?
These are the concerns of the 21st century student. Or at least the concerns we face when an Internet connection isn’t available - don’t even get me started on that side of the story. They’re concerns no other student has ever had to face, but they’re concerns we’re taking on with heads held high and noses to the grindstone, as sleep deprived as we may be. These are the concerns that will, in the end, either prove to make us the most successful generation or the most burnt out generation. We’ll find out soon enough, I suppose.
03.17.2008 | Changing Perspectives
While my life has been absolutely insane since elections in the beginning of March, I’ve strangely had a lot of time to really think about things. Maybe it’s been my need to prioritize and juggle responsibilities lately or maybe it’s just been the inevitable realization finally coming to light, but over these past few months I’ve been slowing coming to realize that what I had originally thought I wanted to do with my life just isn’t so.
I’ve talked about this a lot, I know, but it’s really something that I think about every single day. And with every passing day, I also get a little bit closer (or so it would seem) to figuring things out. Over the summer, I thought I had it figured out. While that realization has come to be just stepping stone to my current notion, at the time it was a huge thing for me. (more…)
03.04.2008 | Ringing In A New Era With A Bang
Well, the insanity of training to run (we call it “compet”) for Photography Editor has given way to a new kind of insanity.
This past Saturday, March 1, I was elected Photography Editor for the 126th Editorial Board of The Cornell Daily Sun. It was such a crazy experience as I lost a ton of sleep preparing for the elections and then a ton more because I was so nervous! Not to mention, the former photo editor went into the hospital to have surgery the day of elections, leaving me kind of spun in a circle with a blindfold on and the left to sort my way out. (more…)