It’s been a smidge over a month since last we left our blog, and I’ve been compelled multiple times recently to update it, so here we go.

I’m going to roll out three or so posts this week, and I’ll update the links here as they go live. I’m going to talk about something that makes my life just a little bit harder, the difference between groups and teams, and a word about memory errors. If something else comes up, we’ll add that too, but that’s the schedule for today. Pretty eclectic, no?

The last time I wrote here, I was trying to finish classes, finish my epic video project/keynote presentation, and get convocation (NOT graduation) over with. How did we do? Read more and find out…

Classes finished well enough, with my semester GPA falling just short of Dean’s List. Finals were a breeze since I had no English classes, so everything was multiple choice! The Richard Digital Rights Keynote, however, took a turn for the worse.

I’m pretty proud of the presentation itself. That is, the file. But the deliverable, a movie of the presentation with my partner and I narrating, was a disaster. I elected to record the narration in Keynote, as Apple swears they added this functionality in Keynote 3. They did, but it doesn’t seem to work quite right. I made the mistake of appending some additional commentary at the end of the presentation, and it completely wrecked the timing and the playback of the show. Couple this with the fact that Matt and I recorded the narration in the Library at like 10 the night before, and you don’t get a very exciting show. Very long story short, Richard was very forgiving, allowing me to re-submit the file a few times. I ended up running through the presentation again, recording it with screen capture software, and then manually attaching our narration track to the new movie file. This produced a less than stellar file, but we ended up getting a B for effort, and after spending an entire day trying to fix it, I was happy to talk away with that.

Convocation was whatever. It’s extremely awkward and anti-climactic to be at your graduation and know you’re sort of kind of not actually done yet. And you don’t have a job. You just have the sense of “What exactly am I celebrating?” But it was nice to just do convocation with the English Department and have people I actually know speak and give me well-wishes.

I just took my first exam for my online ECON 100 which will give me the 3 pathetic final credits I need to officially graduate. It’ll all be over by August.

But that’s not all that’ll happen by August! Fate, talent, and dumb luck have all conspired to place me solidly in the running for two incredible jobs on two opposite coasts. One is at an innovative and unique private high school in San Francisco, The Urban School, where they need someone to help support the incredible things they’re doing, like their 1:1 laptop program. That’s right, everyone there gets a Mac laptop and they’re all actually using them! It’s brilliant! The other is at a place you might not have heard of, Harvard University. They’re looking for someone to work at their two Campus Stores and help start some exciting new Apple initiatives there.

I spoke with the manager for Harvard on the phone already and we got along great and really connected on retail philosophy very quickly. I’m headed up there to formally interview as soon as she’s back from vacation, the beginning of July, and I don’t see any reason why I won’t get the job. I have a video chat scheduled with Urban this Friday and, being called a “long shot” by the manager there, I’m extremely hesitant to start packing for SFO. But I will do everything I can to convince them I’m worth taking a chance on.

I’m trying to limit how many times I use the word incredible, but it’s very difficult. They’re both incredible opportunities with incredible employers in incredible places doing incredible things. I’d be thrilled to bits with either opportunity and I’m comfortable saying I’ll get at least one of them. So I don’t know where I’ll be in August, but I know I’ll have a job wherever I am. I can’t wait to go to IKEA!