Interview land

Where nobody has a job and everyone is nervous all the time. Today, I received a lot of good news. First, I got a second round from the interview that I had last Wednesday; I’ll be flying to Cincinnati on Sunday. The downside is that my grandparents are coming to visit me this weekend, so I won’t be able to see them as much as I would have been able to. Second, I got a first round interview at a consulting company. This is really exciting, since consulting is awesome.

I can’t believe I forgot to say this yesterday

Friday was also an excellent day because I got my history paper back and I got an A! That was an absolutely awesome start to my Friday; it’s also the first A I’ve gotten at my school (on a paper). Whenever I hand in papers, I always feel that the work I’ve done is excellent, but most of the time the professor doesn’t agree. It worked out really well this time.

I went to the gym again today and I didn’t throw up! Pretty awesome. Hopefully this will turn into a regular thing. I also made a presentation on Nietzsche for my Sosc class. Nietzsche is pretty sweet. I just wish he wasn’t so insane.

A pretty awesome Saturday

I went out to dinner with the same girl I saw on Wednesday, which was pretty fun. Afterwards, I came home and went to a martini party with four different kinds of martini flavors: cosmopolitan, apple, chocolate, and lemon drop. Apple was the best. It made me think that I was doing something healthy instead of just kidding brain cells. Chocolate was the worst. You should never mix alcohol and chocolate unless the booze is liqueur.

Stupid, devious bullshit

I went on a coffee date with a girl yesterday, so now I can’t call her until Friday. What stupid crap. If you want to hang out with someone, you call them and ask if they want to hang out with you.

Reading my psychology textbook for this week’s quiz is so boring. Everything that is written in the chapter on personality is followed by “of course, this is really subjective.” We know that personality is affected by genetics and the environment and that there are five basic personality traits – openness to experience, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism. Good job, psychologists. How very descriptive.

Disappointing news

My interview today went pretty well. I don’t know if I’ll get a second round because I couldn’t get a read on the guy at all. However, when I left the interview, it turned out that the second round I had was cancelled! Apparently, the company pulled out of having a summer intern all together. All I can say is – lame.

Not for the faint of heart

I am really out of shape. On Monday, I decided to go to the gym, due to urgings from my mom and a feeling that it would be really good for me. Let me tell you – not going to the gym for many months is awful. All of my muscles hurt like hell today. Still, no pain, no gain, right?

At the gym, I went to the weight room and pumped iron for a little while. This was fairly exhausting, so I decided to end my workout with a short run; ten minutes to run a mile. The first seven minutes were fine. It felt great to be running. At around the seven minute mark, I started noticing a slight cramp in my side but ignored it. At the eight minute mark, the slight cramp had grown in intensity, but I kept running. At the nine minute mark, I realized that it wasn’t a cramp, after all – it was my stomach going insane. I finished my run, sprinted to the trash can, and proceeded to vomit up my lunch. And I’m going back tomorrow. Talk about determination.

Sipping wine from plastic cups is CLASSY

It’s kind of how I roll. I stayed up all night on Sunday writing my Sosc paper, on which I procrastinated horribly. At 1:48 am, the internet in my dorm turned off completely, which instantly eliminated all of my procrastination sources. However, a lot of people immediately came in my room complaining about the internet, so I didn’t get any work done for another hour because we just sat around and talked. Around 3 in the morning, people left and I got back to writing my paper. It turned out okay; not my best work, but far from my worst.

In retrospect, Saturday night was really not that bad. I think I was upset by how someone could have such a low opinion of me, which I still can’t comprehend. On the bright side, I have a coffee date on Wednesday.

Really upset

So, Saturday night, I went to a party as usual. At the party, I met up with a first year that I’ve met before. Anyway, to make a long story short, we ended up making out at a party. She suggested that we go somewhere else and I suggested that we should go to my room, to which she responded, “Okay, and if there are people there, we can always go to my room.” So, we start leaving and some guy pulls her away from me, and whispers something in her ear. Afterwards, this girl grabs her and says something else. Afterwards, we leave the party, and she tells me that she just wants to go home.

I can’t possibly describe how upset I am. I feel upset, rejected… just sad. It’s really hard to not have a girlfriend or be in love. I pushed around the guy who talked to her but I didn’t have the guts to hit him. I’m in enough trouble with Housing already. Or maybe I’m just afraid to hit people – how disappointing. How can he do something like that to me when he doesn’t even know me?

I walk through life and I feel alone. I want to cry, yet I have no tears.

Something in this picture isn’t actually there

It’s the snow! We’re having fantastically awesome weather (especially when compared to the East coast). I love living in Chicago.

I’m convinced

I should not be an economics major. I don’t enjoy the classes as much as I should and it’s not like I’m doing that well, anyway. Ironically, the guy who convinced me was Alan Sanderson, a big shot on the economics faculty. He said that he was a math major in college and that he switched to economics because he didn’t want to be a math major and thought that it would be a good application of his math skills. The thing is, I don’t enjoy math, nor do I enjoy the purely theoretical approach taken by the Chicago school of economics. Is psychology and law, letters, and society the way to go for me? I guess we’ll find out after this quarter.

So, a story told by Professor Sanderson. He was in Japan giving a lecture and he was wondering if he should bring up Professor Levitt’s work on the corruption in sumo wrestling. The lecture was going pretty well, so he decided to mention it, to what the Japanese economics responded, “Yeah, that’s probably right.” Needless to say, Professor Sanderson was somewhat surprised.

Interview update

I guess I was right about the good impression I made with the people who interviewed me for the job in the New York hedge fund, since I got a second round interview. Pretty exciting stuff. I also got an interview with a Cincinnati-based investment management firm, but that’ll be next week.

This was a three day weekend, so as you might expect, there were three nights of partying. Thursday and Saturday were pretty laid back; I didn’t go very far from my dorm and mostly hung out with people in my room. Friday night, however, was insane. It started off with a party in my dorm. From there, I went to a frat party on campus. The plan was that I would meet up with Emily and Mila at the party later. However, when they got to the party, I was completely trashed. They decided to go home but I wasn’t ready to end the night yet. Mila made me sit in one spot, but every time she turned around, I would go somewhere else because there were always more interesting places than the spot that she wanted me to sit in. As you can imagine, this made her pretty annoyed.

We left the party and I met up with Chris and Sebastian, who said that they were going to a different frat party. We went there but it wasn’t very exciting, so I decided to go home. We go outside and I see a white van. I decide that this is the drunk van, ready and waiting to take me home. I climb into the van and realize that there’s no one sitting in the driver’s seat. I decide that something needs to be done about this, so I move into the driver’s seat and try to turn on the van. At this point, Chris and Sebastian run up to me and pull me out of the van. I guess it wasn’t the drunk van after all.

My last hours of sobriety

No school Friday – no updates until Sunday. Sorry.

Grizzly Man

After watching Grizzly man, I have decided that all people who live in Alaska are retards. First of all, there's the actual grizzly man. He tells all the animals that he loves them repeatedly and acts as though he's playing with them. It's all a game to him. He says that he might die all the time but he doesn't ever actually consider it as reality. His pilot - talks way too long about the dumbest crap ever. His ex-girlfriend - her reaction when she gets his watch is right out of a soap opera. And why is everyone so slow? Everyone talks like they're half asleep.

I’ll be honest

The econ midterm was very difficult. Maybe I’m in the wrong major. I called my mom and she said that I should switch to being a Psychology and Law, Letters, and Society double major. It’s definitely something to consider.

On the other hand, my interview went really, really well. It wasn’t done by people from the company so it wasn’t really done with a very high level of technical analysis, which made it a lot easier. I was interviewed by a 4^th year and an alum; after the interview, instead of the criticism that I got in all of my interviews this year, I got lots of compliments! That was a big boost to the self esteem bubble. Also, when I sent my thank you letter, the 4^th year told me that the alum was “VERY impressed with the prompt thank you.” So, I think my chances of getting a second round are pretty good.

Pranked!

I found out that I had to read The Little Book that Beats the Market for my interview tomorrow, so I read it. It’s a pretty good book; interesting ideas about investing. It was a pain to read the day before my midterm, though. I also had a presentation in my investing club, for which I made the picture. She didn’t find it very amusing, but everybody else did.