I went to an ASCE meeting on Friday, in hopes of finding job leads.
After wasting $35 dollars on a mediocre lunch, I learned that I could have attended for free if I did not eat there. The cost was the main reason I had not been attending these meetings regularly. If I had known I could come for free years ago, I might have done so enough to have a job years ago.
Overall I find the networking process unpleasant. I only knew two other attendees there. One ignored me, and the other was a recruiter who seemed disappointed that I hadn't found a job since we spoke last year.
Most of the people there did not seem very interesting, or very happy with their jobs. I'm not so sure I really want to stay in the field of my degree.
I did find a few leads, but haven't had time to follow up on them yet.
The company that most interested me is not hiring. The firm where I did my senior design project is, but it is a large corporation and none of its representatives at that meeting have any influence on hiring decisions. The most promising lead came from a former ASCE president who sat at my table, whose company is not hiring in this state but has a dozen newly open entry level positions in Tennessee.
I felt very over dressed at the event. Apart from the presenters, there were more people in jeans and a polo shirt than a suit and tie like I wore. It was also really wet outside (the rain stopped just before the luncheon started, but came back harder just before I left), so I ended up splattering mud all over my best shoes and best suit pants.
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I got much less done than planned again at Habitat for Humanity this Saturday. We made some progress, but are still further behind where I expected us to be 3 weeks ago.
Our other experienced volunteers are leading another project now, so we don't have enough crew leaders to direct the inexperienced volunteers at this site.
There was a paid project manager on site too for most of our work days, but I learned on Thursday that she had quit her job to start her own contracting company.
The future homeowner's family and friends remain some of the worst workers I've met. (Her father is an exception to this; he may even have been our best worker on the one day he showed up.) Their work ethic and attitudes are both terrible. They seem to take offense at every instruction I give and every question I ask.
They constantly criticize me for not knowing what I'm doing as well as our skilled carpenter. When I told them how long I'd been volunteering with Habitat they insisted I should be an expert on everything by now, despite most of the tasks needed on this house being things I'd never done before. (Inspectors are still holding up progress on the tasks with which I am experienced.)
I'm not good with names in general. Whenever I get one of theirs wrong they act like it is blatant racism. They still get my name wrong a lot though, despite there being no one who looks anything like me on the site.
When I state who specifically made a decision or performed some task they call me a snitch, and say I must not have had any friends growing up.
Most of them won't go on ladders because they are so obese as to be close to the weight limit, while the others ignore the safety briefings and stand on the rungs not designed to hold a person.
They tend to stop working as soon as I look away, and want me to bring them all their supplies rather than looking for or moving anything themselves. I keep needing to go back and forth to check on people and can't focus on one task long enough to get it done. They keep calling me lazy for that.
We would probably be further along if they did never even showed up. They insist that they have done everything they need to do to earn the house and are not going to bother volunteering for anymore.
I'm not looking forward to explaining our lack of progress at the Construction Committee tomorrow.
I much prefer being a regular crew leader than a house leader. I'm glad that the next several work days are at the other site, where I'm not in charge and the home owner is a very friendly Yezidi man with plenty of construction experience.
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On Friday night I clicked "like" on the OkCupid profile of the most attractive woman I'd ever seen on that site, and was pleasantly surprised to learn that she had "liked" my profile too. I sent her a message on Saturday (after returning from Habitat) and have been anxiously hoping for a reply. It doesn't look like that will ever happen, as it appears that she deleted her account around lunchtime today.
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My sister has been very stressed out lately and not handling it well. (It makes my family wonder if taking her off her psychiatric meds a few months ago was a good idea.) She is way behind on planning the lessons for the ESL classes she teaches at a community college in the evenings.
She has been contacted about taking a job teaching kindergarten in a French immersion charter school. That is pretty much her ideal job, and pays 50% more than her current position, but is further away. She doesn't feel ready for an interview and doubts she could handle both jobs at once.
She'd really rather quit her current job and take the other one, but is contractually bound to finish the current term. The charter school said they need to fill the position ASAP, that the curriculum is already set so she wouldn't have to waste so much time planning lessons, and that could get a substitute for Thursdays (the one day my sister teaches in the morning as well as evenings). That means their would be no direct conflict of working hours, but she wouldn't have a lot of time for grading and prep work. She is spending too much time deciding whether to try for that job and not getting her current work done.
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Her current job requires playing some CDs for the class. The old desktop in the classroom is very unreliable, and its speakers as so bad they can hardly understand the audio. The new laptop we bought her a couple weeks ago lacked a CD drive. (It also lacked a numpad, which she was used to using for French accent marks.)
I took it back and exchanged it out for a slightly cheaper one yesterday. It has a very slightly better processor, an optical drive, a numpad, and is still a touch screen. It also bulkier, heavier, has slightly less RAM, no solid state drive, and doesn't flip back to function as a tablet. Fingerprints seem to show up on it more.
I think I liked the other one better.
I spent a lot of time yesterday setting it up, installing updates, and fixing drivers so the sound would work properly.
My mother had a mystery coupon for anywhere from $5 to $5000 off. We planned to use it when I bought the new laptop, not realizing that it expired the previous day.
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Windows Update was not working properly on my own laptop for a several days, and some programs wouldn't load either. I wasted too much time trying to fix this, before finally succeeding around 1am today.
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I just wasted more time writing out these rants instead of sending in job applications or follow up with contacts I made at the ASCE meeting on Friday.
