What's My Name...?

Ever notice how things can go pretty well for a time and your mood improves? then something happens and blows it straight out of the water, even if it's a tiny little thing?

Like, say you're in class, and the teacher gives you a project, and at first you're irritated cause you have ENOUGH to do. But it's okay, actually, cause the project really isn't that hard, and you're with a bunch of friends and you can do it easilly enough. And you're progressing fairly well on your main project, and you've been productive and accomplished, and things are gooing really pretty well. And you go out to lunch with your friends and you have some good laughs and your mood is about as up there as it's ever been in the past bunch of months, and things are going pretty good, all in all. (By the way, you know you're a visual effects geek whe you get into a conversation with someone about how to simulate the "night vision goggles" effect that you see on TV using Apple Shake or Adobe Photoshop -- and you're certain that you can pull it off!) Even the blaring television in the corner talking about the war doesn't phase you.

Then you see someone whom you've had an interest in, but whom you've always either been too much of a coward to approach or didn't wannt to barge in on her in her circle of friends, and whom you thought had actually left the school for one reason or another. And all the frustration comes right back to that place in you where it left, and settles in nice and comfortable as if it had never been bloody evicted.

So it was that I came to the realization that the initials of my name -- 'JSM,' for 'Jonathan Scott McDermott' for those of you who were curious -- also fit that neat little phrase, 'JUST SHOOT ME!' Sometimes, I think that would be an altogether more pleasant resolution.

Anyway. I feltt the need to vent. I apologize if you've seen too much angsting from me here. Things are actually going reasonably well, I'm rather optimistic about the project; I've got the librarian's wings going very well -- not close to done, but I'm certainly on the right track. I'm just In A Mood right now. I'll post somethign a bit more chipper later when I come back from the Placement office.

BLAST YOU, iJOURNAL!

OKAY. Take Two. iJournal collapsed on me after I was ALMOST done with my last rant, so you can at least feel like you're spared from most of the unhappiness that was present there.

ALl right. What was I saying? Well, silly me, for thinking that going to talk with the placement officer would improve my mood. Some numbers: Full Sail currently has a 78% placement rate for my program. At first glance, this is actually rather pretty good. And, actually, with my particular class, I've very little doubt that the rate will be up closer to 100%; we're all pretty crackerjack and I can see us being eminently employable. The devil's in the algorithm, though. (This is where Mark Twain saunters out and says 'There are lies, damn lies, and statistics.') This is 78% of graduates who have been out of school for a year. As the counselor told me, some people have jobs when they graduate, some few have jobs before they graduate, and the rest of us... well, she said she's had some who've struggled for 'three, six, eight' months trying to find a job.

As has been recently brought to my attention, I need a job when I get out of here. I mean, RIGHT after I get out of here. I've never been in debt this much before and I don't intend to start defaulting on debts now after a reasonably good credit history, even if I can defer the debts for a few months. So this makes me a bit (understandably) panicked and nervous when I look at what the HELL I'm going to do in two months (AND COUNTING.) I suppose I did it to myself. But I have to keep telling myself that I did what I NEEDED to do, that there was never going to be another chance to get out of a soul-sucking industry and into something I enjoy doing. I haven't yet started saying that this was a mistake. I have started saying, "Oh dead Heavens, what the bloody hell am I going to do now?"

On a slightly brighter note, I got the stationery back from Kinko's, and they look rather spiffy if I do say so myself. So now my resumes and cover letters will at least look good when they're sitting on the rejection pile. *sigh* Honest, I really, really am trying to have a positive outlook on all this; I'd hoped to put 'productive' into the mood slot. But when I've been told that the job search is going to STINK UTTERLY for the past year, and when I'm looking at being out of work for upwards of many months after I graduate.... Well, it kind of eats away at optimism and just encourages misanthropy on my part. :(

I'll try to make my next entry a little more upbeat. It's just kind of a hard crash to be feeling good, then feel bad, then be beaten on the head with a steel reality-bat (as opposed to a foam reality-bat.)

Hmm...

Reading back my last entry, I realized I have a typo. Well, SEVERAL, but one of tose typs that churn out a word much different than the word you intended. I'd said 'Oh dead Heavens' instead of 'Oh DEAR Heavens.' However, saying 'oh dead Heavens' as an exclaimatory could be useful for a story set in some post-uber-nihilist society, so I'l have to remember that. =)