Ok, Already! - Notes from a Lagging Blogger

Yes, I'm a negligent blogger. It is the busiest time in my life. I feel I am in boot camp; everything after this will be easy by comparison.

I've been getting some inquiries from friends like: did you switch blog addresses? (Flattering that anyone checks, really.) Now I am realizing that rather than write each and every one of you an email, I can just write this all once and refer you to it. Just as impersonal as a Christmas form letter! I do actually love corresponding with my pals all over the world, but this will save time for now until graduation (only 68 days away, but whose counting?).





Things I'm up to:

• I am making a web-based tool for a tenant's rights organization in Lower East Side of Manhattan (Will get to travel there with my team for assessments research! Keeping the NYC connections flowing!).
• Helping write a grant for the National Science Foundation to give my current university employer (Social Science Data Analysis Network) some $ to make a digital library. We are partnering with the Interuniversity Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR), so there is a lot of research and coordination with that, too.
• Plus four classes: business information management (very practical), digital governments (love it) , graphic arts (fun to use the dormant creative part of my brain), and Content Management Systems (so practical, with a meaningful project, and I have a great team).

I also just took a second job as a web analytics trainee at a local interactive design firm. The company is in the top 50 for Advertising Age's Interactive Agencies, and it's a great place to work. The skill set I will be learning is the fastest growing segment right now of the IT industry; a shortage of professionals trained in it. I feel incredibly lucky to get this chance to learn something so valuable in the market place.


So, provided I survive these next 9 weeks, I will soon be free from school - for a good loooong while, and can get my life back!! I can't wait to read for pleasure again, and have a nice list that I am drooling over. I'm so psyched to be getting my life back and having the skills to have some degree of freedom again. Can't wait to travel, travel travel!!!

I have no idea what will happen after graduation, and I feel so busy now that I can't even think about looking for work. However, I have a list of 19 employers I want to work for, and will begin the resume drops in March at Spring Break. There is a possibility I may stay in Ann Arbor for a couple of years if I can get a decent offer with the right situation. Otherwise, I am looking at New York, mostly, for the fact that I have a great friend and professional network there, but also would consider Philly, SanFran and Atlanta if particular employers were to make an exceptionally great offer.

I also have an opportunity to travel to London the last week of March for an emetrics conference, as I have been offered free admission (to a $2k conference) if I work as a student volunteer. I know London is so expensive to live, and quite a long shot, but I'll be packing some resumes if I do decide to make the trip (depends on the tax return)!!!

I should also mention a recent fascination with virtual worlds. I have been having a dialog with some similarly interested classmates about the potential and implications of Second Life, an online sim, where I maintain a "life" complete with house and friends. I have also been having a lot of email discussion about the virtual reality medium with some bloggers, and through this correspondence I was recently asked to write a column for a web zine about SL relationships, as that is my area of interest (electronically mediated human-to-human interaction, NOT so much Human-Computer Interaction, as my school promotes). So I may be doing that soon in addition to everything else!!!

Anyway... i think that's all the news that's fit to print. Not much but school, work, school, school, work, school. I'll write more insightful things later....