Zhou Dynasty

Still hurting.. I haven't been blogging for a while.. Just took an exam yesterday for my Computer Architecture class. This class is total bs. The professor is the worst I've ever had here at the U. Not only does he speak with an accent that confuses you, but he speaks slow as hell with a bunch of slow "uhhhh" in between every other word. You'd think he's speed up the pace a little if he spoke so slow but after every sentence this bastard pauses for about half a minute to catch his breath! He also has no clue on how to put on a transparency. First day of class he spent a good 5 minutes trying to figure out how to lay a transparency do it doesn't show up reversed and upsidedown on the board. He's still having problems with that, the transparency is never straight...sigh.. Can't read the hand writing either, just a mess. THe only thing that we students have going for us is the book we use. It is actually a good book and for once you can understand the contents by reading it! But the exam he gave yesterday was horrible. Covered over 200 pages of material and he gave us no clue as to what it might focus on. Turned out it had a bunch of irrelevant non technical questions dealing with acronyms. The rest of the technical problems took forever to complete. You could just feel the hatred and the blood boiling in that room. A couple students handed the test in early (which means they probably gave up) and you could hear the professor laugh out loud after looking through their tests! How cruel... This guy is going to get the worse review I can ever write up at the end of the semester. What a damn waste of tuition... piece of shit. So that's why I went out to Hooters for wings and beer with Steve last night. Bastards like that prof make everyone stressed out and wish they weren't in engineering. We had 50 wings and reminisced about the good old days when we were young and stupid. We had a pretty good history of partying and making a fool out of ourselves. I think that's what keeps you young, by doing stupid things and laughing about it the next day.

Crunch time I got an interview tomorrow for a full-time Product Marketing Engineer position at Cypress Semiconductors. The company is in San Jose and they are a big producer of memory and timing devices. I was surprised to get the interview because the our recruiting website is screwy and they didnt notify me until 3 days before. I went to the information session tonight and from what it sounds, the company is very dynamic and competitive because most of the people employed are in their mid twenties. They're recruiting at 14 schools and only 8 people are going to get selected for the PME position. I'm pretty sure I'm going to get past the first round given the competition within our school. And also when I talked to the recruiter before leaving he said to me "Your resume is very interesting, I will talk to you about that tomorrow." And he said it twice... so I think I'll have a good chance of getting in the second round. But the second round is what I'm afraid of. Its a whole day's worth of interviews at their HQ in San Jose and they're going to "pick my resume apart" and throw a bunch of technical questions. Basically they're going to make it as stressful as they can for me. Which is why I am bringing all my books home and going to review everything I've learned in the last 4 years that relates to electrical engineering. My goal is to get an offer from this company, and I'm gonna everything I can to get one. Its funny because I often find myself taking interviews and job search much more seriously than any class I've had. Preparation is key to success... but I'm just not good at that when it comes to preparing for exams. On top another topic... I partied too much over the weekend. Holy cow. The weekend basically started on Thursday for me. I drank everyday except for today and partied hard on Thursday and Friday. I can't even get Thursday and Friday straight. Also everymorning I wake up and feel like someone kicked my ass and stole my money. My body aches in the morning (probably from the drinking) and my wallet is always empty. I think it is empty because I spent al my money and never refilled it so I feel like I am constantly broke. Good thing there's that piece of plastic which gives me a frequent flyer mile for every dollar I spend, yay! We'll see about next week, it all depends on how much stress I take on this week.

Update Yeah I realized I never mentioned how my interview with Cypress went. I've told quite a few people and don't feel like going into detail. But basically I was led to believe that their first round interviews were the typical personality type questions which I usually never have trouble with. But I was wrong. As soon as my interview closed the door, his smile turned into a serious questioning look. The pace of his speech increases to a point where you feel like you must spit out your answer immediately. I could tell the pressure was on. On top of that, he didn't ask me any personality quesitons and only 1 or 2 "tell me about a time when" questions. He mostly asked me questions pertaining to Marketing. Even had me draw a graph of a product's average selling price versus time and indicate the inflection points and why they were there. Wow. After the interview he said "And we didn't even get to the hard questions about circuits." Thank god we didnt, I would've fainted. I couldn't even draw a straight line for my graph. I think I handled it okay and tried to sound as competent as possible without exposing how incompetent I am. At the end I decided to apply for an internship instead because he told me they currenlty not hiring for people graduation date. Yesterday Cypress called me back. A woman named Erin called me. She is a product marketing engineer herself and called to have a phone interview with me. She actually asked me quesitons I could handle. It went well and we had a good conversation. She said she's going to report to her boss on what she thinks of me and I should hear from them soon. So if I get this internship, I might end up working in San Jose over the summer. Which would rock. It's not just about getting the job and working in San Jose, it's also about getting the offer and not the rejection. Getting rejected is not a good feeling and I don't want to get that.