February 25, 2005

The inductive method

Math is excellent for clearing the mind of whiny, first world angst. I've been working on my math homework for most of the day and I'm feeling much better, thank you. I have a tendency in my spots of downtime to wallow in whatever is bothering me (which is usually not that bad as bad things go).

Lately the whine du jour (or, rather, de la semaine) has been "nobody will hire me because my background is so odd and therefore my career will be in essentially the same place as it was seven years ago except that I have over US$25,000 in student loan debt and no translation clients anymore because all I do is homework."

This is actually quite scary and not entirely unwarranted, because my job hunt has thus far been characterized by a total lack of response to all my applications. But I am not thinking about that right now. I just spent hours on my discrete mathematics homework solving recurrence relations and doing proofs. Very soothing.

Another technique I find useful when I run out of homework and this particular whine gets deafening is to apply to yet another job opening. I did that today too.

202 words | February 25, 2005 10:38 PM | Because I said
Comments

Here's a random strategy that works for me sometimes. Forget about sending resumes, just send out a kick but cover letter that convince the hiring person that they would be out of their minds to hire anybody but you. It doesn't work with big faceless corporations, but it did get me my last two projects.

Posted by: Derek at February 27, 2005 02:27 AM

I may have to resort to that, but as my preference is for faceless corporations (I just want to try something new—being an employee. And who else wants entry level people?), I'm going to keep throwing resumes to The Man for a while longer.

Posted by: Nee-chama at February 27, 2005 09:26 PM

I understand the soothing feeling you get from solving math problems. I get it from knitting. :)
Good luck with your job hunt BTW.

Posted by: dragonfly jenny at March 2, 2005 09:52 PM

Yeah, I was freaking myself out about my employment prospects again today, but then I designed some clock-crossing signal synchronizers and two finite state machines that exchange data across a clock boundary. Calmed me right down.

Posted by: Nee-chama at March 2, 2005 10:46 PM