Big In Japan

After a stressful spring semester and a rushed summer semester spent recovering from said spring semester my life seems to be putting itself back together again.

Let’s start with the low, crushing point for our hero. In late March I quit my job of several years at “the Den” (a liquor store near campus). I had several motivators for leaving my job but perhaps the biggest was that after coming back from my semester and a half off for my trip to Japan I was overshadowed by new people (including the replacement for my old job.) To make matters worse there seemed to be a lot of pressure from above for me to shape up or ship out. Since I did not believe I was doing a particularly bad job as it was… I decided to leave.

Coming back to my dorm after making a big show of putting my managerial keys in the safe and walking off the job halfway through a shift (insuring that I can’t go back to THAT job) (Although I did wait until another manager came in to leave) I was invited out to a local bar by a few people. I’m not one who does the whole “bar scene” but since it was a Friday I decided to go along. Flash forward a few hours of exciting slightly intoxicated conversation with my dorm-mates and I’m walking home. As I get to the door to my dorm I noticed… my bike is missing. It’s 2am and I’m too tired to do anything about it at that point so I go to bed. The next morning I get up and walk around campus looking to see if maybe I locked my bike up somewhere else and forgot it… nothing. Looking at the spot where my bike was I found my lock on the ground (I think a cold snap we had that week cracked the steel lock.)

So in one day I “lost” my job and found out my bike got stolen. Since then I finished that semester, although I received an incomplete in my “hated class”. I haven’t been able to find a job and the police haven’t found my bike.

Flash forward one (of two) summer semesters. I go to see my academic advisor to apply for graduation (which, by my calculations would happen in December). It turns out that my advisor LOST my Major slip (needed in the graduate audit process). Now, this isn’t the first time this has happened. This advisor has now lost TWO of my Major slips (the second one HE signed HIMSELF.) He tells me I need to go talk to the department head for my major and see if he has my slip or can get me a new one. A few days later I meet with the department head who tells me that what I had taken so far wasn’t enough to graduate and that I need to take 18 more credits (including 12 credits in Economics.) At this point I’m going out of my mind… 18 more credits means another year minimum because some classes aren’t offered fall semester. Luckily thanks to the advice of a friend I found a copy of my major slip in with my old school stuff. Using this, my advisor was able to over-ride the department head and push through my application for graduation.

So now 4 months later: I’m on track to graduate in December, I’m almost done working on the material I need to wrap up my incomplete (I now have motivation to finish it), I have a lead on a job (in the dorm cafeteria come fall), and I walk everywhere. In other happenings I have also given up playing PC games, most specifically MMORPGs. I did this for a couple of reasons. One was reading my own last post (Internet killed the video star) which was eye opening. Also, I found that PC games were taking up time that I should have been spending on other things (*cough* studies *cough*). Since I quit I’ve spent more time with people, exercised more, and generally don’t keep holed up in my room as much as I used to.

That’s the news as it is from here. I’d promise to update more often but, really, there’s not much to write home about. I will say this: If my plans work out as I’d like them to, I’ll be bloging a lot when I return to Japan.

Ja Mata Ne.

posted by Dockett @ 11:57 AM