Tuesday, January 29, 2013

Diet Coke

Sorry gents, I've been busy with classes and homework so I don't have much time to write unfortunately. Things have been pretty smooth sailing here though so hopefully I'll find time to start that series of posts on Gay Stereotypes I promised.

In the mean time, enjoy this ad :P



Cheers,

JP

Monday, January 21, 2013

Oh Hey Mr. President

Hey guys, I haven't posted in a week since things have been pretty hectic with the first official full week of classes all, but there have been some events that have transpired which I want to share.

First, I'm out of that horrid Linguistics class. The professor was unhelpful, the material being taught required a level of prior knowledge in linguistics which I did not possess (which, given it was quoted as a "no previous reqs" class kinda pisses me off). Instead, I enrolled in an Anthropology class. I've taken psych and sociology classes before and I feel this will complement them well. So far, it's a pretty decent class (given the one class I've attended so far) and I hope I'll enjoy it. The professor seems nice and the course load seems reasonable. My other classes have been going pretty well as well. I've been able to stay ahead of my readings and work which I hope to continue the rest of the semester. Given that, I expect the work load to start piling up more soon, and now that I'm working as publicity director again for another show with one of the theatre groups on campus, that will also start eating into my time.

Moving on, living with the roomies has been awesome. This past week, E's girlfriend was here which was awesome since we all love her. She goes to school in New Jersey but visits often and will be doing an internship in DC this semester as part of her university's internship/class program so we will be seeing her pretty often. Me and E's girlfriend get along really well and chat about lots of stuff (guys mostly haha) which is funny since behind a lot of the questions we ask one another, she seems determined to find out my type. She jokes that even though she's with E, we're true soul mates and should be together instead haha.

In my personal life, I do have some complicated news. At the start of the year, a sophomore and I had a quick fling, but while he was really into me, I wasn't really into him. After a week of constant texts, I decided to cut things off with him. I said I was still trying to figure things out and didn't know what I really wanted in my personal life, though I'd be totally cool to still be friends.  He was really appreciative that I was being honest with him and we're on good terms which nice. I think why I didn't really feel really interested in the sophomore is that I'm still really into Brandon. We text and stay in contact and once everything settles down, we're going to try and see if I can get him to DC and show him around and stay for a Friday or Saturday. The next time I see him I hope to settle things for once and see where things are headed for us. The last time I saw him, I got caught up in just being with him and we ended up falling asleep on the couch until I woke up since one of his roommates came back. In the end, I just want to know if things are worth pursuing beyond just being close buds like we are now.

This past weekend was a four-day one for me since I have no classes Friday and we had today off for MLK Day/The Inauguration. Saturday, we tried to throw a surprise birthday party for E's 21st birthday but he caught us wheeling the keg dolly away from campus back to the store. E's girlfriend was supposed to keep him away from the apartment longer but he kept insisting to go back since he had work to do. After they ran into us, she tried to explain things like how we might be trying to move out a fridge or helping a friend move their stuff, but a keg dolly is pretty obvious and there was a keg sitting in the kitchen when they got in the apartment. The whole series of events was a pretty funny after the slight disappointment wore off. The party itself went well - lots of people showed up, the music was sick, we had a laser light, pong, and E had a fun time. The fact that the apartment didn't get trashed either was a nice surprise. The next birthday is my roommate R's 21st in May which means we have some time until the next big party rolls in.

Now, given I go to school in DC, it's only fitting that I participate a least a little in the inaugural events going on for Obama's 2nd term. E, his girlfriend, and I decided that we were going to skip the inauguration itself and instead go see the parade. We left at 10:30 and walked to near the Treasury Department building and grab a spot. We ended up getting a great spot though the wait took forever since the parade itself started late. Here's some pics from the event:


It began with the Metro Police


Pershing's Own Army Band



Representatives from all branches of the armed forces came next




And then it was time for Obama!
It was pretty sick I gotta say. Obama walked for a bit before he reached where we were standing and I wish he came out again, but nevertheless, it was really cool. Biden, Michelle, and other key members of Congress were also riding with the same group as the President.

Alright guys, that's all I have to report for now. Hope things are going well for everyone.

Cheers,

JP

Sunday, January 13, 2013

Welcome Back - Spring 2013

Hey guys. It's been a little while but I do have some updates I want to pass along. First, I'm all moved in back on campus! Classes started on Wednesday so I began moving my stuff on Monday. One of my roommates moved back already so me and another guy took advantage of that so it wouldn't be such a mess on the actual move-in date on Tuesday. I'm finally out of dorm housing and am now in an apartment which is still school owned. It's a two bedroom, four person flat with a massive living/dining room but a tiny kitchen; it gets the job done though. The guys I'm living with are really awesome. I've known all of them since at least Sophomore year if not longer, and yes, I'm out to all of them: two of them since freshman year, and they're cool with it all and really supportive.

I'm taking five classes this semester: Advanced International Business, Business Law, Management Science and Decision Making, Buyer Behavior, and for kicks Sounds of Language which is a linguistics class. I only have classes Mon-Thur which is sweet but I did have to take an 8AM class to get it which is kind of a pain. So far, my classes already seem much more difficult than Denmark which is expected, but getting back into the groove of things is still going to be a challenge. Advanced IB is also the last class in order to complete my International Business major so that will probably be a lot of work. The other classes are basically working towards my Marketing major (it's official, I got my faculty advisor signatures and did all the paperwork) and the Linguistics class is basically going to a liberal arts credit. The linguistics class is actually a class I thought would be pretty simple but now I'm kind of scared because I will have to learn and be able to reproduce the International Phonetic Alphabet which entails learning this which is more than a little intimidating. If anyone out there has taken a linguistics course or is a linguistics major/nerd do you have any tips?  Other than that, I'm expecting this semester to be pretty challenging so I gotta be sure to balance work/play.

Other than school stuff, I'm looking for summer internships. Most companies who are posting summer internships are mostly large investment banking and consulting firms like Barclays, Goldman, Credit Suisse which don't really fit into my major. I'm just looking and hoping something shows up. It's nerve racking since almost everyone else in the business school (aka Finance majors) is constantly going to networking events and scrambling to get in their applications for the summer while I'm kinda stuck until more marketing type internships open up. I talked to one of the marketing professors who pointed me in the directions of a few government agencies which I think I'm going to look into like the Department of Commerce which could be a good bet. One thing that does annoy me about my school is that while it does attract some very well known and powerful recruiters, it's such a finance-centric atmosphere that it leaves many others who aren't in the field or major a bit out of the loop. Nevertheless, the two professors I talked to said later in the semester there will be more opportunities for networking events with more marketing type firms which I'll attend. I'll also have to go to some on-campus interviewing workshop for later in the semester when even more recruiters start coming on campus.

Yesterday was the Spring activities fair where basically all the clubs and organizations come out and table for all the students to come see what they're all about. First I helped with the the grilling club which is doing well; in the semester me one of my roommates who is also in the club were gone, the number of new members - freshmen and sophomores, went up at least 50% which is pretty awesome. They all seem really nice and kinda shy at first (perks of being senior to them haha) but they open up quickly. There's a pair of them at the post-grill party who were hella good at beer pong though. They were on a 8 game winning streak when I left last night which probably is a new record. Me and my roommate E were ahead until the last cup when they narrowed it down to 1-to-1 and bounce shotted it in. Overall though, the weather was beautiful and the grill was sucessful. I also did some tabling for the LGBT club on campus. It went well but I don't feel as particularly close to them as I used to, I guess mostly because many of the members don't really have enough in common with me for something like that. Most of the guys in the club are, and I don't mean this in a derogatory way, really, really gay. Like, you can tell after two seconds gay. Everyone should be happy with who they are and whatever they do, but for me, it makes being able to identify with the rest of the LGBT population for difficult. I'll probably go into depth about this more in the future post since I've been thinking about this for a while now.

Alright, well that's what's been going on in the past few days in a nutshell. Hopefully I will find time to write in the future once classes really start getting underway. I'm planning to start a series of posts regarding stereotypes in the LGBT community and specifically its impact in a college atmosphere so hopefully you guys will find that interesting. I did a similar post a few years ago which you can read here but I plan on expanding and going into more depth in this series.

Cheers everyone; I hope everyone is doing well.

All the best,

JP

Sunday, January 6, 2013

Dammit Shanahan!


The Redskins were off to such a hot start, damn. We had such great momentum out of the gate; RGIII was playing well, and we got a 14 point lead, and then, inevitably, RGIII's knee began acting up. Shanahan should have switched him out for Cousins right after that second touchdown; RGIII was already limping pretty badly at that point. Instead, he kept in and he got worse and worse.

Endangering your rising star QB like that and having him play when we clearly couldn't move quickly or well enough for a game like this was such a stupid move. Gah, yeah, I'm just annoyed as eff.

I still have faith in my home team, but this game was the biggest tease ever.

At least the Ravens won today....

Thursday, January 3, 2013

Happy New Year! and a Question

Hey guys! I hope y'all had a fun start to 2013. I spent my new year in New York with some friends which was pretty sick. New year eve we went to my friend's cousin's place in Brooklyn for a party he was throwing. I got too drunk for my own good and got a little quite messy which I'm not the most proud of but whatever. I ended up being the first new year's kiss for my friend's hot cousin which was funny. We initially had bonded over sharing the same name which doesn't happen often since I have a less common, kinda old-fashioned name. Anyways, not too long after that my memory got a little more spotty but I didn't fully black out which is a plus. We left around 2:30 or so and made it back to her apartment in Manhattan around 3:15 or something around then. New Year day was spent mostly in bed. I got up around 1 but it wasn't until maybe 3 or slightly after that everyone was up. The hangover wasn't horrible and I avoided the headache, though the body aches weren't as forgiving.

The rest of the trip was spent mostly chilling and exploring Manhattan. It was cold, windy, and with one of my friends being sick, we couldn't do too much which was fine by me. It was nice to be able to do have some fun outside of Virginia before heading back to DC.

*                               *                                *     

So now I have a question for you guys:

The state of things between Brandon and I has me kinda confused and doing some thinking. First, I do like the guy; it's awesome spending time with him, but I don't know if things are going where either of us want. At this point, I'm looking for more than just being cuddle buddies or friends with benefits, and I don't know if that's what he's looking for. I also think if for whatever reason our relationship did end up being more. we might be too different for each other. I know I've made a point to say how I don't want everything to be similar between me and a guy I'm interested in, but this time around, I think things might be too far apart to be workable. We don't really share friend circles, he's working, I'm still in school, and given that, we don't really get to see each other either apart from maybe once a month when we arrange our schedules. In addition, our interests don't really overlap. Sure, we share a love for the Redskins and such, but there isn't anything we can both get really excited about. We aren't even really talking nearly as often now, and my major pet peeve - ignoring texts - is too common.

I don't know if people have gotten past this sort of thing and how they do it, but I'm seriously starting to think if I really should continue fretting over this. School's starting soon which is going to bring its own brand of stress inevitably. Also, what's worse, being woefully single or being in a relationship where uncertainty of where things stand rules? Going back to school soon could be a good "fresh start". Granted, my last two years at my school haven't exactly made me very excited about the prospects there, but hey, maybe some new people have come out of the woodwork (no pun intended) and there's the new freshman population to terrorize look into if I really have to.

I know you guys don't have all the details but do you have an opinion on this situation? Should I try and talk to him and see what the whole picture is like from his side, or just accept that maybe things are cooling down and let things happen?

All the best,

JP