Path of the Wastrel

So I decid­ed to fol­low up on my infa­mous “Oh the human­i­ties” let­ter to my aca­d­e­mic advi­sor:

Hi again,

It’s Xo once again, the ever-ador­ing fan of the aca­d­e­mic advise­ment office at the Depart­ment of Elec­tri­cal and Com­put­er Engi­neer­ing. I’d just like to update you on my sum­mer as it has been so far since I received your fan­tas­tic insight into the only ped­a­gog­i­cal path appro­pri­ate to me at this point in my life.

So far, I have tak­en the path of the wastrel. The­se past months have seen me exper­i­ment with var­i­ous ille­gal sub­stances and par­tic­i­pate in vio­lent (though hard­ly con­se­quen­tial, in my hum­ble opin­ion) street crime, all while I gam­ble away my per­son­al assets.

In antic­i­pa­tion of my next year of valu­able instruc­tion, espe­cial­ly in the human­i­ties (oh them!), I’ve tak­en on cut­ting my body as an extracur­ric­u­lar. I find that it is an extreme­ly intense form of expres­sion. Cut­ting enthu­si­asts have advised me that I am a “nat­u­ral” and that I should enter the pros—perhaps even­tu­al­ly com­pete in the World Cham­pi­onships.

I have shrugged off warn­ings from friends and fam­i­ly about my declin­ing state of health and squalor­ous liv­ing con­di­tions. I see no rea­son in their con­cern. After all, they’re the ones who sug­gest­ed that I should have a say in the choice of course­work at uni­ver­si­ty and that I should be free to pur­sue my edu­ca­tion at a lev­el com­fort­able for me. Ha! They were demon­strat­ed to be wrong by your high­ly log­i­cal and con­sid­er­ate coun­sel­ing; who are they to now dis­suade me from a path that will lead to assured ruin among the out­casts of soci­ety?

Yours,
Xo Wang

Alright, so I haven’t actu­al­ly been doing of the above men­tioned, but instead try­ing to hold a job. The Office of Pro­fes­sion­al Devel­op­ment, or rather the whole of Geor­gia Tech, has been excep­tion­al­ly unhelp­ful towards that end.

Though they are often laud­ed for their great co-op & intern­ship pro­grams, GT basi­cal­ly with­holds oppor­tu­ni­ties from fresh­men. Their web­site isn’t open to any­one below a cer­tain num­ber of cred­it-hours and the staff are just unhelp­ful. What, are you afraid your stu­dents might catch up to those at bet­ter schools? God for­bid any of us should get a head start on this pro­fes­sion­al devel­op­ment thing.

I start­ed a bit at a hedge fund, decid­ed finance was not for me, and switched into a reward­ing intern­ship at Bar­nes & Noble, thanks in great part to a won­der­ful friend and men­tor. Devel­op­ing appli­ca­tions is pret­ty nice.

As an aside, I high­ly rec­om­mend the sand­wich­es from Financier Patis­serie and burg­ers from Jimbo’s, if you’re ever around that cor­ner in Mid­town East. They’re good stuff.