A Tale of Twin Cities

A week ago if you would have asked me to name three cities in Minnesota, I probably would have had to google if Minnesota were a state or a city. In fact, I had to double check if Minnesota had one or two 'n's. Never was much good with geography. Or spelling.


But now, oh now, things are different.

Check this out. Minneapolis, St. Paul, AND St. Cloud. Three! Count it, I can name THREE cities in Minnesota.

Sure, two of those are kind of gimme's and the third I may only know in reference to a particular sitcom that I watch...

Legend--Wait for it...

And I still went and double-checked those on the google machine.

But I digress, spent the week in Minneapolis for a psychology conference and while I could spend hours describing the various speakers I listened to, name drop a couple prominent figures, or wane to you on the multi-facets of avoidance contingencies (which I won't, because honestly I'm still not straight on that one either) I'm not going to. Mostly because it'd be kind of obnoxious.

Much to the shock of my fellow conference go-er's and road trip buddies, Minnesota was the farthest west in this great United States that I had ever visited and I doubted that I would ever get out that far. I mean, it is just Minnesota.

No offense to those from the area, I had heard it was such a beautiful city and everyone is so friendly and all the mid-west fixings you can eat--and those things stood to be true--but seriously. It had a snow storm like, a week ago, right? Half of the city of Minneapolis is built so that you can navigate it via a series of indoor walkways.
Super friendly people? High carb diets? Snow at obscene times of the year? It's practically Canada.

...dary! Legendary! Two How I Met Your Mother references in one post!

All jests aside, had a great time and am glad to be back. Thank you Minneapolis for your courtesy and kindness... and the two pounds of hot wings that I ate from Hell's Kitchen. Those were delicious.

Road Trippin'

Since I'm trying to make this a bit more of a daily habit, I'm requiring myself to write even when there's nothing to write about... Lucky you. But it'll get me in a rhythm, hopefully.

So then, good time to start is while I'm going to be taking a break because of an impromptu road trip. Instead of somewhere exotic or exciting, however, I am spending twelve hours of my life to drive out to Minnesota for a psychology conference.

More when I get back (about a week). I'm sure there will be daring tales of rolling wheat fields or roque Midwestern accents, or something. I dunno. What happens in Minnesota may very well stay in Minnesota.

But I will buy cheese curds in Wisconsin. That is a certainty.

Life's Simple How-Tos

Application Edition:
Or the how to NOT to's. Like, how to NOT get a job in an ice cream and chocolate shop.

With the upcoming push of students looking for summer work, I thought it nice to help out those who are looking to get into the culinary art of ice cream shop and chocolate sales. I've compiled a helpful to- (not) do list of all the things I find detrimental to your potential employment from real-life applications being submitted to the store right now. (Oh how I wish I had made some of these up.)

So, read on, dear applicant, and do the exact opposite of the poor saps below for a guaranteed 72.3% increase in your chocolate and ice cream marketability!

1. When asked for your hobbies, write: dieting, exercise and modelling.
     Seriously. Did you even happen to glance inside the store to glimpse its contents before grabbing this application?

2. Writing in the margin that you are lactose intolerant or allergic to dairy.
     See above response.

3. When handing in your application, ask: So when should I call you for an interview?
     Won't get you as far as you think it will. Because you sound like a jerk.

4. In the 'getting to know you' question of who your favorite character from a novel is, respond: Edward Cullen, Bella Swan, Ana Steele, or Christian Grey. (Combo breaker for answering two or more)
     I've already thrown your application in the trash. I might have even ripped it into pieces first.
Subsequently,

5. Answering the above question with "Ernest Hemingway"
     You're not fooling anyone. No one likes reading Hemingway. I don't even think Hemingway enjoyed writing his own work. 

 6. Dotting your i's with hearts. Writing your periods as smiling faces. Starting sentences with lower-case letters. Writing 'LOL' or 'IDK' or any other shorthand text answer for anything.
     You're speaking to potential employers, not your BFF from across the aisle in geometry class.

So there you have it. Six simple mistakes that are easy to avoid. I'm sure there will be more to come.

Oh the Places we will go

It's been eight days since I last attended to anything academic at all.
Graduation doesn't count. Being herded into a mass of 20,000 squirming pointy black cardboard hats to sit on bleachers for two hours didn't really result in any firing of neurons, so apart from my thesis defense I've been working on accustoming myself to...things?

I'm not really sure. I walked into work yesterday and as we humans are prone to do, I was asked how it was going. Before I could reply with the obligatory "Fine." (Because no one actually wants to hear about your deepest fears and desires) my boss chimed in with a "She's getting used to how to not be a student."

If that's what you'd call the crippling sense of overwhelming self doubt a formative stage of accustoming to real life... then yeah. I'm working on that.

Although, this summer should be pretty sweet. I'm working full time at an alright job, I've got enough money to keep my fridge semi-stocked, I can take a Wednesday morning off to blog and drink sangria on the porch with my cat curled up in my lap. Today is Wednesday, right? I lose track...
 So yep, without all of those aspirations and goals to strive for, the mental stimulation of overcoming challenges, the arduous journey to self discovery, this is looking like it might shape up to be an alright summer.

 And this is usually the moment where someone decides to tell me that mine being melodramatic is cliche. 20,000 other graduates in Ann Arbor alone are going through the same feelings I am. And they're right.

Our commencement speaker was the CEO of Twitter. Though not a Tweeter (Twitter-er? Getwotter?) it was nice to find out that he had a checkered past. Before hauling off and inventing some social media site filled with tiny #birds, he adventured out to try his hand at stand-up comedy. (Oh, so Obama spoke during your commencement speech? Big deal! Our speaker sort of kind of knows Steve Carell. Yeah, how do you like them apples!?) He told us to go out and do two things: be courageous and live in the moment.

My mom had similar advice. She gave me a hug before leaving and said, "Now go make something of yourself"

Without a doubt, I could think of nothing but this:

Leave it to Sunny to perfectly iterate what every single one of those 20,000 previous pointy black cardboard hats is thinking at this moment as we listen to the birds chirp on this gloriously sunny day and slip deeper into pool of our own anxiety.

I am currently shimmying down a job canon to fire off a few applications into job land. I hope they land in fertile fields to produce many a jobbie tree...