This afternoon I had my first ever graduate assessment centre, basically I went along and some logic puzzle tests, listened to the companies PR campaign, and did a group exercise which involved working in a group of 6 people to choose a solution to a fictional problem and then giving a solo presentation on a topic related to the problem.

I thought I did pretty well the the logic test, I had did a bit of study on those types of tests beforehand and so nothing much on there popped up that was really out of the ball park. I had 20 minutes to do 40 questions, I think I didn't answer 2 or 3 as they were pretty insane and I was running out of time, out of the rest I did pretty well (serp thinks he did well on a test - STOP THE PRESSES!), the other parts of the assessing I feel I let myself down a bit on, I was in a group with some pretty impressive candidates, it took me a little while to get into the group discussion but I felt I bought up some valid points, people were dominating the conversation left right and centre so it was hard to get a word in each way, towards the end I got a bit more assertive because everyone was getting a little confused, it is a pretty stressful environment and everything is really quite rushed so I can understand what happened there.

The solo presentation went off ok for me, usually I am just terrible, however if you compared me to the others in my group I would say that I was not so good, 3 of the 6 guys were excellent presenters, I guess it is something I just really need to practice on, here is hoping that they don't decide who goes for final interviews soley off who gave great presentations! (although I am guessing it counts for a lot).

The speech they gave was very "rah rah we are so great!" which was fine, I was surprised not to meet any other Swinburne students at my assessment centre (although I do know mates of mine who are going in on later dates), the place just seemed to be full of monash and deakin students, with the deakin guys really cleaning up! A strange strange day.

Oh well it was a good experience, it has sort of put me in the right mindset for the next one I have in Sydney. I now have a better understanding of what I have to practice if I'm going to be successful in making it to the final interviews for these places, here is hoping I can pull through.

FYI - I feel extremely tired and weak at the moment, a strong breeze could knock me for six right now. I think I need to sleep quite badly.

I really need more confidence in myself.

Weird, last night when I wrote that post I was trying not to swear through the entire thing, this morning I read over my post and I've swore at least 4 times. I swear too much on my blog, the funny thing is, that is the only place I really swear, if I'm on IM or on the phone or talking to people I usually don't swear. IT must be some sort of release thing.

Meanwhile astro is still sick, I think I'm going to get what she has just in time for my assessment centre days. :/ Here is hoping I don't.

PS - I never want to have a pet, mum's cats kept me up all last night scratching and jumping and generally freaking out because mum and dad aren't here to wait on them hand and foot, those little barstards, I'm not going to feed them at 5am in the morning like mum does, no matter how much they piss me off!

I'm sitting here in Bendigo at the lounge room dining table writing a report about why some fictional conglomerate should take up a hedging strategy for its commodity and foreign currency requirements. It is not thrilling but a taxing piece of assessment all the same. For some reason the ducted heating is still operating even though I turned it off, poor old astro is in bed because she can't breathe very well and is pretty knackered, she probably is starting to get a chest infection or is being affected by her asthma from going for a jog today. My eyes feel really tired but the rest of me doesn't feel tired enough to go to sleep, I have a bit of shit to get done tomorrow but it is so hard getting things done when you come up here, too many distractions, although I guess that is the same when I am at home, that and I generally just don't feel like doing stuff because I'm hella lazy.

All I want is a job for a while, just to earn some money so I'm not always ass broke like I have been for the last 5 years, get into a little routine where I can maybe squeeze in some regular exercise. Take back control of my "free time" where I don't feel like I should be doing something uni orientated all of the time, I hate feeling bad about having a good time in my spare time, that is why I need to stop doing uni for a while.

I have been tossing with the idea of doing honours if I don't get into a grad program, I know what your thinking, "serp that is a shitty reason to do honours", but I was actually thinking about during summer holidays even before I started to even think about grad positions, hell I might even do it if I get IN to a grad position, I'll still have over 6 to 7 months of free time to do nothing if I do! Ahh that would be sweet, a cushy grad position in a field of work that I would find interesting, that starts sometime next year, then I have a shitload of free time to do whatever the fuck I want without having to feel guilty. No more brain saying "serp you should do some study" , me: what study! I finished!, brain says: "You should get a real job and stop being a but", me: I gotta real job! etc etc. Oh the dream, if only I can pull it off eh?

If I was to pull it off i'd probably end up finding some other job to fill in the time with, something that pays a bit with flexible hours, yeah, call centre job. It'll put hairs on my chest or some shit too. I would also head overseas, I was sorta planning on doing that but I don't really feel like it anymore, but hey if I had a grad position lined up I'd have no reason not to, just save the cash and go. I swear to god this is the only reason why grad positions are so sought after, it is because you are given a guaranteed job that starts with at least 4 months unpaid holiday at the start! Who could ask for more? :P

Hmm check this video clip out, it is a clip of a song by a guy called Jason Forrest, supposedly if you see this guy live you are basically watching an old balding man rocking the fuck out with an iMac on stage, if you were to listen to that clip and then imagine seeing him live it just doesn't make sense in my head.

Ok that is enough drivel from me.

Why oh why do I argue with idiots on Whirlpool? It makes me so mad.

I should turn the name of this blog into "serp talks about graduate applications". I've heard back about another two positions i've gone for, i've progressed to the assessment centre stage for those as well, this bodes better for me as at least now if I stuff one up it will be good practice for the others. Getting these other call upsmakes me feel like I am not fluking things and maybe I am actually worth a damn, I dunno about that quite yet, we'll see if I can perform at these things ok. If you know me you know that I stress out about presentations/interviews quite a bit, although that is usually because I feel unprepared, I am making DAMN sure that I am going to be well prepared for these things, well as much as I can be.

I'm going to Bendigo in 9 hours, I get to see kitties and be somewhere else that isn't swinburne or my lounge room, hooray!

So whats going on with me? I've got a test at 5:30pm, a small one which shouldn't be too drastic. I'm sitting here reading and studying stuff, I seems all fairly easy type of stuff.

Grad Apps: Still doing them, still got a few more places to apply to, I reckon I've done nearly 20 applications, which might not seem like a lot but they can be very time consuming! I got through to an interview/assessment centre stage for one company, they are flying me to Sydney to do it which is pretty cool. I thought I was going to have to pay for it but they will, rock on. I am a bit dubious on what to expect, they said it would be a "structured interview" with representatives from the company and the recruiting firm, aptitude and reasoning tests (which they say I can't prepare for), participate in a group activity and presentation. Then if I do well on this I go back for a final interview, then if I do well again I get a job offer.

So now I have to figure out the best way to prepare, i'm going to do some more heavy research on the company (although I already know a fair bit about the company and program I am applying for), try and practice common interview questions, really memorize what the hell I wrote in my resume/cover letters/applcations as I am starting to get a bit confused on what I said to who now, find some aptitude tests to practice doing, go see the careers people at uni and ask them to give me what advice they can. Any suggestions from anyone out there reading this is most welcome.

So yeah, apart from all this going down I am also going to Bendigo on the weekend until ANZAC day to look after the cats while my parents are out of town, I have so much friggin' schoolwork to do it is ridiculous, and it all needs to be pretty much done in the next 3 weeks. I was hoping to have a relaxing time in Bendigo but it looks like i'll be doing a fair bit of homework at this rate. Here is hoping I can get a chunk of it done by Friday night so I am not stressing hard all weekend.

And because you really want to know, I just upped my high score on Snake II on my phone. 3419 pointzzzz, read it and weep world!

I also noticed that you not get bonus food bits when you get past 3000 points or so, so there is either a certain point limit or number of bonus food points that you get per game, hmmmmmm the plot thickens!

So yeah, I'm feeling a lot better now, My head is somewhat working again and I'm starting to eat a lot more food. My test went very badly, due to me not being able to study for it at all over the week leading up to it. It was all pretty heavy derivatives stuff on calculating futures and forward prices and all sorts of shit. I probably would have done a lot better if I have gone over calculation stuff a bit and actually knew what each formula was for and how to use them etc, but I honestly couldn't have studied any better for that exam. My head was screwed and it was just an effort to drag my arse down there and even write, hopefully I'll recover for my poor marks and pull through on that subject to at least pass, I'd really hate to fail a subject in my last semester.

Grad applications, had my phone interviews, I really have no idea how they went, I think I did okay, it is quite hard to feel what they are looking for out of those things, I just stressed that I had a lot of relevant work experience, I like working in groups, im self motivated, I do things other than sit on my arse etc etc. I can't see them striking me down on anything except for maybe I was nervous or my responses were a bit rambly. I guess we'll see, they said they'll let me know end of this coming week or the week after or whatever. Just before I got accepted for another place to do the psychometric testing phase, that's good, I'm glad to see that more than one place is going to give me a slim chance of getting a job with them.

I still feel like shit, although my body is sorta getting back to normal. My head is whats totally screwed, I can't concentrate on anything for more than 30 seconds, I get really tired and/or dizzy all of a sudden for no reason, I also get waves of stomach pains, constant bloaty-ness, I burp a little bit everytime I stand up. It is just fucked.

I have a test for Financial Risk Management in just over an hour, I feel very unprepared because I can't really study as it takes all my effort just to get off the couch/bed and be upright. It also doesn't help that our lecturer has been very vague with what is actually going to be on the test, saying that "it will be easy". Yeah maybe for a guy who has traded in derivatives for 25 years it is easy, for the rest of the world it will be probably pretty out there.

Just to think I was complaining that last week was terrible! Just goes to show eh?

Errrr I've had pretty much the worse sickness (outside of having to have operations) of my life since Saturday. Saturday night consisted of me throwing up somewhere in the vicinity of 10 to maybe 15 times (I seriously lost count after 8) and also having mad diarrhea (more than the times I threw up :/), this happened between the convenient hours of midnight to 6am-ish, and then another bout of both an hour or so later after i woke up out of my sleep. By about 8am I was literially going insane, I started having all these weird thoughts and not quite understanding where the hell I was, I have heard that severe dehydration can cause this.

Anyway yesterday was spent using all my energy just to try and keep myself upright, drinking fluids and then eating 3/4 of a piece of toast, In just under 2 hours I have a phone interview for a grad position which i haven't had the best lead up to, I hope I do ok, I've never had a phone interview before so it should be an experience at least.

So for reasons that don't make sense to me, my last post doesn't really hold a lot of truth to it, yet...

I've only been offically rejected from one place, and another place i'm through to the 3rd round on two different applications (one for business one for I.T), things don't make much sense, here is hoping i can keep going.

Meanwhile I haven't had much sleep the last few days, so I am going to go to bed!

All this graduate application applying/rejection is making me feel like the biggest LOSER!

Today has been another bad day in terms of little shit that has annoyed me, fyi.

I've been at uni since around 8am this morning doing test plans, I've gotten about 5 times more work done in the last 80 minutes than I did in 3 hours with my group yesterday. They do more complaining than doing. It is REALLY annoying.

FYI - My bumbakpak bag is starting to eat shit as the zipper where I jam my laptop in broke this morning. It is totally fucked, about 2 months ago one of the clips that holds the straps to the bag cracked and now when I jolt my bag or have the weight of my bag pull against the fucked clip the whole thing comes off my shoulders in a wrecking-ball like motion towards the ground/other people. It is shitting me off cause I love this bag! I just don't think it was built to last the likes of me :/ .

Woop got more rejections today! Plus I think my test went badly, also my IS Project group and I continue to get very little done when we meet. It has just been a great fucking day.

So yeah me, you love to hear about me right? I bet you all sit there refreshing this page in your lunch hour (or whatever) just hoping that i'll post something that is just totally awesome! Yeah well, hmm.

Back to reality now...

So what have I been doing? Apart from drinking too much that I shouldn't be doing during the semester, I am finally filling out (and submitting) graduate applications. I've started about 15, submitted 3 and have heard back from 2 of those companies. One knocked me back (which I was expecting since it was a loooonngg shot) and the other let me through to the second round where I have to do "psychological assessments" which are basically one part english analysis and one part maths. The math stuff is hard mainly due to the fact that you have about 60 to 90 seconds to answer a question, which involves looking at a chart of figures or graphs and deriving figures from them to use in an equation. I find I don't have enough time to finish all the math ones off and had to guess a few at the end, annoying.

Now I have to study for a Class Judgement I have tomorrow for my Marketing Law subject, I don't think it will be too drastic, but it is worth 1/4 of my assessment so I should take it seriously. I'm actually enjoying this subject far more than I thought I would, you can apply a lot of this to real world situations and is interesting knowledge for a person who might want to start their own business one day. Oh yeah, the convenor is rad, he is a nice old friendly looking man that really knows his stuff and his cases, hardly ever has to read off a sheet or lecture slides, it is just all up there (*points to head*) for him, he rules.

Oh yeah I've been playing Oblivion (but less of it over the last week) I have this stupid bug happening where I can't sleep or rest because there are "enemies near by" all the time, no matter where I go, it really really sucks! I'll have to figure out how to fix that soon.