Thursday, January 29, 2015

Looking back on 2014

This was a much better year than 2013, which was a rather stressful year. Graduating was the high point.

2014 led to many more improvements. I was finally able to get started with jobsearches in mid-January. A few interviews came up including one gov't interview. With this gov't interview which was 3 weeks after the surgery on the right hip, even though I asked for an interpreter, I didn't get one. Still wasn't quite the same even though all the questions posed me were on paper. But when the interpreter coordinator heard about it, she passed it on to a couple other people. From what I last heard, up pretty high. It was about 3 weeks later that I had a second chance at interviewing with them, and made the best of it.

I had an internship with Sprint from June to August, right after I went from walker to cane. Though I used the wheelchair to get to and from my workspace, I used the cane at times to get to a meeting room or someone's cubicle. That impressed my two supervisors and it showed on my final performance appraisal. I managed also to improve one of their badly-written documents by updating it with better descriptions and screenshots.

But it was also the entertainment industry where we lost a number of well-known people.

Perhaps our biggest loss was Robin Williams, what with his madcap style of comedy. We knew him from Mork and Mindy, and I believe it was his oddball audition performance that got him the part. Probably one of his best quotes, and he's right...

"You're only given a little spark of madness. You mustn't lose it."

And probably one of his best - "O Captain! My Captain!" and "Seize the day!" from Dead Poet's Society.

Thank you, Robin, for being around.

2015 should be a better year for me, health-wise and my jobsearches.