the 20's - the shedding years

Tonight I had a difficult phone call to make. When I was in college I made a number of good friends. Unlike university, where the links all dissapeared, my college friends stayed. One friend in particular I worked with quite often.

In the last year though, he seemed to get in with the wrong crowd. I'm not into cliques, and I am no snob....but the wrong crowd did apply here. Suddenly my friend was skipping classes, and towards the end of it all, problems with the law. I could have run away from it all...ignored his phone calls, left him to fend for himself, but I didn't. I called, I wrote, and I even helped him to get a lawyer for his court appearances.

Tonight I had to tell him he was no longer a groomsman in the wedding. Why you might ask? When someone cancells on you for nearly a year, what do you do? When you're supposed to meet your friend, and they turn off their phone and don't show up, what does it say? I don't know him. Whoever this is I spoke to tonight isn't the friend I met in college. Its sad, and I can't say I like how it worked out. I just hope that one day, I can call him a friend again.

A gift offered....an insight revealed

So last week I offered an opportunity to a former faculty member. Basically I mentioned a job posting that they might have a student for. One might think that the answer would be, "Yes please! Send me the details." The actual reply was a bit of a shock.

Me: Hi, I found out the company I work at is looking to hire more flash developers. Do you know of any students that are in need of an opportunity?

Them: Thats interesting. You should send that to Bob.

Me: I've been trying to get in touch with Bob for 6 months. He never returns my calls.

Them: We're restructuring the program. Its taking longer than we thought. Did you try sending an e-mail?

Me: I've phoned and e-mailed quite a bit. Bob never gets back to me. You'll likely see Bob before I do. Can you pass the message to them?

Them: Well, not to belittle your problem, but we're really busy.

Me: Well, thanks anyways. I guess I'll have to take this elsewhere.

At this point I began to recall the difficulty I had in my job hunt. The feelings that faculty had lied about helping students to find jobs rang in my head. No wonder they didn't seem to help finding opportunities! If this is how they treated me when I presented this to them, who knows how they would respond to someone they didn't know.

Grrrrr.