Careering around

Since last week I've been back at university for my fourth and final year. Today involved traipsing around the Careers Fair where a few dozen employers have set up stands and sent representatives who will talk to you about their company's graduate scheme and hopefully will give you free stuff. (Unfortunately, I walked away without a single free pen! Shameful.)

It is a mutually beneficial arrangement. Students get inspiration and information about prospective employers (and free stuff, as aforementioned, but see above re: lack of pens), and employers catch the attention of students and try to convince them that they should apply to their company (and get rid of all the free stuff which they would otherwise presumably have to cart back somewhere).

I stopped at the stall of EDS, a large "IT solutions" consultancy, and waited while the representative finished talking to an interested student. He seemed a bit salesman-esque, but courteous and helpful. The guy walked off and the representative turned his attention to me.

Now, what do you think might have been an appropriate form of address for him to use at a graduate careers fair such as this?

If you chose "Can I help you, my love?" you'd be incorrect, but would have come up with the same answer as he did.

From there we went onto him boggling at the fact that I'm doing a Masters degree in Computer Science, asking whether that meant I'd want a technical role and checking whether I actually liked computers and wanted to work with them. (Kevin pointed out later that it's a valid point – after all, cancer scientists don't like cancer...)

Once he'd worked out that I was serious he called over a manager to talk to me, which was a smart move on his part since the manager was actually... what's the word? ah yes, professional.

*sigh*

I decided not to apply in the end, partly since the manager I spoke to recommended not applying until June at the earliest, and I'd like to get employment sorted before then. But they did give me a free phone charger, so hurrah for that.

Microsoft had a stall populated entirely by attractive women in their 20s and early 30s (there, I imagine, to show the Other Side of Microsoft), and yet were still looking incredibly grateful for anyone who could bring themselved to stop at their stand :-) Mind you, the woman whom I spoke to seemed more interested in delivering her pitch to me rather than letting me ask questions of her – I think I managed about three and then gave up.

IBM seemed to have the most personable representative that I talked to overall (though I did go on an IBM open day last year, so I knew quite a lot already about their graduate scheme), and as a further plus they gave me a yellow squishie asterisk. Yay corporate freebies!

Breaking apart

I am generally rather careful with my possessions and look after them well, in return for which they rarely come to harm. I am happy with this arrangement, as are they.

This week, however, has seen a series of organised, parallel breaches of this agreement.

On Tuesday I was fiddling with the clip on the pen for my tablet PC when it broke through, and then broke off. I wasn't too put out until I tried to re-house the pen – it lives in a little hole at the bottom of the laptop screen, and one presses a release button to pop it out again – and found to my chagrin that I was merely pushing it further and further into the hole without it slotting into place. The release button confirmed that the clip is needed both to slot the pen into place and to push it out again.

When I got home Kevin managed to hook a bent paperclip around the pen and draw it out again, whereupon the clip was reattached with superglue and I am currently treating it very delicately, since I don't want to pay £35-£40 for a new tablet pen just for the sake of a small piece of plastic.

This morning I tried to open the clasp on my laptop case, but I couldn't. It is of the kind where it juts out a bit (because there's a tiny spring behind it), you push it in to make it lie flat and then you can slide it through the opening. (I don't think I'm describing it very well.) I couldn't push it in because, further inspection revealed, some of the parts inside (the locking mechanism, and the tiny spring) had come off and were rolling around inside the housing, getting in the way. I managed to fish them out with a pen, and joy at being able to access my laptop dimmed at the realisation that the case now wouldn't stay closed.

I had a small metal chain handy though, and had the brilliant idea of looping it through the clasp when it was closed in order to prevent it from coming open. (This idea is rendered rather less brilliant when you have to keep spending 20 seconds fiddling to try to open or close your case.)

This is my kneeling chair. I originally wanted to buy it when I went to university, because I had just spent a year working in an office and knew that my lower back didn't appreciate sitting in a cheap office chair for hours on end. (Of course, we weren't allowed to bring furniture of any kind to the halls of residence, and so I was stuck in a totally non-adjustable desk chair for hours on end which resulted in, um, back pain. Maybe I should have got out more.) I got it two years ago when Kevin and I moved into the flat and it has proven to be a remarkably good choice.

After coming home today I swivelled around on it in order to stand up and heard a small cracking noise. Checking underneath I saw that the metal soldering that holds the seat to the frame had snapped through on one side, which has left me wobbling rather precariously whenever I forget and shuffle around slightly. (Actually, a closer look showed that the metal plate it was soldered to wasn't even made of metal, but some kind of chipboard material coated in metal.)

They say these things come in threes. I certainly hope so.