Unlike most students, I attend Drexel; So that means I was in classes all summer long with a full load. That finally ended last Wednesday, so I get a week to relax. After all of my friends have returned back to college for another year, I get home to have fun. It also means that instead of having to deal with classes, I get to spend the next six months working at Razorfish Health (one of Digitas Health’s many sister companies) as part of their UX team, and performing research and creating websites for pharmaceutical companies. I can’t wait to get started, because I know it’s going to be a blast, and I get to work with many of my old coworkers.

As for the rest of  this summer, it wasn’t all bad. One of my highlights of my summer had to be a three-day weekend in Washington D.C. with all my friends and a visit to NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center to see what my twin brother had been working on at his summer internship. (Which I still need to post pictures from the trip to my Flickr)

As much as I complain about having to deal with the woes of Drexel’s summer term, I’m still glad that I choose to attend Drexel and get the amazing opportunities that I have had when I am on co-op. It has made a huge impact on what I want to do for a career and at the same time reassured me that I’m on the right track.

That and the fact that I’m still too busy to update this blog regularly. At least I’m still constantly tweeting on my Twitter!

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1. Summers Over… Back to Work I Go

For the Fall-Winter 2010 co-op term, I was lucky enough to get a co-op job through Drexel as an Associate Interaction Designer at Digitas Health, a Publicis Groupe company. It was great experience, and honestly; I wish I was still at co-op rather than sitting in class.

As an Interaction Designer, I got to create both sitemaps and wireframes for upcoming pharmaceutical websites. I even created a few simple mobile websites. DH was a great place to get an internship and expand my portfolio and working knowledge of User Experience work. I hope that I can go back in six months when my next (and final) co-op cycle arrives.

User Experience has always been an area that I have enjoyed, mainly because it falls into the intersection of technology and design. I can also use some of the skills that I have learned doing print production (i.e The Triangle) and web design. Since when creating wireframes or other diagrams, you need to have them presented cleanly on a print document, but it still represents a website.

I would also like to thank all of my co-workers in the UX department for welcoming me to the team, and mentoring me along the process. The co-op would not have been as much fun with out all of you!

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1. Co-Op is Over, Back to Class I Go
2. Summers over, and I’m excited.

Wow, what a year it has been.

I can’t believe that I’m now a 3rd year “pre-junior” at Drexel, I’m now Managing Editor and an Editorial Board Member of Drexel’s independent student newspaper, The Triangle, and starting my second co-op internship at a digital marketing agency in Center City Philadelphia.

Let’s jump back to my last blog post, where I was on assignment for The Triangle at the opening of the Philadelphia Apple Store in September. I probably should have written a few blog posts between then and now, but the gist of my life is this (after the jump):

• Headed to Atlantic City with the Drexel University Photography Club and took a ton of pictures. (Check out flickr)
• Forced my twin brother to come down to Philly for the Red Bull Flugtag, and got a ton of pictures of idiots jumping into the Delaware River. (flickr)
• Started working at Digitas Health, a digital marketing agency that specializes in the pharmaceutical industry, as an associate interaction designer intern/co-op.
• Went down to the Schuylkill River Banks for the Light Drift event, and also got a lot of pictures from the trails of the river bank. (Light Drift needs to be uploaded, pics along the river bank here.)
• Finally got a smartphone to help me keep up with my digital life while on the go.
• Headed up to Boylston, MA for Halloween with my extended family for pumpkin carving and apple picking. (Check out the flickr pics)
• I also visited a bonsai tree farm near Boylston and got a lot of great pictures. (Still need to be uploaded flickr)
• Went to New York City for a photo walk though Central Park with the Drexel Photo Club. (Which I still need to upload on flickr)
• Spent Thanksgiving in Gloucester, MA via a quick flight up to Boston (and got back-scattered on my way home)
• Got the last issue of The Triangle for the term out complete with a Cellphone Holiday Gift Guide (See the blog post)
• Went back home to North Jersey for my Mom’s extra-large retirement party; she worked at Kraft Foods for 42 years (and managed to forget my camera for the party).
• Went back home (again) to go see the Trans Siberian Orchestra with my friends. The concert was awesome, and I really wish I could have brought my camera into the venue.
• Finally got back to North Jersey for longer than a weekend, just in time for the holidays. I even got to work from home for the week between Christmas and New Year’s, so I didn’t have to run back to Philly for three days.

…all while working 40 hours a week at DH and another 20 at The Triangle. And that catches us up to now.

I’m still quite amazed at how much I managed to fit into just three months. Now I finally have a bit of time to sit back, relax, spend time with my family, and do things like write this blog post (and maybe get the rest of my photos uploaded… eventually)

I hope that you have had a happy holiday season and a happy new year.

See you in 2011!

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1. Summers over, and I’m excited.

Well, these past six months have flown by. Since September, I have being working at SAP Americas as a End User Services intern. It has been a great experience, and I’ve gotten to do a ton of different things besides just fixing peoples computers and troubleshooting, like working with A/V equipment, working with SAP systems, using Norton Ghost, and being in a corporate environment.

I really have enjoyed my time at SAP, and am going to miss going there on a daily basis (as much as I disliked my one hour commute via SEPTA). All of my co-workers were really helpful in showing me the ropes and getting acclimated to SAP and their processes. I was just a great experience overall.

I am excited (and a bit scared) to get back into my classes are improve my skill set and learn new things. It’s only scary because I haven’t been to class in nine months, and I’m worried about getting back into the cycle of studying and stressing out.

And, as soon as my Co-Op at SAP is over, I’m right into starting to find my next one. Not sure where I’ll end up, but I know it will be exciting.

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1. Back to class… Again.

Looks like my (last) summer vacation is now over. For me it’s been a long summer, that I think I got to take full advantage of. I got to hone my interviewing skills and get a co-op (more about that later),  going down to the Jersey Shore for a week (and having limited internet access), working with clients to help find solutions to their technology problems, doing some demolition work at a commercial food factory,and getting to have a bit of a different college experience up in Worcester, MA for a week.

I want to go in depth about some of these events, but I need more room to do it. So, take a look, after the Jump.

I have to say, this summer vacation was one of the special ones that I have had, since it is probably my last. Because I am on the 5 year / Three Co-op Information Systems program, my schedule looks like this:

Graphic courtesy of Drexel Admissions

So, I get only one “vacation” term and for the rest of the 5 years, I’m either working on co-op or studying. Since I enrolled at Drexel, I knew that I had to make the most of this summer vacation, and I think that I did. I got to spend time with my family down at the Jersey Shore in Lavallette. Of course, the beach and the sun are not exactly my friends, so I spent most of my time covered up with my iPod, or back at our rental house attempting to find internet access and watching videos from my hard drive. Either way, I did get to spend valuable time with my family, and overall, I did enjoy myself and got to relax.

And boy, did I need the relaxation. See my week at the beach was right after my intense week of interviewing for co-op jobs. I had 18 diferent co-op jobs offer me the opportunity to interview for the position, which means that in the end, I had gone on over 20 interviews. My stratigie to get them all done? Put them in a spreadsheet so that I could keep tract of all of them, and get all the Drexel and Center City interviews done before I left Philly for the end of the school year. I had tried to cram all the rest of the interviews I could into one week so that I did not have to come back down to Philly again, but due to scheduling conflicts and more second interview requests, that didn’t workout; so I had to come pack to Philly for two more days. After all of that, I’m pretty sure that I can go into a interview with some level of confidence, I have had plenty of experience with it. It also means that I was lucky enough to find a co-op job during “A-Round”, and I’m excited to be working at SAP at their Newtown Square, PA location as a End User Support Intern. I will be working their until the end of “Winter” term in March.

Looking ahead,  goal of mine is to finally get involved with Drexel’s student newspaper, The Triangle. Hopefully, one I start writing some articles, I’ll post links to them here. Don’t get me wrong, I love writing for The iLife, but having my journalistic eggs in more than one basket can’t hurt.

It’s going to be a crazy ride, and I’ll keep updating here and over at my Twitter account. Expect another lengthy post at the end of the year!

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1. Summers over, and I’m excited.

Summer is finally here! And it’s time for my first “real” blog post at my personal blog (like I said in my “other” first post, don’t expect me to update this that much… check twitter instead). I have been up to so much lately. I’m finally out of Drexel (which didn’t end till June 13th) and home for the summer.

Well, sort of.

Take a look, after the jump.

Because I am starting my first co-op cycle in September (where I work for 6 months instead of going to school), I have to come back down to Philadelphia for job interviews. And boy, do I have job interviews. Here’s what happened:

Drexel’s online job system lets you normally apply for 20 co-op jobs during “A” round (The first round of applying for jobs and interviewing. If you don’t get a job in “A” round, you try again in “B” round, and then “C” round, and then if you still don’t have a co-op job at that point, your pretty much out of luck and have to make a “job search journal” in order to receive co-op credit. If you really care about how this works visit http://www.drexel.edu/scdc). However, because of “perverse economic conditions” (The economy being horrible), Drexel allowed us to apply for a total of 25 co-op jobs in “A” round. Since SCDC constantly tells us to apply for all the co-op jobs we could, and since I thought that it might be difficult for a first time co-op with no real world experience to get a job, I applied for all 25 jobs. Results? I got 18 job interviews. Apparently, the IT industry is still doing pretty well, and the employers keep telling me that I have so much experience. Go figure. (What do you think? Take a look at my resume)

Now, I am and was very happy about this, but it presented some problems. Like, how the hell am I going to be able to fit all these interviews into about 4 weeks, while living at home in North Jersey. So far, I have been constantly planing for all of this craziness for the past two weeks. I have already managed to complete 6 interviews, and I have 10 more this week (about 3 a day). For me, its really hard to schedule them because I don’t really know how I am getting to all of these locations for interviews. I don’t have a car, so I have to rely on public transportation (SEPTA) to get me every where. And not all of the interviews are in Center City / University City. It long and complicated to get to these “remote” locations, but doable. As long as I have adaquite time to get from one interview to another (which i discovered yesterday that sometimes I did not, but that’s another story)

Overall, I am grateful that I have so many options, and that there are a bunch of really cool experiences that I can get. The stress will go away soon, and I can relax. Thank goodness that I am pretty good at planing, and frequently use tools like Google Calendar, Google Docs and Spreadsheets, and Tripit to help keep me organized. Even Google Voice helps with its awesome call log that you can annotate (and making sure that I always receive my calls, no matter where I am!

And while Co-op stuff is a big part of my current summer plans, it’s not all of it. I’m still blogging at The iLife (and you may have seen me and The iLife crew in the news with our NYC apple store “campout” for the new iPhone 3G S), and am working on a few small web design projects with my company, Keith Hobin IT Services.

So that’s basically my summer so far. I expect to keep busy, but still get some relaxation time in (This is my last summer break, after that fall I will be either studying at Drexel, or out on co-op…). I am going to make the most of it. And blog about it.

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