Baltimore -> Boat -> Big Apple, Part 2

By Nick G.

Jun

25

Get your towels ready, it’s about to go down.

Welcome to part 2 of the three part series, Baltimore -> Boat -> Big Apple, and perhaps my favorite part of the series. My drive home from my brief summer time excursion in Baltimore did not end in a suburban house in New Haven. No, it ended up in a marina parking lot. The second part of my summer would begin on the water, stopping at home only to drop off some boxes from the trunk of my car.

Chipotle on Deck

As can be seen from this post from last year, boating is a big part of my life. If it were up to me, I’d bring it down to the Inner Harbor during the school year and live there instead of a dorm. But, alas, that option isn’t exactly in the cards (not to mention, who knows what kind of radio active Inner Harbor monsters live there).

What makes this part of my summer so special? Well, what not many people realize is that no, we’re not out in the middle of the ocean. No, there are no sails. And no, I don’t need to swim there. My car is a whopping 30 feet away, up a slightly inclined ramp from the dock, and my house is another 20 minute drive from there. Essentially, it is like a piece of my house was cut off and is floating in a harbor 20 minutes away.

It is a difficult thing to describe in a blog post, and the reasons I’m so attached to the water are even harder to describe.  Ever watched Shark Week on a boat? There is nothing better. Unless there is Chipotle involved.

As weird as it is to say, it is a bit of an adjustment not being on the water often this summer. I’ve got a few weeks in the beginning, and another week and change in the end of the summer, but other than that being in Manhattan is becoming an adjustment. With the awesome water view from my office, though, I never feel too far away.

Stay tuned for part 3!

-Nick

Current Track: Trouble On My Mind by Pusha T ft Tyler

 

P.s. sorry for the brevity of this post, things have been pretty busy here, but that’s why it is a three part post, isn’t it?

Why Hopkins: For Jobs!

By Nick G.

Apr

14

As scary as it is to admit, one day, I’ll have to go out into the real world and do the unthinkable…get a job. While it seems ages away at this point, it is still something very crucial to start to think about.  One of the great things about Hopkins is the career center, where students can go to get resume advice, learn to write a cover letter, contact employers and get help in seeking out their future careers.

There are several things which the career center has done very well, and resources that I have found to be very helpful in my search for summer internships. Here are several things which I believe makes our career center unique and which have helped me get a fantastic internship for this summer.

1. Walk-in hours. Depending on your year, the career center will hold walk in help hours. No appointment needed, simply show up an get advice on whatever you need. I took advantage of walk in hours during the fall semester, expecting to enter in to a madhouse of people waiting, only to have someone look at my resume for all of 5 seconds and move on to the next one. But, when I arrived, I found that after only a minute or two of waiting, someone brought me in and stayed with me to go through my entire resume, start to finish, and to give me tons of much needed advice.

A typical career center email

2. Recruitment emails. Every Friday, I get an email with the subject line “Hot Jobs, Cool Internships” sent to my JHU email. In this email is a list of dozens of job openings which match something similar to my major or future career goals. These weekly emails are very helpful in keeping you posted on what kind of opportunities are out there, as well as to remind you to keep an eye on new job postings.

3. J-Connect. J-Connect is Hopkins’ own job listing site, where you can upload your resume, cover letter, and transcript and apply directly to jobs. When you go on, it is often overwhelming the number of posts for job listings. After some search narrowing down, however, chances are you’ll be able to find something that interests you. Once you have found it, you can apply directly from J-Connect and then all that is left is to wait for a reply!

4. Other career centers. In the fall, the employer I will be working for this summer came on a recruiting visit to campus. Due to limited availability and high demand, you actually had to apply to attend their info session. I applied and was not accepted to attend. However, a few months later, the Hopkins career center sent out an email regarding a career fair in New York, which Hopkins teamed up with several other schools to put on and was only open to students from those schools. At this fair, I met with the same employer that I had been turned away from, got an interview, and two weeks later had a position for the summer!

So, when your here, be sure to use the career center as a resource, because it is a great one!

Thanks for reading,

Nick

Current track: Over, Hyper Crush Remix by Drake (JHU_Ruthie, if you are reading this, you should download this song)

There’s No I In Team, But There’s Meat

By Nick G.

Jan

31

I like to think Ari Gold has my back in this picture. And don't worry, I evened my tie before I went in.

The letter “I” appears in many words, such as insatiable, advertising, and radius. Team, however, is not one of these select words.

Recently, I began the search for an awesome summer internship. Hoping to knock some employers’ socks off with my resume, I went on the career center’s website and applied to several positions which I thought would be interesting summer experiences. As of now, I’ve only heard back from two companies, but that doesn’t really matter because one of them was my top choice internship which I’ve been accepted to. So, here is one of the main things I learned from that application and interview process: the importance of teamwork.

I had never really interviewed for a job before this. My last summer job interview had taken place over the phone, and didn’t really involve much thinking, it mostly was about how well I’d be able to handle a bunk full of crazy kids. The career center offered a guide on common interview questions for positions like I had applied for, and I found a site via Google where people posed what they had been asked in their interviews, although I didn’t trust the accuracy of these.

Overall, I interviewed with 13 people (two for my first interview, which lasted around 45 minutes, and 11 more in an all day, 9 round interview session). They all had me go through my resume, explaining the things which they were curious to learn more about. Each then asked their own questions, some asked brain teasers, some asked Computer Science theory questions, one handed me a piece of paper and asked me to write computer code on it. But there was one thing which every single person I talked to asked about: my experience in working in a team.

Most people don’t think of Computer Science as a team focused major. However, in recent years especially, programming projects and complexities have expanded to the point where teamwork in application development is absolutely key. Every interviewer asked me to describe an experience working in a team (both in programming and outside of class), how we divided up the work, how we communicated, what I’d do if a teammate was slacking off, etc. I was expecting a question or two on the subject, but not to be asked to go into detail about it for everyone I spoke to.

Fortunately for me, the Computer Science department and Hopkins as a whole had helped me to have stellar answers to all of these questions. Hopkins has truly recognized this industry trend, and classes and professors give many opportunities to work in a team environment. Each time I was asked about my teamwork experience, I was able to come up with an answer (and I didn’t even have to make stuff up!).

Overall, this was a great learning experience for real world job searching and interview skills, and it even came with a happy ending (since I ended up getting the job). So, remember, it’s not always necessarily about you, the reason you get the job could have a lot to do with how well you work with others.

Thanks for reading!

-Nick

Current Track: Ray Charles by Chiddy Bang

Welcome to Chez Nick, Bon Appetite!

By Nick G.

Sep

18

About a month ago, the extent of my cooking abilities was limited to Easy Mac and quesadillas.  Every year, we all make promises to ourselves that “this year will be different”.  We pledge to go to the gym every day, stop going to Chipotle, and to get all our work done before the night before its due.  Well, one of my promises to myself for this year was that I’d learn to cook.  While I may have gone to the gym a few times the first week…and haven’t returned since, have gone to Chipotle twice, and was up until the wee hours of the night last night doing a programming assignment due this morning, I have successfully added to my arsenal of culinary abilities.

My strip steak and Mac&Cheese creation. CharMar actually sells steaks for $8, and when cooked on a George Forman, they are awesome.

I started my kitchen expeditions off small, using a George Forman grill I brought from home to cook almost everything.  The first of my creations were simple, and hard to really mess up, mostly consisting of cheeseburgers and hot dogs.  All my ingredients, including meats, have been purchased from CharMar using dining dollars included with my meal plan, which makes it super easy to get things to cook in my Charles Commons kitchenette.

The first of my more “daring” meals was chili.  Never before have I made anything of that complexity, nor did I have any idea how to pull such a dish off.  My suitemate came in as I was preparing everything and asked if I knew what I was doing.  I replied “No idea. I’m pretty much just winging it.”  With that, I continued to throw all the ingredients I purchased into a frying pan on the stove, crosses my fingers, stirred it all together, and waited.

 

 

From this angle, my chili kind of looks like vomit...awkward...

When I went looking for things to put in the chili, I had more or less an idea of what to get.  Beans, some veggie looking things, spicy stuff, and meat.  I couldn’t find regular beans, but I found “Amy’s Vegan Beans and Rice Soup”.  Well, it has beans in it, and some veggie looking things, so why not kill two birds with one stone? I got a can.  Side note: We didn’t have a can opener at the time, which I realized when I got back, so stabbing the top repeatedly with a pocket knife has become the preferred method of can opening.  In addition to my vegan bean soup, I got Taco Bell brand taco seasoning, some cajun spice powder, and, keeping with the vegan theme of the soup, a pound of ground beef.

When preparing, I spilled out some of the soupier parts of the soup to make it more chili appropriate, combined everything, put it on the stove, and waited for it to look like something delicious.  To my surprise, it worked, and came out pretty delicious if I do say so myself.  So, if anyone out there is hungry or has something to suggest for me to cook, let me know!

Thanks for reading and bon appetite!

-Nick

Current track: Stronger by Kanye West

 

P.s. While the cooking may be something we do, the dishes don’t seem to be…

There may or may not be things living on the bottom of our sink...

What I Learned At Camp

By Nick G.

Jul

30

For the past 5 weeks, I’ve been in the middle of nowhere Pennsylvania working at a camp teaching leadership training to Jewish teens between the ages of 15 and 17.  It is a program which I attended before my junior year in high school, and it has been an honor to come back as a staff member.  Through this experience, I have grown in several ways and have had my experiences at Hopkins come in handy several times.

The McOcho

1. Late nights during finals week are nothing.  Yeah, you may stay up late a few nights a semester before a big exam, but when you are the sole staff member in charge of 25 teenage boys in a bunk for 5 weeks, its like having a calc final every morning and pulling an all nighter for it every night.  They are exhausting.  They stay up until 3, knowing perfectly well that they have to be up at 7:45, but complain every morning anyway.  You’d think that by week two they would catch on, but no, they did not.

2. People seem to have a very, very difficult time setting up projectors.  As a future computer scientist, I was always the go-to guy for projector set up.  It really is astonishing how people can’t figure out where the one cord on the projector plugs in to the computer.  It doesn’t take a degree to figure that one out.

3. Campus food  > camp food.  Don’t complain about dining hall food at Hopkins, it is exponentially superior to camp food in every way.  If you’ve ever read my blogs, you know I love food, and its been difficult here to get proper nourishment (see the McOcho picture, taken on my day-off trip to McDonalds).

Chillin in the kiddie pool

4. Kiddie pools make everything more fun.  This is true both at Hopkins and at camp…hence the purchase of a $20 blow up pool for next year.

5. 3G is your best friend.  You never truly appreciate something as simple as 3G service until it becomes like a unicorn, you’ve heard it exists around camp but you’ve never actually seen it.

It may seem like I don’t like it here, but don’t get me wrong, I absolutely love it.  The people are fantastic and the experience has been amazing.  The negative aspects of the camp are things we can bond over and crack jokes about.  It overall has been a growing experience, and many things I have gained from here will help me as I move into my sophomore year at Hopkins.

 

Thanks for reading,

Nick

 

Current track: Pon De Floor by Major Lazer

We on TV!!!

By Nick G.

Jun

14

On the set!

That’s right, people, I am officially a TV star.  I now join the ranks of Jerry Seinfeld, Gary Colman, and Homer Simpson. This past weekend, I was on MTV (don’t worry, it wasn’t on “16 And Pregnant”). How did I get my big break? Funny you should ask. Here is the story of my rise to stardom.

A friend of mine who I did a summer program at NYU with a few summers ago came in to visit from Michigan, and we decided to meet up with a few other friends of ours in New York City.  We did some exploring, went on the ferris wheel in Toys-R-Us, got some chocolate at the Hershey’s store, and I got a baller M&M’s tie at the M&M’s store.  As we walked through Time Square, a young woman came up to us holding orange wristbands and asked if we wanted to be on MTV.  Obviously, we accepted.  She gave each of us a wristband and directed us to the building where everything was going on.  When we went in, they took/searched out bags and had us go through metal detectors (this is the point where they confiscated my Swiss Army Knife, which I never got back).  We were told we were going to be a part of the live studio audience for the show “The Seven”, which was filmed in the same room that TRL used to be in.  ”The Seven” is a news show where the top 7 entertainment stories are presented in front of a live studio audience.  Unfortunately, that day there were no celeb guests (I had my fingers crossed for Justin Beiber), but it was still pretty cool being in the studio.

The most epic Nerf gun of all time.

Before they made us leave our cellphones, I texted my parents to have them TIVO it so I could re live my fame over and over again.  As it turns out, I was ACTUALLY ON MTV!!! In the beginning you can see about half of my body, and for about 3 seconds 2/3 of the way into the show, I am clearly visible in a pan of the audience.  Epic? I think yes.

So what does this have to do with anything? Its simple.  Be spontaneous.  Don’t think you need a plan, you never know what kind of plans your plans can get in the way of.  Our plan for New York? Go to New York.  Come back home eventually.  So whether it’s walking around in New York City or a weekend at school, don’t think you need to have your life needs to be perfectly planned out.  The best things can happen spontaneously and without warning.  If an opportunity presents itself, take it. Take it and enjoy it.  When you come to college, one of the best things you’ll find is the lack of plans.  Want to hang out with someone? Go down the hall and knock on their door, see if they’re in.  If not, go find someone else. That’s how it works, no need to plan out who you’ll see and what you’ll be doing.  And that is probably the best part about coming to college and meeting new people: you never know who will show up and what you’ll do.

Thanks for reading, hope you enjoyed. I’ll be signing autographs next year, so come find me if you want one!

-Nick

Current track: Numb/Encore (Lincoln Park/Jay-Z)

Tron

By Nick G.

Dec

26

If there is one past time I truly enjoy, it is coming up with ridiculous comparisons between two things that have absolutely nothing in common at first glance, but when you investigate further you can actually find some pretty cool parallels. So, given that I spent my Christmas seeing Tron (shout out to any fellow Hebrews out there), here are some similarities between Hopkins and Tron.

1. 3-D.  Unlike many other universities, Hopkins is entirely in 3-D, just like Tron.  The buildings, students, even the lacrosse players are all fully three dimensional, almost like you can reach out and touch them.  Cornell’s claim to fame may be their gorges, but how can you truly appreciate a gorge when it is in old-fashioned 2-D? James Cameron would not approve.

The beach, Tron style. Time taken to photoshop: About 3 minutes.

2. The people are pretty smart.  In order to make a digital version of yourself to go inside the computer and create a digital society within it, you have to have some intelligence.  And at Hopkins, everyone is pretty smart.  What a perfect comparison.  We all are trying to break through to new frontiers.  Just like Kevin Flynn in Tron, Hopkins students are ambitious and always trying to put themselves into the pinnacle of intellectual innovation.

3. The technology.  Tron featured some pretty sweet technology, and Hopkins has its fair share of cool stuff as well.  Take, for example, the security system.  Around 200 cameras cover almost every point on campus, many of which are infrared, so you can feel comfortable walking anywhere at any time.  But wait…there’s more.  The Hopkins cameras can actually pick up on sketchy motion, so even if a guard isn’t monitoring that particular camera at the time, the system will alert them that something potentially bad is happening in that area.  And, should they need to take action, the security vehicles are actually light cycles (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Light_Cycle#Light_cycles). Pretty cool, huh?

Johns Hopkins on his Ducati. Time taken to Photoshop: I didn't photoshop it, this is a real image.

4. Daft Punk.  In Tron, Daft Punk actually make a cameo appearance as techno DJ’s in the computer world.  Believe it or not, for those more interested in the party scene, it is certainly available. Those interested in Raves can go a short cab ride away to find them (I’ve yet to go, but several friends have given rave reviews about them. Pun totally intended).  Contrary to what people often believe, there is a party scene on campus, but it is by no means overwhelming.  What I mean is that while the option exists, those that choose not to part take are not social outcasts and can maintain a solid social life without the party scene.

5. Ducatis. Everyone at Hopkins gets a Ducati, just like the guy in Tron had. But the new model, you know, the one that goes like 230 mph, like Vince bought for everyone in that episode of Entourage.  When you arrive on campus on move in day, there will be a Ducati waiting in your room just for you. As Johns Hopkins once said “This bike is insane, I just outran half of the Baltimore City Police Department without even getting out of third gear.”

Thanks for reading!

-Nick

Current track: Remember the Name by Fort Minor

Academic Life

By Nick G.

Oct

18

So let me tell you how this week has been academics wise.  First, on Monday, somebody took my Intro to American Politics textbook and ripped out several key pages that were needed for the upcoming midterm when I wasn’t looking, making it impossible for me to study.  Then, on Tuesday, in chem lab, somehow some mysterious chemicals ended up in my beaker completely ruining my experiment causing me to get a D.  On Wednesday, I was struggling with some Calc homework so I asked the kid across the hall for help.  He basically said, to put it in kinder words, “No, that would ruin the curve for me”. So I ended up not being able to complete the assignment because I had no idea what to do and nobody was willing to help.  Pretty bad so far, eh? Well then Thursday came.  I opened my Econ binder only to find that all my notes had been stolen by someone who obviously wanted to improve on their own notes, but didn’t want to work together to get it.  And that’s life here at Hopkins, everyone just competes for everything because we all just want to get into the best med school we can, and most students are willing to do anything to break the curve and be more competitive.

Since I had no idea what to answer on my Calc homework, I just put this.

Oh…wait.  In case you hadn’t already figured it out, everything I just wrote was completely made up.  My textbooks have all their pages (to my knowledge), I’m not even taking Chem, the kid across the hall is more than happy to assist in doing Calc homework, and my Econ notes are yet to be stolen.  And we’re not even all premed.

Shocker, right?  For some reason, Hopkins has this reputation of being ultra competitive and full of premeds.  Well, I’m happy to say that this is FALSE.  People here are more than happy to study together, to achieve a common goal of having everyone get a better grade.  Hopkins students often proofread papers for their peers, work with a group on a tough homework assignment, and engage in group studying in the days and weeks for an exam.  People here care about their grades, obviously, but also have a strong sense of community.  Sure, you may not be struggling on an assignment now when another person in the class is, but the tables may soon shift and you could be the one in need of assistance.  Students here love to help others out, and no matter what the subject, you can always find a friendly face willing to assist.

As for premeds, yes, they exist.  And there is a good number of them.  But by no means is this number overwhelming.  If you’d like to see for yourself, check out http://www.jhu.edu/registrar/reports/Fall%2009-10/1.1-1A%20Homewood%20Undergraduate%20Enrollment%20%281st%20Majors%29.pdf, where you can see a list of all the majors offered.  Numerically speaking, there are far more people taking non-premed associated majors than are majoring in a subject often associated with going to med school.  If you are at all nervous that Hopkins is all future doctors, don’t be.  You’ll meet plenty of humanities, social science, and engineering majors here as well.

I hope this post helped to clear up any misconceptions out there about Hopkins.  I don’t expect our reputation to change overnight, but every little bit counts.

Thanks for reading,

Nick

Current track:
Mosh by Eminem

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