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[theinevitable]

Really, it is not any more confusing to me than other cities. It is probably more my own thing (feeling slightly anxious if I don't know exactly where I am) than anything about a particular city. Also not great at choosing public transit routes. Although, visiting the city with my non-urban planning roommate made me feel like a genius in that department.

But I don't understand how anyone got around anywhere before cell phone GPS. When I learned to drive there was not such a thing, and I remember a lot of time sitting in parking lots looking at maps. Or having to call my dad to get directions. Bleh.

I guess it's more about the idea that in Manhattan if you are standing and holding a map you are definitely in someone's way.

[Arachno-capitalist]

Most of NYC is dead easy to get around - it's a grid and the streets are numbered. What's so hard?

Wait till you go to Tokyo. Even natives get lost in Tokyo.

Yeah the grid falls apart at critical intersections downtown, though. I can generally find my location by looking at what avenue and street I am, but then comes 6th ave (The avenue of the Americas) or Broadway. Those obliques mess my step up and I just look for the nearest subway. (Subway NYC is one of the few instances where capitalism proved how dumb we are. There are redundant North-South lines built by competing companies, but hardly any East-West lines.) 

[wombat]

Also not great at choosing public transit routes.

You should ask someone for help. You will quickly have half a dozen people suggesting half a dozen routes with great enthusiasm. There is nothing New Yorkers like better than thinking they know better than anyone else about the subway.

Really we got around fine with maps in the Olden Times and some of us still do. GPS is a great idea for driving when it is not safe to read a map, but it seems to me like way more complicated technology than needed for walking.  I tried to use it in Tokyo and lost patience and gave up after a couple of tries. It was much easier to just call up a static map on the screen and use that. It would tell me to start by going north when the entire problem was that I didn't know where I was, so how would I know which way was north? Then I'd try to see what happened when I just walked in some direction and found myself spinning around trying to figure out what the right direction was. Much more conspicuous thing to be doing on the street than just looking at a map.

[theinevitable]

Yeah, for walking usually I just use it to find where I am and where my destination is, and then try to plot out the route on my own. Otherwise I feel like computers are telling me where to go all day.

In NJ, I pretty much only know how to get 3 places (and the places in between those places). So if it isn't between here and school, here and the library, or here and the grocery store, I have to look it up. Weird.

Oblique streets throw me for a loop, too. There was a big one (Gravois Ave) that cut through the area I lived in in St Louis, and I never quite mastered which streets were east/west of it at different points going north/south.

[Carlos del Vaca]

I am so bad at sleeping of late. It's getting ridiculous. When we get back from this trip I have to hit the gym hard again, because that helps. But I get in this cycle where I feel like shit and can't get out of bed in the morning, so I don't go to the gym. But not going to the gym makes me feel like shit.

[Arachno-capitalist]

Re: Limp c*ck
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pEsZkTTgydc
Farewell sweet prince.

[theinevitable]

Went to see the "career counselor" at school and she did a pretty good job of convincing me I will never get a job. If the world is full of people who will shred your resume if you write Master's in City Planning instead of Master of City Planning, I am not sure I want what they have. Although I guess this is what I should expect if I'm going to apply to jobs in New York.

Also, seriously, everyone I have ever spoken to about that sort of thing tells me I need to put my skills on my resume. Do you see the stuff on my resume? That's all of it. You don't think that if i had awesome skills, I would put them on there? I put "microsoft word and excel," that doesn't sufficiently convey that I scraped the bottom of the barrel in that department? OK, I can add "GIS-- enrolled spring 2015." That was helpful advice.
She suggested I put on "activities" like being president of my student body or vice president of a club. Yeah, if I had done those things I would have put them on there. I did not know how to express this to her without whining so I just said, thanks, I'll work on that.

"How much was this grant you wrote the application for? You should put how much you got."
"It was zero dollars. We didn't get the grant."
"Oh."

This summer job I'm applying for is actually on Wall Street (doing affordable real estate analysis) so clearly I am attempting to punch above my weight, both skills-wise and confidence-wise.

I figured it had been a while since you guys got a good ol' fashioned inev-fest. The good news is, my class today (housing markets) was good, class tomorrow is cancelled due to snow, and I'm making baked chicken wings and drinking Allagash White. This beer is good as hell.

[Carlos del Vaca]

If the world is full of people who will shred your resume if you write Master's in City Planning instead of Master of City Planning, I am not sure I want what they have.

I'm neither in city planning, nor in New York, but I do review resumes regularly and my gut reaction is this is hossshit. If you wrote "MasturZ in City Planing" then yeah I'm not going to take you seriously, but I'm sure as hell not going to quibble about something like that.

[AugustWest]

Fun Fact:  The Career Counselor at my law school is Tom Cruise's first cousin.  Also, entirely useless.

[theinevitable]

I was hoping this would be y'all's response.

Good news: a group of women in my program invited me over for snow-day booze and board games. This is Important, because I was reflecting while in St Louis that I could not name a single person in Jersey who I could imagine inviting me to their house.

I should bring the wings.

[theinevitable]

drank a lot of rum, walked around in the snow and sledded down a big hill, threw snowballs, fed all my wings to people. life is good.

[pmcd9]

That was very satisfying. Thank you Inev. Also, good luck!

[theinevitable]

Majorly overdid it with the rum, I am lucky I did not make a fool of myself. Just fell down in the soft snow a lot. Man, that was a blast.

[Arachno-capitalist]

Fun Fact:  The Career Counselor at my law school is Tom Cruise's first cousin.  Also, entirely useless.

Fun Fact: I had a class that included both Mary Kate Olsen, Haley Joel Osment, and I was dragged to a talent show where the lady gaga (then known as Stefani Germanotta) performed a better song than anything she made after her name changed. The class was screenwriting and the only class I attended at Tisch School of The Arts. There are roughly three different buildings called Tisch Hall and I spent a day finding which Tisch that class was in.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=NM51qOpwcIM
The host was a tool.
There was a time when all three of those people and ACAP occupied the same space. In a distant fourth place was my roommate who majored in the euphonium and had a nervous breakdown due to euphonium related stress. Of the four, I count myself as #1. Mary Kate, Haley (who traveled with some posse of hangers-on, the gaga, and the euphonium dude haven't done shit with that screenwriting class. Neither have I, but that is besides the point.

[wombat]

These characters are getting out of control. There is no way that I could have written either that last scene or Inev's heartwarming and somewhat cliched evening of youthful socializing in the snow.