Going Back to Work, College Limbo.

I don't know if I mentioned this, but Fazzini's the place I've worked at for the last few years (while not in college) was closed down about a month ago. Something to do with the rent or payment to the previous owner; I don't really know many details. So for a while there I was wondering what I was going to do for a job once the fall semester let out. Jobs are pretty scarce right now, and I wasn't about to work at some fast food joint because that sounds like such a shitty job.

Luckily, though, I got a call from my old manager saying everything was getting sorted out and Fazzini's was going to reopen in early January. Kind of flattering that they called me up after I hadn't worked there since I left for college months ago. But then again, they love me over there at Fazzini's because I'm good at it and I'm reliable. So that all will be a nice boost to my future resume (fuck the accents in that word).

The title of this entry is kind of misleading. I don't mean to say that work is college's limbo (although that does make some sense, when I think about it), I mean that I'm literally stuck in a limbo of sorts. I'm not enjoying UMBC, and by that I mean I'm not enjoying the standard 4-year-to-get-a-BS setup and everything that entails. It just feels too damn much like High School, and there's no way I'm putting up with that bullshit for 3 more years. The only thing that UMBC offers me right now is convenience because it's only a 45 minute commute from my house (not that that matters because I lived on campus anyway).

The food was terrible, the general classes that you need to take to graduate were either annoying and useless (like English 100, a class in which I learned nothing) or do not sound appealing in any way (like Physical Education -- yes, fucking P.E.!). It is just straight-up not what I want to get out of college. That combined with the fact that I don't even really want to be a programmer within the video game industry makes UMBC the wrong place.

So it's not just UMBC that isn't right for me, it's conventional college in general. I don't want to spend four years being distracted from my major by having to take these bullshit classes that I already took -- for free -- in High School. I think back to when I was first looking at colleges, and my first choice was a school called Collin's College out in Arizona that had a strictly game design-oriented program. I was actually originally supposed to go there, but something went wrong that I can't really explain (not because I don't want to, but because I really don't know exactly what went wrong). For some reason they just stopped talking to my father (the person who is paying for everything), and sent me an application with a pages missing after I had already been accepted there. So bollocks to that.

Regardless, I figure that's what I want to get out of college. To me, college is one of two things, or a combination of both: It's a learning experience or it's a business decision. But I'm tired of learning experiences. I've been doing that for my entire life. I want college to be a place where I become a expert on something specific. I have always been something of a jack of all trades, master of none. I'm not bad at any one thing -- I can do math, I'm a great writer, I know history, I know enough about science, and I'm well-read. But I don't excel at any one thing. There are people who are extremely creative but can't understand algebra and people who are great with numbers but can't draw for shit. I was always just average at everything.

Going to a four year college, so far, has felt like nothing but a continuation of that. I've been looking into Full Sail, a college down in Florida, which has a great-looking game design program. It's a 2-year deal with long work weeks. That's what I want. No distractions, no prerequisites to graduate beyond what is pertinent to game design.

No, as far as "college limbo" is concerned, I use that term because I'm sort of stuck between UMBC and Full Sail. I haven't severed all ties with UMBC yet, and I don't have everything sorted out with Full Sail yet. I imagine what is going to end up happening is I'm going to go to Full Sail in the Fall of 2009 and simply work at Fazzini's until then. I'll go to Full Sail for 2 years, working at Fazzini's during breaks, graduate, and then work at Fazzini's again until I get picked up by a game development house.

That's the plan anyway. My plans have already been dramatically altered twice, so who knows what will happen.

Christmas was good. I got a brand spanking new GeForce GTX 280, one of the best nVidia cards on the market. Fallout 3 and Far Cry 2 used to run a little iffy, but now they run smooth as silk. I love it. Crysis still gives me problems though -- I think I need to overclock my processor.

There haven't really been any game releases recently, but I'm still looking forward to Killzone 2 and Resident Evil 5 early next year. Until then I think I'll get back to Stalker: Clear Sky, which was put on hold back when it came out in September. I also haven't barely touched MotorStorm: Pacific Rift, and the SOCOM patch is finally coming out in early January. FINALLY.

So that's what I've been up to: thinking about my college future and installing video cards. 'Tis a good life.