Bumpy Start
Posted by Jonathan Ng | Filed under Personal
Day 2 as a Microsoft Student Partner, things aren’t smooth sailing..
First of all, there’s Eu Hua. I know he’s very, very disappointed now, and I don’t know how to console him. I really need his help in the future, when organizing any kind of activities. Yu Bin seems ok, and I really hope he is.. needless to say, ther other SA “candidates” aren’t too happy either. There were even 2 of them who pulled out of their duties for the coming Imagine Day event. I think the reason they weren’t selected is pretty damn obvious.. even with the others, I can sense an air of dissatisfaction.. bad…
Then there’s this little problem with the other MSPs selected. I have to say I don’t really click with them.. worse still, I discovered that me and Kok Chiann have different leadership styles. I think it’s a big problem, but he thinks it’s a small deal… I anticipate that things are gonna be tough, and I hope all 3 of us will learn to work together.. and take this as an experience..
There’s gonna be a “Boot Camp” for us MSPs this Friday and Saturday.. I really, really hope that things turn out okay between us TARC MSPs.. sigh.. off to studies (blurry eyed)..
MSA Interviews
Posted by Jonathan Ng | Filed under Personal
Yeah, note the plural: interviews. I applied to be a Microsoft Student Ambassador about a month ago. I was called last week my Ms Jessie Teoh, one of TARC’s program supervisors, informing me that the interviews for MSA was brought forward. There’s gonna be a Student Ambassador Boot Camp this week, probably on Thursday.
So, my interview was scheduled on Friday morning. 4 course supervisors interviewed me. I think it’s thanks to the previous interview at Swisslog; or perhaps it’s because I kind of know the lecuters. I wasn’t that nervous, and was able to do some thinking before answering. The lecturers kind of know me, and like 90% of the interview was focused on my major weakness: soft skills. They were particularly concerned on the topis I blog about (I don’t have a good history), whether I’m impulsive at making decisions, whether I can be a team player and stuff like that.
Nevertheless, I’m glad that I pulled through. One of the reasons (according to Ms Poh) was my “body language”. I don’t know what “body language” I showed in particular, but I gave her the impression that I was genuinely willing to learn and improve myself, which is true.. On the other hand, she gave me the impression that she will most definitely vote against me. Haha.. she was quite most of the time.. serious.. look like very “anti” me.. hehe..
Then, there’s the second interview, this time by Vico, a representative from Microsoft. I remembered 4 questions in particular that he asked me:
- What kind of technical event will you organize?
- Non-technical event?
- What about an event that has nothing to do with computers?
- Why do you want to be associated with Microsoft?
Was tough questions, and didn’t have much time to prepare the for the answers.. Some discussion with fellow interviewees revealed that not all of us had the same questions. Hm.. but I think none of us did especially well in the interview.
Well, won’t know the results till tommorrow. Ms Kathleen Tan (senior course supervisor or something, haha) should know the result today, but don’t know why she likes to leave us in suspense.. Arghh~
There were feelings of unfairness among some of the other SA candidates. I don’t know the exact reason they weren’t chosen, but I guess luck and fate have something to do with it. Nevertheless, I’ve learned that it’s good to do some self reflection sometimes and not be too affected by the outcome of this interview. Like they said, learning is a life long process.
Tags: life
Data Strucutres Assignment, Part 1
Posted by Jonathan Ng | Filed under Technical
Ok, I should have fired off this blog post on Wednesday, but unlike Jeff, I can’t find the time (and motivation) to blog every other day. Besides, I was tired.. so, ladies and gentlemen, here it is finally: my DSA assignment!
I’ll quickly brief you through our requirements. Technically, it only requires us to implement arrays and linked lists, nothing else. This assignment, as you’ll see, may be misinterpreted as a OO assignment. For me, it’s both. All we need to do for the assignment, is do some sort of business scenario (most of us chose a library, as there wasn’t anything else logical) that allow users to add, edit and delete media items (eg: printMedia, broadcastMedia). I used a fancier term: “learning resource center”. Anyway, if you’ve done OOP or data structurs before, you’ll likely know that the items (media, in this case) doesn’t matter at all.
The assignment allocates 5 (bonus) marks for a GUI. So I thought, it’ll be fun if the input forms for each media item can be dynamically generated. Yeah, more or less like a grid you see in properties pane in Visual Studio. At some point, I was also sort of worried about problems like abstraction. Read the rest of this entry »
Educators Will Always be Educators
Posted by Jonathan Ng | Filed under Personal
The interview for Micorsoft Student Ambassadors (or Student Partner) was held today. Being one of the candidates, I was of course kind of nervous. So I spend some time preparing for the usual questions like “why do you want to be a student ambassador?”.
But a few minutes into the interview, I realized that my interviewers (Ms Kathleen Tan, Mr Yong, Ms Jessie Teoh and Ms Poh) were very concerned on my soft skills instead. If you followed my blog, you probably know that I had a few “brush” with the college and some lecturers. Hence, they were particularly concerned with that.
Nevertheless, educators will always be educators. They did ask me many questions about how I will act in situations like having different opinions with people I work with and so on. However, they did tell me how I could have responded, what I should have done. Perhaps they were just trying to see what response I’d give to their suggestions. The response I gave? “yes.. yes.. I understand”. I tried to make it clear to them that I’m willing to learn, willing to change.. but whether or not they think I can change in time, I don’t know..
Educators will always be educators. I doubt my future employers will be so kind as to tell me what I should have done. So, thanks to them.. will remember their words..
Tags: life
Problems in Modern Keyboards
Posted by Jonathan Ng | Filed under Personal
Rob Manuel has written a lovely post, listing 10 reasons why modern keyboards are shit. Wonderful..
If you look at some of the points he highlights, most of the are perfectly valid. For example, do you ever use the numeric keypads for navigation?? No.. I don’t know anybody who does.. and hence, the numlock key is useless..
The thing i hate most about some keyboards, is the non standard insert key block. The whole delete key’s just gone.. hm, wonder how you shift+del files you dont need..
As for the caps lock key, if you do find it annoying, you can change it into a shift key. There are some registry files here that’ll do the trick.
