Thursday, March 29, 2012

One year from now...

Dear Self from one year ago,

So how did your thesis defense go? I mean your first thesis defense. You'll be thankful to those people that seemed to kill you before now cares for your graduation a lot. You'll graduate on time and it will be the proudest moment of your life. Trust me. You will have his name (three given names, two-word middle name and last name) at the end of your thesis acknowledgments, just as you wished.

One year from now you'll look back at it and still be amazed how you got away from all the shiznit alive. After the revision, you won't be able to open your thesis manuscript until you had to refer to it while editing a friend's thesis--yes, you will help a friend with his thesis. You can't open it not because you curse the final manuscript to the deepest pits of hell, but because you know for yourself that it's 90-something half-baked pages that could have been better if not of the circumstances brought about by your respondents. One year from now, OrCom students will come to you for help and you will not deprive them of it. You will, in fact, make a pledge that you would uphold the pursuit of academic excellence (or somewhat like it) in any way you can because that's the least you can do to help them. If only your thesis respondents thought the same way as you do.

After your graduation, you will stay at home all summer looking for a job, and finally get one a week after classes officially start. I'm sorry darling, but no matter how hard you try to avoid Human Resources, you will inadvertently land there. And I am telling you this now, you will learn to love it that you actually see yourself in the industry in the long run. It just sucks that your cover letter for that PR role wasn't enough to do the trick--I thought it was kick-ass too.

One year from now, you will be in a top recruitment company based in UK and your body clock still wouldn't have changed as you will work with counterparts in the Americas (ergo, the night shift). One year from now you will realize that your thesis manuscript has nothing to do with how you start your career--it is what you have learned and experience during its making that would. At this moment I know that you have already learned the virtues of patience and optimism, and I kid you not, working like mad as long as you see a hint of light at the end pays off eventually.

You will encounter difficult clients and even more difficult teammates to work with. You will contemplate resignation for at least ten times and cry in toilets. A year after you first tried to defend your thesis, however, you will write this and realize how good your life is and that your company values you a lot. You will "Strongly Agree" to a survey item that states"I will not leave this company right now". You will be awarded as Contributor of the Quarter on your first quarter at work, and your excellence will become a special case in the company that you will bypass regular employee processes. I'm not telling you this to swell your head and give everyone a middle finger, saying "I don't need this, suckers!" Do not be proud as you read this. Do not neglect every little thing you do. Do not be grumpy when things don't go your way because they can only get better. Trust me.

One year from now you will write this using your personal office computer while on a 1-hour break. You still have your headphones on but you will listen to Oasis (mostly), Arctic Monkeys, Franz Ferdinand, Jet, The Smiths, and The Beatles instead of your thesis playlist. You will finally be aware of the fact that Wonderwall is not the best Oasis song there is (but it will always remind you of his scent and how he juxtaposed his body against yours as he tried to know what you listen to). You will have an unexplainable admiration for a man named Noel Gallagher (if you don't know him you can google it up) who is 23 years your senior and you will secretly wish you were a British girl born in the 70's who was in Knebworth's biggest gig in '96. You will have changed a lot of your views in life, you will have established a stronger personality, and you will listen to music that you used to skip on MTV, mostly by British rockstars who used to sniff cocaine during the time that you were just learning to recognize the five basic senses. In the end, however, you are confident that you have grown up more than you have grown old. It's only a year hence.

I can't wait until you get here. It will be the wildest year of your life so far.

Onwards.

In a bit,
Yourself (only a year older)

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