Today was my last day of class! A little bittersweet, but also pretty exciting. I only have two exams next week, since one of my professor's made his final optional. So it should be a pretty easy finals week.

In career-related news, I have a job interview on Monday! I'm pretty excited about it because it's the type of job I have been looking for. I'm trying not to get overly excited or confident about it, but I'm really stoked.

Yesterday, I sent my resume and a sample cover letter to Grace Kutney, who runs Sweet Careers. She gave me some very helpful and very in-depth feedback on how I can improve my resume to make it more noticeable and accessible to employers. She is seriously amazing. She did all this for me for no charge, and I cannot thank her enough. It's nice to know that there are people in this world that genuinely want to help people without looking for personal gain. If you're interested in contacting her, check out this post: Free Resume/Cover Letter Reviews.

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Well, today begins the 10 day countdown until I graduate from Michigan State University with a BA in Marketing. I decided I would document the remaining days and how I feel about them.

I had my final performance assessment with my supervisor at work. He gave me all good marks, told me it has been a pleasure working with me, and said I will be an asset to whatever future companies I work for. Those were all really great things to hear. I've been working at the Help Desk since my very first week of college, so it has been a pretty big part of my life. I've met and worked with a lot of really great people there, and I'm going to be sad to leave. It will definitely be an adjustment not seeing the same people on a regular basis.

I only have one class today, it's my final Business Law class. I was kind of dreading that class at the beginning of the semester, but it has turned out to be one of my favorites. The professor has been really great. She's very knowledgeable and extremely passionate. I wish I had a chance to take more law classes, because they're actually pretty interesting. Maybe that could be a future career choice.

Right now, I would say I am feeling four things:

Relieved- This has been a really taxing and busy semester, so I'm glad it's coming to an end.

Excited- I am so close to finishing college! I'm the first person on my mom's side of the family to graduate from college, so she's really excited. I did it in four years, something not a lot of people are doing these days, so I'm pretty excited about that.

Sad- I didn't think I would be sad at all, but lately I've been realizing the things I will miss. I'm no longer going to get to see the campus on a daily basis. I'm also going to miss the people, friends and classmates.

I have a friend who is also a Marketing major, and we've had a lot of classes together. After our class yesterday, we went to lunch. Afterward, we realized that we no longer have any classes together; something we hadn't thought of. I'm hoping that we'll be able to stay in touch even though we're out of school.

Puzzled- With graduation being a little over a week away, I still have no idea what I'm going to be doing afterward. I've been applying at a bunch of places. I've heard back from a few, but they're mostly jobs I know I would go crazy in; mostly cold calling sales positions.

The thing is, I finally know what I want to do. I want to do some sort of Public Relations or Internet marketing. I know that I would be good at it, and I know that I would love it. The only problem is finding a job doing it. I'm going to have a marketing degree, but a lot of those positions prefer some sort of communications education mixed in. I've taken elective courses in communications, and I've always places a large emphasis on my ability to communicate with others. I've just got to find a company that will actually hear me out and give me a chance. You can only say so much with a cover letter and a resume.

Reasons I want to go into that type of work:

I really do love communicating. I love speaking, presenting, writing, meeting, collaborating, planning. Seriously, any situation where I get to interact with people, exchange ideas, and present information is an ideal situation for me.

I love learning new things. I'm the type of person that just wants to learn and know everything. Whenever something new comes out, I've got to be the first one to know about it. I can research anything on the Internet.

I love the Internet. I love the interactivity of the Internet, the information that's available. It's a very integrated part of my everyday life.

I love problem solving. I get great satisfaction from taking something that is directionless or a mess and turning it into something awesome.

That's about it for today. I'm going to attempt to post one entry a day until my graduation, just to document what's going on in my head. Only 10 days to go....

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I'm always amazed when I hear self-proclaimed Christians attribute something happening to being caused by karma. I'm sure that when some say it, they're just using it as a phrase, kind of an, "I deserved that." But there are some Christians I know that truly say they believe in karma. They believe that what goes around, comes around.

Karma is a direct contradiction of Christianity. There is no way you can accept the message of Jesus and also accept the idea of karma. Not only is it not compatible with Christian doctrine, but it's just plain illogical.

I'll start by really explaining what karma is defined as. When you really look at it, karma is just about cause and effect. If you do good things, good things will happen to you. If you do bad things, bad things will happen to you. When you apply this to the idea of reincarnation (the origin of the idea of karma), then a person that leads a good life will be reincarnated into a higher state of being, while a person that leads a bad life will be reincarnated into a lower state of being. The way you live your life causes you to either be rewarded or punished.

Whether or not you attribute karma to reincarnation, the idea of "what goes around comes around" is not at all compatible with Christianity. Christianity teaches that we all have done bad things, and we all deserve punishment. We can't atone for our misdeeds by trying to do good deeds. Salvation and eternal life (the reward) is only found through Christ. No person is more or less deserving of the reward.

Christianity believes in grace, not karma. They are two completely contradictory ideas, and you cannot logically believe in both. Karma says you get the reward or punishment that you deserve. Grace says you get the reward even if you deserve the punishment.

So when you're giving your waitress a big tip, do so because you want to be gracious, like Christ, not because you want to rack up some "good karma" in hopes that you'll somehow benefit later down the road.

"The beauty of grace is that it makes life not fair." -Be My Escape by Relient K

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I had a pretty humbling experience this morning. For those of you who may not know, I live in Michigan. Even though today is April 6th, we had a pretty large snow storm full of wet and slushy snow. Regardless of the snowfall and current road conditions, I drove as if there were no snow at all. I mean, I do have a 1999 Kia Sportage and all.

So as I was driving, I somehow hit a very slippery and very thick pile of snow and ended up skirting off the side of the road down a hill into somebody’s yard. For some reason, the incident didn’t really scare me, it just annoyed me a bit. I sat there for a second, then arrogantly put my car into 4X4, figuring I could easily get myself out of the yard. I eased onto the gas pedal, but I wasn’t going anywhere. I kind of sighed, and then hopped out of my car to further investigate the situation. I apparently had skidded pretty hard and had really dug myself into not only the snow, but also the grass and dirt.

I packed some snow under my wheels to get some extra traction, and tried again. I still wasn’t budging. I started thinking about how I was probably going to have to call my roommate and wake him up to come help me out. And I started thinking about how I was going to be late for work. And I started thinking about how much it was going to cost me if I needed to get a tow truck.

I got out of my car to try packing the snow again. And I was jamming some snow, grass, and dirt under my front tire, a car stopped on the road and the window rolled down. A middle-aged woman stuck her head out and asked, “Are you alright?” I told her I was fine and was about to ask if she’d mind pushing the gas pedal while I pushed from behind when she interrupted and said, “Oh, I can’t help you. Bye.” And she drove away.

I got back in my car and eased onto the gas again to see if I could get traction this time. I still wasn’t moving. I saw the snowplow coming down the street. I started to get mixed feelings of hope and devastation, because I knew he could either help me or just plow right by and cover me in more snow. To my relief, he pulled over and rolled down his window. “Do you have a place to hook a chain?” he asked. I ignorantly told him I had no idea. He got out of his truck and bent down in the front of my car to check. He pointed to a place on the chassis and told me to put the hook there. He got back in his truck, positioned it right in front of my car, and then pulled out a huge chain and handed one end to me. I hooked it up the spot he had pointed out, got in my car, and put it in neutral. He slowly drove backward and gently pulled me out of my rut.

As soon as my car was back on the road, we both got out and unhooked the chain. I don’t know that I’ve ever been so eager to shake someone’s hand. I thanked him and gave him a wave as he drove away.

As I continued my drive to work (much more carefully, I might add), I started really thinking about the whole situation and how that really translates to life. A lot of us are like that lady that stopped to ask if I was alright, but wasn’t really willing to help. That’s kind of like how when we see someone in need or in pain, we say things like, “I’ll pray for you,” and leave it at that. We don’t really want to get involved, we don’t want to take time out of our life to help. We convey condolences and pretend to be empathetic, but just carry on with our lives.

On the other hand, here was this guy that was in the middle of doing his job, and he just stopped to help me out. He didn’t ask me if I needed help or what he could do, he just stopped and did it. That’s really how we should be. We should actively take time out of our lives to help people we find that are in need. We should show them that we care, not just tell them.

This incident could have really affected my day and really turned it into a disaster. I could have been significantly late to work, and I could have been out a couple hundred dollars for a tow truck. But since this guy decided to stop for five minutes to give me a hand, he turned a could-be disaster into a minor setback.

This was the first time anything like this has happened to me. I’m actually the type of guy that sees people on the side of the road in a snow bank and just thinks, “Well that idiot couldn’t control their own car!” I sometimes think about stopping, but rarely actually follow through. I think that after this morning, I’m going to be a lot more compassionate when I see that, and also a lot more active in helping them out.

I guess this April snow wasn’t so bad after all.

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