Hair Funeral. According to legend, Mexican general Santa Anna held a funeral for and buried his leg after he lost it in battle. Well, I decided to bury my hair. This weekend I held a ceremony in which I ritually severed the sideburns from my face and finally put them to rest. I billed it as a "hair funeral" and invited some friends and just made an occasion of the whole thing. But the ceremony also served as a symbolic "burying of my youth" and for saying goodbye to a stage in my life. It was an occasion to remember the good times and was kind of a culmination of the bittersweet last 4 years. Yea, it may have been a tad bit melodramatic, it was also be quite memorable.

So I gathered some friends together at Zilker Park around sunset tonight (which added to the symbolism I suppose). We dug a little hole at the base of a tree, and I took to the sideburns with a pair of scissors (I promised myself long ago that when it was time, the sideburns would go by my own hand. If anyone else took them before it was time, I would have to lay the righteous vengeful smackdown on the offender, no matter who it was- friend, relative, stranger, or enemy. Promised.)

There was that moment of hesitation with the scissors by my ear when I doubted my conviction and wasn't sure I could go through with it. It really DID feel like I was burying a big part of myself I'd been growing my sideburns since mid sophomore year, so like two and a half years? The hair was my claim to fame, what I was known for, what set me apart from the crowd, who I WAS. "Hey, you know that guy with the crazy anime hair?" Yea, that was me... was... =/

But alas, some things just need to be done. People ask me why I cut them, and I give different answers: "I was getting a little sick of 'em," "I thought they were hurting me in job interviews," "They were part of a phase that I've kinda grown out of," "I just felt like it was time" ...all of those are a partially true, just in ascending order of heartfelt-ness(?). I guess I knew deep down that I couldn't keep them forever, and I had already put it off longer than I planned to. Didn't make things any easier though.

I stuck each one of the (braided) sideburns in a test tube that my friends got for me. I put one in the ground and kept the other. A few of my friends also buried various items to commemorate their time here in Austin. We said some final words and covered the hole. I held a BBQ afterwards (...cuz I think the sideburns would've wanted it that way). At various times in the evening, I poured libations for the sideburns and crumbled some cookies onto the hair grave as offerings. (Yea, I'm sappy and into symbols like that.) I constantly feel like there's something missing from the sides of my face now. I find myself reaching to brush them behind my ears, only to find nothing there. =/ This is gonna take awhile to get used to. *sigh*

It WAS time though. In a sense, they were very much a symbol of my childhood- playfulness, carefree attitude, sticking it to the man, being weird and proud of it. But I suppose you can't live like that forever- it's not responsible. As enticing as it sometimes sounds, people who choose to live La Vie Boheme typically wind up as the starving artist-type. And what Asian could do that and not be disowned by his parents? Hah. All joking aside though, it was something I had to do as an act of growing up.

"When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things."
~Corinthians Book 1, Chapter 13

*O Commander! my Commander! I caught wind recently that my high school calculus teacher, Mr. Gander passed away (maybe recently, maybe not- I'm not sure). He was one of the few teachers I had in high school that I truly and deeply respected. He taught us to integrate before we could convolve and transform. He single-handedly turned so many of us into budding engineers. He will be missed.

"Don't put the horse before Descartes"
"gotta use the big hammer"
"You must be from Missouri... the SHOW ME state"
"At no point will my fingers leave my hands"
"AMAZING... and you were there"

Dead End. So I got rejected from the company I interviewed with last week, and there effectively went the last of my solid job leads. I guess it just hurts especially bad cuz I had kinda gotten used to & started liking the idea of working for this company. Lesson learned: don't become a company man until you have the offer letter in your hands.

And moreover, I'd gotten used to the idea of not working in aerospace, period. Quite honestly, I have very little love for my major left. And further thinking (albeit guided by the thought that I had a job offer in the bag) seriously made me think that aerospace really ISN'T what I wanna do with my life. But I guess I can't rule out that possibility just yet anymore. I have to keep ALL my options open, even it IS to something I've got a hunch I wouldn't be happy doing. I guess I'm just looking for more diverse opportunities to show up at my door... something new that I can pour myself into.

I guess I'd always known it was a possibility that I'd still be jobless at graduation, but it was a thought I really didn't wanna consider. Pssshhh... going unhired? That's for the DUMB kids! And now as the school year (and the associated recruiting season) winds down, I can't help but get that familiar feeling of not being chosen by a team captain for sports as a kid. =( Rejection, in all its forms, still hurts.

And now I'm faced with the very real possibility that I'll be sticking around in Austin through the Fall semester to job hunt. (As I've come to the conclusion that online resume submission is 99% useless.) ECAC (our engineering career center) is dead for the summer, so new opportunities won't really emerge until Fall. We get to use ECAC for a semester or so after we graduate. I dunno, I guess I'll wait a week or two more (in the slim hopes that I get another callback), before I "dig in for the long haul" and start hunting for a place to stay in the Fall.

Man, I had thought I was such a hot shot job prospect, some kinda really good candidate for a hire- wouldn't have any problem finding a job, not me. I'm a pretty smart kid, my overall GPA's pretty good, I've got awards here and there- some company should want me, right? ...no, apparently I was wrong. Lesson learned: You are NOT as high and mighty as you may at first think. So suck up your dang pride and send your resume to anyone who'll take it. Consulting jobs, sales jobs, tech support jobs, jobs completely unrelated to anything you ever studied in school... at some point, you really DO lose the right to be picky.

If nothing else, this job search thing has been a very humbling experience. I wish I could go back in time and apply to all those jobs I'd brushed off as being beneath me. =/

"Hey,
Don't write yourself off yet
It's only in your head you feel left out or looked down on.
Just try your best
Try everything you can
And don't you worry what they tell themselves
When you're away."
~Jimmy Eat World - The Middle