Group Interview

Today I had my first group interview. I got the interview through the Weissman Center. There was a total of nine of us, including me. It was a big Baruch fest, with one guy from Fordham. I've never been on a group interview before, so before the interview I looked online on what to expect. All I can say is, you have to make a good lasting impression and stand out in a good way.

There were a lot of different personalities amongst the group. Let's see who they are:

1. The I ALWAYS ANSWER FIRST guy: this speaks for itself, this guy was the first to answer every question the interviewer asked us. This displayed his self confidence, his quickness on his feet, as well as his arrogance.

2. The I DID MY HOMEWORK guy: this guy did his homework and tries to refer back to his knowledge of the company whenever possible. All of his questions relates back to how the company is performing and includes facts and figures from the news. I dislike this guy because he seems very superficial and a suck up.

3. The I SOCIALIZE WITH EVERYONE guy: the guy who spoke to everyone and did the icebreaking, as well as trying to invoke responses from people. This guy tries to be the chill guy and tries to be the center of attention as well. Another type of suck up.

4. The FOREIGNER guy: the typical story of how this guy recently came to the US, is self motivated, pays for college and works at the same time, and pretty much amazing all around. The AMERICAN dream as you can call it.

5. The STUTTERING guy: this guy is obviously a nervous wreck and lacks both self confidence and experience. His voice was cracking up whenever it was his turn to answer and although he claimed to be an honors student with an excellent GPA, he's one of those bookworms that's never been out of the house.

And then there's me. What I did was try to relate everything to my current "job" and answered most of the questions using my experience with MetLife. I tried to stand out in my answers, but I don't think I made a strong enough impression. There were two people who I felt were more qualified than I was at the group interview. Oh well. Oh yeah, it was at UBS Financial.

WSJ article

As you may or may not know, I'm taking an Economics class this summer. Our professor sends us a couple of articles every week to read and discuss in class. I found this one very interesting so I'm going to share it with you all.

"Missing Children by Gary S. Becker" on the Wall Street Journal

To summarize, this article talks about the problem of the decline in birthrates and its effect on the world economy. The article states that every country needs to produce roughly 2.1 kids per family in order to sustain and grow the population. However, most countries now have fallen below 1 kid per family. What are the effects of a decline population?

1. More of the working class and more old people. With more people going into retirement and less people entering into the work force, the government will lose tax revenue while paying more social security for the retired.

2. Less young people in the labor force amounts to less innovation. Without innovation, there is no growth.

3. The rise in the older population will increase medical costs as well as other costs.

This Season

This is quite a big season of television (at least for me). I don't remember the last time I followed so many different television series at any given time. Contains a lot of spoilers.

Smallville Season 9 (CW11)

This series has been going downhill ever since Kristin Kreuk and Michael Rosenbaum left the show back in season 7. Why the hell do I still watch it? Probably to see how much they can mess up the show even more. The problem with series like these is that the longer the show goes on, the more ridiculous the story lines become. The producers have to deal with actor's contracts and other changes and thus the story line must be altered to meet those needs.

What happened this season? Tess Mercer (who?) released a bunch of Kandorians (Kryptonians) from an orb and they threatened to take over the Earth. Everything leads to an epic finale where our hero Clark must clash against a ton of other super powered Kryptonians but what happens? Spoiler: not too much. It was such a bad ending to the story arc.


Supernatural Season 5 (CW11)

I absolutely love this series. Even though season 1 was definitely the best season, I still follow this one every week as it airs on Thursdays. What the hell do you watch this show for, there aren't even any hot female leads! That's true--however being a horror fan, this show has been quite captivating. Not only is it action packed, but there's a lot of comical moments here and there.

Season 5 is about how Sam and Dean goes about fixing the Apocalypse. They released Lucifer from hell and go around trying to how to fix the current situation. In the season finale, the inevitable fight between Michael and Lucifer looks like it was going to happen, but only to be foiled by the two brothers. The legendary fight was stopped and the planet is saved, but only at the cost of one brother. I have to say the season finale was disappointing to say the very least. I was expecting a lot more action and special effects but I guess that was too much to ask for in 45 minutes.

How I Met Your Mother Season 5 (CBS)

Although this series is in season 5, I've only really begun to start watching this series this season. A bunch of my friends told me it is a great show and indeed it is. Even though the story sidetracks often, most viewers prefer it that way because the show would be over once it gets to the part when Ted finally reveals who the mother is. I can't really compare this season with the others because I haven't watched the earlier ones yet. Season 5 was pretty good and provided a lot of laughs.



Lost (ABC)

Funny thing about this show is that when it came out I didn't watch the first season (from what I heard was the best season). I started watching it sometime during season 2 and stopped watching it further because the show shifted to 10 PM for season 3 (I used to sleep early back then).

So whats up with season 6, the final season? Well I caught the retrospective episode before season 6 began and they pretty much summed up all of the important parts of the plot in 2 hours. So with my knowledge of season 2 and 2 hours of summary, I caught up. Season 6 was very exciting. Every episode built more tension and kept me wanting for more. Although the writers are good at creating cliffhangers, they definitely are not good at creating an ending. The ending was very disappointing because it left too many questions unsolved. After watching the 2.5 hour series finale I was still confused and did not know what happened. Hell, not even the actors really know what happened. So what is Lost? Don't expect to really understand anything. The show is just a really cool joyride but lacks explanations.

New Series

Community (NBC)

This show is spectacular. There are seven main characters and the story revolves around the lives of seven community college students. The show makes fun of community colleges in general and how the characters behave. I can't really explain the style of the comedy. You just need to watch it to get it. I highly recommend this series!






Modern Family (ABC)

Another new comedy series, this one is on ABC. The cast is even bigger than Community; seems like the new trend is to include as many characters as possible. It follows the lives of three typical families: a straight couple with 3 kids, a gay couple with an adopted child, and a hot mom married to a rich old guy. I haven't watched the entire season as of yet, I've only seen a couple of episodes here and there. I don't think it is as funny as Community but I'll give it a shot.






V (ABC)

V is an annoying name for a TV series. It's so difficult to search for images because V is so short. As I was watching Lost, the premier of this show caught my eye and I downloaded all of the episodes. I did not have the chance to watch it yet but it looks like a good series.




The Vampire Diaries (CW11)

I am by no means a fan of the recent trend of vampire shows/movies. Hell, I didn't even watch the Twilight movies. So why the hell am I watching this? It just so happens that this show is on the same night as Supernatural, just preceding the show. So I decided to give it a shot. The show is alright I suppose, it's pretty complicated and stuff. But in short, it's main story is about how two brothers compete for the love of this one girl. Thank goodness the cast is good looking or else I wouldn't even bother watching this.






I haven't seen any of the previous seasons but when I saw the lineup for this season, I decided to watch it. A lot of eye candy on this season :Q. Nicole Scherzinger, Pamela Anderson, Erin Andrews, etc. From the beginning of the season, I've already knew who was going to win it all. Nicole Scherzinger, the Pussycat Doll, won this season. She is an amazing performer and dancing probably comes naturally to her. There were also some really bad people on this season. They had Buzz Aldrin, the 80 year old retired astronaut on the show. Why bother getting him on the show? They also had Kate Gosslin (who?) and she was just plain bad. But this season was worth watching just because of Nicole Scherzinger. Yep.

lol