My background & first post!

Hey folks,

Thanks for landing on my blog! This blog is intended for former teachers of mine, friends, family, and anybody really that's in the same boat as me - whether you're trying to establish yourself in a foreign country or just graduated college, I hope that you can find something valuable in my postings.

Here's a little background info on me

I came to the US in 2003 as exchange student from Germany. I went to a public high school in Idaho for a year. In 2004, I was offered a scholarship from St Paul Preparatory School (www.stpaulprep.org), an excellent private high school now located downtown St Paul, MN.  I accepted and graduated with something close to a 3.7 GPA from there.

In 2005, shortly before I graduated high school, I was offered a scholarship from Hamline University, one of the colleges I had been looking at (I also looked at St Thomas, Gustavus Adolphus, and the University of Pennsylvania). Because of the scholarship and friends and familiarity with the Twin Cities, I chose Hamline.

I attended Hamline for 3 and a half years and graduated January 31st, 2009 with a BA in International Management and Economics minor and a GPA of 3.18/4.0.

I also worked a lot throughout my college career. My freshman year I spent working at Hamline's Career Development Center and at a company I had founded (outsourcing consulting). My sophomore year I started working at Hamline's Post Office where I stayed until my first semester as senior. I also still worked at my company until fall 2007 when I got rid of both the German office and the UK office. It got too much with school, social life, and girl friend who disliked being second to my cell phone. She left me shortly after that anyways. In November 2007, I got an internship as software developer at uTead, Inc. in Minneapolis where I became project manager of 6 developers in February 2008. I stayed with the company until around December 2008. I didn't want to work for the last month or two in college and just enjoy the last few days in school with friends before the "real life" begins.

So, now 17 days after I graduated, I'm still looking for a job. Until the middle of January, I had something lined up that seemed to be a pretty sure thing. It was a position as OBI Consultant at Eagle Creek Software Services, however, management decided against hiring me because I required a work visa down the road. That came as a blow as I had been interviewing there since the end of November. Last Thursday I interviewed at Hollister Co. for assistant store manager. I think the interview went pretty well. The district manager was laid back and seems cool, so I'm waiting to hear back from them to see if I got it. He promised to let me know this Friday.

Thanks for reading all this - I know it's long. I'll post some more later in the week with info on some other things that I'm looking into right now. Please comment and I'm always looking for some advice and encouragement. 

I also want to thank everybody that has helped & guided me so far, including: My family (parents, grandparents, siblings), James & Lori O'Dell, Debra & Rich Johnson, Elizabeth & John Tillmanns, Dr. Watson, Dr. Tarsitano, Dr. Mawk, Professors Dr. Gunderson, Dr. Christensen, Dr. Hagen, Dr. Somerville, Gary & Bev Kampa, as well as my good friends Markus, Aleksandra, Kate, Katie, Paul and Eric, and many many others without whom I wouldn't be where I am today!

Until next time,

Johnny