Asa Jay's weblog

Two and a half years of school has left me a little out of the loop. I knew the BBC was producing a new Doctor Who series but two things prevented me from getting involved. The first was the fact it makes it to the United States late, and the second was that I was I still in school. Be that as it may, a friend at work has allowed me to watch a copy, starting from the beginning. Tonight, I just finished the first two episodes and I am suitably impressed.

It’s been some 20 plus years since I was first introduced to The Doctor. My first experience was in tech school with the Air Force, while stationed at Keesler AFB in Mississippi. One late night surfing through the channels on the television in the day room, I stumbled across this odd English program with a frightened young girl and a curly haired tall man in a long coat and even longer scarf. It looked sci-fi so it intrigued me. The episode was “The Brain of Mobius” or something like that (I don’t really follow these that close), and it ran uninterrupted. Even at the end of the show, I didn’t really understand what I had seen.

The acting was alright, the sets seemed a bit cheesy but the back story was intriguing. Who was this doctor person, and what was the relationship to this Sara Jane Smith person? Well, I didn’t manage to catch any more episodes there but once I got back home, I found this show called Doctor Who on the local PBS station, and it all became clear. I then followed it through the next two Doctors and it faded away. For almost any sci-fi fan, the resurrection of Doctor Who is almost a watershed event.

Tonight as I watched, I found myself engrossed in the same old, but familiar theme. Having only watched the first two episodes I can at least say it was certainly made for old fans. We get a passing quip from the new Doctor as he passes a mirror and comments on his new appearance. We don’t really know what his very last appearance was but he seems to be okay with his new look. This of course plays on the fans knowledge that The Doctor regenerates. Something else the fans knew about, was the TARDIS. Read the rest of this entry »

Two and a half years ago I started down a path to a new degree. I had reached a kind of glass ceiling that didn’t allow me to move up in the working world and experience new challenges. I tried changing jobs to take a promotion but that didn’t work out so well, and that in itself is another long story. But one of the things that hit me hard was an experienced division manager looking me square in the face and asking me point blank why I didn’t have a four year degree. That was embarrassing. But what followed hurt me more, he asked if I thought I could run the local office. He was from another division and was most likely going to fire the manager who had hired me, and this was a way of telling me I might have had the chance at being the office manager if had a four year degree.

I told him I’d like to think I could do a good job, but was realistic enough and perhaps a bit humble enough to also tell him I wasn’t ready and didn’t have quite enough experience. He thought that was a good answer and we got along very well. He had me work with one other person in the office and between the two of us we managed the end of the critical project we were working on. All this after our direct manager resigned, probably seeing the writing on the wall. But it all got me to thinking… maybe I need that four year degree.

At the time, I recently had a friend who graduated the accelerated continuing studies program at Whitworth College, obtaining a degree in Organizational Management. Since that was the direction I felt my strengths were in, I contacted him, got the details and then contacted an advisor at the college. The rest is now history.

Twenty classes, two and a half years, a name change from Whitworth College to Whitworth University, and I’m done. Read the rest of this entry »