what happened last semester??

So fast forward to December 13th 2005. School is over, I'm at home, and I'm leaving for a 3.5 week multi-continent trek tomorrow at 5AM. Wow... so that was it, fall 2005 is in the books. One would suppose that a person would start getting ancy and bored with school at this point.... I would have to disagree... as I get older, school seems to get better and better. I'm sure as a Tech person, I could make that into some seemingly ridicilious inverse graph, but for the sake of blogging, and for the sake of my readers. I'm going to keep that to a minimum. So in the next few paragraphs, I am going to sum up what my recolection of the past 3 months have been, and what its done for me.

So picking up where I left off. which I believe was late september or something of that nature, was probably around homecoming time. I think it was about the same time when school starts to really pick up, and of course with all of the homecoming activities, it has every right to do so. Looking back on my freshman year, I remember I was so scared to do anything, because I thought I would fail outta school if I deviated from my schedule. Well 5 years can really do a number on that kind of lifestyle, So this year, I tried to get my hands on every single homecoming event possible. Mock Rock, Photo Scavenger Hunt, Dizzy Jump, Mini500 (as a senior mind you...), Tech Trivia, you name it, handed out Red Bull at the Cake Race and I got the opportunity to MC the talent show, Reck Parade, and be on the field at the Clemson game,.. not a bad couple of days if you ask me... the one down side to that was when Saturday Oct 31st - night rolled around, I passed out around 10pm.... something I'm not particuarly proud of, but you can only do it for so long. So after the fun of passing the crown, I guess life returned to normal for me, not that it was weird during the past year, but I definatly liked not having eyes turned towards me as the external GT Campus rep, i felt that it was pressure lifted off my shoulders.

Since then, I've really felt awesome, and more confident about my future plans. I'm still in the same boat as far as choosing a graduate school, but at least I know it's something I'm definatly interested and passionate towards, and something I could do for a long while. In these last two months (between november and december), there have been some pretty busy weeks of school work, but I really have felt that my free time has turned into real free time. I am not nearly as involved anymore, which is great, 1. to have free time, 2. to see some of the younger guys step up and really impress ya. With my free time, I've gotten to work out more, try some new things (climbing a bit more, reading a bit more, and just being more flexible with the schedule), I just made it home last weekend, and it felt great to get back to Illinois for a while. Its strangely satisfying to go there, and feel like things have never changed. I'm sure many small town folks have the same feeling.

But in this last week or so, I've been lucky not to have too many friends graduating, but it is sad to see some of the ones that are leaving. I guess now i'm really starting to feel like the minority at GT as far as being old. I think by this time in the spring semester, I will have plenty of great memories to look back on, and will be confident that at least for me, I made college everything that I'd hoped for.

In order to do so, I need to make sure I get my list posted of things to do before I graduate, and I have a feeling that between me and my other pals, that list is going to get pretty long. Well at least for now, I am going to get some rest, In the next 3.5 weeks, I'm sure there are going to be some interesting stories between Thailand, Taiwan, LA and Salt Lake City...,

Paul