My Life : One Year Later...

So welcome to 2007, I'm glad you could join in on the newest addition to my story, so since my last installment, alot has happened. I graduated! Before jumping ahead too far, I just wanted to point out how it is much harder to do anything academically related knowing full well that you have that one degree under your belt. But at any rate, I will continue with my story. So the time is May 2006. After a quick trip back to Cedar Point to relive the days of my past...I made a quick stopover in Chicago to visit a few friends, then to drive back down to Gibson City. It's always great to go back to the Midwest, I have this strange affinity for the place, even though it's flat, humid, and boring. But it's still home. After that, it was time to put some time with the family. Last spring, we went out to Seattle and traveled much of the Pacific Northwest. Truly gorgeous place, but I wouldn't recommend going at that time of year. We ran into alot of rain, clouds, and unpleasant weather in general. But we made the best of it. Definately hit up plenty of national parks: North Cascade, Olympic, Mt. Rainer, Glacier, Banff, Waterton... Truly an awesome trip.

So moving onto the summer, worked at summer discovery at ucla again! This summer was vastly different from the past. I mean, it's hard to dislike sunny warm days for 2 months, and having your main purpose be taking kids to the beach and theme parks, but somehow the staff was missing some chemistry this year, so it just wasn't the same. Maybe it's because it was my second swing through with it, who knows, It's a job, but I shouldn't complain, it is far better than many!

After the summer's end, Cat came out and we did a short trip down to San Diego, that was a blast, we got to hang out at this little hostel in Point Loma and do some nice sight seeing along the coast.

So if you haven't heard, I made it into grad school, and I somehow managed to make it into Berkeley. How that happened... I still don't really know, but I'm here. So I won't go into much detail about last semester, but it's probably the most stressed I've been in my academic life. I was talking to a law student tonight at dinner, we spoke how we wanted to have our higher education really challenge us (this is before we were in of course...), and how idealistic we were about school... well fall 2006, all of that was shattered. School was hard and relentless. The challenge had turned into a battle. But luckily for me, semesters come in the form of 4 months. As I told many of my friends at home, I love Berkeley, I just don't exactly feel the same way about the courses. But I can pretty reassuringly say that this is the place I should be, and I definitely have no regrets about continuing onto grad school. I know through last semester Cat and I had alot of challenges to face with a new school and a new job, but we helped eachother through that.

Last semester really gave me an opportunity to try some new things though, I started windsurfing, and did quite a bit of camping around the area. Finally bought a snowboard, and did a little painting. It was nice to have a chance of pace, and it's definately been that from my experience as an undergrad. My network of friends were gone, constant student organization meetings were gone, and a feeling that I had to be a senior "role model" were gone. Not saying that I didn't value those things, I really did. After all, that's why I loved Georgia Tech so much. But having a change was nice and refreshing.

So as the semester winded down, I prepared myself for my hardest finals week since... well in my life. I'm not sure if that says much about my academics as an undergrad... but I argue it's a different playing field of peopel in a grad program. So after making it through my final, I hopped onto a plane (literally 2 hours later), back to Atlanta. I was able to relax and spend some time with Cat and the family. Then about a week later, I had another challenge before me. Venezuela. I was totally pumped about going, yet a bit apprehensive. I'd traveled abroad before, and traveled abroad alone before. But this time, I was taking those two attributes, and adding the traveling abroad, alone, and feeling like you're going to get robbed at any moment.

That threw an interesting curveball for me. Lukcily I spent a good bit of the trip with a few very cool aussies that I had recently met. We climed Mt. Roraima in the Southeastern part of the country, a truly awesome experience. I'd really recommend it to anyone. But, make sure you read the alititudes in meters not feet. (3000ft is a little lower than 3000m, whoops) So that little escapade lasted about 10 days, then I made my way back to Atlanta. (does anyone remember that American airlines commerical with the biz man in latin america releived to see that shiny bird at the airport...) well replace that biz man and that plane, with me and a Delta plane headed back to Atlanta.

So the spring semester arrived, came, and is now almost gone. To be quite honest, this semester has been a vacation. I've loved every minute of it. I've gone snowboarding at least 5 times, gone to 3 conferences, and have had the chance to take control of my life again. I don't know if this is the eye in the storm or not, but I really must say that spring 2007 hasn't been to bad at all. I for the most part enjoy my clasess, and feel pretty comfortable in the groove that Berkeley has placed me in. Also, I of course feel really fortunate and lucky for being able to have this lifestyle this semester, and hope that with some hard work, it will continue to be at this pace.

Spring break was last week, and I again followed tradition and had a week full of random little trips. Catherine had been out to visit for the week before, that was really great having her around and being able to explore around Berkeley and other parts of the Bay Area with her. Then spend a few nights at her company-expensed hotel in the city, not to shabby either. After that, it was back to Chicago to visit a few h.s. friends, then to Washington to meet up with others going to East Asia-Pacific for this summer. Oh yeah, I slugged together this proposal last fall, and somehow they awarded me money to research abroad this summer. Wow, I get pretty lucky. Let's hope it doesn't run out at the wrong time! But I'm really excited about that this summer, we'll see how things go. But for now, I will end this super-fragmented post, and hope the next one will be a bit more concise, detailed, and not span over a year.