First Few Days Back at School

January 22nd, 2020

It has currently been raining non-stop the entire day, and I HATE it. Biking in the rain is horrible because the water from my back tire gets yeeted to my rear area, leaving me with water stains that make people wonder whether or not I can control my bowel movements.

Being back at school has been oddly tiring. I’m happy to be with my friends, and I’m taking some pretty interesting classes this semester. However, I feel slightly intimidated by some of the goals that I’ve set for myself and the bridges I need to cross to achieve them. It’s easy to say that you want to do all of these things, but it’s definitely a little challenging to put them into practice.

Concurrency with Rossbach seems like a great class. I enjoy his teaching style and his practical approach to systems concepts. I think one of the things that has drawn me to this field of computer science is because it revolves more about hands-on programming than theoretical non-sense that I just hate. I know, I know, theory is critical to computer science. However, I honestly could care less. It’s just something that I don’t really want to do. My parallel computation class also seems to be really interesting. I get to work with some interesting technologies and I hope to learn from a different angle that concurrency won’t necessarily offer.

I decided to take a weight training class to hold me accountable to a proper lifting schedule. This way, I’ll be able to work out at least twice a week. I hope to make some friends in this class and learn the proper forms for squatting and deadlifting (I’ve avoided these two workouts because I don’t want to annihilate my knees from not knowing what I’m doing. The instructors seem like they know what’s up so hopefully, they can guide me.) The only annoying this about this class is that it’s tucked inside the stadium. My bike has been very helpful with this, but without it, I think I’d be a little screwed getting to and from the gym.

I’m not going to lie, I’ve been feeling pretty overwhelmed ever since I’ve gotten back to school. On one hand, I’m attempting to do research in a field that I virtually know nothing about and on the other hand, I’m starting to reconsider some of my life choices because my mind never seems to be able to make its mind. One of my flaws is that I constantly fall for the “grass is greener” trap, where I consider other situations to be better than what I’m fortunate to have right now. I feel like maybe I should have committed to doing some research over this summer instead of hunting for an internship. Maybe I could get an NSF funded thing or something. I don’t know. I feel strangely lost about all of this even though I have so much to be grateful for. I think the lyrics from Paralysis by Young the Giant sums up how I feel right now:

Paralyzed on the floor And lately I’ve been feeling I’m not thinking anything at all Will I survive in the dead of night? And now the lights are fading faster Save me from my disaster, my disaster

I’m hoping that everything goes smoothly this semester. I want to have fun, be happy, learn a lot, and feel fulfilled. If I can achieve these things, I think that will be pretty successful from my perspective. Gotta just hope for the best!