I'm sitting in Boston Logan Airport right now, surfing on free wifi, thanks to Google. Flight leaves in ~25 min. Not much to do, so why not blog?

Coming home is a weird sensation. I'm not really sure of what to expect when I get back. It's always odd to think of other people's lives continuing on parallel your own life experience. You never know what they've been through until you intersect again. I'm excited to hear how all my other '09ers have been faring in college.

Even weirder will be living at home. I remember when I first got to Olin, it felt like summer camp. Fun activities, hanging out with people all the time. But in the past few weeks, I have grown accustomed to the spontaneous atmosphere of dorm life. Now, I return home to a space that could house at least 10 people. I can only imagine how bored I'm going to get again. I wonder what I will be doing to fill the void.

And finally, I wonder what it will be like to have a mom again. At Olin, I've had freedom and independence like I've never known. It has enabled me to do things like shave my head and get a mohawk, play ultimate at night when its so cold the sweat mists off your chest, go sliding out on the great lawn when it rains all day. What happens to the parent-child dynamic when a kid goes to college? This pandora's box is about to be opened.

on the bright side, home cooked food! driving! sleep! all good reasons why thanksgiving break is going to be awesome.

~boarding~

cya soon.

We're moving into a different stage at Olin. Pretty much all the work I'm doing now is team work. Let's do a review.

ModSim-Partner modeling projects
Design Nature-Team swimmer project, 4 members
Anthropology-Partners-->supergroup(4 total) H1N1 presentation
ModCon-Labs with individual writeups but partner data collection

When I first came to Olin, I was like, "yeah, working in teams is awesome. It'll be so cool." But by now, the novelty has worn off. It sucks working with other people. I suck at working with other people. Everyone has different schedules and different ways of working. The other night I sat around not doing any work because my partner couldn't meet up with me. It sucks feeling like you can't do anything then because you know it'll mean you have to give up stuff you want to do later.

More than anything though, it's given me insight to how self-centered I am. I think about all the things I'll be missing out on when I'm cramming for a project later, but what about the things I'm making my partners miss out on when I ask them to work on it earlier? Obviously there's always the issue of more urgent work too. If you've got a diagnostic due the next day, it's more important to do that than the project due next week.

Gah, i don't even know where I'm going with this. College is so hard. I'm so glad this semester is pass/no record. I would be dying like peter if i wasn't. There's just so much stuff I don't get. College PWNs me so hard.

On the other hand, the stuff i'm doing/failing at is SUPER COOL. Modeling the effects of a HIV drug? Building a mechanical swimmer toy? Studying the social effects of H1N1? yeah. This place is freakin awesome.

Did I mention its 70 degrees outside today? NO WAIIII

I was thinking about my post yesterday and realized how terribly selective I was with details, so I decided to make a second post with some of the things I haven't love as much about being at college.

It really sucks not to have a car anymore. I have to bump rides off of everyone if i want to go anywhere. i'm fortunate that I befriended someone who lives around here so he has a car. But, I don't get rides from him often cuz he's been bombarded with requests

On the note of befriending people. It's also been tough not knowing people. You all know how bad I am with names. So meeting people constantly around here has been really hard. It seriously did take me like a month to learn the names of ppl in my own class(86 btw). And just today, I forgot someone's name. So, i'm clearly still working on it. But aside from names, it's just different feeling like i'm cut off from people I can talk to for real. It's been pretty much a month straight of small talk. I've had little spots of deeper conversations here and there, but I miss being able to just ask people at YG how their walk with God is or talking about my own struggles with them.

It's also really different going from being a leader in church to a "nobody" here. I've visited CBCGB a couple times now, and i'll be going to their english service retreat next weekend. But I'm still keeping an open mind in terms of which church i should go to. It's just weird cause i felt pressure back at home to have it all together in terms of my walk with God and stuff, but now all that pressure is gone because no one knows me. I realize how many questions I have about God and the bible. Stuff that I didn't know the answer to back in HS, but wouldn't have wanted to ask, or maybe didn't have a good explanation for.

I'm not only getting dwarfed spiritually, but also academically. People here are reaaaally smart. and yeah, people keep telling me to keep things in perspective, that i'm already among some really smart people, so being dumb isn't so bad. It's just frustrating when you don't get something for a long time and others get it right away, like in ModCon. I feel so underprepared for all my classes because so much is expected out of us. There's definitely a higher bar for us as Olin students. I was talking to some UMass grads from CBCGB and they were sharing how tough engineering was, but then when they found out I was from Olin, they were like, "oh i bet you're already really good. you won't have a problem". What does that mean anyways? I definitely don't feel like my engineering career is going to be problem-free.

Lastly, I feel like i keep getting reminded of friends from home. I thought of Hayson when I met a girl working on homework on a friday night before a long weekend. I thought of Jen when a girl here started beating me up. I thought of peter when I saw the mixed martial arts stand at the babson club fair. I thought of Phil when I watched people beat halo 3 on legendary all in one day. There are a bunch more, but i can't put them all here.

-sigh- i'd keep going, but, sadly, i have a buttload of work to do. one of the unfortunate outcomes of going to Olin. I'll leave you with a saying that's on an Olin tshirt:

Work, Social, Sleep-pick two