And so, to quote the movie, another year passes. How is it with you?
Because, having finished Spring semester and going now into Summer, I feel like I should talk a little bit about the past year.
But first, let's give it up for air conditioning, and its presence in my room. Because heat with humidity sucks the suck fantastic. It's another way in which Oregon is vastly superior to the world - hot? Maybe. Humid? No.
The tornado warning (!) last week was interesting, too.
Anyway. About this time last year, I was freaking out a lot, trying to figure out if I was getting into SCSU, realizing that otherwise I was going to need to move to Rhode Island to go to URI like, right then. Working a lot.
So, over the course of 2006, I:
1. Started and completed my first real sustained bout of employment working for The Man. It told a lot of things to me and to others, but what I think showed up the most was that when push comes to shove, I can show up, get the job done, and get it done well. In the dark. In the rain. In the cold. Sick. In the early morning. In the repressive heat. Now, I'd been telling people I could do that sort of thing for years, but I got believed a little more after CC. I also got paid, which was pretty cool.
2. Since 2004, I've been taking fairly extensive trips at least once a year. In '04, I lived in London and travelled Europe. '05 was my jaunt to PA to meet Sarah and see U2. In '06, I drove across the country. It hasn't been all that long, relatively speaking, since it bothered me to go to Portland, and let me tell you that I5 is light years better than Hartford ever hoped to be. I wasn't even sure I could do 10 hours in a car, and then I spent a week doing just that. Plus saw some interesting stuff.
3. While I've lived in away from my parents for years, and lived in various different arrangements, 2006 was my first experience with hunting down, renting, moving in to, and living in an apartment. Not coincidentally, the first also required me to live in a hotel for a week - another first. It's gone ok. I'm in a good place in a good neighborhood, and unlike some other landlords, mine does not randomly extort money from people. It turns out, contrary to my mother's expectations, that I can actually live on my own, and it appears that I can actually cook, although Sarah can tell you all sorts of entertaining stories from the attempts.
4. I wasn't sure about moving away from everything and everyone I knew. Mostly this has gone ok, but only because of that new communications tool, the Internet. If I am not precisely in Oregon all the time, at least we can still game and whatever, which is a lot better than what it must have been like back in the barbaric Phone Age, when dinosaurs called the Earth. On a landline. Too, I've met some new people here, and had fun with old friends in new ways, and that's been pretty good, to tell the truth.
5. Oh yeah, speaking of phones, this whole cell phone thing. I like mine. It's working out ok for me. I'm still a fan of the text-based communication (sure am glad I live in the IM age) or just, yknow, going and talking in person, but it's a pretty handy device, I must say. A heretical infernal device of evil, to be sure, but a little evil is good from time to time.
6. Oh, and I went to school for the first time in two years. That's the big one, isn't it? It's been...interesting. At the end of my undergrad years in '04, I had spent the better part of 18 years in school, and I was burnt out, exhausted, and never wanted to set foot in a classroom again. I expected to take a year off, of course, and expected to go back for grad school, but I wasn't really anticipating the experience. Too, I was not the best student through my HS and undergrad years, and it showed, which worried me some.
Little did I realize that over my two year break, I would end up deeply missing being in school. And I did. And, while SCSU isn't quite OSU (it, and I, are a lot different), it's been a pretty good place to be. I worried a lot about what being in grad school was going to be like, and I shouldn't have. I have the most supportive faculty ever, the classes, even when they suck, are fantastic, and it's really the best academic experience I've ever had. I've had fun, I'm doing something I really enjoy doing, and I'm pulling the best grades I've had since about 8th grade. I pulled As my first semester, and while I don't know my grades for this last semester, they should be good. I'm happy about that.
So it's all generally worked out. CT's not the greatest place in the world (tossup between Oregon and London there), but except for the infernal heat and whyever the hell I'm being attacked by spiders, it hasn't been too bad.
As to what's coming up on the next season of The Rabbit Show, I'm taking two classes over the summer, one of which is an internship that should be interesting, once I figure out where I'm going for it. For fall, I also have three classes (which I may drop to two), followed by a single class in the spring for my final project. During this, I'll have actual work to do as a graduate assistant, plus being a member of the graduate student affairs committee. Busy, to be sure, but interesting.
And to bring it around to what I quoted in the beginning, how is it with you?
Posted by Dwip at May 26, 2007 10:28 AM