AoNikki

Boston suddenly becomes chilly these last two days, and before I know it the summer air seemed to have been over. Not that it ever really came, for that matter. But the winds are strong, the rain comes more frequently, and - although the leaves haven't turned red - the trees seem to be more "sober." It was pouring yesterday, when I was sitting in my room - warmly lit, listening to Norah Jones, studying 2.001, with Eve - the black cat - next to me on the window and Angleton - the white cat - curling up in the closet. I'm describing the weather because I only notice it when it changes, like this.

6 classes didn't seem like a lot of work in the first two weeks, but now as it's the end of September and mid-terms are coming, I feel like I just don't have enough time. The reactor has taken all of my energy during the summer, and so I'm no longer comfortable with 5 hours of sleep per day. I switched back to biphasis instead. The good side of it though, is that I've been accustomed to waking up early (relatively early - MIT students' standards) every morning and thus often go to class on time... or at least skipping them less frequently (...) In fact, I managed to not have missed any HASS class! The key to it is not to have any scheduled before 12:30.

I was in a good mood during the weekend. Well, I'm always in a good mood, but this weekend was extraordinarily pleasant: a lot of sleeping hours, reactor work during a shutdown week and an interesting Chicago Pizza conversation afterward, privatizing the bench that my group made during 1.016, lunch with Evan's mom, shopping cart fixing... It sure alleviated the crazy density of assignments/deadlines/mid-terms/essays/meetings this week.

While this week is probably the most tiring one since the beginning of the semester, it's also really exciting and gives me a sense of accomplishment due to many meetings and initiatives on matters outside of classes. For example, Nick and I just met to discuss plans for WHP for this semester (shameless plug: http://web.mit.edu/hemisphere/index.shtml ). WHP already has a few things to do this week; although Nick is in charge for the most part, that still adds some extra work. Nick is taking D-lab, which was what I initially wanted to take but figured that adding a 7th class was probably not a good idea. Fioni and I are going to the MIT Admission Office tomorrow to talk about the new class of UWCers and establishing a group. While Fioni is going on with 1-E (Environmental Engineering), I'm now a Mechanical Engineering major - more on that later. I'm also back to my APO Printshop Manager duty - not fully aware of everything yet, but getting there (probably will work on it this weekend). I'm also trying to do more for Spherio - and one of the things I'm doing is reviewing and studying Spanish, to give it back its bilingual focus it used to have.

So now I'm a course 2A (Mechanical Engineering major). I wanted to be 1-E, but bio/chem and me just don't get along. Anyways I'm quite happy being a MechE, and my plan is to do my MechE concentration in International Development and minor in Energy (it's an awesome minor!) Probably not this term, but next term or next year I want to get involved with EWB (Engineers Without Borders). In the mean time, I'm just trying to read/study materials related to MechE and Energy (outside of classes) as much as I can.

In my free time (if I have any free time), I tend to hang out around Random. Recently I've started playing Go, and will look more strategically into it if I have time. Working on Saturday evenings kind of prevents me from playing many Guild Games, but hopefully after I'm officially licensed (if I passed the exam!) I'll have a different working schedule. Other than that, I enjoy walking outside, jogging sometimes, talking to random people, or just be generally cheerful. I'm also starting to build random things (or making plans to do so), so I also spent a quite some time scavenging materials. Several conversations recently made me realized that I tend to ignore the bad sides of a lot of things (including people) and just be really happy with the good sides I see in them. This realization actually makes me happy; while some people have told me that I was not critical enough, I think it's not true. It's like when you're grading a paper: I don't give everything full credit and subtract points as I see something I don't like. Instead, I start with 0 and check everything good I can find. I think that's a much better approach.

I guess that's my current situation in a nutshell