Today was a Good Day

On Monday I discovered I had missed my chance to apply for a Software Engineering internship at Google. In North America, at least. I was both disappointed and frustrated, having been prepared to spend the afternoon working on my application but never having received a deadline. On Wednesday I was startled to discover the student to whom I had given a 13% was a man in his mid-thirties with a wife and kids and a very reasonable appeal for a better grade than he received. Somehow even this simple, calmly negotiated disagreement gnawed at me for the rest of the day. Yesterday the observatory was closed after we came all the way from the South 40 to go to it, and today it rained.

Overall, it was a good week.

I found a renewed desire for adventure both at school and for this summer and felt the highest I have all month, both literally and emotionally. Literally, you ask? Despite the fact that the observatory was closed, not all of the doors were, and we managed to get out onto the lowest roof of Crow and, with a little work, up to a point above the observatory. I suppose I was still riding that wave today, and the combination of that with Flatterland, my anticipation of the weekend, the rain, and my continual discovery of wonderful music was a recipe for that ever-hunted but oft-elusive Good Day.

Speaking of music, check out Kina Grannis on YouTube, MySpace, or iTunes. She is awesome.

The Good Kind of Tired

You know the kind of tired you are when you sleep too late or stay inactive all day? Perhaps it's better referred to as sleepiness or lethargy. But for now, for the sake of contrast, it's the bad kind of tired. It's the kind of tired that means you don't have the energy or motivation to do much of anything, but also doesn't really make you want to sleep. In fact, when you're the bad kind of tired, you often can't sleep.

Right now, I'm the good kind of tired. It's the kind of tired that that starts when you get three hours of sleep because you're up working on a circuit design problem that's frustrating at first but kind of fun when you solve your problems and end up with an elegant solution. This kind of tired grows out of that initial exhaustion when you get nine hours of sleep the next night but still have to power through a full day of commitments. It is more subtle then. You feel it in your joints and every time you rub your head. Then this kind of tired hits you when you do your last workout of the week. It spreads through your arms and your legs. It settles into the soles of your feet and crawls out to your fingertips where it is felt with every last key you type.

Still, this kind of tired is optimistic. It would love to go out and do something. Maybe frisbee? But it's cold outside. And no one can think of anything to do. As you watch The Fifth Element, this kind of tired starts to remind you that what you really want is sleep. So as you savor one more 60% dark chocolate square you begin to really notice the feeling in your toes as they play with the table. The soothing massage of your neck on the back of the couch. And when someone suggests playing Gauntlet, this kind of tired pulls you, strong and seductive, away to your bed.

It waits, patiently at first, for you to do what you need to do at the end of the night—brushing your teeth, swishing from your new bottle of Listerine, clearing papers and books from your bed. But as you type the post you missed last night because you wanted nine hours of sleep and didn't have one of the pictures you wanted, this kind of tired starts to pull a little harder. As the message goes on, you go slower and slower and want more and more to give in and burrow into the mattress and pillow, pulling your blanket tight, and sinking beautifully and blissfully into a long-awaited and well-deserved sleep. And so, with the sounds of swords and mages coming from the tv in the background, you finally... happily... serenely... collapse.

No Amount of Wine

"You see," he said, "You're choosing to love a changing person."

maybe when i think about you i know exactly what i want.

maybe what i want is to fly. and

maybe when i fly the breeze brushes 

smooth, light, and cool on my skin. but

maybe when the breeze brushes smooth, light, and cool on my skin 

it burns, cold and hard in my eyes.

maybe i have no idea what i'm doing.

maybe i'm not perfect and neither is life. and yet

maybe, just maybe, every time i go to sleep, every time i wake, 

every time i walk to class...

maybe i know exactly what i want

Back to Work

Arriving back at WashU after spending Saturday at home, I quickly remembered that

1. I am a TA

2. I do in fact have homework on weekends, despite their being followed by a light Monday

3. I can't turn down anyone asking for help

And all of those are good things, even though they frequently lead to my being up at 3 am, as they did today. When I have people all around me, on- and off-line, asking for help on physics and computer science, and I know how to answer all of their questions, I feel good and I feel like I'm where I need to be. I sometimes (often) feel like I don't have the service or leadership credentials expected of me as a Danforth scholar, or perhaps as a good person in general, so it's reassuring to know the academic help I can provide is still valued.

I also recorded a song for KWUR Theater of Air today. It was my first time in a recording studio and it was kind of cool to experience, even though it took a long time and by the end I could barely get through my part because my lips were so tired. It has certainly been a while since I was in marching band. But, as I realized later in disappointment, I didn't think to take any pictures there, which means I have once again reached the end of the day with the challenge of finding something in the limited space of my dorm room to summarize it. I considered taking a picture of mystery girl when she was here today, but then thought that might be a little creepy.

Better Late than Never

Yawn. Sleep. Work. Scratch. Groan. What?

This week I am realizing two things. First, this might be a pretty exhausting semester. I'm going on my second straight week of not going to bed before 2 am and frequently staying up past three (though that still gives me eight hours of sleep on weekends). And I'm still exercising, trying to read several books, and become generally more organized, all while dealing with my heavy work- and course-load.

Second, I need to complain less. And "complaining" here also includes having a holier-than-thou attitude about my schedule. I'm not really sure how much I do either of those things verbally (complain or sport an attitude), but three things I encountered this week made me notice that, at the very least, I do them mentally.

My first encounter was in Bear's Den. I ordered pesto pasta and was waiting for it to be mixed and boxed for me while the guy who had just been in front of me in line was sprinkling on some parmesan cheese. In fact, he took so long putting it on I thought I might be able to beat him to the checkout. Had he taken any longer, I would have. Instead I took solace in the fact that there was no one in line on our side of the cashier, which meant I could still check out without waiting in a significant line. But when the cashier finished ringing up the person she was working with and turned to us, this guy in front of me, who I see now has intentionally been maintaining distance from the register, told her he would wait for her to handle the end of the line on the other side.

I'm not sure if I explained that well enough for you to follow it, but this fellow pasta eater turned down a coincidental cut in line that I sometimes try to use on purpose. As simple as it was, it made a big impression on me and made me realize that I should consider other people a lot more than I do now.

My second encounter was with fellow Danforth Scholars at a meeting about our Spring Break trip to Biloxi, MS. Everyone there was busy, and I didn't even think about complaining myself. In fact, it is probably being in this group of people that motivated me to do as much as possible in the first place.

My last encounter this week was a phone call earlier tonight from the most resilient girl I have ever met. Despite facing a multitude of issues that would each be particularly difficult on their own, she remains upbeat, incredibly enthusiastic (most of the time), and says next to nothing about any of her problems. People like her just make me think "whoah!" and they are the best part of being a student at WashU. I hope I can learn from every last one of them.

Goodnight, World

I swear blogging has been on my to-do list every night since Saturday. It just gets late at night and I'm tired and... anyway, see you in five hours, world!

Rain is beautiful.

A green light, a tidal wave, and the beginning of spring (but no apologies)

After a lot of thinking and talking about the semester in New Zealand some of my friends have been planning, I finally did some work of my own on Friday to start making it a reality. I arranged a meeting with my academic adviser to talk about the process of getting classes approved for transfer credit. As I should have expected, it went very well. My adviser is always smiling, informative, and fun to talk to. From the very beginning he expressed a lot of enthusiasm for the project, and loved the idea of going as a group. He told me what I should be doing, what classes would likely transfer, and that, as the department chair, he would get to make the final decision for approving my classes. I walked out feeling elated and ready to make my first trip ever outside of the United States.

20 minutes later I was meeting with my independent study adviser and feeling completely different. I was already a little nervous having not been able to read everything I was supposed to for this week. But, to my surprise and disappointment, the reading wasn't even mentioned. He was more concerned whether I had been able to log into my new Linux account. I hadn't. Had I looked at the code? No, I had been waiting until I could use it on the account. In the middle of talking to me, not five minutes into our meeting, he stopped. “Go get that taken care of. Now.”

The abruptness and tone of the command startled me, and as I set off on the task I got the feeling he was extremely unhappy that I had not resolved the issue. But my account hadn't even been created until Tuesday, I didn't get the password until Wednesday, and I let him know Thursday that I couldn't get in. I wasn't that far behind, was I? I ended up at the office of one of the older CTS managers. The “Live free or die – UNIX” license plate mounted above his door struck me as the most lively artifact anywhere in sight. Sitting alone at his terminal (whose dual monitors were producing the only light in the room), making little attempt at conversation with me or the person who had brought me here, he matched the stereotypical computer programmer to a frightening degree.

Fortunately he was able to fix the problem quickly and I was soon on my way back to my independent study adviser's room, trying to shake off the creepy feeling I had gotten so far. Back in his room, which was also as dark as could be managed, I found him watching some sort of professional development video the School was required him to watch. By now I am used to waiting for our meetings to start, so I pulled out some of that reading I hadn't finished and waited. The video ended, but on the first question out of his mouth I had already failed again: “Did you get everything compiled and running?” Well, no... I thought you just wanted me to fix the login problem...

This time the command was also the end of the meeting. No theory discussion, no questions of how my week was. This felt very different and very uncomfortable. I went to the nearest computer lab and opened a command line for my new account. Well... I tried to. I guess I've never done this on Linux before... I opened up the account in an explorer window. God, there were so many directories. Which one was mine? Do I want the home folder? Research? Projects? How about Bioalign? That's the name of the cluster... oh, there's a “Cluster” folder too... Oh! jgs2! That's me! Oh... here's another one... and... another one? No, that was the last one

I chose one, which turned out to be wrong, and saved the files I had been given. At this point I was pretty flustered, couldn't remember what I was supposed to be doing after realizing that there weren't really instructions provided, and didn't know how to deal with what I had, which mostly seemed to be long lines of terminal commands that I either couldn't get to work or didn't know what they did. The closest thing I did have to instructions was in a format I had never seen, couldn't find online, and didn't have the slightest hope of using.

I was overwhelmed. I stayed there in the lab, moving files around and trying to make sense of what I was supposed to do, until after 5:00, when I knew my adviser would be gone for the day and my suite would be getting ready to cook Ian's birthday dinner. Back at the dorm, I recounted what had happened that afternoon and suddenly felt on the verge of tears. Thankfully everyone was very sympathetic and I was able to enjoy myself making some delicious pasta and meat sauce.

The night turned out very well. Not only did we get to enjoy good food we made ourselves, but it was also the Zach-approved official beginning of spring. We brought in the new season with a nighttime game of frisbee 500 and a session of stargazing which, while not at all as bright as I had over break, was still beautiful and very relaxing. This morning I christened Spring for myself with a run to Forrest Park and reading on Art Hill. I felt a lot better than I had yesterday afternoon. Having distance from it helped me put it in perspective, but perhaps more important was the fact that I was able to get some sleep.

And so, speaking of that...

Year 21, Month 7: In which Jeremy learns Linux

I am wondering whether Thursdays are a bad choice for my weekly publishing requirement. They are long days, only one day before Friday, and I want to spend as much time as possible getting ready for my independent study meeting. But on further reflection, I think I would probably feel this way about any day of the week I choose to make myself write.

A lot of the reason I am hesitant is that if the post isn't inspired by an idea but by a schedule, I have no clue what to fill it with. I don't have one of those cool themed blogs like Art of Manliness, Art of Nonconformity, or Zen Habits, that I read regularly. That fact makes my writing feel undirected and unimportant, which is not a good motivator for me to finish it.

But perhaps that's ok. Maybe my writing doesn't have to have a clear direction just yet. After all, I started blogging less than a month ago. I can count the posts I've published on my fingers. If this is something I want to stick with, surely I can afford to spend some time getting used to it without worrying how impressive or insightful it is.

And so, without further editing, worrying, or re-reading, I present you my week in pictures:

I'm not sure if you were aware, but I'm an idiot. A complete maroon. Getting ready to go to class this morning, I realized it was odd I hadn't done quantum homework this week. I opened my notebook, flipped to the page with the folded corner that marks the end of my astrophysics notes, and waiting there with the clueless optimism of an abandoned puppy was my quantum mechanics homework, marked clearly and boldly, "Due Wednesday, February 4th". I had an hour and ten minutes. And a class to go to.

And this is hardly an isolated incident. Monday found me furiously riding from class to my dorm and back again to grab a forgotten (but thankfully finished) homework assignment. Last week I floundered through an entire WU POPS rehearsal on clarinet music because I had walked all the way there without bringing my own, written-for-trumpet-and-everything, music folder. But at least I went to rehearsal on the correct day, which didn't happen three weeks ago. And this afternoon I wrote a C++ loop that was supposed to terminate only when an unsigned variable was less than zero. Ok, I might let that last one slide.

The point is that at my best I am forgetful and absent-minded. I lose or leave behind things I need; I drive, bike, and walk into oncoming traffic; I inadvertently eat whole packages of someone else's biscuits. But I suppose in the end, no matter how foolish I feel, my harebrained mistakes usually turn out just fine. I finished the homework, I became more confident with my own music, the Tuesday evening walk is my favorite part of the week, and I got to learn a little about debugging in Visual Studio 2005. And if nothing else, my lapses in memory and judgment make for good stories later on. Even if they never make Fenchurch want to kiss me while lying on the grass in the cool of another beautiful evening in Hyde Park.

Another Week Begins

It's late o'clock, I'm tired, and I'm finally finished with all my work that is due tomorrow, but I find myself wanting to stay up just a little bit later. Why? Partly because I have been wanting for the past day or two to publish something here. Largely because I love listening to the Xtension Chords and was not ready for the song to end.

I was reading Zen Habits today and came across the classic question of what if you only had X time to live? It was certainly not the first time I had heard the question but I thought about it for longer than I probably ever have before. In the end, I didn't have an answer, but I had a question of my own. Lying on my bed, I tilted my head back and saw my closet. Thinking about what really matters, I asked myself how much of my closet I would really care about losing. Or to invert that, what would I truly want to save if I had to watch everything else go up in flames? What would I want to save if I lost everything on that wall? In my room? In the end I decided there were two things I owned here that I would need to save. There are only two things that really, really matter.

As I thought about why these things were important to me, I was amused to realize just how long and how clearly I had already known about the bigger priorities in my life that they represent. I hadn't made a startling new insight so much as an affirmation of something I had already known. But perhaps that is exactly the point of this kind of exercise. The question of what is really important to us isn't supposed to be difficult. It is supposed to be a reminder. And remind me it did. I am happy to report I made time for both of my priorities today. In other words, I did things that really mattered.

And now for the $64,000 question: what were my two things?