Welcome Back

I read this comment on reddit a day ago. Here is an excerpt:

Here’s my advice to younger folks: don’t spend your life chasing money stuff. Figure out how to make a decent living in something you like. Doesn’t have to be a mind blowing career, just something you can do every day that you can take pride in. Spend your 20s going on adventures. See the world. Don’t settle down. If you find good romantic relationships with someone you trust, make them great, but don’t ever settle for a bad relationship – drop it before you waste any time on them. Don’t worry too much about planning the rest of your life; it will fall into place as a result of all the learning and experiences you have once you hit your 30s. You have no idea what that will look like at 20.

Once you hit 40, time will speed up dramatically. Things will keep changing, mentally and physically. Just try to point them in a positive direction. And enjoy the ride.

The rest is linked here. It’s kind of weird to think tomorrow (later today) marks the beginning of my third year of college. I remember when I first entered high school the dean of students said that our four years of high school would go by quickly. I’ve been out of high school for over 2 years now. I still have 3 years of college ahead of me (well 2 more years of classes and 1 year of co-op) but it’s weird to think how much everything has changed. I really haven’t had a plan. I kind of just stepped into the ring and took hits as they were thrown at me. Dodged a couple. Got punched in the face a couple times but I’m still going.

I always ask myself if things will be different than last year when heading into a new school year. Will I not be able to handle what is given to me. After a while though I am just back in the rhythm of things. Head to class, head to work, read reddit, program, hang out, pass out, repeat. It’s kind of nice that things don’t change drastically. I have time to adjust.

When the semester ended in April I was wondering what I would do with myself for 4 months before heading back to school. Surgery conveniently let me do nothing for 6 weeks. After that I worked in Boston for 6 weeks. I kind of just went into autopilot. Wake up. Go to work. Get back home. Do nothing important. Sleep. Repeat. Just waiting to move back to school. I don’t want to live a life of autopilot but I am amazingly good at it. After a while it is second nature. I don’t really complain. It’s just a thing I have to get through. College however is a whole different story. You never really know what to expect.

I’ve probably said before that college is probably one of the strangest things ever. It’s one of the last bastions of freedom you have before becoming an adult forever. You aren’t tied down by parental rules anymore. You are free to make your own decisions about almost anything. You also are not tied down by a job. You are not tied down by a family. You don’t have to care about anybody or anything. You can go longboarding at 10 at night and go to MIT. (Side note apparently MIT frats were already having events? What?). You can order pizza at 2 AM and nobody is going to tell you that’s a bad idea. You can sleep in till noon and then head to the beach on Friday instead of going to class. You can experiment with whatever you feel like (within reasonable restraint…hopefully). As long you aren’t breaking serious laws (underage drinking, meh; cutting out a freshman’s kidney and selling it on the black market, don’t do that) go crazy.

At this point I don’t know what I’m saying. In like 35% of my posts I kind of lose my train of thought about 3/4ths of the way through my post. For this post I didn’t even know what I wanted to write about. I just wanted to reflect about the first day of school. Just another part of my life I guess. Life is a bunch of hills and valleys. There are tons of high points and low points. The thing I try to remember is that the valleys will always start to trend upward. Whenever I am at the top of a hill I just let go and enjoy the ride.