Graduation... again

I know what you're thinking... "Another graduation post?" Yep. Because I'm the mom. And I said so.

From Julie and Jeff:

Here are some photos from today's Bee Hive exploration!

We pulled out our first honey.

Dirty Dancing

When I find a new activity that I like, I always have such high aspirations about incorporating it into my regular routine. I decide that it is awesome and that I need to do it more often and then all the sudden it is six months later and I have yet to do it again! If you need any examples all you need to do is scroll back through my posts and you will find that they are abundant... today we will focus on "going to plays" or more specifically "going to musicals". I got my first taste of a live musical back in high school when Katie was in 'Pippin'. This was reinforced by a date a couple months later to see 'The Lion King' when it came to the Tampa Performing Arts Center. I decided that when I grew up I would be sure to support these types of plays by seeing them as often as possible! Well I have been unsuccessful on that front as of yet (both growing up and seeing musicals) as evidenced by only having gone to see Wicked since graduating college. Although, I should get brownie points for seeing it in both NY and LA :) Last night I got to put a second notch on my theatrical belt by going to see Dirty Dancing with Jocelyn and her roommate Carly. It solidified for me the fact that, in spite of many late night bar hopping practice sessions, my dance skills may still leave something to be desired.

Graduation!

Consider this a spin on the Christmas Card Letter theme – I am not even sure who all reads this blog, but considering that the audience probably includes people I don't talk to all that regularly, I figured graduation was a good time to let you know what I’ve been up to for the past couple years…

In my college tours during junior year of high school I had told my mother that I wanted to be warm (first and foremost) during my academic career, so we would have to stay south of the Mason-Dixon. Furthermore, I wanted to have what my sister Paige called “the Real College Experience,” that included a sprinkling of sorority life, some big crazy football games, and maybe some cute southern boys thrown in the mix. Furthermore, I wanted to study something “math-y that you could actually find a job with.” It seemed Georgia Tech, with its world class Industrial Engineering program, fit the bill perfectly – and as a bonus prize my inner nerd could even do a little breathing there! So, about this time in 2005 I was a bright-eyed and bushy-tailed new high school graduate; with diploma in hand I was getting geared up to go to Georgia Tech in the fall to begin my education towards becoming an Industrial Engineer.

But some snags came along the way.

That summer I fell head over heels for a boy, Yangda. He was Chinese, going to Harvard, and a Math major. Scratch cute southern boys from the requirements list. When I got to school, I spent an inordinate amount of time on the phone with him, but I still managed to find things to love about GT. I joined a sorority with some great girls, and really enjoyed my classes. I even found an internship close to my boyfriend for the summer – plus one to Industrial Engineering for being math-y and marketable!

During that year, I also went to my first big college football game - as it turns out, when you can’t flirt with the boys who brought you, you don’t drink much, and you don’t know anything about football this isn’t quite as fun. Scratch big athletic teams from the requirements list.

Summer of my freshman year rolled around and I was off to my internship with General Electric in Boston. Four really big things happened that summer. First, I found out that Boston is secretly a really awesome place (despite being gosh-awful cold most of the year) and that I loved it with all my soul. Second, I realized that while Industrial Engineering requires cool math classes, you don’t get to do much cool math in practice and that my inner nerd was not OK with that. Next, while spending time with my boyfriend and all of his fellow math major buddies, it dawned on me that they all had super-cool, fun, quantitatively challenging jobs that their progress towards math degrees had gotten them. I changed my major to math before the summer had even finished. Finally, Yangda and I had a huge falling out just days before I was to go home. I was so shell shocked that I didn’t tell a soul. We decided to keep dating, but things were not as peachy as I tried to make them seem.

When I got back to school in Georgia, I decided to do research with a professor to make up for lost time in my major. When I went to my teacher, however, he was baffled by my change of major, “Why would you want to study math here?” he said, “We’re awful at it!”

Thus began my decision to transfer schools. My priorities had changed since. I was willing to give up being warm and having my “Real” college life for a place where the inner nerd was truly free, and where I could study math more easily. My relationship was in it’s death throes, but I knew he still would help me with the ropes of adjusting to a more intense academic setting too. After much secrecy (I never told my parents or friends) and some online searching, I decided to apply to MIT. It was in the city I’d fallen in love with, I already knew some people there, and it was great for Math.

When I arrived in Boston for my first day it was a whopping -10 outside, and while I knew people in the city, I knew almost no one at the school. That first day was the only day I thought I might have made a huge mistake. I missed being warm, I missed my friends, and I missed my non-prison-cell sized room. The next day was much better though, when I found WILG. WILG is a living group that was having rush when I arrived on campus, they wanted to meet new people and they wanted to feed me! I have stayed there practically my whole time at school and all of my best friends live there with me, moving out has been tough. I couldn’t join a sorority since mine didn’t have a chapter, but WILG grew to take it’s place – it is, as my mom affectionately calls it, the granola sorority – lot’s of makeup disdaining, vegetarian, hippie types who would never join a sorority intentionally and often still don’t realize that the place they live in is exactly like one. We have rush, house meetings just like chapter, and are a group of women who live in the same house and do all sorts of social things together. The only thing missing is the rules, it’s great!

About 6 months into my arrival at MIT I went with a fellow wilglet (I don’t know when that name got coined, but it stuck) to her boyfriend’s fraternity alum event and met a very cute alum from NYC. Sheldon Chan (yes, really, Sheldon… an Electrical Engineer no less… I do love the nerdy ones) and I hit it off right away. We exchanged numbers, but I figured we wouldn’t be seeing much of each other since he was in a different state.

Sophomore summer passed, as did Junior fall and as I predicted I hardly ever saw Sheldon. We'd chat from time to time and grab lunch together when I passed through the city to visit my family, but I was busy being enamored with MIT. I really enjoyed learning about all the history behind the Institute. I found a photo of my great-great grandfather in the museum! I learned all about hacking – the school term for climbing on buildings and pulling engineering pranks at night, like putting a fire truck on top of the big dome. The summer in between I spent in Boston practicing and performing in the musical Cabaret with a community theater group. I took some really cool classes, including one called 6.001 which was all about learning how to program.(all the class names are numbers - as are the buildings, and majors, none of which go in any very strong or predictable order. The "6" stands for Electrical Engineering and Computer Science) I was hooked! I switched majors from straight math to Mathematics with Computer Science (aka "18C").

As Junior fall wound down I started thinking about what I wanted to do for my first IAP as a student. IAP is a one month winter term, it stands for Independent Activities Period. Students can do all sorts of things, both on and off campus. Some people take super-intense versions of full term classes for credit like Spanish I, others take classes like Charm School or Medieval Jousting for fun, some people just hang out at home and take a break from school, or there's the option of an Externship (which is just a fancy name for a 1 month internship at a company somehow affiliated with MIT).

I decided to get myself an Externship since my experience at GE had been so path altering. I was supposed to be staying with a big group of girls in NYC all the way up until about a week before my arrival. Then our housing fell through. We could not find any other places that would accept such a large number of people living together in one room, so as the least known member of the group I was voted off the island, so to speak.

This turned out to be one of the best things that's happened to me. Sheldon was the only person I knew enough to talk to regularly in the city, but we were by no means close. Like I said before, I chatted with him for a couple minutes about once a month, and had seen him in passing when going home from my Dad’s house upstate, but it was definitely pushing when I called him out of the blue and asked to couch surf for a month with practically no notice. Luckily for me, he’s a nice guy and had an extremely comfortable couch, so I had housing for January. I wasn't there more than a week before I started falling for him, he's charming and smart and I have this thing for Asian boys you see, they're so cute! By the end of the month I was completely head over heels.

Unfortunately, he still was going to be living far away and I didn't know if he was as head over heels for me as I was for him, and on top of it all I was still pretty devestated about losing Yangda (the boy that started my change in schools). When things were good between us, Yangda and I had been like two halves to a whole. It's like that cheesy Jerry MacGuire line, "You complete me." When our relationship fell apart I didn't think I'd ever be able to breathe again, much less find someone else, yet here I was completely smitten with a different guy. It was exciting and intoxicating, but I was absolutely terrified that I would get hurt all over again.

What could have been a disaster ended up working out very well. Since then has been a blur. Going into my Junior spring I was job hunting a lot. I knew I wanted to work in quantitative field (of course), and that I wanted to be in New York. As a result, I was doing a lot of couch crashing since I was in the city all the time. For Junior summer I landed an internship with a really great proprietary trading company called Jane Street Capital. Staying with Sheldon for the summer was even better than just staying for January. We got to do all sorts of fun things (including watching the official World Hot Dog Eating Championship in person at Coney Island, I know you're jealous).

What's more, I realized that I really enjoyed the work I was doing, but that it was a little too much math - mental math that is - Jane Street was amazing but I am just plain no good at calculating numbers quickly in my head. We would do mock trading classes and I would be frustrated and left behind when everyone else was juggling all the numbers in their brains. Give me a computer and a bit of time and I will generally do a decent job, even pen and paper would help, but mental math leaves me feeling sick to my stomach. So Senior year fall came and I was again pushing really hard with interviewing, even more than before since this time I was looking for full time offers. I ended up deciding to work for Coatue, which is a super tiny hedge fund based in NYC. I'll be doing software for them instead of trading, so I will be commuting to the software office in NJ, which means I get to read my Kindle (thanks mom!) every day for about an hour and a half.

Furthermore, after all that couch surfing, I’m officially becoming a paying renter - Sheldon and I just signed the lease on our own apartment last month! NYC here I come…for real this time… I know that if things don't work out with Sheldon that this could really stink, but I'd rather hope for the best and leap because so far leaping has brought me the experiences I've treasured most. And, seriously, he's really cute.

In sum, it really has been a wild four years. There have been a ton of changes and, as you can see, following my heart has brought me all sorts of adventures. Considering my past record, who knows where I will be four years from now, but I'm sure it'll be one heck of a trip!

Eurotrip 2009

As a post-classes, pre-graduation celebration of reduced responsibilities, Sheldon took me on a vacation to Europe! We flew into London Heathrow at 6 am on Sunday May 25th, completely beat after taking the red-eye next to an adorable screaming toddler. Upon arriving at the airport we discovered Yotel, which is this really cool hourly hotel in the airport. I know what you're thinking - either A) Hourly hotels...sketchy, or B) You went to Europe and you're blogging about the airport hotel? The answer to those questions is A) not like you might think, and B) YES, it was amazing to get off the plane feeling dirty and exhausted only to discover this little clean, shower and bed oasis. Ahhhh. 

After a quick rest and cleanup we went on our merry way to wander about London. First we went to Liverpool to this great Turkish restaurant called Haz, we were at a weird hour between lunch and dinner so we got the place to ourselves. We were definitely underdressed in our jeans and t's, but they were polite and gave us awesome food anyways. We stumbled onto this restaurant because I knew there was a phone store near the station, and when we were there I asked a couple random people for good places to eat in the area. Even the starter pita's and hummus were to die for. 

After our late lunch, we wandered over to the theater district and caught the dinnertime showing of Le Clique, which is like an old fashioned circus show - people performing all sorts of little (very strange) acts: there were two boys doing crazy lifts, a contortionist, a hula hoop girl and a juggling unicyler in a leather outfit dancing to Queen - it was my kind of place! When the show ended we caught the subway over to Victoria Coach Station and boarded a bus for Paris. We took a ferry over the English Channel halfway through, where there were all sorts of duty free goodies like Wine Gums and champagne. The breakfast on the boat was exactly what we were craving at 2 in the morning after a crazy day. 

After sleeping on the bus we arrived in Paris at 7am and took off to Montmartre. Montmarte is the area where the Moulin Rouge is located, it's a very romantic part of town, with lots of winding roads, brick streets, and pretty views. We dropped our stuff off at the hotel and wandered down to Le Templier restuarant at the suggestion of the Concierge. It was delicious, but the portions were huge and we overheard quite a bit of English (I'm pretty sure the concierge was thinking that us American tourists would want to eat a lot and speak English the whole time, needless to say we didn't take any more of his food suggestions...) Afterwards, we wandered back to the hotel for a shower (oddly, cleaning up in the bus station's enormous, french bread serving McDonald's hadn't made us feel all that fresh after our 9 hour ride, hm). We spent the rest of the day wandering around outside.

The next morning we geared up and grabbed a baguette from this delicious bakery right outside our door. We then trekked to our second hotel, also in Montmartre, but in a different part of it. This was our cheapest hotel, but it looked really nice in pictures. I discovered on the way there that it was probably the cheapest because it was right next to Pigalle and the red light district. Sweet.

When we arrived the hotel itself was very clean and nice and in a better part of town, but still it was like living a couple streets off the seedier side of Dale Mabry. We asked the new concierge where a good place to eat was, and he directed us to Le Cloche d'Or, which was pretty much perfect. The waiter didn't even speak English so I actually got to practice my language skills a bit. After a hearty lunch there, we hopped on the subway to check out the Eiffel Tower, where we took pretty much some of the only pictures we got on our trip. Paige and I are secretely not related, and my life post-tampa is more poorly documented than the nutrition facts in a Chinese restaurant, which is "killing her softly". Sorry Paige.

After the Eiffel Tower, we walked over to the Galleries Lafayette because our clothes were starting to smell like dead possum. We spent a bit of time trying to find it, and ended up arriving after they'd already closed. Oops. So instead we walked into the nearest hotel and asked the doorman if there was a good restaurant around. The doorman, mistakenly supposing we were staying at said really nice and expensive hotel, not only gave us a recommendation, but also a card that got us free champagne and olives. Yay! I forget the name of this restaurant, but again it was fancy and we were underdressed (and smelling of possum recall), but with our little card we made it in, to a nice table, and were given free booze - which probably would have been even cooler if we drank much. Sheldon had one sip and turned bright red from being asian and suffering asian glow (def: An allergic reaction of the skin that occurs when asians drink alcohol, also known as bukkake blush - ex: Carol only needs half a shot before she gets a bad case of the asian glow.  Thanks Urban Dictionary!). Sheldon drinks so rarely I didn't know what was happening and asked him if it was too warm in the restaurant. Oops.

This place was pretty cool until my escargot got too hot and exploded when the oil on top was broken covering my (only decencent) shirt and chest and hand with boiling liquid. I had three mini-blisters for the rest of my trip. They were still delicious. I thought the staff was going to have a hernia they were so worried. I spent the whole meal with ice in a napkin pressed to my skin, which made it look even worse because my skin gets really red in the cold. Oh well, it happens. We went home and I put some (difficult to procure since I never leaned the word "burn") antiseptic cream on it and slept like babies.

On Wednesday we moved to our final hotel - this time in the Latin Quarter, just next to the Luxemburg Gardens. By this time the dirty clothes thing was just too much, so we grabbed some bread from a nearby bakery and went shopping. Clearly Sheldon had to drag me kicking and screaming to do this. We both got new shoes since our sneakers had been attacked by rain and sweaty feet. He got a new shirt and I got a skirt. It made us smell much nicer, and we were able to be only mildly underdressed at dinner this time! We went to a place from the Frommer's Guide To Paris, it was in the middle of no where, but inside was very classy (waiter's in tux's - they liked my new tennis shoes too i bet). We got oysters and steak and of course good bread.

The last day in Paris - Thursday - we got up early and went to L'Ile de la Cite which is an island in the middle of the Seine which runs through the heart of Paris. There we saw the Sacre Coeur church, the Palais de Justice, the Conciergerie and Notre Dame Cathedral. After wandering around for a while, we hit a cafe for lunch and for tourist observing. We noticed that you could tell who the tourists were just by watching people's feet walking by. Europeans all had cool, fashionable walking shoes whereas the Americans usually had the big white running type shoes I was always whining about having to wear when we visited NYC as kids. Finally I feel justified ! You really do stick out like a sore thumb when you wear that stuff ! After lunch we followed a crowd of plushy white running shoes over to a double decker red tour bus and took a tour of the city. We saw the Louvre, the Opera House, the Eiffel Tower (again), the Military Acadamy, the Arc de Triomph, and Pont Neuf bridge. After all the running around we went back to the hotel to pick up our stuff and grabbed dinner in the Latin Quarter. We found this cool open air restaurant that had this really tasty pinapple skewer heaven dessert and stuffed ourselves silly before getting back into the subway and getting on a bus to take us to London again. We arrived in London the next morning completely wiped. We went to the airport, grabbed some Z's at Yotel again, and bought some duty free goodies before flying home and back to the real world.

What a rough life, eh?