Another Year

I've had this blog for about a year now!

School starts on Wednesday and the campus community is already off to a running start, which will turn into a sprint soonly....

Walking through campus today, I was struck by how carefree and, at the same time, VIBRANT all the students are. Everyone's all excited about the parties, the friends, the cool shit, whatever. Bright colors and happy faces everywhere. Whereas I am a "veteran", I'm taking care of business shit on campus, not there to socialize, there's just too much to get done. And I'm not really into the parties either - again, too many other things I could be doing. Or too many people are new and I don't have the energy/want to make nice with them.

Transitioning into school will be my final transition back into American life, hopefully it's not too hard. Coming back from Italy was not easy, and in many ways I grew a lot more in these past two months than you would think. I know now that one of my core values is my community. I feel the greatest sense of happiness not just when I am serving my community, but when the whole community gets together and works toward a common cause. But not everyone in my life views this value in the same way, and it's been a learning experience to see that some folks may care about the community...but aren't as commited to real action as I think they should be.

Another thing I was surprised to learn is that I like, maybe even want, to share and be dependent on others. It is a huge comfort and relief to lean a little on others after being unable to do that while I lived in Europe. Living abroad gave me a real sense of exactly who I am and what I am capable of, and now that I have that I have the capacity to share my life with other people. It kind of goes along the same lines of "nobody will love you if you can't love yourself". I know myself and am thus secure (stable?) enough to be able to share myself with another human being. That ability - and the fact that I have the desire to do that - is something I definitely did not have a year ago. Unfortunately I haven't met anyone who has reached that point in their life, so for now I'm giving myself over to NSU work and school.

Looking to this school year....I want to graduate with a 3.6. I want to feel like I got a good city planning education. I want to bring CS to Japantown and help put on another great CS on campus. I want to spend time with my amici and I hopefully not feel oceans apart from all the young'ns. I want to work, because I don't want my parents to have to shoulder any more burden than they already are. I want to make a million more great memories, but not at the expense of my academics...because unfortunately, grades are going to follow me around until I get into grad school. I want so many things, some of which are in conflict with each other, and I'm struggling with how all those things can be acheived. So for now I gotta take it one day at a time, because eventually I will find a way. This is going to be a year to rememeber.