Monday, March 14, 2011

Last Week at Stanford!

Just finished up a final project for my earthquake class. Now all I have left is:

  • presentation for infrastructure class on Tuesday
  • making a cash flow spreadsheet for financial literacy class, and
  • answering questions about the foundations final
These last few things are really no big deals. I will be all done by Wednesday. This past week has really dragged on. The days just all seemed to mash together. Looking at my last posts, it seems like the last time I wrote about my life was Wednesday/early Thursday.

Last Thursday, I went to my last lecture at Stanford. It really didn't feel very special. I barely recognized it as my last class (for a long while). I had office hours that no one attended so I managed to squeeze in some work. Then I had lunch with Kathy and Mahalia. We talked about Cambridge and other random stuff. They're both staying for PhDs so I guess they'll be here for a while. I was kind of tired the entire time. I went back to my apartment and napped a bit. I was aiming for a 30 min nap but it nearly turned into a 2 hour one. One of my friends called when I was trying to decide whether or not to keep sleeping after an hour.

I attended the last women's perspectives seminar. That seminar has been really interesting. They have had some really good speakers. The general topic this quarter was named after the recent book, "Letters to my younger self." I've been meaning to read that book. Most of the speakers talked about their experiences and how they have made the decisions that they have, what has helped them, etc. This got me thinking, if I could write a letter to my younger self and send it back to the past, what would I write? I thought about this one morning and a usual set of advice came up such as, "treasure your friends, find good mentors, etc." But then I thought, I don't think my younger self would have been very receptive to a list of advice! How was I (or anyone else) supposed to take some generic advice and use them? And I then I thought, actually, the one thing that I would really appreciate hearing from my future self is a confirmation that I am doing the right thing, making the right choices, and that everything will be okay. I'm about to embark on another journey, starting a new chapter in life. Some confirmation that this is the right choice and things will work out, would be invaluable.

After the seminar, I went to dinner with  people who were on my team for the d.school summer session. We had a really nice time eating and chatting at a Thai place that had a really chill atmosphere. Actually, it's a pretty empty place and left us wondering how long they will be in business. It was great to see everyone again. That summer session seemed like a dream to me since I had just gotten back from Indonesia. We never met up to do anything afterwards.

And then I started grading. I found more errors in the textbook. Because I had to double check everything, I only managed to finish grading 5 out of the 8 problems before going to sleep at 2am. I got up the next morning and finished grading. Went to lunch with a friend. And then picked up the take-home final for my finite element class. I sent out some emails related to foundations before starting on my take-home exam.

I think I was over-thinking the problems on that take-home exam. It took me way longer than it should. I had some panic moments when I thought I didn't know how to do half the problems. We had 24 hours to do it and I finished it early Saturday morning. With half of a problem left, I went to brunch with my Rains neighborhood. I came back, finished the exam, and then went to Brunch with the ESW crowd. I came back, double checked my work, and then turned it in. Had a group meeting with my infrastructure group, and came back to start on the earthquake assignment.

I spent all of today (Sunday) working on the assignment and looking for the latest news on the Japan earthquake. More thoughts on the earthquake and tsunami in a later post. There was a sushi study break by AAGSA which featured a ton of sushi. It was great since I have not had the time or energy to cook lately. Rains had its quarterly start-of-finals Krispy Kreme study break at night. I think I should start making a list of foods that I won't be able to find in HK.

Looking forward to a good night's sleep tonight. My sleep hasn't been that great lately. Too much stress. I keep waking up before dawn.

1 comment:

Y said...

Almost there!