the path

I’m fairly stressed. With one week down I thought I would be more relaxed about being here. Ironically I’m feeling pressure already and exams won’t begin for a few weeks. It’s not that my classes are too difficult; it’s that I don’t completely understand the wave of information that has been thrown at me. I want that trend to not continue because it doesn’t bode well for the future.

In high school I honestly thought I was one of the smartest people at my school. I wasn’t really challenged and that probably hurt me more than I could have realized then. All four years of undergrad college I had it in my head that I was somewhere just above the middle. When I tried I did well, and when I didn’t the outcome was never good. Now, I really believe that it was a miracle I was accepted. Currently I’m lacking self confidence, and that is extremely frustrating for me, a quasi perfectionist.

Never in my life have I felt this way, and I keep telling myself that I should work hard and everything will sort itself out. I am getting overwhelmed… and for no logical reason. I want to remain positive and once I start getting work done I’m sure I’ll begin to make strides towards my goal.

Let me preface this with how I will never post about my day with minuscule details as are given as an example in the following excerpt:

“So today I fed my cat and/or pet lizard, went to drop off my Star Trek watch at the jeweler, and then ate pizza with my friends. Overall it was a good day, I guess it could have been better, but it was just good. I’ll post again tomorrow with more boring as hell commentary that will inevitably be pointless.”

On the same note, if I ever give a laundry list exposing the dullness of my life or what I drank last night or last weekend then I will surely never add anything further for I will have broken my own promise. For these reasons, I have waited a long time to put something like this together. I should put my rules on paper - although unlikely, maybe I’ll do that tomorrow and I’ll be sure to record it here.

I haven’t traveled on an RTS bus to get to campus in over two years, so when I got on this morning near Kari’s apartment it was a shock. I wasn’t taken back with the fact I was on the bus, it was that everyone on there seemed so young. So young in fact that I thought I was actually doing something wrong by looking at some of the girls because they looked like they were seventeen. In some cases you just can’t help but look because they are wearing almost nothing. After all, it is Florida in August. Besides, it’s not that looking is a crime but I’m into people around my age or older. Some of these people were in middle school the first time I set foot onto a college campus. Soon enough I’ll be too old for any college girls. That will be a sad, sad day.

I shouldn’t classify this as my first real day of graduate school because I’m only enrolled in one course on Monday, so I decree tomorrow to be the official day. Today was more of a warm-up, but I do like the setup of two of my classes. In an effort to attract busy professionals, the College of Engineering has been doing a FEEDS program in which they stream the class over the internet to off campus students. This serves a dual purpose in that if I miss a class it will be available to me on the web so I don’t miss all that much. It’s not something to fall back on, but not a reliable replacement for actually attending the lectures. I’m paying enough, so I want to be there.

I’m looking forward to being immersed in school again. I’ve forgotten what it is like being excited about starting something new and how I still have the potential to stay ahead in all of my classes. Undoubtedly that feeling doesn’t last more than a week or two, but for now I will revel in it and pretend it will last all year.

I’ve probably driven down highway 528 in Orlando about a dozen times in the past two years. At least four of those trips were to pick someone up from the airport and another three or four were to see Nick and Tammy. Some of the others were to random places, such as the Kennedy Space Center or Melbourne - where I got to this weekend to see Anne. I always try to figure out something new when I travel long distances by myself since there isn’t anyone to talk with. My mind wanders and if I’m not daydreaming of something new then there’s a good chance I’m evaluating some past experience and how I could’ve done it differently.

Each time I’m heading east on the 528 I see the sign for the Semoran Boulevard exit. The reason the road name sticks in my head stems back a ways (I would estimate a little over two years ago) to when I drove to Orlando and went to Disney with Jennifer. It was great to get away from everyone and everything else and spend time with someone I wanted to be close with. It seems like that was forever ago, but it’s always nice to be reminded of the good things. Although now I’ve grown away from that part of my life, I hope I don’t forget anything about it.

In a similar way, listening to one of my favorite bands takes me to November of 1998. Soon after turning 16, I saw the Barenaked Ladies at the Sunrise Musical Theatre with my then girlfriend Debbie. The fact that we even got there was surprising seeing as how until four or five hours before the show we didn’t even have tickets. The way the theatre is set up, there isn’t a bad seat in the place and we had tickets about half way up from the bottom section. Once they started playing everything becomes kind of a blur, but there isn’t a time when I hear “It’s All Been Done” or “Jane” that I don’t think of Debbie and the really fun time I had with her. I hope that she has a similarly fond memory of me, but yet considering how I treated her I’m not so sure. I may not remember much else about how it felt to be in a relationship with her, but I’m very glad I’ll always have the music.

I’m usually not surprised when music brings me back to a moment in time, and in fact I’ve come to expect it. On the other hand, it does catch me off guard when I feel a certain way because of where I am. I’m sure I probably couldn’t care less if I was ever back in the Sunrise Musical Theatre, and I know I couldn’t tell you any song I heard on the radio in the car with Jen. Neither is more important to me than the other, so as I begin to evaluate my past I find it a blessing to have some emotion attached to these memories at all.

One of the promises I made to myself before beginning this whole ‘journal’ business is that I wouldn’t be vague and skip around what was really on my mind. Following that goal, I’ve been about as detailed as I want to be since I don’t want to verbally discuss my anger. I am left to merely put it into words.

I find it ironic that one of the primary reasons I stayed at the University of Florida no longer applies to me right now. I have been looking forward to teaching ever since I sat in my very first lab in early January of 2002. I distinctly remember sitting in a 70s style orange swivel chair at a brown desk with a small yellow box in front of me. Inside were a series of chips (ICs) of which I had no clue as to their purpose, a digital multimeter that I couldn’t figure out how to use, and a breadboard that wouldn’t connect to the given power supply. With no prior training and not half a clue as to what to do, I sat next to Kari patiently waiting instruction from the someone I could barely begin to undestand. My first reaction was to get up and walk out, but I knew this was something I had to learn so I started to cut the wire while at the same time trying to see what the person across the table from me was doing. Looking back, I must have appeared to be a total idiot because I remember telling Kari to make sure not to touch the wires together out of fear of her electrocuting herself. Little did I know that there were only 5 volts between power and ground.. and there was no way electrocution was possible. I had basically no idea how to put a circuit together, and didn’t understand what the drawings on the board were supposed to represent (probably how to get an LED to light up). Anyways, as the lab continued to progress over the next few weeks I managed to get the assigned material completed but kept noticing how little the TA was actually able to assist me.

It wasn’t the language barrier, nor was it her unwillingness to help because she always tried as best she could. The fundamental flaw was that her way of teaching simply didn’t get through to me. The more courses I took, the more aware I became and the more I wanted to do something about the lack of the educational foundation that was laid for myself. Throughout all of this, the thought that stuck in my mind is how if I was in the position to be the helper, how much differently I would have done everything. Perhaps that sounds elitist or arrogant of me, but that is honestly the way I look at a lot of things (I’m sure a good number of people silently share that same characteristic, but I’m admitting it). To me, the ability to give students a solid foundation and understanding is crucial to their success further on. Even going back to high school, I knew I wasn’t being pushed as hard as I could have been, and I now had the chance to push myself from the very beginning but had no idea where to start. Thus, the beginning of my frustration. The more at the beginning usually translates to less at the end, and I wanted to give what I didn’t get to someone else. I doubt I’m alone in thinking this, but that was my sole motivation for wanting to teach. I really enjoy helping people. Not because it makes me feel good or whatever, but because I like to think that in a similar situation another person would do the same for me. Now, through no recent fault of my own, I failed to reach my goal. Seeing as how I am traditionally used to getting what I want, especially when I work hard to achieve it, it is difficult for me to come to terms with why I would be denied the opportunity to better not only myself but perhaps someone else as well.

Two days later, I’m no longer bitter but I am left feeling just as disconcerted. If I work hard enough for the next three and a half months, I should be able to secure some sort of teaching assistantship (eg, the robots class) so I can pass on what I’ve learned and hopefully inspire a student in a way that a few of my TAs inspired me.

Overall, the experiences of the past 36 hours made me rethink my life’s path. I don’t know if I made the right decision, and for whatever reason I cannot shake my initial sentiment that, in fact, I chose incorrectly. But at this point it doesn’t matter if it is right or wrong, because there was obviously something that kept me from going to New York City or taking one of the job offers to come my way. In a few months, I know my current attitude and frustration will seem to have been unfounded, but for now I am fed up.

I am pleased that I managed to miss the effects of Hurricane Charley. While I do like the force of a hurricane and would one day like to actually feel the wind and rain for myself first hand, it is something not to take to be a trivial storm. After living in Florida for long enough I will be able to be a witness one personally by the time I die. At that time I’m sure I will not want anything too harsh… and if it never happens, then so be it.

On the other hand, I wish that real people were not affected by the storm and that everyone could simply enjoy nature. I am not big on power outages or even a leaky roof, and after seeing some of the preliminary damage it is apparent what can be done by a category 4 hurricane.

Even though the two hit different areas of the state, it reminds me about how I was feeling months after hurricane Andrew (late August 1992 — the first day of public school in Palm Beach County, no less). What I mean is I can remember some of my new classmates were in my 5th grade class because their schools or houses were destroyed. One blonde haired girl in particular I can distinctly picture in my mind, but cannot remember her name to save my life. I cannot fathom that kind of change now, much less when I was barely a ten year old. It’s solemnly ironic that something I did not even know existed until two days ago has made someone I do not even know today (nor will I probably ever know) homeless.

Good things, though, do sometimes come out of what at first seems to be the worst of times. Trying to see past the damage or hurt as I sit here in my home with electricity, food, and water is obviously easier to imagine than when going through a traumatic event.. but it is something I have experienced on one level or another, and will certainly try to remember the next time I am placed in a seemingly hopeless situation.