End and Beginning

Graduation was only yesterday.

I mean that Commencement for the newly graduated class of 2007 was only yesterday. =] I went to support my fellow brother and sisters and to listen to the commencement speaker Dana Gioia. Ironically, in my experience the less popular speakers tend to make better speeches. Students complained as well about Tom Brokaw before my commencement, but his speech turned out fine. The whole business of students’ wanting to have famous commencement speakers is what I would describe in the words of King Solomon (taken vastly out of context but still appearing to apply), “This also is vanity and a striving after wind.” as vanity.

I bade farewell to the FiCS class of 2007, at least to those who left. Maybe I just lack emotions, but seeing them off triggered no tears. The most I felt was a tinge of regret that I didn’t spend more time with some of them. Nevertheless, I do sincerely wish them the best, and I will see them in the future, even if on the other side (which is partially why I don’t grieve over departure).

The year ended anticlimactically for me. I had a final homework assignment due the 8th and a final report due the 10th. And that was that. The year was over. No finals. No intense studying. Even though I pulled the most number of all-nighters per quarter out of all the quarters I’ve been at Stanford, the last week of classes consisted of no cramming. I got a decent amount of sleep, and even slipped in quite a few games of Starcraft. The week after my final assignments, I just lounged around, played more Starcraft, played piano, lifted weights, and tinkered with my laptop (which, by the way, I disassembled to clean the thermal unit and fan, the result being a 20 C drop in CPU temperature, putting a stop to the overheating that slowed the system to a crawl and completely eliminating the need for an ice pack whenever I had to do CPU intensive tasks).

In any case, today was my first day of work. It’s my first real job ever (i.e., at a company with more than one employee), and things definitely felt different from being at a university. The people were very nice and accommodating, but I could not shake the impression that there is implicit structure everywhere. I like that. I need that discipline. Today being my first day, I had to wait for things to get set up for me, but nevertheless, I felt quite productive.

One of the perks of the working world is that there is no homework. After I leave work, I can go home and relax. There is no constant stress of deadlines looming over me (at least, not yet). I can enjoy my hobbies in relative peace. But I grossly overestimated the amount of free time I would have. I arrived home today around 6:30 PM, finished dinner around 7:30 PM. As I need to get up at 7:30 AM, I must go to bed around 11:30 PM, leaving me with only about four hours of free time. Today, I spent one of those hours at the gym and three updating my website.

I just finished a new thought piece. It’s called “College Advice.” And now I must go prepare for work tomorrow and go to bed. So long.