Well hello again folks. 

Only a few things to talk about this time around. Which I suppose is one of the issues with interim: there’s so much less going on. Which isn’t to say that I’m not doing anything or even that there isn’t anything going on around campus – I’ll get to that later – but rather it’s to say that the pace moves so much slower when you’re not trying to have class and two jobs and student organization meetings and such all at once. So instead there’s a bizarre calm both after and before incredible stretches of being busy, which I realize now sounds an awful lot like the eye of a storm.But I digress. 

I mentioned things have been happening on campus, which is 100% true. There have been posters up for a while now and if I’m not mistaken, there were at least a couple things a week. However I admit I was standing (I want to say in the Rolland Center Boilerhouse) somewhere, looking at one of the event calendars, and I did something I feel happens too often, and probably not only with me: I looked and saw an event I was really interested in attending, proceeded to look at the date, and said “this happened two weeks ago. Great.” There has been a really strong push to have events going on all the time – particularly on weekends – during the term. I had a professor who, when students in class started to suggest that there isn’t much to do on campus, said something to the effect of “There are events every weekend! What more do you people want?!”  

Christmas shopping has been going well, so that’s fun. And by well, I mean I am continually impressed how, as the season wears on, certain stores are just cleaned out. I feel it’s pretty impressive to walk into a store looking for something and just see completely bare shelves. I was actually talking recently with some friends about how peculiar it is to have an economy based on Christmas, essentially. Someone mentioned how it makes sense since some businesses will make in a day around Christmas what it takes weeks to do for the rest of the year, but it still seems pretty remarkably strange. 

But yeah, that’s pretty much where I’m standing. Well, sitting.

And in case I haven’t said it before: happy holidays everyone.

Greetings everyone,

I only have a few things to write about this time around. I have been working, as I’ve mentioned, and besides that I’ve been emailing lots of folks for various reasons. Which I know, doesn’t sound exciting, but part of what I was really doing was trying to stay in touch with folks that I hadn’t spoken to for months or – in some cases – for years.
I think it’s something remarkably too easy to do, given the nature of college, to lose touch with people you don’t see every day: considering all the tests, homework, clubs, your job, etc etc. I admit that I’ve been ridiculously guilty of letting those things get in the way of staying in touch with folks, but fortunately the modern world had afforded me some fairly convenient options. Like the aforementioned email
So all of this is really a long way of saying that, if you haven’t recently, reach out to those you haven’t spoken to for a long time but were really important to you. I highly recommend it. And honestly, who needs to lose friends, even old ones?

Also, for the record, I’m quite fond of tea. Which is where this picture came from! Taken, of course, just for you all.

 (I was trying to somehow get snow, photography, and advisors into the same subject line. Take that.) 

Happy snow everyone.A couple of things of note: 

I need to have a few meetings this interim (besides the whole working thing) and I’ve had none of them as of yet. One is scheduled, one requires me to actually set up the meeting, and one requires me to talk to my advisor in more detail. 

Speaking of my advisor, I would like to make a couple quick notes about the student-advisor relationship, and I guess the student-professor relationship in general. When I first got to North Central, I was told (and I believe they still tell incoming folks) that you should always have good working relationships with your professors, and to choose your advisor based on your major and/or someone with whom you’ve developed a good relationship. I agree with both points, so long as the caveat on the second is observed. I chose my advisor not because he knew or cared what a linux kernel was, or knew off the top of his head what classes I needed to graduate. Those, I felt, were things I could look up (let alone the fact that I wasn’t even a computer science major at the time). But he was, and continues to be, a good source of advice and encouragement, and, frankly, I felt then and feel now that it’s way more valuable to have someone with whom you can talk to about your professional and academic life honestly than someone who can go ‘oh. Well you need another English class, and then you’re good.”So my meeting with him is going to be in part talking about classes and study abroad and such, but mostly will be about life advice. Because really, everybody needs folks like that.  

Right! So, photography time. 

As I know I’ve mentioned at least twice, I really enjoy photography. Which isn’t to say that I have even a little bit of formal training or that I’m any good. But notably I didn’t say that, I just said I liked it. And coincidentally I often take pictures of things that are on their own beautiful (things in nature, generally). I’ve always wanted to be one of those artsy types that take the kind of picture that makes people go ‘hmm. Interesting.” because that, apparently is the pinnacle of reaction from the artistic community.;-) Sadly, however, I’m not one of those folks.We have photography classes here at North Central (one in particular that I want to take called Digital Photography), but unfortunately they are among the dozens of classes that I would love to take but would never have time for. East Asian history, sculpting, literature, music theory, pretty much every philosophy class ever created, etc etc etc. And I would take and love every one of them, if I had, you know, eighty zillion dollars to stay in school forever.And I would do it too, if I could. 

My camera is a Canon S3 IS, which is one of the ultra-zoom image stabilization type digital cameras. So 6 megapixels, 12x optical zoom, and other crazy features as well. It’s fairly big, but it’s pretty amazing: it lets you take really easy automatic shots but also gives some pretty fair manual controls. My big nemesis is white balance (I’m not quite sure why, over the years, I have developed a sincere animosity to white balance, but that’s how it turned out), and the camera is really nice in handling it.

And while I love this camera, I have to admit to you all that it’s been freezing outside and that – due to my work schedule – I haven’t taken any pictures worth mention so the pictures that follow are from the archives as well, and hilariously, I don’t think I took any of them with the camera I have now.

One of the many I took during my aforementioned trip to Ireland, and one I’m personally fond of.

I’m not positive, but I seem to recall this being taken out of a car window, again in Ireland. I’m quite fond of the tree, myself.

This one was actually taken at a place called Robert Allerton Park, which is located near the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign. It’s a really beautiful place, the guy was really fond of world cultures, and so he has sculptures from everywhere.

So hooray.