Hello happy people,

Over the past couple weeks I have put considerable thought into the stated purpose of these (and really any) student blogs, and the phrase ’seeing what college life is really like’ keeps standing out. I think it is valuable to remember two things when thinking about that idea. First, that life in college and anywhere else is based greatly on what you make of it (as I believe I have stated before) and secondly that college life still falls under the broader category of ‘life.’ Life here is much like life before and after graduation. And while I recognize there is a wealth of popular opinion to counter that argument, I defer those opinions to a professor I had only once (and who, despite our limited interaction, provided some remarkably insightful comments about life) who said (to greatly paraphrase) “there is no ‘real world’ when one leaves college. College is just as ‘real world’ as anywhere else. You people [students] have to balance your personal lives, full time academic schedules, many of you have jobs and extra curricular activities and I know several of you commute. This is just as real as the world you’ll find when you graduate.” The professor, mind you, when on to use this argument to discuss how if we were habitually late for class we would be habitually late for work when we graduated, etc. But the argument in and of itself stuck with me. And I was reminded of it when confronted with some of the issues of this term.
As you folks may have noticed, there’s been a lapse in my posts. I explain this only by saying that I, like any other student here, am subject to the same real life laws that people in the real world are subject to, which sometimes includes some hilarious and not-so-hilarious misfortune. To recap briefly, personal issues, a short emergency room visit, an automotive failure, academic issues, and all manner of other small and incredibly annoying misfortunes (like leaving a pen in a load of laundry and causing ink spots to appear over all of my clothing) have plagued me over the past couple weeks. But things look to be on the rise: my health is recovering wonderfully, even though I cannot say the same for my clothes.

The past few weeks, I feel, should remind us all that while some students may go to college for free, party all the time, never go to class, and in general not take any responsibility for their lives, I think that this group is in such an overwhelming minority that those students should not shape (as I feel is so often the case in popular culture) the perception of students. We, like any other population, live in as real a world as any.

And now, for the general updates.

I am making significant progress at a project I have been working on for a fair amount of time at my internship. The project involved me learning –essentially from scratch- some of the basics about Visual Basic, ASP.NET, XML, XSL, and some commercial web-services. It has been a really significant learning curve, but I have made some really appreciable progress so I’m glad for that.

Classes are going relatively well, which is to say that they are -as is their nature- challenging, time consuming, and worthwhile experiences. Hopefully in a post soon I will talk a little bit more about my honors thesis. I’m quite excited about it, as it lets me research into a subject that is important to me.

As a junior, I met with my advisor to schedule my last round of classes. We spoke at length and made sure that I would be able to graduate in four years, fulfilling the requirements for a Computer Science major with an English Writing minor while simultaneously fulfilling the requirements to graduate with honors. And there was a strange sense when I realized I would have exactly enough time to get in exactly the classes I needed. Everything fell into place, and it allowed for the moment when you realize graduation isn’t that far away. And then you also realize that doesn’t change the one paper being due next week, and so that moment was short lived.

Oh! And the first study abroad orientation met since I posted last, and I must say I am very excited about the program. Which I suppose should go without saying, but the opportunity to be able to meet the other people going on the trip, including the professor that would accompany us, was really nice. The folks seem to be cool people, and I’m glad for the opportunity to get to know them better over the course of the orientations, pre-study abroad class, and the program itself.

I think that’s about it for me.
So there.

 (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.