It's harder to post when you don't have a computer. Not that I don't still spend most of my day sitting in front of one but usually I want to get in and out as quick as I can. Not that that's always possible with my valve group, but with them I have to act busy. Eunji said that either she or someone she knows can fix it for me which would be absolutly amazing. Right now I have all my files (cover letters, resumes, etc) saved on the computers in the CAD lab so they're fine but I already spend way too much time in the CAD lab. It's such a mech E hang out though so its alright.

I've spent most of this week going to employer presentations and applying to jobs. It's a full time occupation right there. Maybe someone would pay me to do that. I've done some school work too but so far nothing's been really hard or stressful. The machine shop was a little annoying today cause we kept finding out that our design couldn't be manufactured. Copper is a bitch to work with and we're working on a pretty small scale and we don't know what we're doing so basically, we're fucked. Oh well. I have fun messing around with the power tools, as long as no one expects good results.

Dan's coming to visit me in two weeks or so. That's pretty exciting. I didn't expect him to actually go through with it. You know how people say "yeah I'll totally come to NY" but they don't actually mean it. It should be a good time.

Oh and I could kill club sports. Why would you give a 15 person van to the sailing team and the hiking team when the sailing team only has 6 people going and you don't know how many people are going for the hiking team when the men and women's frisbee teams both submitted rosters of 15 people? And why would you give us such a hard time about it and not confirm our reservations ever. It's such a little detail until we end up walking to yale.

What else it going on... I don't actively hate any of my classes which I consider a real blessing. Some of them are actually kind of cool which is unexpected. I can get through this semester I think and hopefully by the end of it, i'll have a job so I'll be more relaxed. I'm still wicked psyched about non-profit management consulting, but even if i don't make it work this time, I'll get there.

I'm less lonely now that i've settled into classes. Not happy all the time, but living next to elizabeth helps and i've been trying to hang out with people more. me and goose still have to watch the rest of shalin soccer.

That's my week/life in a nutshell and next week will be more of the same. More job searching, more school. Lots of the deadlines are in the Oct 2 to Oct 7 range so that will be fun.

Non profit management consulting! I think I've told everyone I know about it. I didn't even know it existed until yesterday but now I want to do it. It's such a relief to be actually excited about a job that I'm applying for. That sounds horrible, but that's the first time I've been like "wow I want to do that." Everything else has been like "well I guess that wouldn't be so bad." So now I have something to work for. And if something else comes up then so be it, but now I have a plan A which I was seriously missing.

Panic just set in. I missed my first deadline for a consulting firm. Granted its not one I was particularly interested in, but still. Things are suddenly moving too fast for me. I had no less than three involved conversations today with various people on the topic of "what do I want to be when I grow up." I wish there was a way to take myself out of the situation like I did when I decided I didn't want to go right to college. Like find an alternate solution that's equally acceptable but not nearly as stressful.

And I have to get my computer looked at and I just don't want to bother.

I'm retarded

My computer won't turn on. At all. Well that's not true. It'll get to the log in screen after about 20 minutes of trying and then it stops there. I'm hoping it can heal itself cause i miss it already. I get like a million e mails a day so checking it only a couple times a day can be quite a process.

That's not why I'm retarded though. I'm retarded because no matter how many times I knew it was going to crash in the near future (and its been on its last legs for a while), I've never back things up systematically. Like I have somethings saved random places, and there's not a lot on there I need. I have all my music on my ipod and most of my important documents on cunix. But there's lots of random stuff like photos and IM logs that I never backed up. Though actually most of the photos are still on my camera. Ok, so maybe it'll be ok. I just still feel dumb, cause I've seen it coming for so long.

I went climbing again today and it was fun though more frustrating than last time. There was one wall that neither of us (me or Ben) could get up but I got higher than him. He wasn't flexible enough to get past the first section and I wasn't strong enough to get past the top part. Oh the irony.

This whole looking for jobs, planning for the rest of my life thing is really stressing me out. Not because its a lot of work and I'm going to get rejected a lot, though that's true. More because I don't know what I want. I almost always know what I want and then its just a matter of getting my shit together and getting it. But I don't.

Three weeks ago, before I moved back to the city, I would have said I wanted to get a real job, with a real income, and start settling down. Because the people I was hanging out with in Seattle had that, and I wanted it. Thinking about travelling made me a little tired, and I started fantasizing about 9-5s and stable boyfriends. I mean it makes sense. I was happy there, so I wanted to keep the elements of the summer that made me happy.

Now I'm back in New York, and I don't want to be here. And I'm not happy with my classes or my schedule or my lack of energy or my social life. So I'm restless. I want to move away. I want to travel. Peace Corps is starting to look appealing where less than a month ago, it looked exhausting. I want to change everything in my life so I'm not sucked into the boring funk that is Columbia. Now logically, you'd think I'd just want to go back to Seattle or somewhere and settle down if that's what was making me happy before. But some how I don't work like that. Mostly because I can't quite picture it, so I'm picturing settling down in New York and New York has bad associations for me right now.

But the problem is, how do I conduct a job search when I don't even know what end of the spectrum I want to be on? I'll apply for consulting jobs but with my GPA and lack of relevent experience, I don't have a great shot. And most of them are in New York. I'll apply for Peace Corps, but I don't know if that's what I really want. It's so confusing to feel such a huge change within myself in such a short time. I really can't handle it; I don't know how to figure it out; I don't even want to think about it, because it brings up such confusing gut reactions.

And it doesn't help that I have to keep squashing down the mental calculations, telling myself that it doesn't matter where I am in May 2008 cause its not going to happen.

Don't kill me, busy people (mara) but I have entirely too much time on my hands this week. And I know that in two weeks I'll be wishing I had it back but right now its useless to me. School hasn't really started yet. None of the books for my classes are in the bookstore yet and I only just settled my schedule yesterday. I have one assignment due Thursday but its a group one and we're meeting later today.

Yesterday, I went to a career event briefly and then went climbing with Ben. City Climbers Club is so casual and the guy told me that if I bought a membership, I could always just use the gear with no rental cost. So I'm going to spring for it. $100 for 12 months is fairly incredible and I wanted to get more into it. I know I shouldn't spend the money but I'm rationalizing it because only have to buy one book this semester.

The stuff I should be doing mostly involves finding jobs, both an easy one for this semester and a real one for next year. All of the consulting firms recruit right now so I have to apply and interview and THEN figure out what I want.

Oh and it was so sad! I just bought a new suit like three weeks ago and I tried it on last night again to see if the woman at the tailor shop hemmed it right. Well she hemmed it right but now it doesn't fit around the waist! I hadn't been running for a week or so when I bought it and my cousins had been feeding me well and that must have made a difference. So now I have a beautiful suit that doesn't work. I don't want to gain weight but I need that suit to work. Could I still return it? I got it hemmed but all the tags are still on it and I have the receit.

eek

Being at school defietely brings out my anxiety. I always have a distinct feeling that I'm missing something. Also, I don't trust Columbia to have my back. I knew at Barnard that if I asked my adviser something, she would give me the correct answer and if she said I was fine, then I was fine. Here, no one seems to know anything so I'm in constant fear that I'm forgetting requirements or misunderstanding something. I have three people that I can talk to about classes and they all know less than 1/3 of the story.

Columbia makes everything harder. Even opening a mailbox in Lerner is a huge deal. Despite the fact that there are at least 70 people that I know who need to open one this year, and 10 people I know that have ALREADY opened one this year, the people in mail services treated us like it was some new and uncomprehensible problem. I don't see why it is such a confusing request, but they've treated each person to ask as if it was the first time they had ever imagined that someone could ask for so much.

I'm still trying to figure out classes too. I have 4 or them all set but I need one more and I can't decide whether to knock off a tech elective or do something fun and trust that the tech electives next semester will both interest me and fit into my schedule. Those two things seem to be mutually exclusive this semester.

Practice last night was a lot of fun though. I hope more returners come out but I had a good time with the ones who did and the rookies who might or might not stay. I need to work on my throws hard core though.

Anyway, I have to stop stressing out when I have nothing to stress out about. Only things I need to do is figure out that one extra class and find a job for this semester. And find a job for next year. But I have about a week before recruiting really starts for consulting. Just enough time to update my resume and focus my search a little more. And apply to the Peace Corps. Ok maybe I should stress out....

New York

I'm back in the city. Moved in yesterday in the middle of what felt like a hurricaine. It was so windy and rainy and gross out. Luckily today is nicer. I was moved in pretty early yesterday cause I insisted in getting her by 10 AM. I thought the process would be much harder and take a lot longer but it turned out to be fine. I spent the rest of the day unpacking and catching up with people.

It is so strange to be here without my Barnard friends. I mean I like frisbee people and engineers but the Barnard group was the one I relyed on. They're the ones that I could show up in their suite and do absolutly nothing. They're the ones I could call if I was bored and just wanted to grab a coffee with someone. I don't like not having them; it makes me feel alone.

I was so happy in Seattle almost all of the time. I think I'm going to have to work on that in New York. I don't know what the difference was but I have to figure it out. Cause I'm already feeling so let down being back at school. So I have to figure out what was making me so happy over the summer and how I can keep it up even as classes get hard and things get busy. I think one difference was that I didn't have to go to parties or interact with large groups of people. I would do specific activities that I wanted to do with one or two people that I liked. That's something that I can recreate in New York. Cause honestly, with some exceptions, parties kind of depress me. So that's one thing I can do- grab coffee with Alex, go climbing with Ben, do some exploring with Elizabeth, chill with Brian and Jake. Call up people I wouldn't normally call up.

In other news, I helped Karen move in last Friday and I love their new place. It's right on a lake and its so much cleaner and brighter and not student ghetto fabulous. I just have to figure out how to visit them easily.