My self-image is different now. I think I have a stronger sense of how to make decisions and of how to evaluate situations. Experience helps a lot with that. I've experienced a few things. I became the main tenant in a lease contract with another person. I shared a small apartment with a person not in my family for an extended period of time, and learned what possible conflicts, or interesting discussions, might arise from living with someone like that. I've bought clothing for myself, I enjoyed the beauty of Pittsburgh during the Fall season, I fell in love with a girl who I almost thought I shared a soul with, I lived through a strong winter in Pittsburgh, I found myself buying a heater fan for myself, I shared my most intimate secrets with a girl who I secretly thought could eventually love me back, my heart broke when I found out that would not happen, and I experienced a spring semester full of gloom, false pretenses, hatred, and feelings of revenge towards her.
Then as the semester drew to an end, I removed her presence from my life, and by doing that, I managed to focus on other people and activities. And then a different chapter of my grad year opened up: Summer.
Summer has been populated with images of people different from the ones I interacted with during the school semesters. Orkun, Julian, Lucia, Maria Clara, Andrea, Ashik, Jose Flores, Maria Luisa, Simeona, Laura Stokes, Lexie, the 8+ couchsurfers that surfed through my house, Harmony, Theo, Sonja, Polina, and Mariha come to mind. Skydiving, rafting, biking, Cedar Point, Washington DC, Moraine State Park, roadtrips, bridge-climbing, Pittsburgh discovery... experiences have been quite diverse, and there are still many more yet to go through.
Now, however, I evaluate this past year in general. I came to Carnegie Mellon University, to Pittsburgh, to live. My single decision of leaving my Reddwerks job in Austin to pursue a Ph.D. in Pittsburgh caused my life to change substantially, and I think of asking myself whether it was a good choice. (I do not ask myself that question, though, because the way I see it, I do not like to think of choices as "good" or "bad". Each person chooses according to what they think and believe at that time, and whatever effects and ramifications, expected or unexpected, happiness or grief, caused by the chosen possibility are far too complex and uncertain to predict at any given time. What we can do is choose with certainty and with belief, knowing that it was the best choice we could take at that time, and trusting the effects of it to the natural forces and to the world).
I ask what have been its consequences. What would've happened, had I refused to come to Carnegie Mellon University? Had I chosen to stay at my job, with my stable decent salary, with great coworkers and bosses, coding happily, but with slightly increasing, seeping frustration at the fairly routinary nature of my software engineer role? Living with my brother, with only a few friends, but in a strongly energetic city? Would I have liked it? I was looking for an escape anyway... I found it. And here I am now.
Had I not left my job, heck, had I not been contacted by Luis 2 full years ago, in August of 2008, I would not have even thought of applying to CMU again. I would've continued in my job, always looking for other opportunities, of course, but probably not aiming at CMU. I would have continued on the McLane project, and probably kept on working on the Spider chart I was occupied with during the last few months.
I wouldn't have gone to Disneyland with the company probably - I would not have gone to Europe in Spring of 2009, and I would have saved more money. Monthly rent of $450, monthly salary of $2800 (considering the final raise I got as I left the company), groceries, gas, and miscellaneous expenses of not more than $350 would have probably kept my savings increasing at a rate of almost $2000 per month. Following this trend, I'd probably have enough money to buy 2 Nissan Leafs by now (including the $7500 tax credit per car). Probably enough money to buy a house back in Guatemala. Enough money to travel even more. Would I have gone traveling? Would I have decided to leave the company, like Doug did, and become a rich backpacker going all over the world? I'd rather be a sustainable backpacker. You know, one whose incomes manage to equal or exceed his/her expenses. Whose traveling can become a lifestyle.
If I had worked for the full year of 2009, I probably would have kept having a slight, pointless crush on Emily Rose Rawlings, who is still going strong, and almost flawlessly, on her relationship with her boyfriend, who is also quite awesome. I may have continued going to bars in downtown, probably met up with other people. I could not do other illegal drugs very much though - they seem to be a little too intense for my brain. Austin is mostly known for people who do drugs... what kind of friends would I have found?
Would I have moved? Where to? California, maybe, to the Bay Area? Maybe I would've found some kind of job in Europe? I would've still had a strong urgency to go to Europe, so that could've happened. Maybe Singapore again? I may not have been able to meet up with Marcelo at Toronto, or to see Niagara Falls, or to know about Couchsurfing at all. But what would have happened? I don't know. But given the place I am in now, the experiences I have absorbed, and the people I have met, I think my choice turned out to be quite all right :). I have received beneficial and instructive influences from many experiences and people, and I know I have been a beneficial influence to others around me. A few examples:
- I helped my Machine Learning classmates move around the city with my car all year.
- I learned about Machine Learning, Statistics, and Data Mining from my courses.
- I met up with a free-willed, open-minded dancing community here in Pittsburgh.
- I've learned to fix up a bike, inspired others to use bikes for transportation around the city, and shown some of them where to fix their bikes.
- I've shared diverse and fun experiences with great people who are open-minded, free-willed, and curious of Life, as I aim to be and like to think of myself as.
- I've checked off Skydiving and Rafting off my to-do list.
- I helped 8 people stay somewhere at least for one night, while they went on and fulfilled their own Life objectives.
- I had intimate relations with a girl again! That's not that frequent in my life, so it's sure nice when it happens :)
So what choice will I decide upon now? One full year later, given my range of possibilities right now, what path will I take? I have not been feeling identified with my Machine Learning program these days, mostly because of the kind of "research" I have been working at - euphemistic for plain web UI programming on a slow development platform.
Will I switch my research focus? Will I switch my advisor? Will I continue in my program? Or will I wait to achieve my Masters degree, and then focus on things I feel more strongly about? So far, I have learned from Life that change is good. From evolutionary theory, diversity holds the best potential, for it exposes one to the good things from all the different things it finds. To the bad things too, but that is why one can choose. So I am not averse to change. I would not mind it at all :).
Right now, at 2:50:50am on Wednesday August 18th, 2010, I choose to finish one more compilation of the GeoGame, send an email, and sleep :).
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