We’ll see if this continues to be a positive development, but I already feel good about the shape of things to come.

I was being carried through the air

Beneath me, I gazed upon

hilly, glowing cities half-clothed in clouds of mist

an almost ethereal quality

And with a turn of the neck upwards,

my eyes found a still-richer city: the city of stars in the sky, more numerous than I’d ever dreamt.

Those seemingly immortal beacons of light that outline Orion;

the familiar angles of his hunting dog

the meandering but determined river of light, steadfast in its self-same, looping course

The stars told me I was still on my own world, but the experience suggested otherwise.

Until I dare return to this realm of the sky, I can only dream of what wonders it holds.

• Danny and Tianyi both graduated last year
• We picked up a new roommate, Senan
• Tom and Duncan are applying for astrophysics/physics grad schools
• Senior spring!!!

After a summer in banking, I realized that I wasn’t actually very interested in finance.  I came into college with ideas of picking stocks for a career but grew disillusioned along the way.  Stock-picking is fun, to be sure, but I like it more as a hobby.  Banking and trading are not that related to fundamental investing, so I decided to focus on finding a tech or consulting job during senior recruiting.  Fall recruiting proved to be much better for me than junior recruiting, and that can probably be attributed to more interview experience and practice.  In the end, I got my top choice at a large tech firm, and I continue to feel very lucky.  Switching to computer science was definitely one of the best decisions that I made in college.

As for senior spring plans, Tom and I want to rent Zipcars every few weekends and explore New England.

I’ve been home for almost two weeks now, and it’s been very relaxing to be able to read and exercise on a regular schedule.

This past summer I got a root canal and a crown for one of my molars. Now I have a perfect, decay-proof, pain-immune tooth. I begin to wonder how feasible it would be to replace most or all of the human body with superior artificial prosthetic parts, and whether I’ll see this starting to happen within my own lifetime.

I’m developing a new fantasy: as I grow older, I think it would be fascinating to have my bones replaced with artificial substitutes, one at a time. I’d keep my bones in a safe collection, until one day I could assemble them. I would then be able to show people my own skeleton.

My sophomore year of college was characterized by an outward-looking-ness, an intense, conscious questioning of myself and the world and my future and my goals and my failures.
And as I’ve noted on this blog (in the drafts, if nowhere else), this property was drained out of me (at times painfully) over the course of the past year and a half.

This summer is acting as a chance for me to catch up with myself, be restful yet productive, and for me to seriously re-evaluate everything all over again, before the onslaught of senior year begins. And I think it’s working, to a certain degree. I’m pursuing a semi-serious hobby; learning how to effectively structure my time; and developing good, laid-back friendships – things I’m really happy about. And life is not completely peaches: I still have my fair bit of insecurities; doubts and fears about the future; frustrations about myself; but when I get into a speculative mood, these troubles don’t seem as pressing, and all that seems to matter is that I approach the future earnestly and with an open mind, so that I can make the best of what comes.

(I should probably use less semicolons too.)
(And parenthetical remarks.)

So, wish me luck, readers (if there are any of you left), and I’ll see you on the other side.

The end goal, of course, is to play like this:

Stairway on classical guitar

My hair is clearly too long for me to not know how to play guitar.

One positive aspect of recruiting (and probably the only one) was the inducement of self-reflection.  I have never delved so deeply into what my true desires are, and I feel more complete with regards to self-understanding as a result of the process.  Will investment banking be a good choice for me right after college, or will I be happier going with a startup?  Even if I am immediately happier working at a startup, which decision is better in the long term?  I suppose I’ll be able to answer these questions better after this summer.

And yes, I have been neglecting this blog for the entire semester.  It’s now summer, and I have a week of free time before I go to Chicago, but I’m not really sure what to do.

More to come.

For example, I’ve been working tangentially on a piece of code almost all night that will help me remove systematic errors from my dataset (research-y stuff), but instead of making much progress, I’ve poured lots of time into trying to get a better understanding of both software development and a mathematical curiosity called “robust statistics”. I’m a little irritated that I’m not as far as I wanted to be, but I feel like this was worthwhile procrastinations.