Fear itself will know fear.

Tue, 05 Jan 2010 15:51:58 GMT

Results of 2009:
-Chastity, obsequience, obedience, innocence, education, and moralism have moved onto my list of probable sins, under the categories of bigotry, judgementalism and self-flagellation.
-I lost organic interest in the sciences and mathematics. Unclear whether it will come back.
-Developed a math curse.
-I no longer intend to program computers as a career or long-term, significant part of my life. As a result, I'm attempting to drop the "computer geek" label and associated shtick.
-I went from having almost no international experience to being naturally internationally oriented.
-I lost my fear of flying. My annoyance, however, only grows stronger.
-I finished my first major software project and barely averted launching two flawed startup companies from college.
-Acted in a play and created my own solo performance.
-I decided to try to learn languages again but did not have the time to take a course.
-I studied entrepreneurship and management at school.
-I tried and failed to blast through the sport of fencing.
-I finally learned breakdance and some practical self-defense.
-I learned to swing and blues dance. I became obsessed with the latter for about a month.
-I have not kissed anyone or been on a date in over a year.

Initial and Tentative 2010 plans:
-I will obtain reality augmentation.
-I will finally solve the last math problem - or fail at it and put this topic to rest.
-I will write a novel.
-I will found a company.
-I will attain profitability or at least breakeven.
-I will become a leader.
-I will return to the world where people have sex.
-I will allow myself to make a couple huge fuckups and not feel bad about it.
-I will legitimately meditate and become a Buddhist.
-I will enhance my looks and charisma.
-I will have the confidence to fight for fun.
-I will graduate.
-I will live the way I want to.

Tue, 05 Jan 2010 00:02:15 GMT

Meme response (questions for people who clearly commented to that effect, comment on this post if I missed you or you want retroactive inclusion).

thelosthoplite

1) If the whole medium of computer/video games and their derivatives had never been invented, what do you think you'd be doing now?

2) Would you ever move away from NY/Have you ever considered leaving the US?

3) What is your ideal lifestyle (not career, lifestyle)?

4) Is the startup going to bring you to the end, or if not what's next?

5) Red or blue (symbolic implications are left to the answerer)?

scibilia

1) Did you ever find a really good set of housemates?

2) What's dating in Philly like post-Swarthmore?

3) When I knew you, I knew you as one of the few non-role-players around me. I have the impression this changed. Why?

4) What is exciting about archives?

5) What is the most important issue to you today, in the world in general?

Sun, 27 Dec 2009 00:21:56 GMT

1) So... post-college plans? What's your major right now and what do you plan to do with it?

Current major is honors physics, honors minor mathematics, course minor computer science. CS is currently endangered. Honors would be if we were earlier in this year.

As for the diploma, immediately coming to mind are applications in toiletries and nasal blockage removal. More seriously, I will give it to my parents to admire/squee over while I sneak off for slightly less awkward goodbyes with my Swat friends.

As for real answer to this question, I've been thinking about it for the past 2.5 years and have yet to come up with a clear answer. I've been thinking about how to best express this well, looking for an excuse to explain this without seeming spontaneously angsty. Career-wise, entrepreneurship has strong appeal to me. International study has weak appeal. Acting, solo performance, writing, and politics have strong curiosity. Programming has lost its appeal over the last couple months. I would prefer to get out of academia, because I doubt that I will start loving school after 21.5 years of wishing it didn't exist. I am not so big on corporate office drone either. Physicist is maybe 4th or 5th backup career. Code monkey is marginally preferable to starving, but only as a temporary measure.

I suppose the life-changing realization I made is that I want to be an adventurer rather than a professional. I have always held the ambition of making epic changes - not just day-to-day increments - to the world. I also don't like to stay in the same place for too long. More recently, I've come to hate sitting on the computer. I want to get out. I really enjoy international experience, despite despising both vehicular transport and tourist traps. I also really think that there is vastly more to learn than what could possibly come from school or a job and that only with that knowledge can I hope to do anything serious.

I see entrepreneurship as the most ambitious, adventuring, realistic career that I currently know of. I don't know how that relates to me degree. I'm leaning toward technology because I have very strong training in it and have the math curse. That's probably the first thing I will try.

I also have the strong sense of a better life parallel to mine. I've been living in a dark and stinky hole. That search is now extremely high priority. Part of it is putting social and practical pursuits far above anything I effectively could study from a book.

2) Does Swarthmore Free Culture even still exist?

It's been dying since my freshman year, across 3 presidencies. At the moment, no. I may try a last re-launch. I would say that my faith in the organization and movement peaked around the end of freshman year. It now becomes increasingly awkward for me to try to rekindle. I've been very annoyed with many FOSS projects lately.

3) What would you say has changed most about the school between when I left and now?

Swat isn't as weird as it used to be. We have a mascot now. The mysterious, mystical, dangerous, off-worshipped but never truly understood network known as SWIL no longer maintains a visible presence here. Instead we have the geeks-just-wanna-have-fun club known as Psi Phi. The administration quietly decided they would air condition the new dormitories. Sports teams act more like sports teams.

Oh, and the administrators are all leaving for NYU Abu Dhabi.

4) What do you think is the single most important issue facing the world today that no one seems to care about?

Consumerism.

We have the option of making real, lasting changes to our lives. The technology exists. For the first time, we can talk to people in the 3rd world and recognize that something worth fixing is happening there right now. Even if we cannot yet build an AI smarter than us, we have IA to make us smarter. We could train ourselves to be better people. Build a world of scientists and artists. Eradicate hunger. Kill death. Chill out on Mars. Imagine a world where death is not a serious threat. Where war is obsolete. Where farmers work on UN payroll producing so much food that anyone can eat for free. Where we solve overpopulation by moving to Mars.

I would bet my life that we can do this before the next century.

We won't. Not in the near future at least. World-changing discoveries are too far in in space and time to think about accurately. Humans weren't meant to deal with so much change. Instead we focus on what we can contemplate. This new movie. That new book. The sex we will or won't have tonight. A $15 DVD player from Walmart. Farmville. Warcraft. Football. Tomorrow at the job. Britney Spears had a kid. Dick Cheney said the F-word. Small dogs. Boob jobs. Anything that can make me happy right here and right now.

Furthermore, we fear. What if the robots kill us? What if there are Martians? Will Jesus forgive us for not wanting to die? Will the black people stab us? Will the white people bomb us? Can I trust you? I know I will have a good adventure on my Wii. Maybe I better stick to that and not go on any read adventures. I know that Tiger Woods is a champion and how much easier it will be to live vicariously through him than to train myself that hard.

I think that the invention of the millennia would be a universal, long-term and total collaboration. I mean every Western giving what we can afford to help the Africans. Not just the US sending some aide. Especially not a few thousand college kids around the country each donating a dollar. I mean total and complete dedication to the big goal. I mean that we all give up parts of our way of life for it. If you won't do it too then my doing it won't help.

You can see it at a smaller scale too. With our bodies. How so many people want a pill to fix this or that - not a lifestyle. With our machines. This summer I picked up an amazingly powerful and expensive computer for about $30 at a trash sale. It was thrown out because the cooling was clogged. I guess the previous owner lacked the knowledge to fix it.

Basically, I think we buy shit, because we're too scared and paranoid to really weigh the costs of everything and spend what time and resources we have on things that count in the end. I think that the more options we have available to us, the more consumerism is going to keep us from the best.

5) What's the one thing you did in college you're most proud of?

I would have to say my solo performance. It was a close call between this and the autocorrelator. Only about 10 people have seen it. All reviews were exceedingly positive, including my course grade and the anonymous peer feedback. I don't understand why. Why anyone would want to hear me talk in stories and strange metaphors about my life. But apparently I have the capacity for epic charisma, oration skill, writing... something.

More importantly, nothing has ever invalidated my solo performance. Computer code is dead to me. Physics is a fun hobby. Maybe I can even salvage my academic overbalance into some kind of general intelligence. That solo performance told me that I was not stuck. That I have the abilities I want as well as the ones people told me to have.

I don't know what I'm going to do with that, but I think it was my best moment in college.

Oh yeah, I can ask you stuff if you comment here.

Tue, 22 Dec 2009 21:02:26 GMT

Flying to Germany tomorrow, for Christmas. Last time I'll be flying around Europe before the big trip back to the states on the 3rd of January. I will miss this place and these people.

I am definitely eager at some times to get back to NYC food and begin the end of my time at Swarthmore.

Still, I appreciate having the time to stay here and enjoy the Edinburgh snow. It snows almost every day here. It's lovely.

Mon, 21 Dec 2009 04:43:07 GMT

Going to write a novel over break. Novel idea is an existentialist space opera, set about 50 years in the future, in which human expeditions accidentally spur a war with a previously undiscovered Martian life form (for unclear reasons). Humans effectively play the part of the classical alien invaders. Protagonist wants to do what's right but ends up orchestrating the destruction of a civilization. How many famous writers have done it before? Any suggestions on the merits of this idea?

Tue, 08 Dec 2009 20:23:05 GMT

Pre-examination nerves. Not studying too hard today, because I need my mind at full capacity more than I need any more specific knowledge. Relativistic quantum field theory, the subject I literally just learned yesterday and now will be examined on. I haven't been this unprepared since I decided to wing AP bio without having taken the course.

I got a 5 on AP bio. And have a free bio credit waiting if I ever take a course in the department.

So this CAN go well. Fingers crossed, and it's about time I pulled another study session.

Meh, if I fail, then whatever. I've spent too long worrying.

Real life. Starting now. And you know what? Things are improving as fast as they did 5 years ago in that most glorious time. Except I know better now. This is the second revolution. The comeback.

Time to make it real.

Mon, 23 Nov 2009 23:18:08 GMT

Tentative Schedule for next semester:

Modern Algebra II
Advanced Laboratory II (W)
Dance Technique:Contact Improv
Theory of Computation
Japanese Film and Animation

Sun, 22 Nov 2009 22:26:03 GMT

Posting pretty rarely these days. Too much life to throw into a journal, and for a while, I was putting my life story into an attempt at literature instead.

Anyway, I used to write a whole lot about "the wrong universe." I wrote several stories under this nebulous title. It is a feeling that everything I do is playing some game that lies false to my desires. It is the notion that just nextdoor is a society that is more relaxed and meaningful than this one. The notion that the world should be more romantic, less of a nuisance, beautiful in ways usually found only in moments or dreams. The notion that I was born into the wrong universe.

This weekend, I think I found something closer to this dreamworld which I seek.

Now I'm back here, but it bothers me less. I'm going to try to focus now and work harder. There is something to work for.

I don't hate science anymore again. I'm not obsessed with it either. I will do RQFT - as much as is reasonable in the next 2.5 weeks.

Current State of Something

Sun, 01 Nov 2009 18:19:21 GMT

If science were really easy, I'd take it just for the heck of it. This is partially the case in 1st semester postgrad bioinformatics, at least so far. I'm doing not-horribly and haven't actually done any readings or outside-of-class work. Therefore, I enjoy it.

This is not the case with relativistic quantum field theory. This class takes a disproportionate amount of time for me to make half-assed progress on the problem sets. I wish I had not signed up to take the exam for this. Similarly, I have a large and difficult programming project in lattice QCD. Since I don't want to work in academia or research, this kind of study is unimportant and not rewarding to me. When it starts to eat up huge amounts of time that could be dedicated to more relevant tasks, I start to really hate studying. This applies both to physics and computer programming.

I currently oscillate between being okay with taking a little more science and absolutely wanting to leave it for good.

Fundamentally, there's nothing I hate about science - I just hate the fact that it takes an awful lot of effort for something that will never grant me what I desire.

This changes under the circumstances that:
1) I find away that I can attain my desires through science.
2) Science becomes worthwhile for other reasons (such as being satisfying on its own).
3) Science becomes easy enough to do as a sidequest.

I am currently focused on #1. My hope is that with Bayesian inference, a good problem-solving mentality, strong mental discipline, and great patience for complexity, I can learn social skills faster than normal. Social skills aren't necessarily an end in themselves, but I find myself wishing almost constantly that I had more.

For this reason, I am going to try not to hate science. Because I already have it, and it's a sunk cost, so any benefit I can squeeze out of it now is better than nothing. I'm writing a LiveJournal post to remind myself of this. Plus, who knows, maybe in a year I'll discover a new way in which computers can solve all my problems.

It is also worth noting that I hate science out of fear that I will be straightjacketed in a scientific or engineering career. I must take additional steps to resist this, but having a science background shouldn't force me into using it, at least not in the US.

Thu, 22 Oct 2009 00:32:36 GMT

My God, it is such a mess. I don't know how much of my aversion to doing "too much science" comes from childhood fears related to people taking/self-attributing my talents. The repulsion I feel for corporate America may have to do with the sensation of having my hard-earned abilities ripped from me. And so I instinctively seek not to earn what I can't defend.

I'm going to take a more active role in driving many things. Pursuing aggressively, rather than reacting. More frequent "relavance?" queries to myself.

No. Maybe that's not it. Maybe it's just a question of removing that block. Why is it there?

I will find out!

Wed, 21 Oct 2009 18:03:50 GMT

A couple days ago, I had the idea of using GPU-acceleration (combined with some other things) to deliver cheap, real-time cloud computing for mass consumption.

Tonight I read that nVidia has already started doing it.

Guess I'm back to doing this again. Good idea, several months too late.

Tue, 20 Oct 2009 16:26:25 GMT

I almost regret the 30 points of physics I chose to take this semester, given that they take up well more than 70% of my academic time and don't have any forseeable relevance in life. But it least they sound cool. I suppose that's more than most things are worth these days.

I suppose I must remind myself not to discount the various signs of progress in these past months. Nervous responses finally calming, next steps becoming apparent.

Otherwise, I really don't like sitting here, not knowing if I'll ever catch up in RQFT but quite sure I won't be on a date in the near future. I don't care for being chained to my academic desk, but at least it's better than corporate.

I've done well. I've learned how to not care. How to meditate on the connectedness of all things and the next hour eat something I paid to have murdered by overworked immigrants. How to understand that the world ends every hundred years and accept that millions more will die before this decade is up. How to sit here and post on LiveJournal when I know that there are a million more efficient uses of the time.

For the first time I feel like I think I should have as a teenager. Rebellion appears more logical with each new day. With twenty one years drawn behind me, I sometimes question whether it was all wrong, whether I would do better to invert everything I have ever known about living. Smaller apocalypses than such have generally been good for me, but without targeting, I doubt there is anything to learn.

I am painfully aware of how I would enjoy being a sadist. It fights with so many of my current dreams and visions of what is good. Maybe this is part of my problem.

I have a purpose in life, and that purpose is to survive the end of college and bridge the chasm to a better place. I don't know why. If you ask, I'll give some roundabout answer that involves immortality and world domination.

I no longer fear routine damage on my body or soul. I suppose that when form divorces function, I am one step closer to that void.

This is a dumb way to be, but from here there are many ways to go. I suppose I should therefore enjoy my time here.

In other news, I discovered that by feeling the temperature and microcurrents in the air, I can close my eyes and sense walls moments before touching them. I wonder what else I can feel below the surface.

Mon, 19 Oct 2009 15:39:37 GMT

Life goes on at U. of Edinburgh. Surviving bioinformatics for the time being. Hoping for the same with RQFT and everything else (though RQFT is the one that currently most worries me).

I've rejoined some kind of fencing. I'm going to try not to go crazy with it the way I did junior year and let any tournaments ruin a perfectly good weekend - I may simply not go to tournaments. Besides, priorities are different today.

The project is coming along very well. Maybe it's production level. Maybe it's not. I'm currently looking for alpha testers for a new kind of high-resolution real-time autocorrelator, as used in dynamic light scattering and fluorescence correlation spectroscopy. Or anyone who knows what that is and might be interested in chatting about it.

Kinda bored right now, as usual. Kinda worried at the same time, which is always the case. I get still these nightmarish scenarios playing out in my head, like I mentioned in the summer, but I think I know what they are now. As I heard years ago, my nervous system is somewhat over-reactive, making small screwups into fiascos and turning miniscule probabilities into unavoidable accidents. Ironically, I also crave stimulus of magnitude that low-stress lifestyles never seem to provide. I am also a single male in my 20s, which does not make this problem any less apparent.

Shit, I'm in my 20s. Is this supposed to be my prime or something? God I hope not.

emag a yalp ew llahs

Sat, 17 Oct 2009 01:05:14 GMT

Let's try an experiment:

If you could change something about me, what would it be?

(no comment screening)

Thu, 15 Oct 2009 00:21:12 GMT

So I've got the most insane schedule ever, with 3 graduate-level classes and half-a-schedule of physics for which I lack all prereqs. Not to mention the massage classes I suck at, and the desire to do fencing and capoeira and some reasonably practical martial art all at the same time. Plus improv comedy and creative writing. And then I still have my project to work on and am going to want a business plan for it soon.

But you know what? I'm not gonna let it phase me this time. I started relaxing this weekend and I'm going to keep doing that. Because I'm growing into an entrepreneur, and working in 3 different subjects each 2 levels above me is just ordinary. Boring. Yesterday's news.

I also might have missed an opportunity with some insanely hot girl. Who knows. Can't let that get to me either. Might've missed 2 since I got here. Or might not.

Just gonna meditate, get some sleep. I'll need it. And think back to the summer I turned 16 years old and didn't think I could pass linear algebra at Brooklyn Poly... and the day I found out I'd scored an A, better than half the college juniors who'd flunked it the first time

Thu, 08 Oct 2009 00:18:30 GMT

Once again I feel continually bothered by my social anxiety and related lack of progress.

But if this is all there is, if life is no longer stepping in to push me down and hold me there, then I can deal with this. It's just a matter of plan and action.

Wed, 07 Oct 2009 21:54:26 GMT

Sometimes I remember what things used to feel like, how they were different. Specifically, I think of a night in which two of my friends and I stayed out partying far too late in Williamsburg. We walked back on the Williamsburg bridge, shirtless in the summer air, and ate at a NYC diner around 4AM. There was nothing especially great about that night - in most ways it was a useless exercise in hipsterism. It didn't feel that way, though. There was a certain feeling to the night, promise in the air. It darkened my senses and brightened my thoughts.

Then was college sophomore year, the glory days or what passes for them now. I'd just been cruelly eliminated from a relationship that wasn't supposed to have gone anywhere in the first place, leaving me to walk out of depression with a newfound freedom and hope. I proceeded to find defeat where I needed, and victory where I'd most hoped. It was a year spent with more happiness than usual, though I could already feel that something needed to break.

Junior year broke everything. But no, I suppose my GPA held up, even as I stopped caring about it. And I fixed things by the end, somewhat. Still does the shock of it fall upon me.

I finished the relativistic quantum field theory problem set tonight. What does that mean? Well, it means I don't have to worry about field theory for the time being. And maybe that junior year really did teach me to solve physics problems in a tenth the time I could before it.

And that's significant, because it leaves me with time tonight. Time to think about whether the feelings of old were just a delusion, or if there might be a new way to make them true.

Mon, 28 Sep 2009 22:59:46 GMT

Hmmm... so the first thing I do when I get to Edinburgh is find a way to overload myself... this is a strange pattern of mine. Next week ought to be easier, though.

I'll probably drop product management. Today's lesson was how to create databases in Microsoft Access. Yes, this is the same course that promises to be geared toward entrepreneurs in its now outdated course description. Instead I attained the joys of data entry. It's also a 9AM, 40min from where I live. So today I awoke too early and am now very tired.

Apparently I damaged my rotator cuff? Probably leading sloppy swingouts for most of the summer. That would explain the shoulder pain. Anyway, I need some excuse to drop an activity. Maybe I'll let Lindy fall for a month or two while my shoulder heals.

I'm doing another play. It wasn't supposed to be good - no auditions, all n00bs, 1 week to improvise and rehearse. But oddly, it's quite awesome. All 9 of them (there were 9 groups).

These times remind me how much thinking I've left to do. I still want to be an entrepreneur, and probably the non-coding side of the company. But I also still have a sense of science being cool, and of business people being full of shit. I still feel something accomplished at the thought of a publication. Yet I loathe the notion that I would be spending the next 10 years of my life between various labs, waiting for someone in charge to promote me, from BA to PhD, then out of postdoc, then through the various levels of assistantships and professorships...

Maybe I don't hate science at all. Maybe I love science. Maybe what I hate is the thought that I would be working for and at the mercy of an authority.

Sat, 26 Sep 2009 01:01:43 GMT

Tentative Course List:

> Computational Physics Honors Project (GPU-based Lattice methods for the QCD Dirac equation)
> Relativistic Quantum Field Theory (I don't have the prereqs for this, so it's really hard)
> Informatics for Entrepreneurship
> Product Management (engineering)
> Computer Design
> Bioinformatics

In other news, there are breakdance and blues dance here. Awesome. There are also capoeira and fencing, in case I want to keep up with those. And a series of classes in massage. Then there's actual, practical self-defence, taught by a mixed martial arts teacher.

ATI is quite... crappy. Their Brook+ compiler actually brought down my Linux box (yes, the compiler, not the program that it was compiling). This is a major setback for this weekend.

Other than friends, I think the thing I miss most about Swarthmore right now is... Sharples!

Thu, 24 Sep 2009 15:01:13 GMT

I'm now at a major crux of college life: do I take what is cool, or what applies to my desired career?

On the cool side, I have a computational physics project to program a GPU-based solver for the Lattice QCD Dirac equation. This would have me working with a professor who is currently designing the frontloader for the Blue Gene Q, and probably communing with three other cool guys. As a co-requisite, I would have to take a course in relativistic quantum field theory. There is also bioinformatics.

On the relevant side, organization studies, product management, project management. All 3 courses about how to run a business and deal with people. All three things that I desperately need a better understanding of.

There is 1 course, informatics entrepreneurship, which is both awesome and relevant.

There is 1 course, computer design, which is boring and not useful but required for a CS minor.

Please comment.

Mon, 21 Sep 2009 00:53:15 GMT

I had a weird night last night. I got progressively drunker and at some point decided that I could nuke my own mind/bad memories with alcohol. It was then that I recognized I'd been dreaming for months of "obliteration," and that my dreams were not of destroying some external hardship but to free myself from my own bondage. I had similarly believed that with the junior year of hell I would purge all inefficiency and baggage from my personality but never made the connection until last night.

This ended with my drinking plenty but not all that much in the grand scheme of things. My memory didn't get fucked, and half of the mental confusion was from the strobelights. I made the simultaneous realization that I'd been trying to do the opposite as well - to re-affirm myself and thereby escape the baggage of doubt.

It has been abundantly clear to me in these past days that I suffer from paranoia and social anxiety.

I suppose my ultimate desire is transcendence. Of nation. Of thought. Of suffering. Of death. I should meditate again.

In other news, Gnu Make is much like a shell in itself. Complicated, powerful and very necessary.

PS. After countless hours, the makefile is very close to compiling the Brook+ component. Hopefully, adding OpenCL will be much easier.

Sun, 20 Sep 2009 12:01:23 GMT

Edinburgh has been great so far. Now to actually start classes...

I have to figure out whether I want to take a business course or attempt a foreign language for 1 semester. Both seem like they would be massively useful at the moment.

Edinburgh Observations

Mon, 14 Sep 2009 23:53:24 GMT

I suffer currently from a terrible and depressing loneliness. I do not know if this is completely normal for one who has gone to another country and been cut off from one's friends/family, whether it is missing the typical return to Swarthmore and all that I have come to know there, or whether it is a misplaced fear of future leavings. Maybe I put too much pressure on myself to make friends instantly? Does anyone have experience with this kind of thing or know what it is?

In other news, U. Edinburgh charges $ for club membership. YUCK! But the food is cheap, the U. is cheap, the room is good (and not horribly expensive), and everything else will help me avoid overspending.

It just hit me a moment ago that I can do what I always do - try to build again from scratch. It's usually silly but never depressing to feel that one has an open slate. Of course I am wiser now. I know that the slate is not all open. But on the other hand, I left behind a lot of problems when I came here. For one thing, I'm not so self-conscious or nervous as a I remember. I don't know why. Do I feel that I've nothing to lose? Are four months the perfect amount of time that nothing really matters enough to be afraid of?

Mon, 14 Sep 2009 13:26:40 GMT

Finally moved in. The room is not too bad, and there's a reasonable kitchen very nearby. The flatmates also seem cool, though I've hardly met 2 of them. There are 3 internationals in this flat and one Scottish fresher.

Ceilidh last night was excellent. I'm glad to hear that these are relatively common in Edinburgh. Now to do more things.

Sat, 12 Sep 2009 22:14:00 GMT

Strong is the enemy of comfortable.

Right now, you couldn't imagine how much a part of my wishes that I were back in Swarthmore, chilling with old friends in David Kemp or Willets. I remind myself that this time last year I wished the same thing - just as everything I thought familiar and good evaporated from my life. Consistency was no protection from the shattering of comfort zones then. This does little to change my feelings now. I just moved into this dorm an hour and a half ago. It's cold and basementy, but the room is massive and the location optimal. Feeling tired and lonely as ever.

I think partially I fear to leave Swarthmore behind. But it was logical for me to have come here. I will stay strong.