I finally started going out of campus in Spring quarter, treks and hikes are something that I really enjoy but haven't really done too much because Delhi doesn't really have a lot to offer that is under 8-12 hours away by car so I had only been on a few hikes in the past few years.
In Spring I decided to try out a few hikes with the UW hiking club because it was a way out of campus and I had heard a lot of good things about the trails around Seattle and how many hiking spots there are around. So my first hikes was to this lake, it was a pretty easy and a rather short hike with a little snow on the way but it was on a well defined trail and everything so it wasn't really as challenging as I wanted it to be.
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Okay, I know I'm updating my portfolio like super duper late but in my defense procastination got the better of me (on the brighter side, I can now make another entry on how I procastinated for two quarters and one summer vacation to update my portfolio :-P).
Anyyywayyyy, coming back to winter quarter. Well like the title suggested, it was rather uneventful. I have a lot to complain about though. Let's start with the wether, this was my first winter in Seattle and I had heard a lot about the rains but didn't really think it'll be this terrible. IT RAINED LITERALLY ALL DAY, I really did not enjoy it to say the least and seeing the sun on those few days filled my heart with happiness. It would either rain all the time or it would be super gloomy with no sign of a blue sky (I wonder if people forget what a clear sky looks like after not looking at if for so long). Also it is okay if it rains heavy but for an hoir or two, but raining (relatively light) throughout the day was a little too much for me to handle. Moving on to the sunlight, living in India, I was much closer to the equator so sunrise and sunset times were relatively similar to the summer or fall. So quite naturally sunset at 4:30 PM was very annoying for me to say the least. And a super late sunrise left very less daylight time which was further reduced by the grey clouds. So yeah, after going through winter quarter, I can see why seasonal depression is a big thing in Seattle. Next up, my classes. I decided to take 15 credits of STEM (A BIG mistake was made). Bio 200 and my honors class were really good and I really enjoyed it because I got to learn so much more and in a very interesting way. However, Math 126 was a totally different story, while it went fine for most of the quarter, I utterly and completely bombed the final and crashed my GPA in the course. I think part of it was because I too worried about my grade, I pretty much underestimated my performance after the second midterm and got a little too worried about the final and took way too much unnecessary stress which was probably a big contributor to my final grade (I did much better on the first midterm and I was not really stressed about it). Getting a bad grade was one thing, the potential implications of it were way more scary. Math 126 was a prerequisite for my major and it was the only course in the math series that I did at UW because I had credit for the other two from high school. This put me in a tough spot because my skills in math could potentially be judged on jist one course and math being a fairly important course for engineering majors, I was really worried that this could be the reason I do not get into my major! Infact I was worried about this until I got an offer from my department to join the major! (I got in!) So, that was my winter quarter in a nutshell. I don't have a lot of pictures because I barely took any, not sure if it was the procastination or the mood :-P
My first quarter at UW was kind off…confusing? I am not sure what to think of it, I would not say it were the best days of my life but also not the worst, it was somewhere in between, I had my goods and bads. Firstly, it was a huge transition coming here, the way my high school worked was very different, I used to have much smaller classes and a very close group of friends. Here, I faced class sizes exponentially bigger and still have trouble making friends and getting used to the new surroundings. So I wouldn’t say that my transition is complete, it is still going on but I think I should get there soon.
My high school classes were extremely small so I had a very small but close group of friends it was not easy to get accustomed to my group, it took me a while, but it was so far back that I don’t really remember how long it took and tend to underestimate the amount of time it took. So I expected it to be quite easy to get a new group of friends, long story short, I have never been so wrong. I think that it is partly my fault too because I am not very social and tend to feel awkward around too many people, so my interests are kind off conflicting, I want more friends but don't want to go out and socialise. I realise that I am the only one who can actually change the situation and I need to start working on it but I am still a little reluctant to do so. I think I need a little more time. Funny but one thing I noticed about myself is that I am actually getting more than eight hours of sleep everyday, I find it quite interesting how I manage to do this. Honestly I did not really expect this because one thing I heard about college and learnt from memes was that you don’t got enough sleep in college. After coming here, I learnt about a lot more resources and opportunities. I am especially interested in research. I have been for a few advising appointments and I’m working on my resume these days. I have shortlisted a few research positions but I’m yet to contact anyone about it. I have set a deadline for myself to apply for positions by the end of the autumn quarter, I think I should be able to meet this deadline because I am almost done with my resume and I am ready to contact professors now that I’m done with my midterms and I have a two week time until my finals. I am aiming to get in a lab by the beginning of the winter quarter. I think it is too early to come up with a long term plan since only my first quarter is close to completion and I don't really believe in planning in detail for a very long term because things change quite quickly and you can't really predict how things will turn out, I like a outline and then go with the flow and improvise according to the situation. At this point my short term goal is to get in the major I want to and for the longer term, I don’t have a lot of ideas on the list but one I can think of is to get research experience during my time at the UW. In all I think my first quarter was a nice experience but I can do better, there is always room for improvement so I will try to overcome my shortcomings of this quarter in the next and so on. For classes happen everyday but your sister gets married once in a lifetime One of the craziest things I did this quarter was taking a trip to India and returning after two days. Why? Well it was my cousin's marriage. So this is how it went.
My sister was getting married in November (smack in the middle of the quarter) and there was not even a speck of hope that I would be attending well because it is in the middle of the quarter. One fine day, about three weeks before the marriage my dad calls me and asks me if I can make it no matter how small the time and I'm like yes I can come to India for two days. Now, I was not really expecting my dad to be onboard with this but well, he was! So we figure a plan out and decide not to tell anyone, not even mom (this is where it got interesting). So for the next two weeks, me and my dad played like I will not be coming for the marriage (not like anyone could see it coming anyway but yeah). And finally on the 9th of November, I leave Seattle without anyone in my family finding out. 20 hours later (or maybe two days, because of the time zone difference), I reach home, everyone was staying at a hotel for the night so I went there. My sister was getting married tonight but nevertheless I decided to wake her up at 4 AM and surprise her, I flew 20 hours for her, she can do this for me right? And she had the most shocked look on her face, full of surprise and literally stunned, that reaction made my trip! Well then long story short, the jet lagged worked against me in the morning but worked for me at night, right when I needed it to because the marriage lasted till 5 AM the next morning. I barely had any sleep in like the past two days so the first thing I did after reaching home was sleep in my own bed, and I can say it is hard to describe the comfort you feel in your own bed but it is a great feeling. Now for the sad part, I had to leave the same night because I had to go back and attend classes. Even though I could not get a lot of time in India, I was glad I could do this because this will be a memory I will cherish forever. Fun Facts: 1) I probably spent more time travelling than on the ground 2) The quote is what probably convinced my dad to book the flight, that is what I said when he asked me if I was very sure whether I wanted to do this.
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