One Semester Down

I’m sitting on my bed waiting for 6am to come around. I leave for home in the morning so I probably should get some shuteye, but I can’t sleep. Not sure if its because I’m excited to go home or if I’m just too used to going to bed at 3am. Either way, here I am, waiting for the inevitable.

It’s kind of strange to be one eighth of the way done with college already. The last few months seemed to have passed rather quickly. The first couple months were hard. I missed home; the classes were hard; and everyone seemed to know more than me. I figured out how to manage it all and cope with the stress after talking to a few people. There were moments where I wondered what I was doing here at CMU and if I had made a mistake in flying all the way across the country for school. I managed to convince myself that I wouldn’t be happy anywhere else knowing I could have gone to CMU. That worked for a while, but the longing for home was still there. These past few weeks have been different. CMU finally feels like home. Nothing has really changed, but I guess I’ve finally settled it.

Deciding College

I had been having a bit of trouble deciding where I want to go for college as some of you may know. I was torn between UCLA and Carnegie Mellon. I had been researching each school for sometime and trying to figure out what mattered to me the most. UCLA is on the west coast located in sunny Los Angeles while Carnegie Mellon is on the east coast in Pittsburgh. I would say that’s a bit of a contrast in location, but the differences don’t end there. I won’t discuss all the different factors that influenced my decision. I was undecided and that’s all you really need to know.

I decided where to go in English class of all places. My teacher passed out note cards so that people could write what college they were going to and stick it on the door of the classroom for everyone to see. By that time I had already researched everything from recreational activities to how the computer science program is structured. I doubted there was much else I could find out about the schools without actually visiting, which I couldn’t do due to cost of travel and lack of time. So I’m sitting at my desk with a blank note card in front of me and I think to myself “Ah, what the hell. Now is a good time as any other.”

I wrote Carnegie Mellon on my note card and proudly stuck it on the door. :)