time for a change

As my last post stated, it’s been over a year since my college graduation and I’ve been thinking – which is stupid to say because I’m always thinking. I’ve been in the professional world for a year and without hesitation, I can say that I am NOT happy, satisfied, challenged, acknowledged, etc. In fact, I feel like since graduating, I have indeed “been dumbed down”.

Yes, a paycheck is coming in (an engineer’s paycheck), in this economy. I have a stable job, but seriously, how do people do this? How do people work in a high-stress work environment where they are not passionate about what they do. How are people okay with the feelings of helplessness? How are people okay with going through the motions of life?

Maybe it’s because I still have the young spirit in me, I refuse to be defeated. I refuse to be changed – to become a robot. Many times, more than I’d like to admit, I have fantasized about walking out of work and never coming back for the day. Never ever coming back period. It makes me smile and laugh to myself at my cube, but it keeps me going, keeps me determined.

Can’t stop my shine!

Instead of complaining about my situation, I have decided to be PROACTIVE about changing it. It’s time for me to leave the stuffiness and sheltered-attitudes of New England, let go of attachments, experiencing new things, make new friends, and find an engineering job that I enjoy. It’s time for me to seek career growth.

I have faith in the chaos of the universe – that I will get where I need to be when I need to be.
I hope this optimistic attitude lasts!

graduation: one year later

This past Saturday, I returned to my alma mater to watch the Class of 2012 graduate. It was definitely a weird feeling knowing that just a year ago, I was in their shoes.

One year ago, on this day, I graduated with as B.S. in Chemical Engineering.

Needless to say, I remember the graduation ceremony itself being extremely anticlimactic. Being on the Class Gift Committee, I spoke during the ceremony on behalf of the class gift and got to take a picture with the university President holding the big class gift check. At the end of that day, there were no tears from me. I told everyone that was crying that “I’m not dying and I’m sure that I’ll see you next month”. Like many people, I had mentally graduated  and checked out long before my senior year even started. In fact, I had started cleaning my room out right before winter break senior year.  I remember the last couple of months leading up to graduation being so weird. Like it wasn’t real life. Friendships were starting to deteriorate, there was too much drama, too much uncertainty. Everyone was just trying to find a way to quietly slip away from the reality that our reality was coming to an end. Second semester, as soon as Spring hit, me and my neighbor downstairs (also another senior in my sorority) would sit on our stoop, blast music, drink, people-watch, and reminisce. We did this pretty much everyday, as soon as we got out of class. We would talk to anyone that walked by and invite them to join us. Literally stoopin’ until the streetlights came on. Occasionally we had a random cat join us that we named Stoop Cat.

Meet Stoop Cap: Will hang out for a slice of bologna.

I welcomed graduation, like it would be this huge life-changing event, and I would magically transform into a different person. But alas, I drove away from my empty apartment on May 28, 2011 – still holding on that past, with no idea on how to let go and transition into ‘adulthood’. There were apologies from people that were never given and unanswered questions.  I spent the months of  June and half of July 2011 back home in MD trying to regroup, and then I moved back up to MA to start my new, fresh-out-of-college engineering job.

My summer before my senior year, I interned at a wastewater treatment plant in MD. My boss would always inquire what I really wanted to do with my life. The only thing I could think about was getting the hell out of MA and away from everyone and everything I knew. I wanted to start over again. I researched grad schools’ environmental engineering programs and started studying for the GRE. My parents can attest to the fact that I always said I wanted to be a teacher “when I grew up”. I did my research and in Fall 2010, I applied to Teach For America [I also took the GRE].  Throughout the whole application process (application, phone interview, and final in-person interview), I was told how there needed to be an increase in ‘minority teachers’ and teachers from STEM backgrounds. What? I get to change  lives by teaching and move to a completely new, different place and work with people my age group?! Sign me up!

Well, I guess that’s why people tell you not to put all your eggs into one basket because there I was, April 4, 2011, as I opened up my rejection email: feeling lied to, disappointed, confused and stressed. I didn’t sleep that night – I instead began to apply to engineering jobs aimlessly, not caring where I ended up. I’m the type of person that remembers EVERYTHING – good or bad. I hold my achievements proudly, but my rejections even closer. I still have all my college rejection letters (four to be exact).  I wonder if it’s some miracle, some reason, that I didn’t get into those colleges, Teach For America, didn’t get a job in another state,  or move closer back to my home in MD. Not to mention the fact that I was fooling myself when I said I wanted to go to grad school. Well life is a funny thing because I happened to get a job offer the day before graduation.

One year later:
I am slowly starting to shape together my own life, but to also learning to LET GO! I don’t talk to people who I don’t want to talk to, especially ‘energy vampires’,  and I don’t do things that I don’t want to do. I find enjoyment and excitement in the littlest things, like buying a new brand of conditioner, unfriending people on Facebook, pretending I’m on ‘The Office’ while at work, etc.  Each day I walk, with my head high, never looking at the ground or diverting my gaze, looking every human being that I encounter directly in the eyes. Yes, I may still be a little awkward, but I am confident. I’m becoming less afraid of things and more carefree. My life has some semblance of structure. I exercise, do volunteer-work with little kids, mentor, and still hang out with my friends. However,  there’s always that word – ‘PURPOSE’, in the back of my mind, whispering into my ear.  I need a job that allows me to be more creative, to express myself. I’m not sure how cubicle-lifestyle became so acceptable.

8am to 5pm

“Life can only be understood looking backwards, but it must be lived forwards.” – Soren Kierkegaard

Always Sunny in Thailand

It’s hard to believe that around this time two years ago, my 3-month study abroad trip to Thailand had finally, unfortunately, come to an end.

Now, I would give anything to go back and do more with my time there. Originally, my project was to create a transportation device for wounded elephants in Bangkok. You may be asking: “What in the world are elephants doing on the streets of Bangkok?”

The answer? Tourism.

For income, mahouts (elephant caretakers) used to bring their elephants to the streets of Bangkok, or other major cities in Thailand, to allow tourists to feed the elephants. However, this practice is not healthy for elephants for various reasons: polluted city air, hot pavement, potholes, traffic, etc. As a result, these elephants were put in a lot of harm’s way and many would become injured.

Treating a wounded elephant with an abscess

Most of my days were spent learning about elephants, writing about elephants, interviewing people about elephants, and playing with elephants. Needless to say: while in Thailand, I found a new found appreciation of elephants.

Mahout and elephant

However, during our planning process, my group realized that a transportation device for wounded elephants already existed…so yeah. There we were, in Thailand, with no idea what to work on. We decided to find alternative, sustainable roles for elephants in Thailand. All in all, our project it came together, pretty brilliantly:
http://www.wpi.edu/Pubs/E-project/Available/E-project-030410-230224/unrestricted/UrbanElephants_Final_Report_Mar5.pdf

My group won an honorable mention award for our project!

My experience in a nutshell:

There's my flight!

Touching down in Bangkok

The neighborhood I stayed in

The international student dorms

Ballin' in baht

Motorcycles rule the roadways, and contribute to traffic

Tuk tuk, of course

Rambutan fruit

River Kwai

Beautiful day in Kanchanaburi, Thailand

Breakdancing on the train platform

Also visited my fair share of temples and such:

Wat Arun

Grand Palace

Collecting shoes outside the temple

Ayutthaya ruins

Reclining Buddha 'Mother of Pearl' feet

And the weekends:

Pattaya, Thailand

Tried my fair share of bugs!

Can you spot the frog?

Last but not least, words of wisdom from Thailand:

attention sorority girl: you’re definitely not in college anymore

It’s been about 6 months since I’ve graduated and while it has already hit me that I’m not in college anymore, there are still some pangs of nostalgia that I get at times. I definitely blame Facebook and I try to limit my time that I spend on it. Nothing is wrong with Facebook, it’s just that from the moment that I graduated, I realized that it’s more of a social connection for high school (I have no idea why?) and college kids. I don’t like the way nostalgia makes me feel. It makes me feels helpless and sad. It makes me wish I could go back and really enjoy whatever I was doing in that past moment because I never knew how much I would actually miss it. I figuratively graduated long before I literally graduated. I jumped ship last October, even though I had little over a semester left until graduation and the fact that I was actually taking classes that I needed in order to graduate. I was fed up, over friendships, over partying, and over the whole college scene in general. I wanted to be social without feeling the need to go to a grimy, dingy fraternity basement or a bar filled with desperate, attention-seeking girls and creepy guys (hey, it’s Worcester).

Like I said before, there are certain pangs that bring on my feelings of nostalgia, and the particular pang I’ve been feeling lately is due to my sorority’s current recruitment. Don’t roll your eyes, each and every sorority is different depending on the school and chapter. And don’t get me wrong, I’ve had my fair share of arguments and wanting to throw in the towel with my sorority. Along with the couple handfuls of life-long friendships I’ve formed in my sorority over my undergrad years, there are those moments that prove to be on the same excitement-scale as Christmas. One of those is Bid Day.

Imagine spending two weeks of grueling long practices and recruitment rounds to get a class of new members. New members that are better than yourself, that hold the same values as you, that will bring in an even better class the next year – the future of your chapter. It’s a feeling that I guess only a sorority girl would know.

No matter how different each sorority is, there is no difference in the universal feeling on Bid Day: PURE HAPPINESS. At my college, bids are given out at noon at the mailboxes in the Campus Center (CC). We stalk the new members from the moment they enter the CC until the moment when they open their mailboxes. Sometimes, I don’t even think let them actually finish reading the bid card. We then bombard them with hugs and gifts. It’s a start of a journey, and it’s what you make it. I was the New Member Orientation Chair last year, so Bid Day last year was all my doing. From the moment those 40 bids were given out at noon, I was in charge of a class of 40 members until their initiation 7-weeks later. I guess it’s a role that hard to get out of.

These past weeks, my Facebook news feed has been filled with statuses about Alpha Xi Delta, new members, TFJ (our ritual), and Bid Day. I can’t help but feel nostalgic. I want so badly to like a status, but if I like one, then I would feel obligated to like 50+ more, since the Alpha Xi Delta chapter at my school is very large haha (I’m obviously not close to a lot of the girls in my chapter). I try to stay away, and to let the undergrads enjoy their moment. I feel old, I feel like an alumna, and I feel like I’m definitely not in college anymore. I realized that in a couple of years, when the current sophomore class is graduated and gone, who will I go back to see ? There will be no one familiar there waiting for me. I guess it’s a feeling that everyone goes through at the end of a stage in their life.

In the meantime, I think I’ll just continue creeping in the background until the feelings of nostalgia pass.

halloween as a college grad

It’s no secret that I love candy. I think I could live off of it. I guess you could call me a ‘candy connoisseur’. So I guess it’s no shock that I love Halloween. It’s my second-favorite holiday after Thanksgiving of course.

However, I’ve realized over the years that my feeling towards Halloween changes based on my age. Let me break it down:

1.) Elementary school (ages 5-11) - THE BEST! Changing into Halloween costumes after lunch, a Halloween chorus and band concert (I was in chorus), and a school-wide costume parade around the school neighborhood. This was all followed by a kick-ass Halloween party during the last hour of school (snacks on snacks)! Home by 2:30pm, a bit of homework, then TRICK-OR-TREATING from 6pm-9pm (yeah me and my siblings were intense). as a child, you always had to make sure to hit up the best houses that you knew gave the big king-sized candy bars. By the time I was in 3rd grade, I had this skill down to a T. A true hustler.

As a child, you can be whatever you want, even if it doesn't make sense.

Looking back at all of this, I really feel bad for the children that were Jehovah’s Witnesses. This was truly a day of exclusion for them.

2.) Middle School (ages 12/13) – Just okay. Long gone were the days of celebrating Halloween in school. It was that awkward time when your parents told you to go trick-or-treating with your younger siblings, and you acted upset even though you still wanted all the free candy. Yeah. You’d get the occasional “aren’t you too old to be trick-or-treating?!”, but it didn’t matter. I continued to hustle for that candy without even bothering to wear a costume.

3. ) High School (ages 14-17) – Subpar. I guess while most of my peers were discovering alcohol and partying, I was a bit of a late bloomer. I instead spent most weekend nights babysitting my younger siblings. Still supervising trick-or-treating, but not dressing up anymore. I was in a bit of a rut.

4.) College (ages 18-21) – Questionable. I didn’t start drinking alcohol until my sophomore year, so alcohol became a routine part of Halloween and majority of my weekends. I guess I can safely say that college ruined the innocence of Halloween for me. It’s when it became okay to look like a slut for Halloween and think that it’s okay to stand in a line outside of a fraternity in the freezing cold while waiting to get into a party that would surely prove to be terrible. Besides, nobody wants their jacket to get stolen, which always happened at fraternities. Not only that, I began to realize that people made Halloween a whole weekend thing, with some fraternities having their Halloween parties a week after Halloween (WTF?). Though college-Halloween was an interesting experience, I only did it for sophomore and junior year. During my senior year, the thought of going to a fraternity party made me cringe, as both the omnipresent smell of desperation the sight of attention-seeking freshmen and sophomore girls was just too sad to endure.

5.) Post-college (age 22) – Still Questionable. Old habits die hard, which is why I guess majority of women college-grads still find it alright to dress up like sluts, stand in lines in the freezing cold, and go to bars and seek attention.
So how did I celebrate? Well here in the Northeast, Mother Nature bitch-slapped Fall and told it to make way for Winter. Long story short, it snowed a lot and was very very cold. No way I was going to go out partying. I instead went shopping for sweaters and ended up dog-sitting on Saturday night and relaxed on Sunday. My workplace didn’t have power on Monday due to the storm, so I had a nice 3-day weekend, which made for a very Happy Halloween. On Monday night, I went over to one of my friend’s house with the intention of pumpkin carving and giving out candy to trick-or-treaters. While we did give out candy to the very few trick-or-treaters that braved the cold, the pumpkins remained untouched by the end of the night. Call it lame night, but it was effortless, which is what Halloween should be.

 Now, here I am back at work on Tuesday morning. I can’t wait for Thanksgiving. That’s a Holiday that I never need to make any plans for and that only has one universal intention: eating.

homecoming

This past weekend was my school’s Homecoming.

What I really meant to say that this weekend was my alma mater’s school-wide shitshow. Everyone knows that that’s not water in your water bottle or Sprite in your Sprite bottle. I was guilty of it myself, except I disguised it better:

Yeah, that’s definitely filled with Riesling

Since I just graduated this past May, I technically don’t really feel like an alum just yet. Coming back to dirty Worcester felt no different except for the fact that I was homeless and couching it on my wonderful Little’s couch all weekend long. Usually, Homecoming is waaaay later, like end of October. Two years ago, it was on Halloween weekend. Because of its earliness, the crispness of Fall unfortunately wasn’t in the air. Thanks to global warming, it was disgustingly humid. The weather called for rain all weekend…but that didn’t happen, so people (including myself) weren’t dressed correctly for the weather. I began drinking at 6am on Saturday, so I remained in a constant state of inebriation all day. I went to the liquor store about 3 times throughout the day, so I’m pretty sure they know me quite well there now. At 12pm began the usual float parade and fraternity/sorority cookouts on the quad, which is actually no longer a quad due to heavy construction. There were other activities and sports games that were going on, but I naturally stayed near my sorority’s (Alpha Xi Delta) table. There were so many people to hug, so no one could really say more than the mandatory “How are you?!” and ask questions that could easily be self-answered by simply stalking my Facebook page. A short amount of time to reconnect with so many people. Also, since when did it become okay for someone who hated you during college to see you and hug you and say “Hi!”. I’m sorry, we mutually did not acknowledge each other’s presence during college, so why would that change now that it’s over?

My wonderful Little and I

But what do the alum do at night during Homecoming? Long gone are our days of fraternity and apartment-party hopping, so instead, we go to bars. Which in Woo, actually look like fraternity basements. One in particular, is the one that EVERYONE AND THEIR MOTHER goes to for Homecoming Saturday. I hate this place with a passion, and will never return. During my undergrad, I only went once, and I was blackout drunk because that’s the only way you can be to enjoy yourself at this place. Because I was drinking all day Saturday, there was unfortunately no level of higher drunkenness that I could get to, so I actually dared to go to this gross bar in my semi-sober state. BIG MISTAKE. It was so terrible there. Terrible music, terrible drinks, terrible smell. It was so muggy in there that the ceiling was dripping condensation. I could only stand one tequila sunrise, then I was out of there. I left sweaty and disappointed. Laying on my Little’s couch was like laying down on a cloud and I quickly drifted to sleep.

Naturally, my body woke itself up on Sunday around 7am (thank you corporate world). However, I was surprisingly not hungover. No it wasn’t my head that hurt…it was MY WHOLE BODY. It felt like I got stoned with bricks. I couldn’t move without feeling like I had run a marathon. I think it’s honestly from hugging so many people and being picked up, squeezed, bumped into, etc. I honestly didn’t get up from my makeshift couch-bed until about 2pm. Then I ate lunch, said some goodbyes, and was on my way home  by 5pm. Words cannot describe how amazing a shower felt after spending a humid weekend in the dirty Woo. I hope that’s not what Homecoming weekend is always supposed to be like because I think I’ll return for the next 2 years and only be staying during the day on Saturday.

Now it’s back to work