一個星期過了

One week’s passed already since my last post.

I didn’t feel like just finding another nice landscape that someone else took and making it the thumbnail image — I do that pretty frequently. I didn’t have any good pictures lying around in my phone’s photo library, so I thought I should just find something around me to take a picture of. Without getting out of my seat, I decided to share the view on my end. It’s pretty simple.

First of all, this week was very, very dry and cold & some of the heaters in the classrooms were broken — it was still better than outside — but if anyone knows anything about meteorology, it’s probably that cold fronts get followed by warm fronts. I forgot about that, and so at least my conversation about the weather can turn positive — it’s really beautiful today. I don’t think it’s above freezing, but it basically feels like springtime compared to Monday and Tuesday. 挺好！

Second, the things that were going to happen this week all went pretty well — housing selection is this coming week, I managed to (at least, so far) get my way into a 中文 double major (但是我還要等一個學期當“真的”中文專業） and, amid my excitement, am getting a little more rigorous about my class planning for future semesters. I think I have it all worked out, but you don’t know for sure until course selection time comes.

I still don’t have an internship, which I’ll need to graduate, especially if I want to use one of my free semesters to study abroad (which, right now, is the plan). I’m revisiting my plan to potentially try to become a lab assistant for one of my professors, which I really think would be the best possible outcome. I think most of his research is in thin films, and I haven’t taken the mandatory “thin films” class yet, but I think he knows I can learn and that I try.

The last thing I’ve been doing for the past few days is attempting to cut out caffeine, which (my old hot brown of choice was coffee, but that’s pretty highly concentrated) has now resulted in my compromising with myself by way of discovering that tea is pretty good, too. I mean, whatever works — I think tea is cheaper anyway, so it’s at least better for my wallet.

So, all in all, pretty excellent week. I thought I had a fever yesterday because I was cold everywhere I went, but I think I just needed sleep (was lacking energy & didn’t bring my winter coat to campus). It was also pretty windy yesterday. I got some sleep & I feel pretty great now. Again, it always works and never ceases to amaze me. It’s almost like humans were built to survive on a regular sleep schedule — I wonder if anyone else has ever figured this out before?

Looking ahead to the future — I can’t stop thinking about my plans for studying abroad now. I mean, I think there are clearly smart and clearly dumb ways to go about this, so with my years of opportunity to plan (two, since I told the head of the Chinese major program that I planned to study abroad spring 2027), I should really focus on doing a good job. I have to go through the college application process again, more-or-less, but under a slightly different context. Things to not mess up include:

• Getting proper scholarship funding
• Finding a program that’s priced reasonably to begin with
• Finding a good program with a good course selection
• Finding a program in a place that I really want to be (probably Taipei)
• Having the proper courses done already before I go (this is one of the reasons why I need to wait — two classes I should’ve taken this year weren’t offered)
• Getting a program that occurs during the time frame I want to go (optimally spring of two years from now)
• Talking to people who’ve already done a program of this type so that I can stay informed

The last one should actually be achievable, since I was — in my first email CC’ed to me as a prospective Chinese major — told about a session that might be held sometime in the coming month which is for this exact purpose — getting study-abroad students to talk about their experiences. I really need this, so that’s pretty exciting too.

This is all very exciting, overall. My mom always told me, when I was first looking for and entering college, that as the course material gets harder, it’ll get more fun at the same time if I choose something that I’m really interested in and really want to learn. I wasn’t exactly seeing that and, in my attempts to find a good compromise between a useful degree in a growing industry and a fun one where I get to learn about history and culture and be a liberal arts student, I set the end-goal in my head as double-majoring in Mandarin, thinking that it’d be pretty unachievable.

The fact that I’m working through this now makes me sleep way easier at night. First world problems, I know — still, it’s really cool. Hopefully my dreams don’t come crashing down with course conflicts — I talked to the Chinese major program head about this, too, and it seems like we’ve constructed a pretty resilient roadmap for me. If I can get my internship blocks filled and I have the opportunity to study abroad spring 2027, I can take the required “Professional/Business Chinese” class for getting the major while I’m doing that, instead of having to take it here. That’ll make my life a little easier. That, and since I’m completing the final prerequisite for the rest of the Chinese classes in the program right now — Intermediate II — I’ll be able to take whatever classes I want in the future. If one of the lower-level classes doesn’t align with my schedule, I can just skip ahead & take the science and technology Chinese course or something like that. I have some flexibility. Let’s hope it stays that way.

So, hopefully my prospects stay good & the weather stays equally nice.

Spring break is in a few weeks — once that comes, it’ll probably feel great to go back home, as long as the way that I have to do that — the car — stays in good shape with the battery & everything (I mean, I haven’t touched it in several weeks and it was complaining about a low charge back then. I should probably start it up & fill it with gas & drive it somewhere to make sure it’s still okay).

Spring! 春天！ A good season.

We could probably all use it right now.

謝謝光臨。

下個星期見！