Update

Life is good. :)

I'm busy, but not too busy; the Dodgers won their first game (and I won a Boba out of it b/c of a bet); the people in my dorm are great; and I feel comfortable with my role on the Ministry Team this year.

I could rant on about a few of my classes (in particular, a class titled the Rhetoric of the Presidential Campaign where I'm stuck with a bunch of _____ polisci majors) but:
1) I'm working on not complaining so much
2) I'm paranoid about the traces I leave on the Internet. haha

I think I realized today why I feel like I don't need to spend as much time on schoolwork (yet). Obviously, the quarter is just getting underway, and I don't want to jinx myself b/c I'm sure much heavier Psets and papers are looming ahead. But not taking Chinese this year REALLY helps. That 3-unit class had quizzes every Monday, Wednesday, Friday, forcing me to study practically every day. I couldn't afford to "take a day off" from schoolwork (like I'm sort of doing today.) It's Thursday today, and I have class tomorrow, but nothing really due, so I can just take it easy...last year, I would have to spend a few good hours memorizing Chinese characters/pin yin/grammar. I feel so liberated! That, combined with a few other factors, has made this year (so far) more restful.

Other small tidbits of Andrew news:
I bought my ticket for China! yay! I'm very excited :)

I'm kind of sick. ughhhh I hate being sick. Almost as much as I hate getting shots to prevent getting sick

I felt convicted a week ago about caring way too much about what was going to be on my resume. I realized that my eagerness to get more more degrees out of my 4 years was spurred more by caring what people thought of me than by truly wanting to pursue a specific field of study. To combat this, I decided to take a class this quarter that will probably do nothing for me in terms of graduating or finishing any major. It's a communications class called Media Psychology (I can probalby petition it to count towards a psych major, which I am considering getting alongside my MS&E degree)...but I mainly took it b/c it would be easy and b/c one of my close friends is in it (and she lives off campus so I wouldn't really see her otherwise). It's really nice to sit back sometimes able to tell yourself that "hey, I'm not doing this for anyone or any ulterior motive. I'm just going enjoy my time at school."

I wish my dorm didn't have (incredibly amazingly) attractive woman/women. Gar. Fight on singleness! (not that I'd really want to be in a relationship right now, but it's easier to say that when there's no one good looking around) Lucky Alex. Semi-Lucky Daniel. Then again, better this situation than developing a case of MIT-goggles aka Peter Vanden Bos Goggles (jk) (not really)

~peace