Reflections 2022

New Year, New Me.

I look for­ward to writ­ing these every year, be­cause time just flies by and I don’t have much chance to take a step back and let life sink in. I am par­tic­u­larly sa­vor­ing the op­por­tu­nity this year be­cause it has been an event­ful one.

Table of Contents

This Year in Numbers

250 Github con­tri­bu­tions (back on the de­cline, but that’s ok)

700 miles ran (including 1.5 marathons!)

324 New York Times daily cross­words com­pleted

1 mu­si­cal at­tended (Jagged Little Pill at the Golden Gate Theatre)

1 cap and gown 🎓

Highlights

This was the first January in 16 years that I did not have any classes. A short-lived respite; my classes start again next Tuesday. I ran 79 miles and got my first PhD pro­gram ac­cep­tances. Also found out about Wordle (what a mo­ment that was.)

February, though short, was also event­ful. I ran 79 miles, got my first Covid booster, and trav­eled to Madison, WI. It is a neat city with pretty build­ings, a cool art mu­seum, and a lake that you can walk on! Towards the end of the month, I flew out to LA with some friends, which leads us into…

March was the month of travel for me. I ran 106 miles, in­clud­ing my first half marathon, and flew for prob­a­bly a few thou­sand more. It started out with the LA trip; we went to Joshua Tree (who knew the desert could be so pretty), Pomona (who knew a col­lege cam­pus could be so pretty), and the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures (who knew Studio Ghibli films could be so pretty(A lot of peo­ple, ac­tu­ally)). March was also the month of grad school vis­its, so a week af­ter get­ting back from Los Angeles, I flew out to Switzerland for the EPFL visit days (and for Switzer­land). It was a re­ally great ex­pe­ri­ence, and the en­tire coun­try is so pic­turesque. After Lausanne, I vis­ited Jungfraujoch and Zurich. The day af­ter re­turn­ing from Zurich, I drove to Ithaca with my par­ents to visit Cornell. It was gorges, and snowy, even by my Michigan stan­dards. Two days later, I flew out to Berkeley, CA, which had nei­ther gorges nor snow, but did have some beau­ti­ful sun­sets.

By com­par­i­son, April was a bit more re­laxed. I walked for grad­u­a­tion and ran 148 miles.

May was the same way, largely spent in Ann Arbor and at home, just tak­ing a break and run­ning (for 157 miles). I did, how­ever, spend about a week im­mers­ing my­self in Hayao Miyazaki’s di­rec­to­r­ial oeu­vre: I watched, in the fol­low­ing or­der, The Wind Rises, Lupin III, Nausicaä, Laputa, Totoro, Porco Rosso, Princess Mononoke, Spirited Away, Howl’s Moving Castle, and Ponyo. I had watched Kiki’s Delivery Service a few months ear­lier, in LA.

In June, I went back­pack­ing for the first time, hik­ing around 20 miles in two days. In the fu­ture, I will bring more camp ac­tiv­i­ties and spend less time walk­ing. It was also the month of the Banff Marathon, which I had been train­ing for the whole month. My par­ents and I flew up to Banff (absolutely stun­ning), where we vis­ited Lake Louise, picked up my packet, and prayed for the rain to go away. The race was a to­tally unique ex­pe­ri­ence; I saw sev­eral rams along the route, and it was just breath­tak­ing the whole way throughWhich, granted, is not idea for aer­o­bic ac­tiv­i­ties.. After the race, I limped all the way to Seattle, where I vis­ited some friends.

I of­fi­cially moved out of my room in Ann Arbor in July.

In August, I moved to California and started school. There’s a lot to say about that, but I will leave it at that for now.

September and October flew by. I got my California ID, my par­ents came to visit, and I sub­mit­ted an­other GRF ap­pli­ca­tion (second times the charm??)

I saw Jagged Little Pill with Isabelle in November. We also went on a hike in Marin (that lasted a bit longer than ex­pected…). I cel­e­brated my 23rd birthday (oh my god) and went on strike. For Thanksgiving, I flew to Seattle to visit some friends and we took a week­end trip to Portland (also a great city, with a mas­sive book­store.) Michigan won The Game. I took the Amtrak back from Seat­tle (unfortunately, most of the trip was in the dark) and con­tin­ued strike ac­tion.

And fi­nally, in December, I came home for the first time since I left for Cal­i­for­nia. I watched the World Cup fi­nals with my dad, who is a mas­sive fut­bol fan. Now I am sit­ting on the couch, into the last week of break, won­der­ing where all the time went.

Reflections

I’ve had a harder time writ­ing this post than in pre­vi­ous years. Last year, I wrote

“I’m tem­porar­ily stuck look­ing ahead into a bright cloud of com­plete un­cer­tainty.”

In many ways, much of that un­cer­tainty is gone. This time last year, I did­n’t know where I would be liv­ing in a year. Now, I know where I will be for the next five or six.

But, like a new pair of shoes, I have stepped into a new life in which I’m not yet com­fort­able. There is the nag­ging rigid­ity of pre­formed ex­pec­ta­tions: the pro­gram mile­stones I need to achieve, the ideas I had about what grad school would be like, and what I thought my twen­ties would en­tail. At the same time, it feels alien: mov­ing to a new place, adopt­ing a new habits. Right now it feels like an awk­ward fit, not yet bro­ken in.

I have a pretty good idea now of what the next few years will be like — of what I will be do­ing and where I will be. The Berkeley iSchool has a pretty com­pre­hen­sive guide on the time­line to do a PhD. But in be­tween those mile­stones will be thou­sands of ephemeral mo­ments (and a hand­ful of defin­ing ones) that are en­tirely un­known to me, and it is those that I look for­ward to the most. These mo­ments are the wrin­kles and creases and scratches of a well-worn shoe that shape it snugly around my feet.

Breaking in a new pair of shoes can be frus­trat­ing and some­times painful. I am not the most pa­tient per­son. I find my­self some­times yearn­ing for the com­fort­able, lived-in, fa­mil­iar past. But I know that this feel­ing will di­min­ish with time, as I set­tle into the rhythms of this new part of my life. There’s no other way to break in a shoe than to just start walk­ing.

So happy new year. I guess I’ll get go­ing now.