Winter break in college offers something I know I will rarely find elsewhere: little to no responsibilities. I savored almost four weeks with no alarms, meetings, assignments, quizzes, exams, and (fewer) emails. The feeling of waking up and thinking what can I do today rather than what do I need to do today provided me with the respite I needed from a busy fall semester. Most days I spent catching up with my family and friends from home, which was in this case both what I chose to spend the day doing and what I needed to do. As I had hoped, a lot of my family time took place on the ski slopes. I also spent some time watching the new HBO show Barry, which stars Bill Hader. I highly recommend it!
Looking back on break, I probably could have done more… like maybe studied in preparation for some of my classes, made progress on some of my extracurricular projects, or reviewed some of the material from past classes to maintain my knowledge. So rarely do we get this sort of pause, however, that I am glad I took advantage of it and put a hold on my academic life. Maybe in a few weeks, I might face more challenges in my classes because of my choice, but I think I will still be glad that I took the time to see my friends and family at home, as I rarely get the chance to do so; winter break was the longest amount of time I was home in 2018, and will likely be the longest period I am home until the next winter break. Ultimately, I am glad I enjoyed my time at home really being home.
Now that I have gotten to take this break, I also feel recharged for this semester! I am taking AME 204 (Strength of Materials), AME 301 (Dynamics), PHYS 153 (essentially optics, special relativity, quantum mechanics with some other topics in modern physics), IML 365 (Future Cinema), and AMST 285 (African American Popular Culture). I am excited about my course load this semester because it has a balance of engineering courses with the humanities and arts, which I prefer over taking 5 technical’ courses, as it gives me a better context for problem solving. I think there is a lot of opportunity for me to learn about new topics with my course load, so I am looking forward to this semester.
Be sure to look out for future blog posts to see where my semester takes me!
