Winter break for me was mostly comprised of sleeping and eating. Every time I go home, I always crash for the first few days to catch up on my sleep and only emerge from my room to eat food. But after that I had a great time seeing my family and just relaxing after a difficult semester. I baked a lot of cookies, cooked a lot of food, and pretty much just hung out.
I had one big goal over break: to buy a car. Since I’ll be interning with the Boeing Company this summer at the Satellite Development Center in El Segundo, I’m going to want a car to get to work and to come back to the USC campus so I can still work with SC Underwater Robotics to prepare for our competition during the summer. I figured that now was the time to look since I am now in a position to make the payments on a car.
Car shopping was a pretty overwhelming experience at first! But I tried to narrow down the field by prioritizing what I wanted. I wanted a small car, since it’s more convenient for driving in LA traffic and gets better gas mileage. I also wanted something super reliable because I’m not used to taking care of a car and I knew I’d be really stressed out if I was having to take it in all the time. My final consideration was, of course, price!
In the end I got a great deal and bought a used 2011 Honda Civic LX Coupe with only 9k miles on it! It felt so huge to me to take that step. Obviously, since I’m still a student and don’t have a lot of money, I’ll be paying for the car over the next five years. But it’s so great that as an engineering student, I already have a job lined up for the summer that makes it financially possible for me to buy a car! I’m really excited about my job this summer (and the pay of course) and now I have a great car to get to work and back every day. Kind of makes me feel like an adult!
Me with my new car!
