halfway everywhere

I am half in grad school now. More specifically: I am in math camp. Math camp started on Monday, but I missed the first three days, while I was traveling. Luckily the first three days were easy to make up on my own: all I needed to do was remind myself of things I learned long ago. Today was a little like that too, except someone else was reminding me.

Doing problem sets last night I remembered both what I liked and what I disliked about math. I like when it is clean and easy, when equations click together just the right way, and you find a solution you can circle and check off. I do not like when it is complicated, and messy, when I have to fill line after line with brute force, adding this, multiplying by this, forcing it into the right shape. The tediousness of algebra takes away the joy of an answer that is simply right, and usually leads to some equally nasty solution, a terrible fraction that introduces a note of doubt into what should be a clean process.

This will probably be the cleanest process of my year though, messy fractions and all. I should enjoy it while I have it. I should wallow in circle-able solutions.

In the realm of Life, I am also halfway to somewhere. I slept in my Berkeley apartment for the first time last night (a friend stayed with me to allay my nerves about being all alone). I am moved in but furniture-less. I am haunting craigslist, waiting for my bed to come. I am checking items off my to-do list: entrance loan counseling, grocery shopping.

nostalgia for the present

I’m moving to Berkeley in a month.  Berkeley and San Francisco are next door neighbors, but living next door is not the same as living in your very own lovely laughter-filled house.  I am going to leave mine, which I moved into so recently (six months, just).  Yesterday we had friends over to eat “gay cake” (rainbow-frosted) in celebration of Pride and warmth.  We sat around in the backyard drinking homemade mint lemonade and mimosas and eating food and talking and laughing.  At some point a guitar was brought and put to use.  The remnants of the party decided to make dinner, and we sat 10 people down for a feast just because we were all there and did not want to leave.  I tied an apron on to cook, and my friends in the dining room made up blues verses about each of us.  At dinner we argued and laughed and drank wine.  After dinner we cleaned up, crawled into bed.  My roommates came in to kiss me goodnight and gossip.  It was a glorious day.  

I won’t have a lot of days like that when fall hits.  There will be good moments, I am sure, and I know I will come back to my friends in the city.  But as a student, weekends are no longer enormous blocks of leisure time.  I will have to measure and worry and trade-off time.  It’s worth it; I am excited to do it; but days like yesterday remind me of what I’ll be missing for the next two years.

This is brought to the forefront of my mind due to the true beginning of my apartment search in Berkeley.  I went on Saturday and looked at three apartments, two of which were uninhabitable (one tiny, one too crowded by the residents of the adjoining house) and the third of which I would have to pay an extra half a month of rent for.  More will come, I know, but I am in the anxious stage now, where I don’t know where I will be in a month, I don’t know if this move will be an upgrade or a downgrade, and I am already nostalgic for the life I haven’t left yet.

It’s a new world

Dear blog,

I decided to give you a ridiculously long name full of a lot of “p” words.  Why “p” you may ask?  Well, it starts both “public” and “policy” which are the two words that make up the name of the discipline I will soon be studying.  Other good words that start with “p” that I did not use include: picnic, post, pillory, puntilious, pugilistic, and plucky.

As you may have guessed, the creation of this new name signals other changes.  First of all, I’m going to try and write in you.  I know that sounds dirty, but I think it will be a good thing.  Second, since I am no longer campaigning, I am not going to be writing about the Obama campaign anymore.  Instead, I will try to focus on the experience of being a graduate student.  I will also be cross-posting wonky policy stuff with a blog run by students at the program I will be attending (the Goldman School of Public Policy at UC Berkeley, known hereafter as GSPP).  I may also be entertaining a request from a dear friend to include a serial novel.  However, I make no promises on that front; that may be beyond my powers at this time.

Love,

Felicity