A single day.

My plans for the future suddenly became shaky when I saw those scores flash onto the screen. The quantitative score was average for an engineer, nothing special. The verbal score was embarrassing. Was I really that dumb? Maybe there's a good reason I don't speak much.

SELECT THE SCHOOLS YOU WOULD LIKE TO SEND YOUR SCORES TO.

Could I even send these scores? Stanford was now completely off the list. As was Caltech and Berkeley. Cornell, Carnegie Mellon. Princeton. They were gone. The process of mentally striking these schools off began to make my head swim. I had to make some quick choices, or else the time on the computer would probably expire, and nothing would be sent out. Do you still want to go to grad school? Yes. Then look towards the bottom of your list and send your scores there. They might take you. I laughed nervously to myself as I added USC, Texas A&M, University of Florida. Last one? Screw it, I'm sending it to Caltech. I had more redeeming qualities, right? Maybe they would look past the scores.

YOU HAVE NOW COMPLETED YOUR EXAMINATION AND ARE FREE TO LEAVE THE FACILITY. PLEASE TAKE ALL OF YOUR BELONGINGS WITH YOU, AND TURN IN YOUR SCRAP-PAPER TO THE DESK OUTSIDE THE DOOR.

The car-ride home was one of half-hearted joking about the test and listless mental pacing. Do I have more redeeming qualities? Redeeming engineering qualities? The answer to that last question was quickly becoming less certain. Flashing through my college career, it seemed like I had been the farthest from an engineering major that was possible while still staying within the curricular requirements. I had taken the classes, but I had then escaped into music, into band. Into soccer and running and swimming and parties and art and reading. What was it that Professor L had said?

Chris: Well, at that point, I had so much going on with band and my fraternity that I decided it would be too..
Prof L: Mhm, I see.
Chris: But I do have a lot of extracurriculars! How much does that weigh in?
Prof L: Extracurriculars are...fine. Of course, what were are looking for the most is interaction with your professors and research work, if available.
Chris: Don't have much of that....I did a little research before in the combustion la-
Prof L: In fact, it often seems to me that when a student with a greater number of extracurriculars applies, he'll be less focused on the research and more on the outside environment. You see what I'm saying?
Chris: I guess...So more extracurriculars comes-off as a bad thing?
Prof L: When I review grad student applications coming into a Maryland, those extracurriculars come-off more as distraction than anything else...

So I was distracted. But I had gotten decent grades. I may not have been one of those students that always skipped into the professor's office to ask questions, but I liked it that way. I liked knowing that I could figure it out myself. Damn, what had that kid said? That one that commented on my blog a while ago when I was talking about taking 20 credits and pledging at the same time...

20 credits along with outside activities is going to draw the attention of any university as too much on your plate....those reading your blog will see you as whining.
...
Unfortunately life is a game of sorts and the sooner you learn how to play by the rules rather the fight them you will win more often then lose.

Ok ok, I GET IT. It had been a simple truth that had stung at the time, and now it was always creeping up to haunt me. I had taken the risk of becoming the aero band kid rather than the purely aero kid, and I was paying the price. Guess everything catches up with you in the end.

Arriving back at my apartment, I stopped thinking long enough to realize my stomach was doing as many flips as my head was. Apparently I had used up everything in those four hours this morning, and it was time to refuel. Kimmie and Phil's? Don't have cash. Chipotle? Had it yesterday. Noodles. There we go. Pad Thai would really hit the spot.

I gathered my stuff for practice that afternoon and headed over to the shopping plaza next door to the apartments, becoming increasingly aware of the hole I had dug myself into throughout my years at Maryland. My grimace must have been fairly apparent when I arrived at the restaurant, as the cashier's smile faltered slightly and he averted his eyes towards the register. I placed my order and leaned against a low wooden wall with my hands in my hoodie pockets to wait for my food.

Overall below average GRE scores.
Little interaction with professors.
No shining 4.0 GPA.
Several months of research that was mostly spent constructing the steel frame of an experiment I never saw happen.
Too many extracurriculars.

There was no where else to shift the blame but myself. No one had forced any decision on me here at school. That was the beauty of college - you could do what you wanted to and become who you wanted to. I had been one of those people who had wanted to do it all, and all the options were available.

I wasn't aware of how much I had been dragging my feet along the sidewalk until about two-thirds the way to CSPAC. I looked up to discover that I was now behind McKeldin Library. What happened to those days when I would spend hours within those walls, studying? I continued on, not nearly as excited for my Pad Thai as I had been 20 minutes ago.

There were people in the band office, so I turned and walked back out to that table outside the band room. It was now becoming harder and harder to restrain the doubts that were leaking through my wall of future-certainty. I wouldn't be joining any top graduate engineering program. Probably nothing within the top 20. Would anyone within the top 50 even accept me?

That entire wall that had been my carefully crafted future - a top grad school, graduate research, possibly a doctorate, working in the research department of a big aerospace company, bringing innovation to the aerospace world - began to come apart in large chunks. I was losing everything I thought I had known about my future. Everything that I had worked for as an aerospace engineer.

The wall finally gave way, and I was left with bits and pieces among the doubts that flowed throughout my mind. Flowed through my mind and apparently out of my eyes. The ones that escaped, though, were immediately replaced by new ones.

Everyone liked to ask the question "what are you doing after you graduate?", and I had readily provided a response, even sometimes including that I was still unsure of where to work after grad school. And then they would say "well, you better figure it out soon, you don't want to be sitting around doing nothing after undergrad. Employers will be even less likely to accept you." Now I had no response. I had no certainty. It was like having a hovering orb of light guiding you along in a swamp vanish from sight, and now you were left to wade through murky waters and fend off creatures of the dark. And outside the swamp, you were uncertain about whether there would be a city, a small town, a tiny cabin, a barren tundra, or a dry desert.

You didn't know how to get out and you didn't know what lay beyond. You could grope for pieces of some now decrepit wall in the darkness, and attempt to get your bearings. But all of a sudden, that seemed incredibly hard to do.

No Fear, No Sleep

It's about 4:15am. Four hours ago, I consumed 3 scoops of Cookies ice cream, 12 chocolate chip cookies, and a No Fear energy drink (Super Energy: Motherload - With 300% of my DV of Vitamins B6, B12, and C!). I really need sleep to stand any chance of operating later today, but I've developed a twitch that's making this a bit difficult.

I've decided the purpose of my Aircraft Flight Dynamics course is to test my ability to stare at a computer screen for extended periods of time. Apparently I need to study, because I'm failing after only 5 hours. If that 7 hour quiz is next week, I am so screwed.

On a positive note: Doing homework by the warm glow of Christmas lights seems to increase my productivity by 32%. If at anytime Youtube appears, productivity decreases by 3000%. Which, if you're doing the math correctly, means that any work I've accomplished beforehand will burst spontaneously into flame with the ashes carried away in a slight breeze. And then a small child in a third world country will stub his toe, causing a small cry of pain to escape him.

Needless to say, there's a lot of quiet sobbing that goes on in my room.

The story of my Monday night

It's an exciting one, I'll have you know...

While laboring away like I usually am at my homework (cough), I suddenly decided that watching youtube videos would be a much better use of my time. It makes perfect sense, right? Right.

Upon entering the site, I immediately dove into my latest fixations: amateur acoustic covers of popular songs and a capella groups. I stumbled across the ridiculously amazing group called Straight No Chaser from Indiana University (*waves at Dani*), and watched a few of their videos. Being the sucker of in-tune human voices and Christmas that I am, my favorite quickly became "12 Days", a rather interesting version of the classic carol we're all taught as wee little ones. Cue video:

If you watch the video, you'll notice they randomly break into this cool minor-ish harmory midway, and lucky for me, someone had commented saying the harmony was from the song "Africa" by Toto. Because I'm a huge nerd and had to have the latest in trendy harmonies (call 1-800-HAR-MONY in the next 15 minutes for the new, wild fifth-progression harmonies seen in all your favorite pop concerts!), I hit up iTunes and did a quick search. The original song was...meh, but what got me blog-post-writtingly excited was a particular result listed further down. Andy McKee, that virtuosic acoustic guitar talent that you probably didn't know about until right now, had transposed the song for acoustic guitar and recorded it.

After applauding the computer moniter and patting myself on the back for coming across such a find, I quickly *legally* downloaded the song (not iTunes...I'll keep my 99 cents, thank you) and set to listening to it 2000 times - that number not being a gross exaggeration. It was good times.

In other news, I have yet to purchase alcohol. And I've been 21 for all of...2 weeks? In college life, this seems like something akin to cardinal sin - embarrassing, I know. But sometime in the near future, there will be a moment when I walk into a bar, flash my shiny "I'm-actually-legal-unlike-half-the-people-in-here" license, and slap down a crisp five for a few drafts. And there will be much rejoicing.

"And then the angels, they did sing. And from the heavens, three mugs dripping with such delightful condensation, they did fall and rest themselves gently upon that happy bar-top. All order was restored, and such was the purchase by our Great Christopher."

I can see it going something like that.


For those of you not in the know --> Colossal Donuts from Shoppers = DBABG (Delicious Bad-ass Bakery Goods). The end.

Thanks for the birthday gift, Commons

A little story for you, as further proof that Maryland loves money:

I wake up the day after my birthday and go through my usual morning checklist: shower, get dressed, eat breakfast, check email, etc. Upon checking my email, I notice a message from the South Campus Commons desk saying I had received a package the day before. Getting any sort of package when you're at school is like winning the lottery, and if it's around your birthday then excitement might as well be oozing out of your pores. So after completing my checklist, I skip down to the desk to pick up my package.

When I arrive and ask for my package, my heart falls a bit when I learn that the package is an envelope. Maybe it's a card? But then why wouldn't they just put it in my mailbox? Is it a really big card? No no, the envelope is normal mailing size, and looks nothing like a birthday card. In fact, it's from South Campus Commons. Did they send birthday wishes?

Their version of birthday wishes, maybe.

I open the envelope and read that I was being charged $10 for checking out a spare key for longer than an hour last week.



When Maryland does birthdays, hoo boy, it goes all out.

Because my eyes told me so

I was browsing online today and found some really incredible photography, and I figured that everyone deserved a break from my babbling. Therefore, I've posted a few pictures from throughout the summer that I thought were pretty swell. Every once in a while I'll chime in with a comment or explanation about the photograph. Hope you enjoy.

A few pics from Home in the backyard. The pooch in the last photo is our yellow lab Nellie.
A few pictures from my various travels from Cinci and back again. That big shiny object is The Bean in Chicago. It's pretty awesome.


From our time in Myrtle Beach. The black and white is a little busy, but if you look closely, you can see the focus on the salt and pepper in the middle. Made me chuckle.

This calls for a warm waffle

This week has somewhat reminded me of a dramatic movie. Plot twists, crushing emotional blows, and deep, startling realizations. And the Terps right now? Not helping.

I write this now as I take a break from watching the CRAP that is the Terps vs. Middle Tennessee on Comcast SportsNet/CSS. The "crap" part refers to both the quality of sports cinematography (oo, big word!) as well as the quality of Maryland's play. Even given the fact that my eyes would probably melt in their sockets if I continued watching the white and blue blobs that are Maryland and MTSU, my new eyes wouldn't be able to survive witnessing the rest of the game anyway. I am in no way a full-out, hardcore football fanatic, but I can see that Maryland is not holding up.

As for this week, I keep finding myself doing that movie moment stare-out-the-window-pondering-life-while-listening-to-soul-reverberating-music kind of thing. Most of this pondering has dealt with the many questions raised during my first days of classes, and the answers seem hard to come by. What do I want my senior year to be like? Am I preparing myself for what's coming after? What do I even want to do afterwards? What happened to those goals I set mid-summer?

What the hell am I doing?

Opportunities keep cropping up that, given a clearer schedule, I would have taken immediately. During my sophomore year, I had wanted to become an official cartoonist for the Diamondback (if you can call the DB official...). Now, when there's a spot open in the paper, I know that the time I would spend drawing would cut into homework, band, or KKPsi.

But being disappointed with my predicament is useless, of course, because my schedule is full of things that I willingly stepped into. That I love. And in this case, sometimes you need to sacrifice one love to be with another. I just hope I'm never asked to make this sacrifice amongst the people in my life.

In other news, the pivotal moment in every college kid's life is coming up for me: the big 2-1 (September 15th!). I'm happy because I'll finally be able to head out to the bars with my friends, but I'm disappointed because it will mean the end of dorm parties and underage excitement. Yes, I was sometimes one of those kids in the booming dorm room down the hall, and those moments were pretty clutch. I guess this is just the passing of another era, and yet another indicator that I'm stepping out of my childhood. Good thing that's not depressing or anything...

Old age and wrinkles aside, I've gotten to know a lot of people during my time at Maryland. They come from every sway of life here on campus, and it's incredibly interesting to see the connections when you step back and look at it all. For me, though, this is almost a problem.

I was never the popular, know-everyone-at-school kid (not to say that I am now). I went through that normal progression in life: a best friend in elementary school, a "posse" in middle school, one or two small gangs in high school. And then college came through, and I was hit with 25,000 opportunities. Band came first, when I spent every waking minute in an oh-so-glorious and confusing early week with 250+ new people. The trumpet section became my first college family. Then came the time when I was released from my band-chains and appeared as a more or less normal freshman on my dorm floor. Everyone on my floor had already bonded, yet I was lucky enough to be included in on some of their floor activities, and eventually became good friends with most of them. 3Cent became my second college family. From there on the list continued to grow: civil engineering friends, aerospace friends, KKPsi and TBS friends, etc.

This wasn't to say that I was suddenly one of those people who knew everyone and would say hi to every living creature on the College Park campus. Because while I met new people and made new friends, my ability to connect with all of them in the same way I had connected with my best friend in elementary school had diminished.

Now I feel almost stretched, and a little unnerved that I won't be able to connect to all those who I would like to be close to. If you've ever spoken to me, you know that words are in no way my strong point. I'm a bit awkward and tend to trip over words if I can get them out in the first place.

It is my hope, though, that my senior year will allow me insight on making the connections I need.

Hope you're all well, and I look forward to blogging for you again soon. A little less on the deep side, maybe? Heh.

Month's Vacation

So it's definitely been awhile. Can't say I meant to take such a long break from the blog, but I guess the flurry of events that was August led me astray.

So, where to begin...

Life, as of now, is ridiculous. I can't remember a time in my 20 years where I have been more busy than this past week, and I'm happy to report that I've come out on the other side with all of my limbs still attached. Just barely.

This past week, for all you non-band folk, was something called Early Week. It officially began on Friday, August 22nd when we had a morning of early week registration, followed by a few music sectionals and full ensemble rehearsals. From there on out it was band all-day, everyday. You chuckle, but this isn't a joke. Here was my schedule for that week:

6am - Wake up. Roll out of bed. Hit the floor and decide whether those newly broken ribs are worth getting up into the shower.

7am - Breakfast at the South Campus Diner. Eat half a bagel. Think of writing a letter to the NSA with new ideas for torturing prisoners.

8am - Morning marching rehearsal on Chapel Field begins! Cue random dance parties. Also cue death stares from half the band for suggesting such an atrocity.

11:30am - Wrap up marching rehearsal and shuffle towards lunch at the Diner. Contemplate where would be the best place to pass out in the band office. Settle on the small space under one of the computer desks. Awaken from your day dream to the tapping of 200+ plastic utensils on trays and chairs. Conduct the Alma Mater in the middle of the diner, and chuckle as confused non-marchers stand up and place their hands over their hearts.

1pm - Back in CSPAC for indoor music rehearsals. Realize that napping is impossible when you're given a list of 20 things to do. At least you're busy?

4:30pm - Off to dinner. Decide that you could deal without diner food for a while. AKA when you run out of food in your fridge in the apartment. Conduct the fight song in the middle of the diner. Snort when some random non-band kid says "I thought that was Victory..."

6pm - On Chapel Field for evening marching rehearsal. Run through each set of halftime 300+ times. Bust out glowsticks around 7:30 so people can see you waving your arms. Suppress the urge to rave with said glowsticks.

8:30pm - Head back up to CSPAC for meetings, fittings, etc.

12:30am - Get back to the apartment.

1am - Pass out.

6am the next day - Begin it all over again.

Good times? Early week certainly had it's ups and downs, but the passing of our first game against University of Delaware brought an incredible finality to the entire situation. I was very excited to have half my family on my mom's side come down to see me during my public drum-major-debut (albeit they did cheer for Delaware...). A little nerve-wracking, but very cool all the same. Also, for those of you not in band who were oh-so-curious about us not marching halftime, much less not wearing coats; we had about 12 people go down from the heat before halftime even started. And honestly, having another dozen pass-out during or after halftime probably would not have benefited us. Just a thought.

So for all of you who were indignant that the band did not march because hey, they're a marching band. that's their job! WTF?, I would 1.) Like to offer my uniform to you to perform that show after a week of exhaustion + that humidity, and 2.) Like to point out that I probably saw you sitting down during the game come halftime. Actually, I know I did. Poor kid, you must have been so hot. Having to stand there and cheer? Tough job, my friend.

Bitter thoughts aside, this past week was an experience, and I am extremely excited for classes to start. This semester I'll have 5 aerospace classes and 2 band classes for a total of 17 credits, which is the smallest amount I've had since freshman year. Heck yes.

In other news....wait...there is no other news. Band is my life. Well then...

I'll be a better blogger from now on, I swear!