I’m holding on!!!! I can’t wait until I get to go home again and spend some quality time with the family. It’s going to be one heck of a kitchen event as my brother takes charge with his little minion sister and cousins helping him crank out a few dishes for the Thanksgiving dinner. mMmmm.. can’t wait to taste the mac ‘n cheese, green bean casserole, the stuffing, mashed potatoes…
Stop drooling. Okay. Otherwise, I’ve been having a grand old time studying till I drop or rather procrastinating and then studying till the ball drops. Two bioengineering classes that are quite interesting actually, medical imaging and continuum mechanics. I was originally quite interested in the medical imaging field after visiting some family in St. Louis and hanging around the hospital there. Besides that, experimental lab techniques requires a lot of time in doing the lab report write-ups. Some of the experiments are interesting, but for the most part… eh. Last class, my GE on Asian American literature, the books we’re reading are not really my cup of tea. They don’t really spark my interest to keep reading, so the class is a bit of a chore. For my engineering classes, I find myself working less and less by myself, and more and more with my team of friends that are in the same class with me. Engineering is all about teamwork and bouncing ideas off one another to find the “ultimate” idea that works the best, incorporating the different information that each of us have to offer. Quite interesting, since all throughout my pre-college, I was more of a work and study by myself kind of student, but now it’s essential to have that group of people that you can work with well to find the solution. There are much less plug and chug problems, and more think and find new ideas. And then after the midterms that we find ourselves broken and downhearted, we hit the batting cages! Softballs are a lot easier to hit, although I’m improving on connecting with those baseballs…
Outside of all this, I’m building a bigger social life. Tagging along with Emi on her Tau Beta Pi fraternity stuff, since my GPA is too low to actually join… I’ve also become more involved in the Triton Engineering Student Council, helping out the Outreach committee and the Force committee. We just finished up an outreach event called Engineering Explorations for highschoolers interested in engineering, helping them to get a taste of what college life is like and seeing how exciting engineering can be. I was the photographer of the event and also helped design the design challenge! Quite fun, although we need better logistics planning next time as some of our details weren’t thoroughly thought out ahead of time. I’m also now an officer, TESC representative, of the UCSD chapter of International Society of Pharmaceutical Engineers (ISPE). While my current studies have absolutely nothing to do with pharmacy, since our bioengineering program here at UCSD is more focused on the mechanics side due to Dr. Fung being the program’s founder, I hope to learn more about it since it was another thing that held my interest when looking into the field. But anyways, ISPE made instant snow at Engineering Explorations, which was a big hit with the high school kids and everyone else.
Time to sleep. Happy Birthday to my cousin Derek! His birthday is now 30 minutes over. Good night.


