Goals 44 & 64: Back to School

They said the day would come, that the shuffling would have to end...

I moved from Orlando to Palo Alto in a swift 9-day coast-to-coast roadtrip (spending 3 days in New Mexico).

 I turned 24 in the process, which reminds me of a quote I read once but cannot find now that went something like:

"Everything you will become, you will be by the time you are 25."

Probably horseradish, but I still am going to do my best to become quite the person over the next year.

So anyway, I went to Disneyland (for free because I was still a castmember at the time). The greatest thing about it was going to the new Little Mermaid ride, which I worked on extensively back in Florida. It was such a trip! Like fast forwarding into the future, I saw it all put together, finished, where I had been watching the gradual completion at WDW.

I arrived in Palo Alto after a short stay with my friend Chandra, who I met in Sweden. When I got to Palo Alto, I called housing to find out about how I move into my room. Fun news, my room wouldn't be ready until Friday morning...it was Tuesday.

I didn't know anyone in the area, actually, since I was just getting there, so I had to call people I thought had people in the area. Well, my network won me three places to stay over the next three nights, one with a friend of a friend, one with a sister of a former co-worker (and friend), and one that I had met on my visit day to Stanford. Didn't had to sleep in the car once!

Goal 44: Start Grad School or Begin a Career

Well then I started school. My first class was ARTSTUDI 160, a course on visual language. The teacher was intimidating, saying things like "This will be the hardest class you ever take." At first I scoffed, thinking these were probably mostly first year undergrad students, but then when nearly everyone raised their hands in response to "How many of you are graduate students," the sir was not surprised in the least...in fact, he expected everyone to be graduate students... He spent an hour and a half going over the syllabus thoroughly, explaining the difficulty with each project. I was effectively frightened, and was more than happy to not get in.

My final schedule consisted of a class that took me to factories and manufacturers in the Bay Area every Friday, a design class, and a product management class. Here's some camera dissection at IDEO.

The rest, in brief, goes like this:

1. Started classes

2. Joined a dozen clubs to get free food everyday

3. Attended classes I wasn't taking

4. Watched classes online

5. Ran out of time for all the extra stuff (except free food) when paper bikes kicked into gear

Goal 64: Build Something I can Fit Into

That shit is a bike. A bike made of paper. It has a converting feature, allowing it to go from sliding to rolling, and its chassis is a tank. Here's a time lapse of the whole thing being built.

Our mega-team was victorious, winning 2 out of 3 in the paper bike rally of 2011. 

(New Orleans Skybridge)

Status: Tired of writing...