Mission Accomplished

Job accepted. My parents were pretty impressed, and my mom started into a history of her dad's employment and said multiple times that she's never made in a year what I'll make in my first year out of college. I've said I'm available to start at the beginning of February. I think my body's been anticipating. I woke up at 7am on both Monday and Tuesday.

The job's at Denver West, which is at the western edge of Lakewood. The G bus stops there, so I can commute for a while, though two to three hours of daily commute doesn't sound like a fun long-term proposition, even if I do get to read most of the way. And as an employed college graduate, I need to move out of my parents' house anyway, and west Denver is a significantly cheaper place to do so.

I think living on my own will be the best idea. It'll give me a trial (hopefully by not too much fire) to learn all those skills I bypassed in college -- cooking, budgeting, doing taxes, and so forth. Some people miss out on learning experiences in college because they're too busy partying. I missed out on learning experiences in college because I was too busy with school. Oh, and I got to live in the Residence Halls for free, where they cook for you, clean the halls, and take all your money in one lump and precise sum.

But I'm open to other options. Do any of you froods have friends in the west Denver suburbs (Golden/Lakewood/Wheat Ridge ideally) who are looking for a roommate? I should also go about acquiring a car, though I idly wonder how well I'd be able to do relying on the nation's #1 public transit system. (I'd be more tempted to try it if the G didn't just run during rush hour.) So if you or any of your homies are trying to sell a car, put me in cognizance of the fact.


For some odd reason, this mp3 has three distinct parts. Jimi doing his usual Voodoo thang, abruptly shifting to some not-quite-new-age synth for a few minutes, and then Jimi doing his Voodoo thang.

Interest Haiku #13: University of Colorado

university of colorado -
Buffaloes stampede
Academia's warm womb
Sandstone surroundings

I took my first two CU classes -- Calculus I and a junior-level Environmental Design course which Steven Kalmon somehow got involved -- in the fall of 1996. I continued enrollment for the next 14 semesters, acquiring BS and MS degrees in Computer Science and a minor in Philosophy. I got a letter this week from Financial Aid informing me that I'm no longer eligible for assistance as an undergraduate, because I have 181 credits. That's 50% more than you need for a degree in the College of Arts & Sciences. I've spent nearly one third of my life as a CU student.

After I took the PSAT in high school, I got flooded with college promotional materials. Despite being a smart kid, I didn't quite have what it takes to get into top-tier schools like MIT and Cal Tech, and as it turned out I decided not to pursue Harvey Mudd, which I'd thought about. I read through all the post cards, fliers, letters, and pamphlets sent to me by institutions of higher education. (I declined to read through the half-inch course guide for the University of Nebraska. I have no idea why they sent that.) The overarching theme seemed to be "It sounds a lot like CU, but without mountains, and I don't know if I'll be able to find tofu yogurt. Oh, and it's way more expensive." Legend has it that Chief Niwot's curse is that once you've lived in Boulder, you can't really leave. As a native, I'm a case in point. Believe me, there are far worse curses. (Never -- you might want to list chief niwot's curse as an interest for boulderdennys.)

So after all that time, what is there to say? I've been thinking of making a post listing every course I took at CU and what I think of it now. But that would be completely antithetical to haiku, so I'll leave that for another day. I've still got a lot of essays and such that I should put on my essays page, but that can wait for another day. So... what do I say about a place where I've lived for most of the last 7 years? I suppose I could list where I've lived...

Darley North, 7th floor (739?)

I was not pleased to be assigned to Will Vill. I know I turned my housing application in late, but I made sure to turn in my request to transfer promptly. First, Williams village is about 10 blocks from campus, so while it gave me a chance to bike to class, I wasn't looking forward to winter. But the biggest problem was that in 1998, Will Vill didn't have ethernet yet. Looking back on my three months there, however, I'm glad of the experiences. It was a coed floor with folks from a wide variety of majors, so it was a great opportunity for interesting social interactions. Our RA didn't care about most of the rules -- one weekend he told us he would be away, and if we wanted to use his room to party, we were free to do so. But he was great at building community, great at establishing relationships with people, and great at hanging out. As an RA a few years later, I looked up to those skills as a model. In fact, of our floor of 22 people, two were Hall Director Assistants five years later (and I'd applied to be an HDA that year too) and my roommate from Darley was an RA sophomore year. And his friend, who also lived in Will Vill and hung out in our room, was an HDA as well. So Sam Kim did an awesome job raising Department of Housing employees, despite not following through on some of his responsibilities.

209 Aden

Over Thanksgiving break I finally got to move on campus to the Engineering Quad, essentially the antithesis of Williams Village. Almost everyone on my floor was an engineering student. This was another close community, though I was a little too antisocial to become as good friends as the rest of the folks did. A lot of them still hang out together. This was a floor where we'd have 6 people in someone's room doing DiffEq homework at 4 in the morning. On the morning of the applied math finals, everyone was up and noisy at 7. Our RA was also fairly lax, but a much better student. He would've been doing DiffEq with us, but he did it on time and went to bed early. My roommate was a bit odd. He played a frightening amount of StarCraft and a surprisingly small amount of homework. As time went on, he went to fewer and fewer classes. Near the end of the year, there were a couple nights when I'd wake up at 4:30am and peer over to see him playing Freecell. I'd get up at 8:30 to go to class, and then he'd hit the sack. I'd be studying in the evening and then move downstairs because the natural light faded and I didn't want to turn the lights on and wake him up. Then he'd wake up at 10pm, hit up Late Night Libby for some microwave cuisine, and go back to gaming. The ethernet also allowed me to start exploring music via mp3s. I got into U2, Metallica, Led Zeppelin, and who knows what else that year.

222 Baker

My room in Aden was kind of small and I didn't really want to pay the Quad fee again, so I decided on Baker, largely because its architecture looks interesting. I had another interesting group of neighbors. I already knew Jon from philosophy club, but was quite surprised to run into him the first day living 50 feet from my room. My neighbor across the hall went to Tai Chi with me, though he stuck with it better. He was a math and science major, so we had some cool conversations about that. He, his roommate, and about four other folks on the floor, plus a couple guys in the basement, were in Campus Crusade for Chirst, but they were generally cool guys. I had a lot of fun talking with them at lunch about theology, philosophy, and life. Two doors down from me were another two awesome guys with some cool ideas and swell taste in music and film. One was an English major doing creative writing, and he came up with some pretty cool poetry. This was back in the days when the Whizzers coffee shop was open, so we'd go and get some free cookies, an Italian soda, talk about philosophy, and watch the Lords of Misrule. Our RA was on the girls side of the floor and in AFROTC, so I didn't see her much, nor really care. My third semester in Baker wasn't quite as fun. While the floor'd been mostly sophomores the year before, I was one of about four non-Freshmen on the floor, and they were mostly into partying. I was heavily involved in the Green Party group and Philosophy Club, so I didn't spend a lot of time on the floor anyway.

211 Reed

My first semester as an RA I was in the building for seniors, grad students, and foreign students. I had my own kitchenette and bathroom and a whole bunch of residents I rarely saw. It was a good place for me to begin as an RA because it let me get my social skills up to speed. Several people I already knew (including my Baker philosophy friend) were my residents, and I really liked the other folks. At least the ones I saw, anyway. I'll say more about this in a future haiku about ra.

216 Brackett

My first full year as an RA was on a floor of mostly engineering freshmen. They were significantly more social than I'd been as a freshmen, so they quickly made friends and played lots of video games. They were monumentally not interested in doing anything organized, but we had some great conversations over food and I was a lot of help to a couple guys.

5 Reed

After a year and a half as an RA, I decided I was done and moved back into Reed, affectionately known as the RA Retirement Home, since a lot of folks who like the Residence Halls (and so were RAs) know it's the cool building. I never met my originally scheduled roommate, a member of the basketball team. He was replaced somewhere along the line by another guy on the basketball team who I met twice. At the second meeting, he and a friend tried to convince me to swap rooms with the friend, including offering me $200 and the service of moving my stuff. I told them I didn't want to move, and I knew Housing would have a problem with up-and-moving like that. That situation got straightened out fairly quickly (the athletic program has a lot of sway in Getting Things Done), and I was without a roommate for a while. Then I got a cool guy who transferred from Northern Colorado. After I played Troutmask Replica (his first introduction to Captain Beefheart) he said it was pretty interesting. Good sign. Anyway, after some thought over the summer, I'd decided I wanted to get back in as an RA, and on my birthday I got a call to go to...

334 Kittredge West

My smallest room yet, I think it was about 120 square feet, though it had a balcony. I had a pretty small coed floor who'd had an awesome RA who'd been fired for a dumb rule. I was rather overworked that year, hit the ground floundering, and didn't do a very good job being social.

Well. That was much longer than I thought it'd be. I was about to do a <ul> bulleted list, but on a whim decided to do a <dl> definition list. Whee. So... yeah. What else do I say about a place where I lived for so many years? How about more lists!

Student Organizations I was in:

• Pagan Student Alliance
• Philosophy Club
• Tau Beta Pi (engineering honor society)
• ACM
• CU Students for Green Party Candidates

Plus a few that died fairly quickly.

Some of my favorite events and activities:

• annual winter philosophy retreat -- I may even crash this year's
• annual Conference on World Affairs and athanaeum events
• annual E-days egg drop
• Lords of Misrule shows -- awesome improv comedy group; I was one of their most active audience members, and even stayed up for the whole 24-hour marathon
• annual ACM programming contests
• International Film Series
• football games
• voter registration drive, Residence Hall opening week (yeah; I'm a glutton)
• High School Honors Institute -- I only helped one year, but it was a total blast
• Tau Beta Pi conventions

I do have some regrets about my time at CU. I regret that I've been really lousy at keeping in touch with people who I don't see regularly. If I'm not in class with someone or live in the same building, I don't really talk to them. This is possibly related to the fact that I rarely did anything interesting (aside from go to a movie, which I do alone most of the time anyway) that made sense to invite someone to. Mostly I sat in my room and did homework or dealt with email or tried to catch up with the world through the web. I regret not being able to focus on schoolwork, get it done quickly, and then do something interesting. I regret not finding out about the undergrad cognitive science track until too late; I would've loved to do that certificate program. I regret not spending more spare time programming interesting things. I regret not being as good a social RA as I felt my residents deserved. I regret not reading all of my philosophy assignments. I regret not having a clear sense of direction in the MS portion of my degree. I regret not attending more colloquia. Despite the fact that the appropriate department doesn't schedule classes for that time, I always seemed to have some other weekly commitment at the colloquium time (out of three per week, even). Looking back, being a real MS student -- taking a little more time and doing research -- would've been a better educational experience. I'm not sure if I regret not asking a few girls out.

I'm glad I was involved in student groups as I was; that provided some good social and leadership experience. I'm glad I planned my time so I could see (almost) all the IFS films I wanted to. I'm glad I didn't graduate with just a BS. I'm glad I got a philosophy minor. I'm glad I didn't double major in Philosophy. I'm glad I stayed in Boulder. I'm glad I got involved with Green Sabbat. I'm glad I learned most of what I was taught. I'm glad I was an RA for as long as I was. I'm glad I lived in the residence halls for five years. I'm glad I chose computer science. I'm glad I was such a visible person on campus; almost everyone who's been a CU student in the last five years either recognizes me or knows someone who knows me.

So yeah. That's some rambling about my University. I've taken some cool pictures of campus. Yeah.