On Work Life and Adulting

When I graduated college a year ago in June of 2018, I really looked forward to the work life and adulting. Back in October of 2017, I had accepted a full-time offer for a software development engineer position in unsurprisingly, the Silicon Valley. This meant that I’d be moving back to the west coast (best coast!) after four years in Boston, MA. The thought of working full-time and adulting brought an excitement similar to how I felt about moving to Boston for college. I was eager to experience a different kind of independence as well as start a new chapter of my life.

‘Different’ right about sums up work life vs student life. One of the biggest changes I felt once I started working was how much more responsibility you have as a team member working on a product with customers. As a student, what I did only affected my grades, my learning, my sleep… but now what I do affects not only myself, but also the rest of my team, the product, and customers. In a way it’s more exciting, but when you also cook regularly, spend half the weekend running errands/doing chores, are pretty involved in church activities, and still want to spend time socializing with friends, it can get quite exhausting. There were some weeks when I felt overwhelmed with all the responsibilities and decided to give myself a small break in the form of working from home, eating out, or giving myself relaxing alone time.

Another aspect of work life that I found pretty different from student life was how busy I was. Instead of having regular homework to do, I was working on projects – some back to back, some overlapping. This meant that I was relatively chill some weeks and was crazy busy during others. Sometimes, this means I would get a little sleepy at work when things were too chill and when I was super busy, I would find myself continuing to work in the evening. But regardless of how busy I was, whenever I completed a big task, I would feel a big sense of accomplishment.

As a positive side effect of not having regular homework, I’ve been able to spend more dedicated time to hobbies – both rediscovered and new. I play the guitar and sing more often now, and I’ve started to get back into reading leisurely after a super long hiatus. I’ve also started drawing portrait pencil sketches, and I’ve developed an appreciation for comedy and started following some comedians. Because many of the friends I’ve made since I moved to the Bay Area enjoy tabletop games, I’ve also gotten into playing various tabletop games like 7 Wonders, Five Crowns, and Dixit. My involvement in some of my hobbies during college like dance and basketball has for the most part been reduced to none partly because they require more effort to coordinate with others, can get a little costly, and admittedly, are more physically demanding.

I find it interesting how despite my pursuing mostly solo hobbies since I started working, I have become more of an extravert (according to personality tests and comments from those around me). I suspect my increased extraversion developed from a desire to maintain good relationships and be hospitable, an eagerness to learn and improve, and a curiosity for what’s happening around me.

There are only two months left until my one year anniversary working as a software development engineer at Apple, and there are a lot of soft and hard skills I’ve learned both in my professional and personal life. Throughout these past couple of months, I’ve really had to rely on God for guidance and reassurance, and I’m thankful that I’ve been able to experience many blessings since I embarked on this exciting chapter of life.

From the muse in me,

~ marG

Reflection and Rediscovery

It’s surprising how I’ve written zero blog entries in 2017 when a lot actually happened in 2017. Spring 2017 was my best semester in terms of academics, Summer 2017 was my best summer in terms of work life balance, Fall 2017 was my most hectic semester in terms of juggling school, job hunting, and extracurriculars, and Winter 2017 was my most edifying break since Summer 2014. In general, 2017 was a very eventful year: I went skiing for the first time, spent winter break in Boston, participated in a hardware hackathon, spent spring break in the U.S. Virgin Islands where I went paddleboarding and parasailing for the first time, interned in San Francisco for the summer, rode in a paddle boat for the first time, hiked a total of 21 miles in Yosemite National Park, biked across the Golden Gate Bridge, went on a spontaneous road trip to Philly and New York for Thanksgiving break, biked around west Manhattan, accepted my first full time job, choreographed a Kpop dance for the first time, finally took (and passed!) my last general institute requirement – biology, and served as a counselor for 6th-7th graders for the first time during Winter Student Spiritual Convocation.

2017 challenged me in every aspect of my life. I remember being super stressed during September and October because I was doing a lot of interviewing that required traveling, and the combination of the two drained me mentally and physically. But I thank God for reassuring me while I was uncertain of my professional future. Speaking of being stressed, I used to find social interactions stressful because I tried too hard to please everyone, but from exposure to people with varying backgrounds, interests, and values, I realized that pleasing everyone is not only impossible but unnecessary. Through interactions with other interns in my 10 week summer internship, peers during vacation trips, and 6th-7th graders as a counselor during a weeklong church seminar, I learned how to connect with different people and not take things too personally. I also surprised myself with how adventurous I can be. I quite spontaneously went on a 14.5 hike with little knowledge of what the terrain would be like and agreed to go biking in two different unfamiliar cities after not riding a bike for maybe 8 years?! While nothing seriously bad happened except that I tore a pair of pants at the knee from falling of my bike in Manhattan, NY, I definitely felt challenged physically and am still shocked and amazed at how daring I was to complete such physically demanding activities. Aside from discovering my adventurous self, I also discovered how easily my emotions can affect my work – usually by unhealthily destroying or building motivation. For a good portion of Fall semester, I slept at 3:00am on average because I was frustrated with schoolwork and dumbly chose to sacrifice sleep.

I spent the last two weeks of 2017 reflecting a lot not only on the past year but also on my 3.5 years in college, and it made me embark on a journey of rediscovery. I realized that while I have picked up new interests since I got to college such as dance and photography and am slowly transforming from being an introvert to being an extravert, I have sadly deprioritized certain activities that I previously made the effort to habitually do. Those activities include journaling, blogging, and reading the Bible regularly for personal spiritual cultivation. I believe the biggest change was I developed an uneasiness of being alone. I sought to always be in the company of others. This explains why I slowly neglected the above mentioned activities – they are all more effectively done alone. It’s unfortunate how in the process of trying to “find myself” in the exciting phase of college, I’ve forgotten how to find value, comfort, and contentment in having alone time. Without well-utilized alone time, I was living too much in the moment and became too dependent on the presence of others for happiness. A huge side effect was lack of self-reflection, and thus lack of self-improvement, which is a cause I used to passionately champion. Because of this realization, I’ve determined to train myself to treasure and make good use of my alone time, especially in these last few months before I start living the work life and actually adulting. That being said, here’s to a year hopefully full of productivity, God’s blessings, and continual self-growth. :)

From the muse in me,

~ marG

dynaMIT: a Week of Science Fun with Kids

My last major activity before summer 2016 ended was being a mentor for dynaMIT, an MIT student-run program that seeks to ignite an interest in STEM in economically disadvantaged middle school students through a weeklong day camp filled with activities and experiments in a wide variety of STEM topics. That week was an amazing and rewarding experience for me. I was paired with another MIT student to mentor a group of three enthusiastic and curious middle school kids. By the end of the week, my kids had dissected cow eyes, played with oobleck, built an aluminum tower, and learned the basic responsibilities of a forensic scientist, and I had gained a newfound excitement of working with kids and a deeper appreciation for STEM.

There were a total of about 40 kids and 20 mentors in the program. Each day began with ice breakers, which involved running around with arms linked, following instructions from the Captain, and yelling out “pterodactyl” in the most hilarious way. Then, we’d engage in activities relating to the STEM topic of the day. Over the course of the week, the kids got to learn about the importance of adhering to specifications as a mechanical engineer, how an electronic circuit works, how to use a pipette, chromatography, the physics behind a ball traveling through the air, and the strategy for the Monty Hall problem. The kids also got to explore programming through building a game using Scratch. As a mentor, it was rewarding to see kids work together to solve the case of the Stolen Ring, build a straw bridge, and design a science experiment.

I had never been so excited to get up in the morning for an entire week. Even though being a mentor for dynaMIT consumed twelve hours every day, every minute preparing materials, guiding the kids through activities, and debriefing with the other mentors was so worth it because I realized that I was actually making an impact on these kids. These kids come from all sort of backgrounds academically – some love math and science, others prefer the humanities, some have dozens of Scratch personal projects, others have never programmed before – but there is so much value in the time we mentors invest in putting dynaMIT together in the hopes of inspiring middle school students to pursue STEM.

Something interesting that happened to me as a result of being a mentor for dynaMIT (among other things), is I have developed a stronger motivation in my studies as a computer science major and more enthusiasm towards life in general. People sometimes say “kids give me life”, and I think I actually experienced that through dynaMIT. Doing fun science activities all week with kids seemed to instill in me this excitement for making the most of every day. It’s interesting how something so simple and natural as being with kids can change someone’s attitude towards life, and I’m more than happy that dynaMIT did exactly that for me.

From the muse in me,

~ marG

Life at JPL as a Summer Intern

For the past 10 weeks, I’ve had the opportunity to work as a software engineering intern at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) located in La Cañada Flintridge, CA through their Summer Internship Program (JPLSIP). It was an enjoyable learning experience, and I definitely got a better understanding of what software engineering entails as well as JPL as a company.

On my first day, I arrived at JPL at roughly 7:30 in the morning where I was welcomed by JPLSIP staff for orientation. I received my intern badge, my work laptop, a purple JPL cinch bag, and a map of JPL’s 177-acre campus. I got to meet my two mentors, one of whom heads the Data Services Group within the Planning and Execution Systems Section and the other of whom is an engineering applications software engineer within the section. I met a couple other software engineers in the section and made myself at home in the Bullpen, the huge cubicle I eventually shared with five other interns.

My task for the summer was to build a basic prototype of a modified version of SeqGen, a software tool for generating spacecraft sequences, that enables JavaScript-based command modeling. This involved embedding Google’s V8 JavaScript Engine into C++ (the language the software is written in) to allow JavaScript code execution in C++ and designing an API for creating command models in JavaScript. Before I indulged in writing any code, I spent the first few weeks meeting with other software engineers to understand how SeqGen works as well as familiarizing myself with all the technologies I needed – more specifically, C++, V8 JavaScript Engine, the Linux virtual machine, and command-line tools such as Vim and Grep. After drafting designs of a modified software architecture for SeqGen, I proceeded to build multiple prototypes starting from simple programs and moving towards modular programming. At the end of the ninth week, I had successfully embedded the V8 JavaScript Engine into the existing codebase of SeqGen and designed a simple API for printing, getting, and setting model attribute values. I then spent the last week getting my code immortalized in JPL’s GitHub and writing documentation for the API.

My summer was more than just coding, however. I attended Scrum stand-up team meetings, and as part of the JPLSIP program, I also wrote two progress reports and a final report and gave a final presentation about my work. And when you’re at such an innovative place of scientific research and interdisciplinary engineering, there’s always something exciting going on at some part of the lab. I got to attend fascinating talks about animatronics by a Disney Imagineer, design thinking by Alan Cooper, and robotic rapid prototyping by the leader of JPL’s Extreme Environment Robotics Group, to name a few. I got to learn about various software tools developers in different groups at JPL use at monthly Developer meetups. I went on sometimes impromptu tours of Team X, where mission concept designs are formulated, the Operations Lab, where JPL engineers are currently collaborating with Microsoft to incorporate the HoloLens into their work on Mars, and of course, the Space Flight Operations Facility, the control room for interplanetary and deep space exploration and home of the “Center of the Universe”.

One of the best perks of working at JPL is the 9/80 work schedule (80 hours of work in 9 days), which means we work nine-hour days Monday through Thursday, get every other Friday’s off, and on the Fridays we do work, we work eight hours. On a typical day of my internship, I’d arrive at JPL at 7:45am and spend the next 15 minutes reviewing my progress from the day before, taking note of my goals for the day, checking my JPL email, and setting my laptop up for the day’s work. I was generally most productive and focused in the morning, probably because I sometimes had meetings with other software engineers in the morning. At around noon, I’d grab lunch with some fellow interns and maybe listen in on a talk, then head back to the Bullpen to continue working. When I got drowsy in the afternoon, I would go outside for a short walk to get some fresh air. I tried to wrap up fifteen minutes before I left work to leave some time for jotting down the day’s progress and challenges as well as tasks for the next day.

Over the past 10 weeks of writing and debugging code, I realized that although I enjoy designing software and writing code for the most part, I want my code to have a more tangible impact, literally speaking. I want to write code for software that integrates with some sort of user interface and/or hardware product.. but that’s just a thought I have for the future. All in all, I am grateful to have spent this summer interning at JPL working alongside and learning from brilliant, inspiring people.

From the muse in me,

~ marG

When Seasons Change

There is something magical about witnessing seasons change. About a month ago (roughly the peak of fall), I had the opportunity to go hiking at Leominster State Forest in Westminster, MA. It was the perfect time to go and see the colorful foliage. Of course, I brought my DSLR with me to capture all the scenery. Here is a sampling of the trip (taken with a Nikon D5200):

Leominster State Forest
Leominster State Forest

leaves
leaves

foliage
foliage

b&w
b&w

foliage
foliage

rocks lined up
rocks lined up

colorful leaves
colorful leaves

green  |  red  |  yellow
green | red | yellow

rocks
rocks

view of the distant mountains
view of the distant mountains

beautiful scenery
beautiful scenery

view from the top
view from the top

found a geocache!
found a geocache!

leaves resting on a rock
leaves resting on a rock

steep rock
steep rock

nature <3
nature <3

picnic area

perfect acorn
perfect acorn

more leaves
more leaves

leaves
leaves

acorns
acorns

foliage
foliage

What a wonderful day of enjoying nature – fall is such a beautiful season!

From the muse in me,

~ marG

Sophomore Year Expectations and Goals

It’s almost the start of a new school year again.. I’ve got three weeks until the first day of classes as a sophomore in college. Sophomore year will no doubt be more academically challenging than freshman year, but I am determined to make this year a fruitful year. Freshman year taught me what I’m capable of and where I’m lacking, and I’ve been able to experiment with work / study habits over the summer. I’m actually looking forward to school starting again. I’m excited to take real computer science classes, see my classmates and floormates again, push myself to be a better student, and continue to learn how to balance academics, faith, extracurriculars, a social life, and my physical well-being. College is going by faster than I expected it to, so I want to make every bit of it worth the energy, the time, the money, and the effort.

Here are some of my goals for sophomore year:

1) Develop a study schedule that works for me.
Probably my biggest goal – and most important one. I admit that I have never really had what you could call a study schedule, as I’m mostly driven by random energy spikes. But I believe that it’s important to have some sort of routine – especially when it comes to schoolwork – because otherwise, it is very easy to lose the purpose of studying and procrastinate.

2) Take my studies seriously and be resourceful.
Many of the classes I will be taking this school year are directly related to my major, and quite possibly my future career. I can’t waste the opportunity to learn from professors, TAs, peers, and my own mistakes!

3) Learn to balance my mind, body, and spirit.
This is something that may take longer than a year to master, but it is something that I feel is extremely important to personal satisfaction and wellness. And the earlier I figure out what works for me, the more enjoyable life will be. :) I’m eager to experiment with different study habits, exercise routines, and commit myself to consistent personal spiritual cultivation!

Whoo! Sophomore year, let’s go!

From the muse in me,

~ marG

Casual Afternoon on Campus with a Camera

After one school year and a few months of summer spent at MIT, I finally got around to walking around campus with the sole purpose of taking pictures with my camera. It was a nice photowalk and a satisfying amount of walking. I also felt very much like a tourist :P

Here are some of my favorite pictures from that afternoon (taken with a Nikon D5200):

Massachusetts Institute of Technology Seal
Massachusetts Institute of Technology Seal

The Hexagons
The Hexagons

Green Building
Green Building

Aesop's Fables II at North Court
Aesop’s Fables II at North Court

Reflection on Stata's mirror-surface steel
Reflection on Stata’s mirror-surface steel

Stata against the sky
Stata against the sky

A bench near Whitaker College of Health Sciences and Technology
A bench near Whitaker College of Health Sciences and Technology

Grassy area behind MIT Sloan
Grassy area behind MIT Sloan

Glorious Stata
Glorious Stata

La Grande Voile (The Big Sail)
La Grande Voile (The Big Sail)

Two Indeterminate Lines
Two Indeterminate Lines

Fire Hydrant along Memorial Drive
Fire Hydrant along Memorial Drive

View of the Prudential Tower from Cambridge side
View of the Prudential Tower from Cambridge side

Majestic boats on the Charles River
Majestic boats on the Charles River

View of Boston through an arbitrary railing circle in Cambridge
View of Boston through an arbitrary railing circle in Cambridge

Massachusetts 77 Avenue
Massachusetts 77 Avenue

From the muse in me,

~ marG

Done with Frosh Year Reflections: Home Away from Home

My first post in the “Done with Frosh Year Reflections” series was about living away from home. I touched on how I became more independent, realized that responsibility comes with freedom, and became more appreciative of my parents and upbringing. In this post, I’ll share about dorm life, making friends, and how I found my “home away from home”.

Before coming to college, I was most excited about dorm life and making meaningful friendships, and I believed that the two were strongly correlated. My thinking was that ideally, where you live is where your closest friends are, er rather, where your closest friends are is where you live. At MIT, the housing process is unique in that each of the 11 undergraduate residence halls have their own distinctive culture – some more distinct than others – and we students, for the most part, get to choose where we live. Every spring, MIT students from different dorms create i3 (Interactive Introduction to the Institute) videos to give prefrosh (a term for soon-to-be freshmen) a glimpse of the culture of the dorms. In the summer, prefrosh then submit their rankings of which dorms they would like to be placed in. When school starts in the fall, there is something called REX (Residence EXploration) where freshmen can explore each of the dorms more and if they wish to switch dorms, they can enter into the FYRE (First Year Residence Exchange) lottery.

I personally had a hard time ranking the dorms. While I did visit most of the dorms during CPW (Campus Preview Weekend) and I watched all the i3 videos multiple times, I couldn’t figure out my top 3 choices until it was very close to the deadline to submit housing rankings. I ended up being placed in my fourth choice dorm, a co-ed cook-for-yourself community dorm with numbered and cultured houses that was located second furthest on Dorm Row. My twin sister was also placed in the same dorm as me, although she ranked it third. When it was time for REX, I participated in my dorm’s In-House Rush, a day for deciding which sub-community within the dorm you wished to live in. Because I knew more upperclassmen in a certain sub-community from my pre-orientation program, I chose to live there. I ended up rooming with a fellow freshman who actually had a very similar class schedule as I did, which was convenient. However, as I got the hang of classes and settled in, I realized that my social life was lacking something. I wasn’t very happy and I felt that I didn’t really belong in my community. The friendships I had made so far seemed superficial, and I longed to find a group of people I felt comfortable with talking about basically anything.

First semester ended with me feeling intellectually enlightened but socially lacking, so I purposed to be more initiative in social situations and be more active in clubs that fostered my interests when second semester came around. I got a new schedule, and I saw my new classes as new social opportunities. I also decided to invest one hour a week in MIT Asian Dance Team (ADT). This was something I had not planned to do before college, but I thought of it as a perfect opportunity to get some exercise, learn something new, and meet people. Perhaps one of the best decisions I made during freshman year was joining the Asian Christian Fellowship (ACF). ACF was such a welcoming community, and I felt very much at home during weekly CGs (Community Groups or Couch Gatherings). I met some of the most admirable people in ACF, and I also grew close to the other freshmen in ACF. As the semester rolled on, I found myself spending a lot of time psetting (a term for doing homework, or psets), derping around, and basically enjoying myself in a certain dorm that was an all-girls meal-plan dorm located second along Dorm Row. I felt that the best thing I could do for myself in college was to find a nice group of people to enjoy college with, and so I went with my gut feeling and decided to move dorms starting sophomore fall simply because I felt I would be happier there.

Although it took me almost a whole school year to find my “home away from home”, I am glad that I did in rather unexpected ways. College is a time for exploration and life is full of surprises. :)

Done with Frosh Year Reflections: Drinking from the Firehose

At MIT, learning is likened to “drinking from the firehose”, an expression that attests to the rather immense amount of information students here chug down in a relatively small amount of time. Although “drinking from the firehose” can be overwhelming at times, after two semesters and ten classes at MIT, I’ve discovered how exciting and enlightening learning can be. Some classes even influenced my interests and revamped how I approach life.

As a first-year student, my classes were mostly either GIRs (General Institute Requirements) or HASS (Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences) requirements because well, they’re required. I did squeeze in two intro CS courses though, since I was pretty set on studying computer science. I’ll save my thoughts on GIRs for another post when I’ve completed them, as I’ll be able to provide a more thorough reflection then. In this post, I’ll focus on the HASS classes I took my freshman year, because they were especially eye-opening. I can say that I wouldn’t be the person I am today, if it weren’t for the HASS classes I took so far.

Unlike GIRs and even courses for specific majors (aka the technicals), HASS classes (aka the non-technicals) are generally more flexible. There is a broad selection of HASS classes to choose from, and HASS classes are further categorized into HASS-H (Humanities), HASS-A (Arts), or HASS-S (Social Sciences). For both semesters of freshman year, I took HASS-A classes, namely MAS.110 Fundamentals of Computational Media Design and 21M.600 Introduction to Acting.

I took MAS.110 in my first semester as part of the Media Arts Sciences Freshman Year Program at the Media Lab. It was an incredible experience as I got to explore the intersection between technology, art, and design and cultivate my creative side. To be honest, I didn’t really understand what the title of the course – Fundamentals of Computational Media Design – meant initially. It just sounded very cool. And it was! I got to learn about typography, familiarize myself with different styles of art, play around with Scratch, and explore various forms of audio/visual expression – from cameras to musical instruments to computer graphics. This was the first actual art class I have taken, so I found it refreshingly intriguing. I did have to step outside my comfort zone a couple times because the class involved a lot of participation – reading essays out loud and giving/receiving critique, presenting project ideas and finished projects, and sharing thoughts from readings. As the semester progressed however, I let my passion for my projects and curiosity overcome my fears of not being coherent/eloquent in my presentations and impostor syndrome, which is actually a very real thing at MIT. Because of MAS.110, I’ve discovered my fascination with lines and string art, a new obsession with how code, art, and design work together, and a deep appreciation of music as a powerful medium of expression.

Based on recommendations from a few upperclassmen about which HASS classes to take and some luck, I lotteried into 21M.600 second semester (it’s a very popular HASS-A class at MIT). I had never taken theater classes before, so 21M.600 was a really new experience for me. One thing that surprised me was how physically, mentally, and emotionally demanding acting is. There’s way more to acting than memorizing lines of text, which was my initial conception of acting. We spent the first 20 minutes of every class “warming-up” – stretching and yoga – and then a good 40 minutes of partner/group exercises that involved physical activity in silence or vocal activity often accompanied with physical activity. These exercises were very out of my comfort zone at first, because a key thing to these exercises was acting/reacting on impulse (less thinking), and I usually like to think extensively before I act or voice my opinion. But these exercises allowed me to really free my mind, something I needed especially during stressful days. I also became more comfortable in my own body and more aware of myself and my surroundings. I realized the importance of committing to actions and learned to make connections through “inner images” and “countdowns”. For the first time in my life, I learned to embrace myself as an artist who is capable of controlling my interactions with other people and objects in a calculated yet creative manner. Now I feel much more comfortable expressing myself, and I pay more attention to how I carry myself and how others carry themselves.

It’s hard to imagine how just two classes can influence me so much – and non-technical classes at a technical school at that. I’m so glad I took these classes as they’ve helped me gain new perspectives on life, both in an intellectual sense and a psychological sense. Drinking from the firehose can be so enriching, and I’m looking forward to what’s in store for me in the fall! :)

From the muse in me,

~ marG

Done with Frosh Year Reflections: Living Away from Home

Wow, freshman year of college went by so quickly. I was officially done with freshman year at MIT a little over a month ago, but I gotta admit I haven’t fully processed the fact that my first year as a college student is over until recently. Now that I’ve had some time to reflect on the past school year, I find it fitting to share some of my thoughts in a series of blog posts ~

I’ve changed a lot within the nine months I’ve spent at school in Cambridge, MA – and a lot (though not all) of the change stems from living away from home (I’m from Los Angeles, CA). For me, living away from home is a big deal because 1) I have never moved all my life until college, 2) I have never lived in the East Coast before (read as never experienced real winter before), and 3) both my twin sister and I would be living on the other side of the country from my parents.

Going to college so far away from home challenged me to be more independent in all aspects – from what I eat for lunch to how I get from place to place to when I wake up/go to bed. As someone who tends to be indecisive and dependent on others, I found it rather difficult to assume greater responsibility for things I had previously taken quite lightly. Over the school year, however, I learned that I must be responsible for my own well-being, my studies, my extracurricular activities, my faith, my habits, etc.. because if I don’t, no one else will. That alarming truth impelled me to overcome my indecisiveness and dependency. It also helped me build confidence. I began to really do things for myself because I actually felt the need to. Choosing classes, going shopping, using public transportation – these are just a few examples of things I began to more confidently do by myself. I guess you could say I discovered freedom and learned to embrace the responsibility that comes with it.

Besides learning to be more independent, I also developed a strong appreciation of my parents and upbringing. I got homesick in late September, about a month after I first arrived at MIT, and I’ll admit I got homesick again a few weeks ago, almost a month since I came back to campus for the summer. It wasn’t just that I missed my family back home in LA, the more time I spent away from my family, the more I built up a deep gratitude for everything my parents have done for me and a longing to express my thankfulness to them. There were countless times when I felt so blessed to have my family as my family. In particular, I am very thankful that my parents allowed me to explore the world of music early on through piano lessons, that they educated me well in health and nutrition, that they stressed how important church and faith are, and perhaps most importantly, that they encouraged me to treat them as not only parents, but also friends, spiritual buddies, and fellow imperfect human beings. Before college, I took most of these things for granted, but having gone through freshman year,  I realized how much my upbringing has shaped me to be the person I am today, which I will touch more upon in a subsequent post.

It’s amazing how living away from home can give you such an insightful perspective on life. And it’s only been a year of college.. still have three more to go!

From the muse in me,

~ marG