Sunday, May 23, 2010

Updates Time and some Poetry

Despite the very best of intentions, it has been a while since I have posted an update. I have been busy – busy with the everyday business of life. But transitions are on the horizon. I am in the process of searching for a new job. After almost three decades as a student, I am set to finally start working at a “job”. I have been travelling quite a bit for interviews at various places. I like travelling. Let me catalogue the reasons:
  • This will take me a step closer to a potential future job.
  • I get to visit new places as part of my travel. I already have visited two states that I have never been to before as well as revisited some that I have been to.
  • I get to catch up on my reading in the flight and in my hotel rooms (VERY BIG PERK)
  • It is free. I’ve never travelled without having to pay for it myself, so this is a good change.
  • I get to eat at wonderful restaurants. Most prospective employers have tried to give me a genuine taste of the city and taken me to delightful places with delectable fare. One never completely experiences a place until one has sampled its cuisine, and I certainly am getting a generous dose of this.
  • I get to meet all kinds of wonderful psychologists, and talk about what they do for their students – it gives me all kinds of inspiration for what I eventually want to do.
  • I rake up a ton of frequent flier miles.
  • I get to watch cable TV at the hotel. Ever since I gave up cable at home, I have not had the chance to watch trashy TV. I get my fix the night before the interview. Guilty pleasure. Hee hee. :-)

I would love to write at length about all my travels, but perhaps that will be a post for another day. Let me just say this - most beautiful college campus: Michigan – Ann Arbor. The beauty of this campus took my breath away. I think it also helped that it was the start of the summer break, and most students were away. Throngs of people have a way of diluting the effect of a beautiful vista. The ivy-laden buildings of the law quadrangle of the Ann Arbor campus might almost have been what Mathew Arnold had in mind when he wrote:

Pale blue convolvulus in tendrils creep:
And air-swept lindens yield
Their scent, and rustle down their perfumed showers
Of bloom on the bent grass where I am laid,
And bower me from the August sun with shade;
And the eye travels down to Oxford's towers...


He did not, of course. As the poem points out, he had Oxford in mind. I have never been to Oxford, and until I do, Ann Arbor must be my definition of the epitome of beauty amongst college campuses.

In other news, my friends A&A have left Minneapolis. I feel happy for them, and somewhat sad for me. A&A have been my friends since our Kansas City days, and after a few years of living in different cities, when I got matched with the internship in Minneapolis, we were in the same city again. A&A made the move to Minneapolis easier and infinitely more fun. There is nothing quite as nice about moving to a new city as having good friends already in place. Oh well… all good things end, and so A&A have moved to a different city. This is very exciting for them, since they have probably done everything that there is to do in the Twin Cities and surrounding areas. A&A now live in an apartment with the most gorgeous view of snow-capped mountains that I have ever seen, and I have already received the first installment of photographs of their many new adventures. As for me, the transition out of this lovely city will be much easier by their absence.