A Surprising Sophomore Year

What is the best time to post an end-of-year recap? Regardless of whatever your answer is, I guarantee you it is not as bad as doing so at the start of the next school year. Yet, here we are. This time, I am late for a few reasons. Outside of just being quite busy this summer, I wanted to take my time and really sit with the ideas on this post. As some of you may know, it’s been an interesting year for me so far. I decided to take some time and commit to doing what I always do on this blog, be genuine and positive on this blog. The internet especially is so full of negativity so today I hope to provide you all with a small break from that.

As all my friends from back home love to remind me, Purdue is located in the middle of nowhere. One does not often hear about people dying to visit West Lafayette, Indiana. Yet, there is something magical about having a home tucked away from the rest of the world. I recently watched the Bollywood movie Saiyaara. In the movie, the lead actress explains that saiyaara means shooting star in English, telling the lead actor to follow his dreams. At Purdue, I was blessed with the privilege of seeing the night sky light up with all the colors of the rainbow, much like how the main characters saw the night light up with a shooting star. Anxiously waiting in my friend’s car, we tried to find a place to pull over. After ironically pulling over next to a corn field, we got outside of the car. When I tell you that everything you have ever heard about the northern lights pale in comparison to the real thing, believe me. Each time I moved my phone, I saw a new color. Reds, greens, purples, yellows and everything in between made the night sky their canvas. It was truly spectacular and the pictures can not begin to describe the feelings we felt. I’ll never forget our initial excitement upon peering into the night, the fun pictures we took, and the laughs we shared under something truly unbelievable.

Readers of the blog know that I am a big fan of sports. My endless rants about the Seahawks cap allocation and draft strategy never fails to knock my parents and sister off to bed and a lot of my previous blog posts have talked about soccer players in the World Cup. Additionally, I have loved to play basketball with my friends ever since I was in 5th grade, even though I am not very good. Yet, despite this love of sports, I have never really been a big basketball fan. The first time I sat through a full length basketball game was when Purdue made the Final 4. However, when I saw that the Pacers were playing for quite cheap in Indianapolis and Purdue was offering a free shuttle to its Indy campus, I jumped at the chance to do so. It was nice to go on an outing with my friends that was not just on campus, as we were able to explore Indianapolis. City Hall was surprisingly stunning and there was a nice river walk next to campus. The midwest gave us a nice surprise with its colonial architecture and it was a cool side benefit. While the game ended up not being anything special as the Pacers were down by double digits late, it was still a cool experience. I can still remember the stupid jokes we made as we walked towards the stadium, lamenting the fact that West Lafayette is quite far from civilization. Plus, in hindsight, it was cool to see the team that became one of the most enjoyable and fun teams to watch in the postseason with clutch game winners from Haliburton throughout the playoffs. Who knows, if his achilles had not popped, maybe I could be here today bragging about seeing an NBA Champion Live! I am sure the state of Indiana would have erupted if that was the case, a sight I would like to see.

While fall semester was full of fun movie nights, impromptu karaoke sessions, dancing sky lights, and exciting basketball games, winter was a lot of work. Taking both an algorithms course and a systems programming course at the same time had me locked into my friend’s dorm lobby where we all spent many hours working hard on understanding these difficult concepts. Plus, having my algorithms class at 7:30 AM in the winter mornings with average temperatures at -20 degrees Fahrenheit did not help. Yet, as I have said many times before, life is not all about the big moments. To me, enjoying the small moments has always been important. Whether it be a small laugh about an inside joke about potatoes in the midst of doing NP-Complete Reductions or slowly losing our minds pulling an all-nighter for a hackathon, there are countless small moments with my friends that have made college exciting and fun. Watching my friend’s despair as he watched Jameson Williams throw an interception in a playoff game is still one of the funniest things I have seen. I hope that during tough times, all of you have a support network as strong as I have. I am very fortunate to have amazing friends in college, a loving family who will let me bother them at any and all hours of the day, and a group of friends from all over the country who I can talk to as if no time has passed since our last conversation. Despite my love of travel, I wanted to stay home for college. Yet, going out of state for college has been such a great experience for me and reminds me of why I started this blog. Trying new things, meeting new people, and visiting new places is important. I hope you all take risks and live life to the fullest because it is the only one we got. Boiler Up!