Saturday

That means waking up when I wake up, time to put cinnamon in my coffee and enjoy it properly before rushing out the door. I went from 0 to 60 this week, sick and dying actually a week ago to pedal-to-the-floor, classes from 8-6 every day, not to mention things like homework, etc. This Saturday has been a long time coming.

I spent my Friday night partially with good music blasting and me standing at the whiteboard (well, the big presentation paper pad I call a whiteboard) and working out graph theory proofs, smiling to myself because I was finally in the right mindset to do it - and part of the evening with two new friends, who came over and we had brinner: breakfast for dinner. The main part of this brinner was something new and awesome - pancakes with three ingredients: bananas, almond butter, eggs. They were delicious!

And today, I do have a lot of things to do, but I'm taking it easy this morning, 'cause I know I'll work better if I do. I was talking with one of these friends who was here last night (her name is Naomi) about being really impressed at how smart everyone else in our programs seem - she's here with a computer science program that's based in Pest, but our two programs interact a bit - and we both noticed an interesting phenomenon. It's very easy to get intimidated and feel like 'everyone else knows so much, I'm here by mistake' or, as many people do, just oneself purely by one's academic prowess and simply dissolve out of self hatred when you don't feel you are at the same level as those around you. But, even though I am surrounded by a lot of people who are really, really brilliant - I'm not 'hating on' my own abilities yet. It's not that I know that from their perspective, I look the same way to them (I don't think so, actually, at least not yet - I've not been in any situations yet where I really had the floor to talk about math) but something about the environment here just encourages learning. The worst experiences I've ever had with people in math is when pride gets involved (which, I'm learning, happens a lot more when you are working with boys - this is new to me. It does happen among girls, but not as frequently). But there's something in the air here that encourages that to be tossed aside, and just says "Learn. That's why you're here." So, I'll go with that.

A beautiful statue in front of our school. It looks in this picture like it's a real tree, but the leaves are actually from a tree behind the wall.

McDaniel College, through the gates.

Emily's natural habitat. Well, this and the outdoors. :) I can't decide.

Something that I love. Proper notetaking.