Change of plans
The people I see every day have known this bit of news for a while, but I realized today that I never told the internet. I actually alluded to it a little over a month ago, but I thought it would be a huge post, so I never got around to writing it out. Sorry about that.
The reason I’m telling you now is that I have to be up hella early tomorrow to deliver holiday gifts to high school college counselors, so I don’t have time to drone on for hundreds and hundreds of words. Here’s the short version.
As far as the internet knows, I’m going back to Mudd in the spring to restart my junior year. This, however, is not the case. I’m transferring out of HMC, and I’ll probably never be a student there again. I’ve applied to the University of Houston, and I’m supposed to hear back from them in the next week or so. If I don’t get in, I’ll transfer to another local school. I am absolutely staying in Houston.
Oh, and I’ll be majoring in Classics. Or Linguistics. Or both.
But why, you ask. Wasn’t Mudd a great fit for you? Didn’t you love it there?
Well, yes, I did love being at Mudd. I loved Quiz Bowl. I loved tutoring. I loved hanging out with people who could talk all night about math and physics. I loved my professors. I loved the small size of the school and the sense of community.
But I did not love the workload. I did not love the stress. I did not love living in California. I did not love the restrictions on what classes I could take, especially the hum requirements. I chose Mudd (over CalTech), believe it or not, *for its humanities*. Not the HMC hum department, of course, but the ability to cross-register at four other colleges, which sounded fun and easy in all the promo material. Fun? Potentially. Easy? No. Sure, you can register for any off-campus class you want, but did we mention that we require seven on-campus hums? And that by “on-campus,” we mean “not in your fields of interest”?
I *could* do an off-campus major, in which case a few of the requirements would be waived, but what’s the point? If I’m going to be a Classics major, Mudd is not the place for me.
The one thing Mudd does have going for it is that, because of my atrocious GPA, it’s the only “rigorous” school that will let me in. I’d love to go to Rice, but it’s just not an option, by several tenths of a point. But what it all boils down to, in the end, is that I am not going to be a physicist when I grow up. (I didn’t realize this while I was at Mudd, or I might have left earlier.) I therefore don’t need to take on a stressful workload at a college designed to turn out hardcore scientists in a city I can’t stand fifteen hundred miles from home, and pay tens of thousands of dollars a year for the privilege of doing so. That’s just silly.
I feel like I’ve known for a while that this is what I would choose to do. It’s like many big decisions: I know what my gut is telling me, but I have to rationalize it somehow, and I’m afraid of what might happen if I make a bad choice, so I put off the actual decision-making as long as possible. This, however, is a topic for a whole nother gargantuan post, so I’ll stop here.
I know I’ve made the right choice—I love living here, and I’m so glad I get to stay. I’ll miss my Mudd friends and the whole atmosphere there, but I’ve been missing them for a year now, and most of them will be graduating in May, anyway. It’s sad to think about the fun I might have had if I’d gone back this spring, but in terms of the big picture, going back for one semester would be a waste of time and money. Sad face. But also happy face. Content face.
Sleepy face. That “short post” strategy clearly worked. Walk, then bed.
Tags: school
December 13th, 2005 at 5:49 pm
Poor you! We’ll miss you. Stay in touch.
…why have you decided not to be a physicist?