Tags: friends
It's barely been a month since I first arrived in Columbus, and I've already got one heck of a story to tell.
I had decided before I arrived here that I would buy a car. The convenience of being able to drive out whenever I wanted to, or make a road trip to meet friends in other parts of the Midwest was all too tempting. Thus began the search, and let me break it to you if you didn't already know - buying a used car is perhaps the hardest thing to do if you are as indecisive as I am.
"It", being my first full year of grad school. I started last spring as a graduate non-degree candidate, testing the waters of the program you could say. It's been a bumpy, fun, nerve-wracking, exhilarating, amazing, incredible, crazy ride.
It's Week 10 now, and there are signs that this ride is finally slowing down. This quarter has been very different than the others so far. Core courses aplenty, group projects abound, and no finals. Wait, no finals? That's right, no finals. Just papers. Not that papers are less stressful than final exams.
When I first started graduate school, I thought it would be a lot like undergrad, where you met a few people that you liked in classes, were maybe in a few groups together, but at the end of the day, we would all go home and hang out with our friends from either back home or from undergrad. Of course, I couldn't be more wrong. This year has been quite the opposite, in fact. I know I've made friends for life in this program.
First and foremost, I have to put a disclaimer out there before continuing: Please don't judge by the title of this post that I by any means dislike my program or the people in it, in fact just the opposite. I LOVE my program and everyone in it! However, there comes a time when you need a little space to breath outside of the program. As some of the second years told me as soon as classes started in the fall, it is very easy to get consumed with HR and the program itself.
I wanted to follow up to my post from two weeks ago entitled "Making Friends Across the Globe" this week because I actually got to practice what I preached.
This past Friday I was invited to dinner at one of the international student's home. Of course, I was so excited to try real, traditional Chinese food, so I accepted the invitation without question. Of course, as is American custom I had to offer to bring something to add to the meal, but my host said no, that I only needed to bring myself.