Monday, August 12, 2013

Welcome to Pittsburgh

It's about 11pm here in Pittsburgh. I've gotten done with my first day of orientation here at CMU and have settled in quite nicely. I moved in late last evening to the first room that I have had to myself.

(Before I continue to whine about myself, a special shout out to my family for not only driving out to help me lug all my stuff, but also stuck around and helped me unpack. They then braved the roads for the trip all the way back to Michigan even later into the night.  After an action packed Saturday and a very grumpy Patrick, their levels of dedication to getting me out of the state approached divine. I really do love you guys.)

It's an odd feeling being here. I've been going over manuscript critiques on a short story that I'm almost happy with, (Fourteen scenes in just under 4k words. What was I thinking?) and suddenly I'm missing people pretty badly. I'm missing my fellow Clarionites. I'm missing my fellow Spartans. I'm missing my family. The people I met today are really interesting and brilliant, and I'm a little worried about what exactly I plan on doing here.

This is my problem. I wanted to be here. I want to be here. Unfortunately I work out most of my problems by writing about it. It's sort of like talking to myself through a problem except that everyone on the internet can hear you... maybe this wasn't such a good idea either.

Let me start again. I miss people. This is normal. But I am letting these feelings of nostalgia get in the way of me being able to actually pursue what I want. I want to learn and be good at what I do. To do anything that might get in the way of that is wrong. I am not here to do things that are going to interfere with my becoming a kickass guru of computational biological goodness... but what if I've already started? There are so many things to do and -- nope. That's not how this problem is going to be solved. Let's try this one last time.

Hello Pittsburgh. My name is Patrick J Ropp. I'm here to do science and be awesome. Get used to it. 

Yeah. I think that has the right ring to it.

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