possibilities, re-evaluation

In the last month I've lost my journal and my Algorithms textbook (Cormen). The journal wasn't too big of a deal, other than the Andras Schiff ticket inside (which also isn't that big of a deal, I'm pretty sure Memorial Hall is willing to print me another ticket), as I hadn't written much other than bus stops / times in 3 cities and 2 countries and some music inside. The textbook wasn't too big of a deal, because it was an older edition that I got for fairly cheap ($15), and I was planning on buying a newer edition, anyway.
...but seriously, folks: I have yet to take a CS class that I haven't lost a textbook for.

This break I'm trying to reevaluate a lot of my time priorities. I applied to Harvard in high school and I had an interview with an alum (a Duke law school student). He interrogated me on my activities, the time I spent on them, which ones I liked the best, why I hadn't taken many APs--and concluded, in a question, "So, if you enjoy tutoring and music so much, why do you spend most of your time on other things?"
At the time I didn't have much of an answer for him (and if I were to redo the interview, I'm not quite sure I would now, either), but it's interesting how our time priorities don't always mesh well with what we say is important to us. This seems silly, but it's also something that happens really often to people.
I spoke to my friend Rodin the other day on something similar and she exclaimed, "If you let yourself spend your time on things that aren't important to you now, the rest of your life is going to be that way!"

I don't know if I'm going to be as radical as Rodin and say that life is such a continual extreme (you know, you know, people change, things change, most definitely--circumstances change), but the reality for me right now is not only that what I'm spending my time on is not neccesarily important to me, but that I'm not entirely sure what is important to me.

So, I'm re-evaluating. Not just time priorities, but what I'm doing with my time I get in college (seriously, college is so self-fucking-indulgent! I get four whole years where I can just pursue things intellectually for fun! what! I get to interact with people who have seriously thought about some serious (and less serious) issues, who want to help guide me into figuring out what I think about some things and are willing to spend some time with me on that. What! I get to be with other people in the same or similar place as me, what! Hah!). For a long time, I've derided this liberal-arts philosophy and felt like college was a time for learning skills (foreign languages, how to think about certain disciplines, how to do certain disciplines), and I still think it is. But I forgot that I've never been someone with only one interest (or even two or three), and I'm allowed to pursue my various interests with full-hearted abandon instead of trying to limit myself to these false constraints of "majors" and "minors". Political philosophy! Art history! Remember, remember, I like these things--I should let myself think about them intellectually and academically again.

I'm re-evaluating a lot of other things in my life, too. I'm going through a transition phase in my life right now (a serious break in a serious relationship), being financially independent but not needing to be, and other factors are really influencing my mood and making me a lot more introspective than I have in a few weeks. I'd like the things I do to be more cohesive, which is something that's always been important to me. I think I've made the mistake in the past of doing this by viewing all my interests holistically (or attempting to do so), and then trying to SMUSH all these interests into one activity, or one discipline. Obviously, that didn't work (cognitive neuroscience of music, anyone?), but one approach I hadn't thought of just doing things that involve more than one thing I like, but realizing that I'm allowed to do more than one thing, hah!

So from this comes mentoring a Durham county FIRST Robotics team, experimental music (hopefully more on this front soon) collaboratively and individually, allowing myself to consider dropping the Math major (=> taking a more holistic view to my education => taking a course in the relationship between politics and economics) and hopefully more persistent introspection and thought. : ]