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I'm 8 days away from graduating from Columbia University with a Master's degree.

I'm sitting in the library computer lab at SIPA for the fourth night in a row and I will be here, in these bowels of SIPA, until the wee-est hours of the morning.

apparently even during finals, 8am on a Sunday is too early to be in the library...
there weren't even any other Asians here!

Today, as I walked in the late afternoon sunshine, sad that I was walking toward these very same bowels for yet another night of mental marathon running, I looked wistfully at all the people who got to be out in the sun today, playing.

Then, in a rare moment of maturity that I'm pretty proud of, I thought to myself, "Shut the hell up! What's wrong with you?! You're going to look back on these years as two of the hardest and most amazing years of your life. Enjoy this while it lasts, dummy!"

So, while I'm excited to actually get back to this blog and do some writing (for fun! and without the need to cite a damn thing!), I'm gonna keep my big girl pants on, finish this last paper like a f***ing rock star, and savor my last hours in the bowels...

Cuz next week, I'm double mic-dropping (BOOM!!) like a baller (BOOM!!).

... and then I won't be allowed to say things like that anymore because I won't be in frat school--I mean, grad school--anymore. 

New York Public Library: a love letter

I got a junk email today from the New York Public Library. 

Normally, I junk junk mail, but, actually, I LOVE the NYPL, so I opened the email to see what cool thing they have going on. It was a survey that would only take me 5 minutes to complete, they said, so wouldn't I do it just for them, they said, pretty please, with sugar on top?

Sure. I love NYPL. Why not?

It was going pretty fast--NYPL, you're always so reliable--then I got to the question that asked me to share a story for why I support NYPL...

...

15 minutes later, I submitted this (photos added later):

Soon after I moved to NYC, the main library is where I set up shop like it was my office for months every day that I wasn't working at my barista job in an East Village cafe. 

I started, finished, and sent off my grad school apps and scholarship apps in the Rose Reading room and was sitting there a couple months later on a cold March afternoon when I heard from my final and top choice--Columbia--that I'd gotten in. I started to cry quietly so as not to disturb the other patrons, so relieved to know that I'd be staying in New York studying exactly what I wanted to study. Then I gathered my things and RAN outside the building to call my parents with the good news.

Every time I walk past that spot on the north side of the building, I always think about how happy I felt sharing my news, shouting into the phone over my dad's bad cell reception, "I got in! I got into Columbia!!!" and how happy my parents were to hear this.

The security guards are the people I'd say I've interacted with the most, especially once I became one of the regular faces coming in and out of the building. They're always great, real characters, and I felt like I'd found my Cheers bar--only better smelling and with clearer eyed seat-warmers. 

Since starting school, I've had less opportunity to visit the main library, but one of the things I'm looking forward to after finishing my Master's this year is having more time in my schedule to spend a few hours a week back in my first real NYC home in the Rose Reading room. 

thailand

It's frickin' cooooooold in NYC today, so when I was scrolling through my pending posts and saw this one--with just the word "Thailand" in the title and nothing in the body of the post--it made me hate 2010 me juuuust a teensy weensy bit. Earlier, I was also lamenting my now faded, most awesome tan of my adult life from Greece last summer. So, yeah, this post is basically just to wax nostalgic for the heat and sun and water and beach... and mango and pad see eaw and fruit smoothies and scooters and flips flops and tank tops of Thailand.

A little something to make us all jealous:

the view from the second hut that I stayed in on koh chang