Finally, someone I've been wanting to meet

Thank God I'm not the only one who gives a crap about what I'm studying.

I was working on a calculus proof that I wasn't really sure about when I peeped over at my neighbor's screen and saw that he was also working on calculus. I asked him what class he was taking and we talked from there.

Amazing guy. I only talked to him for a few minutes but I was definitely excited to study with this guy later and learn more about him. Apparently, he sucks at math but he wants to understand it now that he sees math has a purpose.

I met up with him later in the day and met his girlfriend. He talked to me about his interests in neuroscience and how he got into it. I love talking to these kinds of people - people who find genuine excitement in what they do. He reminded me of a personal experience my linear algebra teacher shared today. The professor told us about a time he took algebraic topology in college and he learned something so amazing that he couldn't stop talking about it and he was telling everyone he knew. Oh, God I got a good laugh out of that one and I couldn't help but laugh when I thought about what this guy I was talking to was doing.

We got off the topic of academia and I got to know him on a more personal level. He grew up poor and he's content with being poor so long as he does what he wants. I'm not as extreme of a case as him, but I truly appreciate these kinds of motives. He also told me about how his immature and reckless his relationship with his girlfriend early on changed one day and they were good since. It gave me a lot of hope for my relationship with my girlfriend.

I'm not at a level where I can begin to talk about what my academic passions are like him. I love math for the purpose of expanding my knowledge and the range of my creativity to find an appropriate application in the financial industry.

As far as the first week of spring 2010 is going, calculus and linear algebra are terse and fast-paced (love it) and statistics is overloaded with excess examples. Computer science... we'll see about this class later this year.

Kind of apart from the rest of this post, but I feel like I lack the qualities of a good or interesting friend. I can see great things in people that I meet, but when I look at myself, I just can't find something that's great about me. I think I really need to reflect back on the way I'm living my life and hopefully I'll find some things that I can change.