A Different Summer for Me

So this summer I had the opportunity to continue my research in general relativity and differential geometry, which I began last summer. I decided, however, to turn down the position and instead just return home with no job prospects. Most of my friends were pretty surprised to hear this.

In the past, I had been a very focused, planning type of person. I had a lot of momentum going towards getting into graduate school for mathematics at Stanford, but decided not to take a position that would give me a second strong recommendation from a Stanford alum. I think I realized, sometime after getting pneumonia this year, that I wasn't as sure I wanted to do general relativity as I thought. I then came to find that in my efforts to get into a top grad school, I'd really been very tunnel-visioned my first few years of college.

This motivated me to use my last summer and year of college to try and explore some other interests. The only constant thing through this time has been my love for teaching. I'm essentially certain that my future will involve teaching, in some form to a large degree. That passion was a large part of why I embarked on this journey, to set up an website about two other things I'm very interested in, mathematics and fashion.

Thus, this is going to be quite a different summer than any I've had yet. The past two years I've held 40-50/hr per week jobs, in some sort of research vein. Now, I'm currently self-employed with this website, though looking for a restaurant job, something I've always wanted to try. Now seems like as good a time as any. I'm also glad to be home with all of my friends this summer, for the entire summer. It'll be an interesting balance of fun and enlightening work!