excited

I don't really know why, but I haven't felt this excited to be at MIT before. For the first time in a long time, I've come to think of MIT as a place of opportunity and just like a world where anything is possible. Like that feeling that I got, dancing around the public library thinking "wow I just got into mit....MIT!! this is crazy. oh my god this is crazy"

I find that I am much more confident in myself. And confidence breeds more confidence because through confidence you're more willing to put yourself out there and learn and believe that you can learn. I can actually concentrate now haha and I haven't been able to do that since senior year of high school haha. My advisor didn't really look like she believed me when I told her this, but it's true. It's because the first week of school this year, when I went to talk to her I was thinking about my grades from past terms and thinking negatively. So basically I told her that I wanted to stay a fifth year because I didn't know what I was doing and that I didn't think I had the skills to get a job. But for some reason, after that I've gained this sense of confidence that I can do whatever I put mind to. I don't really know where it came from, maybe it was from the assignments I've done this term. (Maybe it's the same sort of feeling I got after finishing a 6.170 pset)

Being confident in yourself is necessary to make other people confident in you.

I was trying to explain this to Justin Moore the other day but I couldn't. He was telling me about how he's so lazy and he tries to study in his room but gets nothing done. All I could say was that you just focus. You know what you gotta do and so you do it and it becomes good. haha I tried to explain it in terms of the way I thought about school back in the days of elementary school. That was when I took school seriouslly. Skipping class was never a thought that went into my mind (until high school, when I thought it was cool). It's just that same drive that I had when I was a kid. School was fun! you had to do this work but you still had fun doing it. I don't know if there's a better way to explain it.

Though I do think a lot of it has to do with being successful at what you're working hard on. I wonder if it's possible to get rid of this dependency of my happiness depending on how well I'm doing at school.

But the funny thing is, all the stuff I used to talk to Ryan about last year like Being too self-conscious when talking to people, not having confidence, etc. It's all inconsequential in my mind. Like I can just go up to someone that I've never met and say wassup without a thought of hesitation. I can talk to people about anything that comes to mind without being afraid that they'll not like it. and then, when I sense that they're not interested or think I'm weird, I'll think of a way to make it funny or I'll laugh to make them laugh hahah. and if they still don't laugh then I'm just like alright whatever, I think it was funny.

Sometimes instead of focusing and thinking about what's wrong, I guess you just have to think like it's not an issue. Make sure you're not ignoring the issue, but rather moving on from the issue.