new people

wow, there are so many cool people that I didn't realize you could meet at MIT. It's amazing just going around and spending time with people that you don't usually spend time with and get to know them.

It's great hearing about people that love what they're doing. I was talking to Amy Wong today and I could just see how much she loved mech E and she loved the stuff she was doing. She was telling me all about the modern refrigerator and ways she was working on to improve it and it was awesome haha. People are inspiring.

It's really true what Brian (the MBA student from the entrepreneur talk) told me. Meet as many people (well, he said girls but I think all people) as you can. You can get a better sense of the world and the many different ways you can view it. You can learn about what industries you want to work for. It's amazing how much a job can shape the way you are. It's like all the people in one industry sort of have this certain way of thinking and mannerisms. Like, when I went to the AllState Insurance Company talk yesterday. I could tell they all thought in a certain frame of mind. They were focused on certain things. It's also scary how set in one framework you can be.

I found it kind of sad how we were in Juny's room and watching these videos when this freshman walked in. The immediate thought that went through my mind was, what the hell is he doing walking in so unexpectedly. Then, his friend knocks on the door and walks in too. I was annoyed at both of them. But is this because they were intruding? or was it because I'm so afraid of change. Did we make our circle of friends so exclusive that other people are not welcome because we're afraid of what it'll do? Granted, they do say really corny things, it's like we still have this defensive mechanism that pushes them away.

I feel that after the summer, I got rid of the uneasiness and being too grumpy to meet new people feeling that I sort of gathered throughout the last two years. I'm loving meeting new people and talking unstressed about anything without feeling like I really need to go and do work. I know a lot of the seniors are like being all antisocial this year and I would recommend just putting yourself out there because it's really a unique time and place in lives that we can do this.

At the same time, I wonder where these limits go. Like I know Issel met a lot of people during their time here and learned a lot about people and then sort of fizzled out her interest. Is it that she got sick of seeing the trend of people's personalities? seeing the same people over and over with different faces? but isn't there a danger of putting everyone in a box?

On another note, it's also cool to go over things that you've already done before. Like reading a book you've read before. It reminds me of what my piano teacher taught me years ago. I would play all these advances pieces and then he would tell me, this is a piece that you can go back to in 10 years and it will be a whole new piece. And it's true. There's a lot of things we have to constantly remind ourselves as well as new things to discover when we've thought we've knew it all.

I wonder if it's the same with talking to people. It's funny how after you've talked to someone for a while, you get into this groove where you talk to them a certain way, focusing on certain kinds of jokes and stories that you know will interest them. Then, you see them talking to someone else and they're sometimes a completely different person. They can be more funny, more animated and talk about a whole variety of issues. Wouldn't it be cool if everytime you talked to someone you could invoke other parts of them? Have you ever tried to talk to someone and pretending they were someone else?