A nice summer ending

After weeks and weeks of job hunting, the day came for the start of a program I had applied to earlier in the summer, a Cosmology(not cosmetology!)program for students at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory right above the UC Berkeley campus. The program was exciting since the beginning. The first day, Nobel Prize laureate George Smoot gave a presentation on research that was being conducted at the Lab, including topics such as the role of Dark Energy in the accelerating expansion of the universe.

Each day was filled with exciting presentations and activities from which the rest of the scholars and I learned a lot. Close to the end of the first week of the Cosmology program, however, I received a call from the director of my old high school. He informed me that he would like me to work for the school during the summer as a mathematics tutor. I gladly agreed, knowing that this was the summer job opportunity that I was looking for. I would have to sacrifice a lot of quality learning time at the Cosmology program, but I knew that the time I spent working at the High school was time that would help me pay for my Berkeley tuition. I worked that week early in the morning, from seven-thirty to noon. Everyday after class, I rushed to the Berkeley Lab, hoping I would be able to participate in some of the daily afternoon experiments, such as using software and recorded video to determine a ball's velocity when tossed in the air, at the program. Fortunately, I made it just in time everyday for those experiments.

Both the Cosmology program and my summer classes ended on a Friday, and although I was not able to attend the final meeting of the Cosmology program, I was able to talk to the High School's director and get some good news from him. He had decided to offer me a year-long tutoring job at the school. I walked home that day a bit less worried about tuition than I had been this summer, and I decided to tell my mother about the job offer. This job opportunity would significantly ease the burden of my tuition on my parents.

About two days ago, a representative from an insurance company I had applied to called me to offer me a job at one of the company's offices. At first I was excited about the offer but as he explained the terms I became uninterested. The schedule he offered me severely overlapped with my school hours, something I could not allow any job to do, since the whole purpose of me working was for me to do well in school and be able to pay my tuition. Also, the minimum work hours were thirty per week, and the office does not open Sundays, so I would have to work a large number of hours during school days, leaving me with a little time to study. If I had no other alternative I would have taken the job, but thanks to the fact that I had a well paying, perfectly scheduled tutoring job set aside for me, I comfortably rejected the insurance company's offer.

Currently I am getting things ready for school, since the first day of class is only a few weeks away. I have my classes set(although I am still waiting for one class to be scheduled), and I have a job set as well. Overall, I think this summer is closing nicely. I do have upcoming semesters to worry about, but for now I am going to enjoy the beginning of my college experience. Filled with excitement for the first day of school and with an amazing feeling of school pride(something the Cal Orientation played a large part in) I happily end this blog entry with one statement: GO BEARS!