My First Week- a recap

People have asked how my first week has gone, and overall, it has been great.

I have met a lot of interesting people from all over, and from other disciplines as well. One of my roommates/housemates- the British term flatmate would probably be more appropriate- is a doctoral candidate in bio-med from Tucson. I met a girl from the Bay Area who worked for Google and now is a geriatrics major. I don't know if major is the right word for people pursuing their master's, but I have yet to find a better term, though I am open to suggestion :P

A lot of the people in my program, urban planning, are sustainable land use, which is good to know, though I think we all have different goals for what we would like to end up doing with our degree.

I have heard people say that it's hard to find an L.A. native, but I don't think that they're asking in the right circles. I think those people are talking about Hollywood. The girl whose parents own the house I am renting a room from is an L.A. native and I met a guy at our program's mixer who was born and raised in Orange County.

A lot less people than I thought are opting for transportation, which I found interesting as infrastructure is such a big issue with the Obama administration right now due to all our aging bridges, highways, etc.,

We all come from different backgrounds, but our prior academic studies and their connection to our current passion is interesting. For example, one person that I met last night at the mixer is doing his concentration in transportation, and if memory serves, and if I heard him correctly over the incredibly loud and even worse "music" he said that he was a chem and micro-bio major. I asked him why and how he made the leap to urban planning and he said that he had been working on something insert science words here- the reverb drowned it out- something about making fuels that were more efficient or something.

We have several philosophy as undergrad majors people, which I really thought was an interesting leap. I'll have to hunt them down and ask them what changed their course in direction.

And as much as I hated moving around as a kid, it has really helped me both in my profession and also being able to relate to people. I was able to talk with a person who has lived here in L.A. for nine years, but came from Iowa, I was also able to talk with another person who was a self-proclaimed "Mr. Hartford" and I was able to call him on his bluff. Turns out he really is from Hartford, CT, not Avon, or Glastonbury, etc., I connected with an old friend on Facebook who I went to high school with in Connecticut, but now lives in Madison, WI, even though she spent her whole life in Massachusetts.