Back to the Future

Friends! Great news: I made it back to Ithaca. And it only took about 26 hours of travel by car, plane, taxi and bus!

For all of those unaware that I was in any danger of not returning to my new home, I spent the weekend in California and I must say, despite the high ratio of travel time to down time, it was worth it. Congratulations Tanner and Heather!

While out west, I also got a tour of Loma Linda, where Kari will be spending the next four years, which was nice in that now I can have a few points of reference for when she attempts to convey her life to me through the phone.

Last night was rough, as I knew it would be from my lack of sleep, but today I stepped outside to realize the sun is still shining. I picked up my ID card this morning and headed over to a giant tent set up in the arts quad for the architectural graduate studies orientation. This consisted of 10-minute speeches by the new dean, the chair of arch. graduate programs, and the heads of each individual program (M.Arch I, M.Arch II, MaPhd). The chair gave an inspiring lecture he started with an anecdote about the tour guides for new undergraduate students encouraging them, despite their new Ivy League surroundings, to just be themselves and ended with giving us the exact opposite advice: "Do not just be yourself... it is not enough. Be more."

Despite the pragmatic advice that our established personas, cultivated over the past 20+ years, were not good enough for Cornell grad school, we were offered no other clues on how to survive the program. Particularly discouraging was the lack of instruction for this next week; the speeches ended and we were turned loose until 4pm where we have a graduate student reception at a house the department owns actually two blocks up from me. Which is where I am headed right now!

PS- I often try to have multiple meanings in my titles. I don't know... maybe I like the intrigue (Drew you were right about me). Anyways this one is not even accessible without a explanation. "Back to the Future" works in three ways:
1. Today I returned to my career goals, my future
2. New York is 3 hours ahead of California, though we live concurrently, I in in some ways, live in your future.
3. One of the speakers today was Christopher Loyd's doppelganger and even possessed some of Doc Brown's mannerisms