Back at Last

So I watched my first baseball game of the new season today. Really a magical moment every spring (i know its not quite spring yet but still) when the memories of football season have started to finally fade and something new most come to take its place. While the celtics are doing as well as I have ever seen them, baseball will always be something a bit more. To see them on TV is also something of a constant that I need again. Its like an old friend that is always there for you...usually predictable but punctuated with moments of excitement that keep you coming back. To some degree this week has been about old friends for me. After meeting up with someone from my past whom I hadn't seen in eight years or so, it really got me thinking about where I've been in the last eight years and how much has changed and how much has stayed the same. A good chance to reevaluate things and take stock. Perhaps the draining winter months play a part as well but it was certainly a bittersweet moment through and through. On a much shorter time scale my best friend asked me to be his best man which is quite an honor and I'm certainly looking forward to all that it brings my way as both a challenge and an opportunity. Furthermore, i hope that in the coming months I can reconnect with people like I have not done in the past and really make an effort to reach out to some people whom I have unfortunately left out of my life. With that said and a promise made to myself in that light it is also worthy to note that we are approaching (technically i guess it already started) WPI's spring break this week. Not so much of a break for me perse but it is a marker of time passed and a harbinger of the ending school year. Of course, this means that the undergrads I have had the privelage of working with these past few months will be leaving. Jobs for some, more school for others. That too, unlike most other years, will be bittersweet. As they go, for the first time, I feel like I have had some influence over their futures maybe taught a few of them a thing or two they just might use and hopefully made them better and more thoughtful scientists in the process. While I had all but sworn off the realm of academia as the provider of my future employment, I find myself reconnecting a bit to its higher ideals. I wonder if the point of it all is not necessarilly making ground breaking a lucrative scientific discoveries and if maybe I would find more joy and empowerment in the knowledge that I was passing on a scientific tradition to others. While I haven't quite sold myself on the idealized rhetoric of the college viewbook ilk...i can no longer count it out entirely. Perhaps, I've been listening to too much Obama but maybe a bit of my cynicism will melt away this spring. Of course, if the red sox stage a monumental collapse in august...all bets are off in that department. Patrick OUT!