Sunday, September 11, 2011

Summer 2011: personal reflection

To say that I had a wonderful time last term in San Francisco would be an understatement. I haven't been happier in all my life. Granted I haven't lived for a long time, but nevertheless it was a good term. The reasons it was good is pretty straightforward:

  • interesting problems to work on at work -- some things were like puzzles, where the solution came to me on a Saturday morning as I woke up,
  • side projects -- launching DataInColour was on the agenda for about half a year, and doing so while supporting DonorsChoose by hacking with the data was a great late evening/weekend project to be doing,
  • meeting people doing what I love -- going to data insight sf meant I finally had a chance to work with David and Fravic, and lead me back in touch with the person who originally taught me ggplot2 and seeing what's up at the Square office,
  • generally being active -- walking about 40-50 min per day, doing some hiking on the weekends, and learning how to swim probably helped in increasing happiness,
  • plenty of down time -- I slept a lot more than usual this term, and lazed around more than a certain friend of mine would be comfortable with,
  • and of course, being surrounded by great people -- no explanations needed here.
Trying to reproduce some of these in Waterloo would be difficult, but hopefully there will be enough going on at school to make this term just as fulfilling.

End of Entry