Hey, just dropping a note off here that I will be attending graduate school this fall! I was accepted to Saarland University's Language Science and Technology M.Sc. program.

So I will be moving to Germany. Yes, I am scared. But also very excited.

It's funny, looking back at how we become affected by things... I would never have applied to the program if I had not read Isaac Asimov. He has literally and noticeably changed the course of my life. I fell in love with robots and AI... and so now here I am.

It has been odd, in a way.. I still can barely believe this is happening. When I was at the University of Hawai'i, I have so many memories of wandering through the library, daring myself to dream of doing computational linguistics. I devoured any recently published books related to AI that I could find. But it seemed like a pipe dream, and me letting myself get whisked away by my fantasies of one day working with AI rapidly approaching human-like intelligence. Perhaps that part will remain a dream... but maybe not. It's so hard to predict how technology will advance.

Being at the University of Hawai'i was difficult.. I was so out of my element, in a foreign place that may as well have been another country in many ways. But I'm starting to realize that it was conducive to allowing myself to imagine new futures for myself. I often complained about how it didn't seem like my life, like I was living someone else's life when I was there (because in many ways, finding myself in Hawai'i was almost out of the blue with how rapidly everything seemed to happen). Now I see that this may not have been so bad. Since I've been at Western (back into my element), I've noticed how little I spend time dreaming about what could be, independent of what I've known. I'm stuck on what I've been because the setting all reminds me of myself as I've known myself.

I am hoping that when I move to Germany, it will not be so disorienting as Hawai'i since it will have been a much longer time coming, but it will be different enough that I can find inspiration to live a new life, even if it is unlike my old one.