Welcome to the University of Washington

Last spring, I had this big meltdown that almost occurred in chem lab. I’m not exactly quite sure what the trigger was, probably stress of some sort. However, another big factor was just being away from all my friends and family in Seattle and not performing as well as I wanted to at Mines. I spent the remaining part of the semester and a majority of the summer thinking about what I wanted. What I wanted in life and what I wanted from school.

I thought about all the schools I applied to and didn’t apply to and how I could improve my life. Around August, I started causally looking at schools, schools near Seattle: SCCC, Seattle U, and University of Washington. I talked to people who I knew who transfered schools; some into Mines, others out of Mines, and a handful not related to Mines at all.

By November, the picture was beginning to clear up. I started filling out an application for transfer for the University of Washington College of Engineering. The way it’s been shaping up is like this: I knew that I had a good shot of finishing all my prerequisites for Electrical Engineering at Mines by the end of fall semester. If I did that, I could start on the EE part of my degree this semester (spring) and looking at the number of credits needed to graduate, I could actually finish by 2008 by transferring into UW. In short, I would have needed over 140 credit hours to graduate at Mines, plus a specialty course over the summer which I wasn’t too thrilled about. By comparison, the University of Colorado at Boulder only needs something on the order of 110 credits or so. The conversion rate to UW’s quarter system is a little weird, but it’s pretty close to CU Boulders requirements (UW actually requires about five more credit hours, based on the semester system).

I sent in my application, which was a little weird because Brian was also sending in his, although he didn’t apply to UW. I got an answer back about a month ago or so.

So now I’ve spent the last four weeks, writing up pro/con lists and trying to figure out if this is really what I wanted to do. I even considered just letting it go and staying at Mines. No one would have been the wiser as only a few people at Mines knew what I was pondering (a couple friends, the counselor, and the teachers I needed to get letters of recommendations from). But no, I didn’t want a repeat of last year. This semester wasn’t turning out to bad, but from talking with Mike (who’s also Electrical Engineering), it wasn’t about to get easier by any means.

So I pulled the trigger and sent in my acceptance letter yesterday.

I have to say, it’s actually kind of relieving to know…like a huge weight has been lifted from my shoulders. I’m excited to be back in Seattle full time now, I’m excited to have a new challenge (no one said this was going to be easy), and I’m even more excited to be back at UPC (finding a church that I like out here has proven damn near impossible and was honestly was an ever so slight factor in deciding to move back).

I didn’t have any homework this weekend (it was EDays, kind of like a second spring break…with alcohol), so I’m taking it easy and going up to Broomfield to hang out with the relatives (that is one thing I will miss), so I’ll be off the radar for the rest of this weekend. I’ll be back tomorrow with some more thoughts and comments on my new journey.