I've always had trouble with beginnings. The beginning of a blog entry, a new project or a new phase in life, such as this one. Tomorrow Monday I'll be starting my life as a university student for CSE at the ETHZ.
Computational Science and Engineering is an interdisciplinary curriculum that was founded by the mathematics and physics departments at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zürich (ETHZ). The idea of it is to teach science, but instead of focusing on traditional experiments, we will create and analyse simulations to do our research and studies. It is interdisciplinary in the sense that you get to choose from a multitude of in-depth disciplines in the later years.
This basically sounds pretty great for me because I don't want to study CS and a purely science focused curriculum seems like a waste for my experience in computing. However, as I'm the worrywart I tend to be, I'm just not convinced if it's the thing for me and if I'll manage to get myself involved and interested in everything to get the required inertia to get through it without too much of a hassle in terms of motivation.
But yeah, that is exactly the main part of my concern. What if I can't get invested enough in it and thus learning becomes as much of a problem as it was in high school? To aid this a bit I've decided to basically resign from every project I've had going until now. I've had immense difficulties balancing studies and projects pretty much all my life, so I cannot let that get into my way again until I can be sure that I have enough self-control to avoid spending too much time on it.
However, abandoning pretty much all I love without any idea of when I can dedicate time to it again is really hard for me as I'm sure you can imagine. I've spent a significant amount of time last week being in turmoil because I had no clue what to do or what would happen to me in the near future. I just hope that the next few days will prove to be a positive experience to me so I can let go of my worries at least a bit.
Another concern of mine is that of classmates. I'm not convinced that I have the social skills necessary to make contact, find people I like being with and actually somehow form a friendship with them. I just really don't know what's going to happen in that regard at all and this absolute absence of information scares me a lot.
It is rather sad that I have barely anything positive associated with this major change in my life and I can only desperately hope that it will turn for the better, as it will either result in a very long and lonesome time or in an absolutely crushing disappointment and failure.
Whatever the case may be, at this point it is all mostly speculation and I know I have a tendency for the worse because I'd rather guard myself for eventual failure points. Again, hopefully it'll all turn out alright. I really want it all to turn out alright.
I might be making more blog entries on this as it goes on to report a bit on what I've learned, how I'm doing or if there's any major changes that have been going on for me. Otherwise, I will most likely be a lot more silent in the coming days, weeks and months.
So long.
Written by shinmera