Author Archives: Alex K.

My Security Blaineket

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I have a best friend. His name is Blaineket. To some, he may just be known as Blaine Muri, but I prefer to consider him my security Blaineket.

We met the first day outside of our academic adviser meetings. He was before me in line and afterwards, we had the awkward “Well what do we do now?” look on both of our faces. It was a bromance at first sight.

We were and are two peas in a pod, computing our way through college courses and creating loud ruckuses in the dorm halls debating (even after the past 7 months of school) whether Apple or PC is better. (If you like Macs, please leave.)

Aren't we adorable? I'm the one on the left and Blaineket is the pea on the right. Couldn't you tell?

Now, why would an 18 year old college student refer to his best friend Blaine as Blaineket? I have no idea, my girlfriend thought up the idea and I decided it was embarrassing enough to call him in public and of course on the world wide interwebz (A.K.A. you guys). But I don’t know where I’d be without him.

Blaineket hails from Las Vegas and over Spring Break and Thanksgiving break he came home with me to the Big Apple. We spent days in Long Island just vegging out and watching through the entirety of Arrested Development (we all know it was before its time) and pulling pranks on the local Ice Cream Parlor workers.

Blaineket with his Blanket!

We plan to room together next year in Charles Commons, just the two of us, bro-ing it out on the 7th floor. If you want to know where the party’s at… It depends what kind of party you’re looking for because we’ll probably just be debating whether Samsung screens are getting too large which in essence is an awesome party for us.

We do have our separate interests. He’s joining Sigma Alpha Epsilon (SAE) on campus and I’m joining Alpha Epsilon Pi (AEPi), but that doesn’t mean we don’t see a lot of each other.

Blaineket and I go together like Peanut Butter and Hummus, something you probably wouldn’t want to eat together, but are happy they’re friendly. I’m not really sure what that means, but just imagine that you’re craving peanuts and chick peas and we happen to be in the vicinity.

Told you it was a real thing...

I’ve taught him to drive a stick shift car and he’s taught me the meaning of a Teraflop. I don’t know what my college experience would be without him.

Until next time,

Alex

Easy as AEPi

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I never wanted to be  a fraternity brother.

It didn’t appeal to me. The drinking, backwards hats, red solo cups full of unknown liquids…. I’m more than that. But then again, the movies never portray anything right.

This is definitely not who I wanted to become. Even if there was an American flag behind me.

 

I’m now going Greek at Alpha Epsilon Pi (AEPi) and I couldn’t be happier.

Since meeting and hanging out with the brothers there during first semester, I learned there was so much more to a fraternity at Hopkins than having a 24/7 drinking crew.

Joining a fraternity meant 3 and a half years of brotherhood with guys who were your closest friends. Joining a fraternity meant having a support group in academia as well as in the world post-college. Joining a fraternity meant having a release from stress and schedules.

Woot!

So I decided to rush AEPi and was ecstatic when I received my bid to become a brother there. I accepted immediately and haven’t looked back since.

Now I have a pledge class of 14 guys. Some of them I knew pretty well, some of them I didn’t, but I can tell you that over these next few years, I’m very excited to finally have some brothers. (See last blog for reasons why).

They’re from all different majors and walks of life, they’re funny, and they’re just as excited as I am.

So let’s raise our non-alcoholic beverages to us, the AΔ class of ΑΕΠ, for an incredible few years to come.

See you all next time,

Alex

ABC, 123, Why’d you do that to me?

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Welcome to the final installment of my close friends series. Tonight, at this incredibly late hour (I’m pretending to be in the Czech Republic right now for reasons you do not have the clearance to hear), I will be writing about someone who I had the absolute misfortune to be with since day 1. My lovely older sister, Talia.

 

That's not me, but you can imagine how my childhood was... Haunting. I now have a severe fear of all cutlery and tableware. Including the little spoons used for sugar and such.

Before I write this, I just want to explain how happy I am that Facebook exists to hold every photo I’d ever want to use on my sister… It’s fantastic.

Relish in the glory of Facebook...

So how did my older sister, who has been physically looking up to me since she was age 3 (I was 1 at the time), manage to change my life? I’ll start with the obvious facts and then get nice and mushy.

Talia will never let me forget that she taught me to read. When she was 5 and learning in school, she came home every day and told me everything she had learned… No wonder why I’m so bad at English. However, as bad as I am at reading and speling at this poynt in my liyphe, I think that she let me get the head start in my academic career that brought me here. I think she start the chain of dominoes that made me hungry for more information and I can’t thank her enough for that. So Thanc Yu Talya.

So I can read and write because of her, psht, big deal. I would’ve learned it soon enough. But I think Talia did more for me than just literal teaching. She taught me to leave my shell and welcome the craziness. She taught me to take a joke and that sometimes you just have to lighten up and be a free soul.

Lettin' loose. Banjo for the win. Oh yeah, the dyed hair? It was permanent dye.

Talia was and still is a very free soul. She does how she likes and knows that sometimes idiocy and shenaniganry. are the paths to happiness. Future Hopkins students, always remember that. Studies and hard work can bring you a lot of great things, but you need to balance that by letting loose once in a while.

Talia oozes this relaxed, driven attitude that I’m honestly quite jealous of sometimes although I’ll never admit it to her (I really hope she doesn’t read this blog).

She’s kicked me, she’s punched me, she’s made me laugh, and she’s definitely made me cry. She’s made me disappointed, she’s made me proud, but she’s my sister through it all and she’s what I’ve got. I’m two years younger than her and although I stand an entire foot above her, I’m glad I’ve got her to look up to.

Talia, I thank you for giving me some brains and knowledge. I thank you for allowing me to let loose. I thank you for teaching me that being siblings means more than a few small fights (which you always won because guys can’t hit girls). And i thank you for continuing to be a part of my life in all that’s to come, encouraging me and pushing me forward.

All my love Talia,

Your Little Brother,

Alex.

I know you're wandering how I got so sexy... Here's how it started. Siblings forever.

Exclamation point count: 0 (I guess, in the end, she’ s just not that exciting)

Linear and Non-Linear: An Influential Combination

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I always loved math. It always made sense, no matter how I did it. I remember learning long division from my sister at age 5. I remember devising a new, more efficient way to divide in the 4th grade. I can remember memorizing 500 digits of Pi (almost all of which I’ve forgotten by now) and I can remember unknowingly discovering Dijkstra’s method for a minimal path tree.

It’s always been there for me, but even more importantly there were two specific teachers who stand out who changed the world of math around me and in the process became two friends that I will never forget.

For this second installment of my tributes to friends pre-Hopkins, I’d like to introduce to all of you John King and Joseph Iwanski, two teachers of mine at my high school.

I came to Dwight-Englewood in 9th grade, a hotheaded (both in the redheaded and mathematical-ego senses), tall student, eager to prove myself. Mr. King was my math teacher for the year and we went through applications of algebra, quadratic functions, matrix manipulation, and a plethora of other subjects. By the end of the year, I loved math, but no more than I had before. Mr. King had sparked new ideas in my mind, but I wasn’t able to apply them to anything yet. I needed more tools to expand.

Sophomore year came around and I took AP Computer Science. Mr. Iwanski taught this course. I had never programmed before and while I became an avid programmer, I hadn’t put math and computers together yet. I hadn’t realized their potential as a pair. Sophomore year came to an end and I still hadn’t made the leap from my love for math to my obsession.

Second semester junior year is where this story really begins. I took Advanced Topics in Computing with Mr. Iwanski. A 6 student class, we were taught and explored Python. After about a week, we were introduced to ProjectEuler.net, a site to solve mathematical questions using self-written computer programs. In an instant, I was obsessed. There was no stopping me.

The never ending quest to solve all of them.

Now I could go on for months about how Project Euler changed my life, but this is about Mr. King and Mr. Iwanski, isn’t it?

For the next year and a half I spent half of my life badgering the two of them with mathematical help to further my knowledge for those problems. I asked them in class, out of class, in their offices, over e-mail, and I even tried smoke signals once although I’m not sure they ever got the message.

They embraced my enthusiasm and set aside more time than was really necessary in order to help me. Granted, there were many times where I just had too many questions for a 24 hour day, but we had some incredible thinking sessions. They had so many answers, and when they didn’t we worked them out. I can’t thank them enough for all the time they devoted to me and all the help they gave me. They encouraged my passion and I can safely say that I am a different man thanks to these two incredible friends.

My senior year, I was lucky to have both of them at once in Non-Linear Dynamics and Linear Algebra, taught by Mr. Iwanski and Mr. King respectively.

In the first one, Mr. Iwanski put mathematics and computers into one whole, building on our knowledge until we could paint masterpieces using simple equations. We broke the bounds of y=mx+b and delved into imaginary spaces. We questioned the efficiency of the binary system and we reasoned whether anything could be considered random. He spoke to us, the class of 7, as though we were equals, asking for our ideas as much as he told us his. He left time after class to speak with him and his door was always open. He wrote one of my college recommendations and helped me choose to attend Hopkins.

A zoom in on the Mandelbrot Set in a program I built thanks to Mr. Iwanski's tutelage. Who knew math could build art?

In Linear Algebra, Mr. King took us to new dimensions, finite and infinite. He asked us whether y=mx+b could even be considered linear when b wasn’t equal to 0. He taught us the applications of Markov Chains and how we could solve chemical equations using linear algebra. He coped with all my nonsense questions that were extremely tangential in the middle of class and knew that after class he could expect at least 1 or 2 questions before I was satisfied. Just like Mr. Iwanski, Mr. King was more than happy to write a recommendation for me.

Never doubt the King.

I can’t tell you how much I miss these two people. They believed in me from the start and pushed me forward. We keep in touch by e-mail from time to time and I saw them when I visited home over winter break. So raise your glasses to these two incredible men who changed the way I think, changed the way I understand, and directly changed who I will become. A mathematician. A programmer. A logician. And a better person.

All the best to you John and Joe.

Alex

Exclamation point count: 2

A Tribute to Old Friends

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As my first semester comes to a close, I find myself doing the usual celebrations, I find myself doing all the laundry I left to the last days when I wouldn’t have any more studying to do, and I find myself contacting old friends to make plans over this coming winter break.

Friends are an extremely important part of my life. They’re there (haha they sound the same, but are different words!) when I need laughs, they’re there (and again!) when I’m feeling down, we have the greatest times together and they’ve been a huge part of who I am today. So this blog post is going to be the first of a set of tributes to some of the many friends who have played a hand in getting me to Hopkins!

Rewind. Rewind and then rewind some more. And then continue to rewind until you’ve rewound to the point of my pre-school days.

VHS can be rewound at around 4 minutes per second. That means, my childhood, being roughly 15 years ago, would take 547.5 hours to rewind back to. Come back to my blog in 23 days.

If you’ve done the correct amount of rewinding, you will find a chubby boy with extremely curly, red hair. Beside him you will find another boy named Michael. Michael and I have known each other since the days even before pre-school. Our older sisters (2 years older) had met when they first entered pre-school and Mike and I were still babies! Unfortunately, here at JHU, I do not have any pictures of baby us handy, but let’s continue to move forward in this epic bromance.

Now we’re 9. We’re much older, I’m still fat, and Mike and I are under the undeniable impression that we are going to win a Nobel prize when we’re older. In order to do that, we do the first sensible thing we possibly can on our path toward victory: We ask my dad to split an atom for us. Now my dad works in marketing. So he comes up with his own logical response to this request: No. So we say, “Can’t you just use two pairs of tweezers and just stretch one until it splits?” I can list about a thousand things wrong with this sentence, but I’ll list the first few that come to mind.

-Did we have any idea what splitting an atom would do for anything? No. It just sounded cool and useful.

-Who owns two pairs of tweezers? I can only imagine a situation where one would be necessary unless somewhere there is a medical emergency in which we just had to pull out two splinters simultaneously or the world would spontaneously combust.

-Since when can tweezers grab single atoms? Need I say more?

So now we’re two teenage delinquents in high school who have no idea what is going on. There are girls, there are things that are considered socially acceptable, there’s college right around the corner. So we do the next sensible thing. This:

I attempt to wear a hat and Mike attempts to become Dr. Seuss on psychedelics.

And now we’re both in college. Unfortunately (for both of us), he didn’t come to Hopkins, however, despite that small notch in our friendship, we still have insane GameCube marathons in his basement and plan midnight trips to go see the latest movies. (This week is “The Hobbit”).

So I have Mike to blame and thank for my quirkiness, my knack for setting high goals, and my everlasting love for the invention of completely unfeasible ideas (in today’s modern world), but I’m a Hopkins student now. Maybe, because of him, I’m just the man to make those ideas and dreams come true. Thank you Mike.

We made this just before we left for college. Do we want some cake with our icing? Yes please.

Exclamation point count: 4

Kazoos and Garbage Soup

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Yes, this blog is titled “Kazoos and Garbage Soup.” And yes it is all relevant. But let me start from the beginning.

I headed home on Tuesday Morning before Thanksgiving. My friend, Blaine, and I got on a Bolt Bus and headed back to Penn Station in New York City. I then took the subway up town and a bus across the George Washington bridge to my Dad’s house in Jersey. We had a fantastic Colombian meal at a local restaurant and then headed to see Flight (a must see) before getting an early night.

I saw some friends the next day and then headed into the city to my Mom’s house where my Grandparents, sister, and absolutely adorable puppy were waiting.

She's gorgeous. We know.

We ordered in Mediterranean and again, had an early night as tomorrow was a big day.

I had a 5am wakeup because I was going to walk in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. I slogged out of bed and got into a cab with my Mom and sister to the costume and makeup center. We waited for half an hour outside and once inside, were shown to our Kazoo band clown costumes. As part of the clown band, we were all given Kazoos. While we were never in tune, we definitely tried our best! A walk over to a makeup artist and we were all set.

 

Sexy, huh?

The parade. Was. Awesome. I got to throw confetti, give high fives, and Gangnam Style on TV! We got to make so many kids happy and yell holiday cheers to all those who had extremely rough times during Hurricane Sandy.

When I got home I was exhausted, but I got right to work on the turkey, which by the way, came out incredible. Just lick your computer screens. You might be able to taste the glory.

That night, my grandparents, my Mom, my sister, Blaine, and I feasted on turkey, stuffing, pies, cookies, cupcakes, mashed potatoes, cranberry sauce, and everything else festive I can’t think of right now. I was too full.

Friday was an easy day, but I got to go see my cousins Nyla and Soleil who just recently turned one! They’re so cute.

.

I love that we can bond over food.

Soleil was, unfortunately, under the weather, but Nyla was a complete sweetheart. My uncle adopted them last year from Uganda. He and my aunt live in Brooklyn and they’re an incredible little family.

Do you see the resemblance?

For dinner, my uncle decided to make his specialty, garbage soup. He takes all of his leftover foods, mainly the stalks of the vegetables no one uses for cooking, some extra sauces and juices and whatnot and makes  a thick gooey liquid by blending it all together and heating it up. I had my fears, I was reluctant, but it tasted so good. I couldn’t believe it.

I’m now back at Hopkins after my first time home and while I had an amazingly unique experience over Thanksgiving, I’m so glad to be back.

Until next time,

Alex K

Exclamation point count: 3

A Hopkins for You

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I’d like to dedicate this blog to you.

Why, you might ask, am I dedicating such a rare, and might I say, priceless, piece of internet to you, a student who I’ve almost definitely never met and who probably has no idea who I am?

I believe this blog, just for you, is even more priceless than a Fabergé egg.

I’m not really sure yet, but I know that somewhere between the lines of my writing there will be a reason.

I really hope you find something in there.

Hopkins is unique because there is something here for everybody. And yes, that means you, the kid who underwater basket weaves in his/her free time, or is incredibly interested in cultivating honey from bees, or just really wants to get to medical school and have a chance to be the hand behind those shiny scalpels (although I can’t imagine why. [It would make me sick {I'm squeamish *I've run out of different types of brackets*}]). It’s like… inception thoughts. Did you just get the chills? I know I did.

I think this can be summed up by your first visit to the Fresh Food Cafe (FFC). When you walk into the FFC that first day, there will be three possible feelings:

1. Holy crap I’m so happy I have my roommate/suitemate/floormate here with me because I would have no one to sit with.

2. Holy crap I came here alone, but thank god I can see my roommate/suitemate/floormate over at that table.

3. Holy crap… I know no one.

I was one of the people who had the 3rd feeling. I walked over while my friends were at the gym, and I knew no one inside of that room. So what did I do?

Imagine this, red headed, 17 years older, and much less cute.

In high school, I probably would have sat down and cried. You’ve got your jocks there, your geeks there, your underwater basket weaving club over there… None of them are me. But this is Hopkins and no matter what someone might be interested in, we are all united by our academic pursuits, our deep passion for our respective interests, and being awesome.

So I walked over to a completely, and I mean completely, random group of students, asked if I could sit and WHAM! 7 new friends. I met Daniel from Italy, Carolyn from Brooklyn. I met John, a football player (our team is in the playoffs!) and Tucker, a trumpeter who studies at Peabody. There is a Hopkins for everyone and no matter who you are, you can make a unique path here with your own interests, your own classes, your own friends. But this isn’t high school anymore where some kids just don’t fit in, because you’d be hard pressed to find someone who feels like they can’t find their niche, or in most cases, niches within the ecosystem of Hopkins.

And truthfully, if you walked over the first day with friends you’d already made, that’s great, but it never hurts, especially in a place like this, to step out on a limb and meet someone new. There are 5,000 kids here on this campus, you’d be hard pressed to meet everyone.

Challenge accepted.

My class of 1,331. How cool is it that it's palindromic? Get excited. Find me and you get a cookie. Electronically. Ha. Puns.

And now it’s 11 weeks into my Hopkins experience and I have my closest of friends. But every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday morning, I have breakfast with John, that football player from early on. And on Friday afternoons, Daniel and I go to the Mattin Center and jam out with guitars, basses, drums, and whatever else we can find. And Carolyn and I laugh together whenever a new Modern Family episode is released. And Tucker comes over from Peabody on the weekends to hang out.

This is Hopkins. There’s a Hopkins for you and I urge you to explore it. You won’t be disappointed with what you find.

…I still haven’t figured out what this blog is about, but I hope it really did mean something to you. Just look very, very deep into the whitespace between the letters. I’m sure there’s something there… Like a pixel or something.

This is a picture of white pixels, in case you didn't know what to look for.

Until next time,

Alex K.

Exclamation Point Count: 2 (Lame!)… 3.

The Name’s President… Mr. President

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What an incredible two weeks it’s been since I last blogged!

If you can’t tell by the title, I won my election for President of the Class of ’16 here at Johns Hopkins! It was an incredibly proud moment to receive the e-mail from SGA (Student Government Association) with the polls. 6 Senators and I were elected to represent our class for this year at Hopkins and we couldn’t be

I'm going to miss those Batman Pajamas... But I do look really good in that suit.

more excited. But now for the hard part… What policies can I implement to make Johns Hopkins a better place for the students? (Psht, as if) What events can I plan that will facilitate a greater feeling of pride and community within my class? And even more importantly, does this mean I have to swap my pajamas for real clothes when I leave my room? These are tough decisions.

 

 

Here are some of my plans for the coming year, split into 2 categories based upon a strict scale of feasibility vs. implausibility.

Feasible:

  • Create a system to keep Freshman in the loop about Academic Deadlines in terms of signing up for classes and meeting with academic advisors

    Does this mean I'm going to have to learn to use these?

  • Have an overnight camp-out on the Freshman Quad for all the Class of ’16er’s!
  • Regulation of the Class of ’16 Facebook group so that all the posts apply to all the members of the group
  • Using social media to better advertise school sponsored events
  • Many, many more!

Implausible:

  • Campus wide paintball tournament (I’ve gotten over 20 requests from students for this event)
  • Overthrow the Senior Class and run the school (Actually this should probably be under Feasible)
  • Place a Taco Bell directly in the middle of campus and/or in place of the Library
  • Helicopter Rides to and from Papermoon diner every 15 minutes. (When you visit Hopkins, because I know you all will, go there. Just do it.)
  • Pool on top of Wolman!
  • Jacuzzi (How does one pluralize Jacuzzi? Is it like fish where it’s already plural?) in everyone’s rooms!
  • Paintball tournament inside our newly created Taco Bell in the library?
I see it looking something like this:
But replace the cars with our feet and the outdoors with Taco Bell. I can’t see how it would go wrong…
The funny part is, people would most definitely be more excited about the implausible ones… I feel like that’s my new plan to get re-elected. Fool proof.
So far SGA has been incredible. I’ve met lots of extremely driven students whose first priority is making Hopkins a better experience for all those who attend. I can’t wait to really start initiating more change here at Hopkins.
Anyway, I’m off to do Presidential stuff (sleep), so until next time!
Alex K.
P.S. Just got news that school is closed for Hurricane Sandy tomorrow… Imagine me in my Batman Pajamas and James Bond tuxedo jacket running circles around my common room. You will have just imagined glory.
Exclamation Point Count: 7

Obama or Romney? Nay. Alex.

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I think its the little goals and ideas that change our existence. The moments that define us are the ones that we make from the very core of our beings, born from spontaneity and influenced by our past experiences. I had such an idea just two weeks ago, a choice on a moments notice. I was going to run for President.

Tell me I don't look good in those colors. I dare you.

Now I’m not 35, nor have I held office prior to this, but luckily, neither of those are prerequisites to being the President of the Class of ’16 at Johns Hopkins. Student Government sent out an e-mail so I decided, why not? I think I’d be up for the job!

I went to the meeting and my first task was to get 200 signatures from my fellow Class of ’16-ers. No problem-o… Until I realized just how many 200 was.

 

This picture is completely irrelevant. It was just a very nice day yesterday :)

I traveled around the Fresh Food Cafe (FFC) for the next 3 days meeting my classmates, introducing myself and asking for them to please sign my sheet to allow me to be on the ballot. I met so many people. In fact, I’m just happy I remember even a small portion of their names. But the first part of my path to the presidency was complete.

Now it was time to campaign. Time to get creative.

I had to try to get my name out there. I wanted people to understand that I am approachable and relatable. As a campaign idea, I was going to be “The Most Interesting Man at Hopkins.”

For those of you who don’t understand the reference, I’m copying the Dos Equis commercial which uses small one-liner jokes to make their “Most Interesting Man” actually interesting.

Mines root beer! (I hope you don't realize that the picture above and this one are the same...)

Do you see the resemblance? I think its the gray hair and beard that does it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I started to write jokes whenever they came to me and I’ll list a few of them for you here:

  • Buildings A and B remain unnamed because they’re awaiting his decision
  • He has names for every squirrel on campus and can trace their lineage back 8 generations
  • Baltimore sings “Good Morning” to him
  • When he makes speeches on D level, people applaud

For those of you who don’t know, D level is the absolute silence level of the library. One is crucified for so much as accidentally dropping a pen. There were 28 jokes in all that were circulating campus in the form of 280 fliers. But that wasn’t enough.

I decided to make a campaign video, get my name out even more, so I came out with this:

Still, I wasn’t satisfied. Even after spending 20 minutes making many attempts at that juggling video, I felt like it wasn’t enough to have people vote for me so I did something even more drastic. Gangnam Style.

With a group of 10 of my floormates, 6 iPhone flashlights, and one hand held point-and-shoot, we managed to put this together in 3 hours on a Tuesday night. Can you honestly tell me that you spent your Tuesday any better?

Now it’s Sunday and I get the results of the election tomorrow! I’m extremely anxious, but very ready to hear whether my method of campaigning paid off. Every candidate worked a different angle and it’s a tough competition, but I’m just glad to have been a part of the race.

Until next time,

Alex K.

Because at Hopkins, even our sandwiches have spirit.

(Exclamation point count: 3)

Never Left out to Dry: Get it? Laundry?

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I had been here for a week when I ran into a huge problem. I had no idea how to tackle it and it was going to ruin my day. I wracked my brain, trying to solve it, but alas, I had no luck finding a solution. This, I knew, was going to be the first of many challenges during my time here at Hopkins, and here it is:

My pair of reversible shorts was white on one side and a very bright blue on the other side and I had no idea whether it should go with the whites or colors in the laundry.

I don't know if you can tell, but he's playing Dun DUN DUUUNNNNN. I know, I hear it too.

Now don’t start jumping to conclusions about me owning these shorts. Reversible shorts just happen to be an extremely convenient invention and are incredibly awesome. I mean, come on, how many people have honestly never been in this situation:

“Oh my god! I spilled some of my jelly and tomato sauce sandwich on my pants while simultaneously rolling around on The Beach and getting grass stains as I was being hit in the legs by water-balloons filled with motor oil!”

But oh wait, reversible shorts to the rescue and BAM! Still stylish. And the pockets even go both ways! Whoever engineered that was a genius… Must’ve been a Hopkins student…

I needed help quick, some support or ideas, so I ran back to my room to ask for advice from my trustworthy roommate, Phillippe. After his moment of pause as he contemplated my extraordinary dilemma, he had an answer. I put it in with the colors and felt at ease.

Self explanatory.

If you have no idea where I’m going with this, I’m in the same boat as you.

My name is Alex K and I’m a Computer Sciences major here at Hopkins. I. Am. Loving it. All I ever wanted in a college was a place where I could meet other students who have a genuine interest and passion in their studies. I wanted to learn alongside other students who were just as glad to be there as I was, even if it was for those early 9am classes. Well, I’ve found my home.

I’ve been here for just over 4 weeks and I’ve been doing a lot. Somehow I’ve finagled a spot on SAAB which is why I’m writing this blog! (I’ve also finagled the word “finagle” into this post). I’ve become an active member of the Entertainer’s Club and as my good friend and co-SAAB member, Jordan M, posted on his blog, I love to juggle! I’ve been juggling since I was 9 years old and it’s a passion of mine to teach others and share the experience! I’m also one of the Host Advisors for overnight stays! If you ever decide to visit (which should be an immediate yes!) there’s a good chance you’ll be meeting me as I set you up with your hosts for the night. In addition I’ve become a director of the Residential Advisory Board, helping to plan and organize events for Johns Hopkins students!

It’s been tough keeping up with everything! I love my courses and each one challenges me in a very different way. The great thing about Hopkins is that everyone is doing the same; they’re challenging themselves every day, in their school work, in their activities, and in their lives in general in order to better themselves. And now that I’m here at Hopkins, I know I have a huge support group that I can rely on. I know that for any challenges I put myself up to, there are amazing students and faculty here to count on for help.

Whether it’s a tough night of homework, not being able to find time for meetings, or not understanding just where reversible shorts fit into the grand scheme of laundry, Hopkins is the place to be to ensure my progress as a student, an engineer, a thinker, and a person.

Maybe the shorts thing was going somewhere.

LOOK AT IT! TWO PATTERNS! I say witchcraft.

Until next time,

Alex K.

(Exclamation point count: 13)