Noble or Selfish?

If you love someone, let that person go.

I've heard the maxim above many times before. But more recently, it has gotten me thinking-is it selfish or noble to do that? If you truly love someone, do you love them for whom they are, or whom you are together? If it is the former, then is letting that person go a noble act because you know s/he deserves better, or is it selfish because one is unwilling to try to become that person oneself?

Is it truly noble, that you should choose not to impede on their happiness? But then, why would you not always let them go? Isn't there always going to be someone else? Someone else who fits them in a different way but equally well? As much as I like the concept of "the one" as a good excuse to hide behind, I don't think it actually exists.

Et tu te baladais sur l'avenue avec moi
Tu me comprenais le mieux, pour la plupart
Mais tu ne me comprends plus
Tu parlais cette langue autrefois
Autrefois quand tu aimais moi

Si j'avais dit ces mots clairement en plein anglais
J'aurais aimé que tu comprendrais
Mais quelque soit la façon dont je dis ça,
Tu ne comprendras pas moi

A Perfect Christmas

From Thanksgiving to Christmas, life has always been a big festival to me. A slew of Thanksgiving birthdays followed by the high-energy shopping rush (tradition as much as consumerism) and many holiday tv specials. I'm a New Englander at heart, and I grew up in an Enchanted Village. So forgive me if I get in your face from time to time, I only want to celebrate with you. To that end, here is the recipe I use for the gingerbread men I make-bake for shorter than the recipe states (I usually do 9-10 minutes rather than 12) because it'll make the cookies soft, which makes them much more popular, as gingerbread men when bought tend to be crispy. There is nothing better than sharing food you've made with a friend and seeing it make them smile.

What You Need

3/4 cup butter, softened

3/4 cup packed brown sugar

1 pkg. (3.4 oz.) JELL-O Butterscotch Instant Pudding

1 egg

2 cups flour

1 tsp. baking soda

1 Tbsp. ground ginger

1-1/2 tsp. ground cinnamon

Make It

BEAT butter, sugar, dry pudding mix and egg in large bowl with mixer until well blended. Mix remaining ingredients. Gradually add to butter mixture, beating well after each addition. Refrigerate 1 hour or until firm.

HEAT oven to 350°F. Roll out dough on lightly floured surface to 1/4-inch thickness; cut into gingerbread shapes with 4-inch cookie cutter, rerolling trimmings. Place, 2 inches apart, on baking sheets sprayed with cooking spray. Use straw to make hole near top of each cutout.

BAKE 10 to 12 min. or until edges are lightly browned. Cool on baking sheets 3 min. Remove to wire racks; cool completely. Decorate as desired. Insert ribbon through holes to hang cookies on tree.

Wait, I'm not a teenager anymore!

A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.

I think sometime in the past day or two it has hit me that I'm actually not a teenager anymore, and that my brother and sister are in fact the teens. At dinner tonight, I was momentarily perplexed at the fact that I could not recall the solution to a mechanics problem. It took a moment and it finally came back to me, but I realized when I thought about it that I have not in fact done any mechanics problems of that type in 4 years. I always understood that much of the actual material we learn we never will use, but I had not really thought I would forget things so soon. And that has me thinking, at what point are we set in our ways? Yes I know I'm not yet, but how late is too late for a person to change?

Starting this fall, I will be working full time for ExxonMobil in their Environmental Services company. And I-like every else I'm sure-am torn between wanting to leave MIT and wanting to stay. But while these desires are equal in magnitude and opposite in direction, the sum of them is not 0, and I've already made my decision to leave. I'm not quite sure how I am going to deal with not being at MIT anymore, and not being able to see the people I see here every week. My impression of MIT is that it is a place that one never really has to leave if one doesn't wish to. And it's not over yet. But I find myself asking myself "Did that really just happen?" I'm pretty sure it was just a year ago I was starting MIT and had that kindergartner's fear that I would not make any friends...

I think it largely has to do with the Career Fair followed by the job application process that this semester has flown by and made me feel like I have sort of been absent from school. What I'm looking to do now is go out with a bang in my last semester. Ultimately I'm torn between the notion of doing as much work and taking as many MIT classes while I still can or getting to know as many people at MIT as well as I can in the short time I have left. I have a bucket list of things that I want to do before I graduate (I've never actually read the 101 things to do before you graduate poster), and some of them include:

1) Take a class at Harvard. This one is really difficult given that I don't want to take 6 classes next semester.

2) Pull an all nighter. I have never ever pulled an all nighter (I don't actually function after 2am) and this is one of those things that I feel I should do once, but I don't know why it would be worth it and whether I actually want to.

3) Go on top of the dome or for an orange tour. As popular as it is, I have never been on top of the infamous MIT dome or on a tour of the passages hackers use to put strange things up around campus. In fact, it seems like yesterday that a friend of mine and I were giving up our spots on one of these tours to a couple of other people who wanted to go much more than we did.

4) Study abroad. It was something I had always thought to do but just never worked into my plan while I was here. Next semester I plan on taking German and spending the summer post-graduation doing research in Germany with the MISTI program. In a way it will be a soft transition to buffer my time between being out of MIT and starting work in the fall.

This is really just a small list of little things. Anything more comprehensive and I think I'd start to feel like I didn't use my time here well. One thing I wonder about is how life would have been different had I gone to college away from home. I really like the fact that I've been so close to home, but it's also a perspective that could've taught me something.

Did you know that catalogue is spelled catalog?