Life's busy. Mostly with work. I've been trying to figure out my near & long term academic plans. As far as this summer's concerned, I'm taking 3 classes - two economics + 1 math class. Just three classes are going to cost me over $3500! Yeah, so now I gotta figure out where to get that much money from.

And in fall '03, I'll take 6 classes, and 6 more in spring '04. Hopefully if I get every class I want, I should graduate in May 2004 with a Computer Science + Economics double major, Math minor, University College Honors, and Economics Honors :) Ya I just found out that I can do a one year research project in Economics by myself and use it towards my UC honors also. It's kinda weird, but in the end, it gives me more recognition for not too much work. I had a meeting with my academic advisor today and she says I'm prolly the best/brightest student in UC @ the moment, cuz nobody's doing so much crap in just 4 years. So I guess I should be proud of myself.

With the whole spring break thing, I've been pretty stressed out. I mean it's spring break and most of the people I know are either relaxing or partying on pretty islands. Instead I'm working :( Now I know everyone says I should take out some time for me and blah blah, but well I just dunno. I really want to do all that major/minor thing I talked above and for that I MUST take classes this summer. And for that, I must somehow make $3500 before May. Only solution is I work my ass off in the next two months. Oh well...

Oh I did my income tax night before yesterday. Great news - I'm getting a tax refund of $1000+! Yay! So hoping that it arrives by May, I now need to make $2500 instead of $3500. I guess it's not impossible, but still, it's not a cakewalk either. Ehhhhh money! I'm tired of it. There's just too many expenses. My main aim is to graduate by May 2004, so that I can work for 3-4 months during summer of 2004 and start my grad studies in fall '04. Hopefully with the summer '04 work, I should be able to pay off more than half of my loans and since I'll be making some money while doing my grad, I'll prolly pay off all my loans by 2005. That means *hopefully* by May 2005, I will be out of debt and have CS + Econ double major and doing my grad studies.

Now I'm 99% going to do a MS in CS (hehe). However, if by any chance I don't get admission anywhere, I can do MS in Economics here @ Rutgers. I just talked to an Economics advisor and she said since I talk well and have got great grades, it'll be very easy for me to get into the free Econ program here @ Rutgers. I'll just have to be a Teaching Assistant for a class or two every week, and they'll pay for my tuition and give me some money every month for living expenses. So ya, as far as I'm concerned, studying more, is not too hard.

When people ask me what I'm gonna do after my BS, I say MS, and after MS, PhD. What after PhD? I dunno. Prolly depends on how Chime's doing at that time. I'm hoping to keep it alive :)

You know sometimes with all the work + studies I'm doing, I get all stressed out and start thinking I'm a moron cuz I'm not enjoying my life enough. Maybe I am a moron. I dunno. But I do have a few things that make me feel good about myself. I guess I keep reminding me these things from time to time, just to keep my spirits up.

First of all, I'm really good @ computers. I'm not showing off or anything, rather just being content that I fortunately am good at doing what I love. Second, I'm paying for a US education all by myself. Many people don't realize this, but $20k a year for 4 years in a foreign country is kinda hard to pay for. But I'm doing it. It's hard, but I'm doing it. I'm also paying now for living expenses, which are like $5-6k a year, depending on how comfortably I wanna live. Third, I have two great jobs - one for my college working as a Database/Web developer and other making websites for people through Chime.

But above all, I have people who love me a lot. It's more important than all the three things above combined. At the moment I am not near any of them, and I guess that's what hurting right now. All my friends are home and all my family is faaaar away. I'm just a poor little lost boy from Calcutta now... in this big eerie empty town. Ahhhh I can't wait till spring break's over.

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