Thank Goodness I Exercise Regularly

The Daily Grind

Last week was hands down the longest week yet. A long weekend beforehand meant four, ten-hour days, including two night shifts. Both were spent on the same thing we've been working on for the past several night shifts, which was frustrating, but thankfully this week we spent a night shift on Big Thunder instead, which was actually kinda fun.

During the normal day shifts, however, I've been working primarily on a project related to the new ride that opens in April in Fantasyland: Seven Dwarves Mine Train. It's a project in which I design something entirely on my own and see it through to the release of that design, which is exciting because that's pretty much the core of mechanical engineering, at least in my mind: design.

In fact, just this morning I presented several different solutions I'd designed for that project to the Engineering Services manager. We made a decision on which design to pursue, so next week I'll start performing virtual tests on it to analyze it and subsequently tweak/improve it. Cool stuff! I've never done anything like it so far in school.

With that in mind, I'm beginning to realize why internships are such a big deal, at least in the engineering disciplines. In school, we rarely get a chance to apply what we learn to the real world, and when we do, it's in pseudo-practical projects that last a couple weeks and constitute 20% of our final grade. In internships, all of what we do is projects, and they last months rather than weeks; the stakes are 100% of people's safety, not 20% of a grade.

Essentially, I'm getting far more in-depth and hands-on experience than I've ever gotten in school, or probably will ever get in school. It's exciting! And I feel like it'll give me a fresh perspective on the courses I take from here on out, now that I understand more of how things work in the industry.

Speaking of next semester's classes, this past week was registration week: course lists opened up on Monday, and registration was at 6:00 am MST on Thursday. What's that? Why did I put in the time zone? Funny you should ask.

Normally I wake up for work at 6:00, so I knew getting up a few minutes early to make sure I was ready to register wouldn't be a big deal. (I don't know how other colleges are, but classes fill up extremely quickly at ASU!) I didn't realize it the night before, but apparently I was pretty paranoid about oversleeping and missing registration, maybe because of oversleeping my nap a couple weeks ago. I woke up a total of about four times throughout the night, each time panicking until I realized it was still only the middle of the night.

Finally it came time for me to truly get up, and so right at 6:00 am, I sat in front of my laptop and clicked the button that would sign me up for all the courses I'd added to my "check out cart."

I clicked once. Refreshed the page. Clicked again. Refreshed the page. A couple cycles later, I glanced again at the time - 6:02 am, on Thursday, February 27th. Just like it needed to be. Why couldn't I register? Then it dawned on me: time zone! It was still only 4:00 am in Phoenix, where the rest of ASU slept soundly in their beds with visions of sugar plums dancing in their heads.

So all the stress of the night before was for naught. I went to work, and at 8:00 am ET, registered for my classes. None of my classes start before 9 or end before 5, and I only have one class on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays! I'd say a pretty good schedule. Nineteen credit hours, but three of them are for an online class that only lasts half a semester, so it shouldn't be too bad. And I'm actually looking forward to taking classes again, and just being back in the college lifestyle.

K-pfffff

That's the sound a couch makes when you flop your 180-pound body onto it after the most tiring work week you've ever had.

Maybe it was because I needed to balance out the week's productivity, but last Friday I came home and spent all evening laying on the couch watching How I Met Your Mother (8 episodes) on Netflix, along with the rest of the Christmas season's Reeses piled on my stomach. Oh yeah, and I was in sweatpants. And the only light in the room was provided by the television. A wonderful evening, indeed.

I need to replenish my stock of Reeses, though.

But I woke up the next morning feeling shameful for my bumminess the previous night, so I went to the gym and ran some errands, including getting an oil change. It took them over two hours just to look at my car, because Saturday is the entire working world's day for oil changes! But it was two well spent hours; I walked over and tried Firehouse Subs and spent the whole time there reading a book and glancing at SportsCenter playing in the background.

My sandwich was expensive, but rightfully so. It was very, very large and absolutely delicious! Best of all, it was called The Engineer! It was clearly meant to be. But then again, true love is always meant to be.

<3

Other Things That Have to Do With Love

Do segues get any more obvious than that? Haha. Well here it is: the dramatic conclusion to the cliff-hanger I posed last week... the one that has consumed your every thought since you read my post last week... Hannah's second Valentine's Day gift to me!

Of course, if you're friends with me on Facebook, this surprise may be ruined. But make no mistake, it was a wonderful surprise for me when it came. In the mail last week arrived a personalized calendar full of all sorts of pictures from the three years I've been dating Hannah. Every month made me smile, as I'm sure it will continue to do for the rest of the year.

I hung it in my cubicle at work, hoping somebody else will see it and ask me about it so I can brag about how amazing my girlfriend is. Nobody's said anything yet, so I may have to resort to more overt means of showing it off. Maybe I'll try taping it over one of my coworker's computer monitors.

Unexpected Magic

At this point in my internship here in Disney World, I've begun to get a bit cocky about my knowledge of the parks. I'm remembering where all the pictures are taken on the rides, I can sing along to every second of Fantasmic, and I strut through the parks with the arrogance of one who has seen Disney princesses walking underneath the Magic Kingdom without spritely smiles plastered on their faces. In fact, just this morning about nine Disney princesses walked right past me, single file, on their way to take a ginormous picture comprised of every Disney character in the park. I almost gagged on all the estrogen that dripped from the air around them. And I think I sustained a couple of cootie bites.

But when my roommates and I went to Studios on Sunday, I discovered new things about the park that I didn't expect to be as fun as the parts of the park I was more familiar with. We spent all day going to shows instead of rides, including Beauty and the Beast; Lights, Motors, Action Stunt Show; and Indiana Jones Epic Stunt Spectacular.

Normally I assume the shows are childish and boring, but guess what - they're not! They're actually really entertaining, and it was just cool to discover fun parts of the park that I didn't think would be fun. It's got me in the mindset of trying new things all over the Disney parks, because apparently I might find magic even in the places I least expect it.

Don't worry, though, we finished the evening with a couple runs of Tower of Terror and Fantasmic. No trip to Hollywood Studios is complete without those.

I also rediscovered the magic of pizza. Yesterday evening I realized it'd been over a month since my last piece of pizza, which, if I remember freshman English correctly, is one of the nine paramount sins from Dante's Inferno. So this evening I ordered Dominos delivery, and now five slices of pizza and half a sandwich later, I'm sated. Pizza satisfies hunger in a way no other food can.

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm gonna get started on another How I Met Your Mother binge. Don't judge.

It's a Jolly Holiday with Hannah

Body Knows Best

If you'll recall, last week I wrapped up right before I went to bed to prepare for my third, third shift in as many weeks. It wasn't too bad, though I was extremely exhausted when I got home around 11 the next morning. I needed sleep, but I also needed to get some stuff done, so I set my alarm for 1 pm and laid down for a nap.

I have the faintest memory of waking up to my alarm and swiping at the screen to turn it off, then thinking, "So tired... Maybe just fifteen more minutes to snooze..." Next thing I know it's 3:15 pm.

Oops.

I was annoyed with myself because I'd intended to use those two hours to go to the gym and practice trombone, neither of which ended up happening that day. But as Hannah's sister said, sleep is productive! And despite my desire for physical productivity, my body clearly needed sleep. I guess my hypothalamus snuck up on my prefrontal cortex and thwacked it over the head with a baseball bat, because my brain had absolutely no intentions of proactivity that afternoon.

Third shifts just wipe me out. Last week's shift still didn't finish the previous week's job, so we had to come in again this morning at 3 am for part three of the trilogy. And then, right at the end of the third movie in the trilogy, they show you a teaser for yet another sequel and you're like "Whaaaat I thought this was a trilogy!!"

That's right - tonight I get to go in again at 3 am to continue with the project. It's almost as bad as X-Men, the way they keep popping up with prequels and sequels just as you think they've squeezed every ounce of storyline out of the series. Tonight will be the fourth shift devoted to this job and my fifth time working third shift in the past month. Hopefully we'll be done with third shifts for awhile after this is over!

The rest of work is going quite well, though; I'm still learning a lot, and getting much more proficient in SolidWorks. Wish I could talk more about what I'm doing, but I can't!

Looking Ahead

On Friday, I FaceTimed with my previous supervisor from my Community Assistant position at ASU last semester to discuss coming back as a CA in the fall. (Community Assistant is ASU's term for an RA.) I had reapplied a couple weeks ago, and this was just an informal interview to catch up with one another, see if I was still interested in the job, and ultimately offer me my job back.

And that's exactly what happened: I was offered the job, and took it! So as soon as I come back from my internship in August I'll move into the dorms at ASU to begin pre-semester training for my CA position. I'm very excited to work with all the awesome friends I made last semester in the job. Plus, I enjoy the job itself, so I'm happy that I'm being welcomed back with no hard feelings about leaving halfway through the year.

Time to start thinking about themes for my hall... Last year's was Disneyland, so I need to come up with something new and different. Maybe Disney World! :D

The Holiday Weekend

After my interview on Friday I spent the rest of the evening relaxing and anticipating Hannah's arrival to the airport in Orlando. A few episodes of The Middle and How I Met Your Mother later, I was out the door and driving down the toll-ridden roads to the airport!

Reunited at Last

I arrived about 9 pm, and Hannah got in about thirty minutes later. This was a blessing, because her original flight was scheduled to arrive at 11:30 that night after a layover in Atlanta. And if you live anywhere but under a rock, you've heard of the ridiculous weather Georgia's had these past couple weeks. I was afraid I wouldn't see her until Saturday afternoon! But thankfully they canceled that flight and rescheduled her on a different flight, so I got a couple extra hours with her on Valentine's Day.

At first, it was pretty weird seeing each other in person. It'd been over five weeks since we said goodbye at the Hyatt Place in Orlando, and I think both of us had kind of forgotten what it was like to physically be with the other! I was literally nervous, my heart beating wildly, to see my girlfriend again. I haven't felt nervous to see her since the first couple months of our relationship. Fortunately, that weirdness quickly subsided as we began talking and drove to find dinner.

We thought Chick-Fil-A sounded delicious, but alas, we got there just five minutes after it closed! So we settled for McDonalds, where we devoured thirty chicken McNuggets. One of us had 22, the other had 8. I'll let you guess who ate how many.

From there, we drove to the All Star Movies Resort, where we stayed in the cheapest room available on Disney property, which still felt like a bit of a splurge. I gave Hannah her Valentine's Day gift, which I had bought several weeks in advance but only "finished" last week when I went to see Belle at Epcot with Francisco. The gift was an artist's hand-drawn portrait of Belle, which I then got signed by Belle herself! That, by the way, is the thing I alluded to last week when I mentioned that Fernando and I both had a specific reason to visit Epcot that day.

She couldn't keep her eyes off my biceps. I think I even heard her mention something about "shoulders to rival Gaston's." Or maybe it was "ego" instead of "shoulders"...

Hannah gave me a cool little book that's full of little "quizzes" for couples, to see how well you know each other and learn more about one another! Such a sweet gift. She also sent a gift in the mail last week, but that hasn't arrived yet...

"Next week, in Jeremiah's blog: Find out what's in the present Hannah sent him for Valentine's Day!... Unless it's too personal or awkward to share publicly on a blog!"

Quite a cliff-hanger, I know.

Magic Kingdom

Conveniently, Disney decided to lift the blockout dates it had placed on the Magic Kingdom for the weekend, which meant Hannah and I could spend all day in that park on Saturday! It was crowded, but not excessively so, and we got to do quite a few rides (nine in total, I believe, which wasn't bad considering we didn't get to the park until 1:15 in the afternoon after I forgot the guest passes back at the hotel).

We snacked our way through the day, which included a savory cream cheese-filled soft pretzel and an unexpected but delicious stop at Gaston's Tavern in the new Fantasyland expansion. We tried a drink called "LeFou's Brew," which was basically an apple juice slushy with hints of toasted marshmallow and a passion fruit foam on top. It was so refreshing! And it came in a souvenir stein that had Gaston and the Beast on it. Doesn't get much better than that, folks.

We finished the day with two heaping desserts from the Ice Cream Parlor on Mainstreet. Every time I go to Magic Kingdom with my roommates we walk by that place and smell the delicious scents of cookies, ice cream, and waffle cones wafting from the doors (probably by means of a very intentionally placed fan), and it kills me not to get anything! So I finally did, and I dragged Hannah in with me. I had a double-scoop ice cream cone, and Hannah had a chocolate chip cookie ice cream sandwich.

One of my favorite things about Hannah is her inability to finish large desserts. After wolfing down my ice cream cone, I took care of the second half of her ice cream sandwich. It wasn't graceful, but she doesn't judge me much after having dated me for three years :)

Animal Kingdom and Epcot

The next day we met up with Hannah's cousin and his wife and son at Animal Kingdom. They just happened to be in town visiting some family this week, and since I have free guest passes, we invited them into the parks with us!

We spent the first half of the day in Animal Kingdom and the second half in Epcot. It was a fun but exhausting day, from safaris and roller coasters in the morning to a stroll around World Showcase at the end of the day. The most tiring part was keeping up with Caleb - that kid can move! He has so much energy, and apparently walking is for the less competent humans, because he wants to run literally everywhere he goes. And he doesn't exactly take the most efficient routes, either.

Fittingly, he gulped at a Dasani water bottle at dinner while wearing his Addidas jacket. I took a picture of the little athlete, hoping it would some day become known as a young candid of the world's most famous track star.

Just remember, you saw it here first!

Goodbye Again

Hannah and I spent our last few hours together on Monday out to lunch at Downtown Disney, followed by a trip to the Cast Connection store and a tour of my apartment. We ate Wetzel's Pretzels and a smoothie, just like my family has each day for lunch in Disneyland when we go! It seemed fitting.

At 2:15 in the afternoon, Disney's Magical Express arrived at the hotel to take Hannah back to the airport. It was only slightly easier saying goodbye this time than it was in January; I again drove away in my car feeling cheated of time with my girlfriend, despite how fun the long weekend was. I'm working ten-hour days the rest of the week, but it's worth it to have taken Monday off for a few extra hours with Hannah!

As a bit of a pick-me-up, my roommates and I went to Hollywood Studios that evening, where we did a few rides and took an animation class on how to draw Tigger. It helped a bit, but it's still hard to shake off the knowledge that it'll be another month until I see her again.

Oh and that's another thing! I found out last week that I can take off whatever days I like to from work, so long as the work still gets done and I don't mind not getting paid for that time off. So, I decided to fly home for a long weekend in mid March, as well as for a long weekend in early July! Only 24 more days until I get to see Hannah again, as well as the rest of our families. Woohoo!

March 14th is a very important day. Not only is it Pi Day and Hannah's niece's birthday, it's the day I fly in from Orlando and the day Hannah flies home from her trip to Utah that week. So, with that in mind, let the countdown to Pi-Birth-Homebound Day begin!

Did you know? I'm a sleep prodigy!

Rough Start

Unfortunately last week kicked off to a bad start on Monday. Francisco called me at work in the afternoon and informed me that Rug's car had been stolen! Shortly after I left that morning, Rug went out to the parking lot and found only broken glass where his car should have been.

Had it been a '98 Toyota Camry with scratches on the passenger-side door, such as mine, this event have been considered a blessing. (Actually, I love my car: it has only 60,000 miles on it and still picks up ladies - just ask Hannah.) But unfortunately, Rug put a lot of time and money into his souped-up Subaru. It was a pretty sporty car, bright blue with a spoiler and everything... Which is probably why it attracted the thief.

Rug spent all day Monday out with friends searching for his car, but to no avail; the police couldn't find it either. He did stop in an auto shop where he learned that there was a local thief apparently notorious for stealing this type of car and selling its parts, but this only saddened him more. It meant that, if Rug ever did find the car, it would likely only be the shell of the car it once was. But that didn't stop him from searching all day and all night for his baby! A true romantic tragedy.

... Love. It's what makes a Subaru, a Subaru.

Well this rather worried the rest of us, since the security in the neighborhood clearly wasn't tight enough to prevent the abduction of Rug's car. But then I remembered that I equipped my car with a state-of-the-art camouflage system that makes it appear old and shoddy, so I could rest peacefully knowing no thief would want to sell my secretly sexy set of wheels.

Also, Francisco and I bought Rug a light-up Mickey sorcerer hat to help him feel better, so even if he gets a low compensation from his insurance company, I'd say he came out on top of this one.

Moving on to Happier Things

Fortunately, the week picked up from there. On Wednesday I met a man I'd been in contact with for a couple of weeks, we'll call him Atom, at the ESPN Wide World of Sports. He's in a walking league, so I joined him for a couple miles around the complex.

It's kind of an interesting story how we began communicating. First of all, he went to the same junior high and high school as me (though graduated many years earlier). In addition, he did the Disney College Program back in the day, and now works full-time as a manager at the All-Star Sports Resort. He had such a passion for Disney, as a matter of fact, that he opened a Disney store with a friend of his back in the Phoenix area, though it eventually had to close. Well if I understood Atom correctly, the friend that he opened the store with knew my mom in some way, so my mom gave Atom my email for us to connect while I'm down in Orlando.

After a couple weeks of emailing, we finally met up, as I said, at the walking league. He was walking with a couple of friends of his, and one of them, I'll call her Libra, actually went to high school with me! She graduated a year ahead of me, and she was in the color guard in the marching band, which is how I knew her. We were both like, "What in the world are YOU doing here??" Turns out it was for similar reasons.

Libra finished college last semester and now works for a company that relocated her to the Orlando area. Being a big fan of both Disney and dance/performing (hence her involvement with marching band and The Academy Drum and Bugle Corps), she decided that while she was down here she'd go for a performing role with Disney; she had just auditioned the previous evening. And, go figure, she was staying with Atom until she finished relocating for her job! She was the last person I'd ever expected to see down here, but that made it an even funnier coincidence.

After we were done walking, Atom took Libra and I out to dinner at one of his favorite Mexican restaurants. It was delicious and a ton of fun talking to them both, getting to know Atom better and catching up with Libra.


On Sunday, Francisco and I went to Epcot. He wanted a pair of Ray Bans he'd spotted earlier, and I wanted something else that I will divulge in next week's blog...

While we were there, we went and met Belle in the France pavilion of World Showcase. Francisco and Rug both have a thing for Disney princesses, and they're looking to get every princess's signature by the end of our internships, so we started with Belle! We also creeped on Ana and Elsa in Norway from a distance, because the wait to meet them was literally two hours long. And of course, we did a few rides as well, then went to Studios in the evening where we ended the night with two runs of Tower of Terror followed by yet another Fantasmic show. Never gets old, and the music is wonderful!

FYI, Belle is my favorite princess because she reminds me of my pretty, brown-haired, intelligent, sweet, musical girlfriend... Who is, coincidentally, in love with a BEAST!

More Third Shifts!

Remember a week or two ago when I said I actually kinda liked third shifts? That I'd enjoy having one every two to three weeks? Well, that was with the understanding that they'd be once every two to three weeks.

Last Friday I had to get to work at 3 am to supervise some work being done on Splash Mountain. That work required a crane, and the crane that somebody ordered didn't fit, soooo we ended up just doing office work for eight hours - something we easily could have done during the normal day shift. That was a bit frustrating. But the nice thing was that I got off work before noon, giving me a slightly longer weekend! It's just that third shifts throw off my body's clock for a couple days, which can be a bit tiring when they happen several weeks in a row.

Now here we are, Tuesday evening, and a properly sized crane is scheduled to come in tonight. So of course, Rawlings and I will be there too, beginning at 2 am. Fortunately I won't be operating the crane, so my sleepiness won't likely kill anybody. Likely.

With that in mind, I'd better get to bed pretty soon. It's already 8 pm! Gasp! Francisco's been mocking me, calling me a grandpa for how early I go to bed. In my opinion, having to wake up before the sun rises is a reasonable justification for that, but I will admit that I require more sleep than the average 19-year-old boy. I guess I'm just prodigious when it comes to sleep habits. Let's see, I'm 19 years old and I sleep like a 70-year-old man... That puts my sleep IQ right around 368. So suck it, Francisco :)

It is a bit depressing, though, when every single alarm in my phone is set for a time prior to 6 am. I'll just have to push through three more days though, because Friday is Valentine's Day and Hannah's flying in for the weekend! Yay!

The Lame Duck Session Begins

Countdown to Baseball Season

Sorry this post is a bit late - it's been a busy weekend! I would have done it yesterday evening, but it was my third favorite day of the year, right after Christmas and my BIRTHDAY (still waiting for you to mark your calendars): Super Bowl Sunday.

This was the first time in four years I haven't celebrated this glorious day at the party hosted by Hannah's brother and sister-in-law, which was a very sobering fact. Thankfully, a friend of mine I made at the orientation during the first week of work - we'll call him Reggiano - invited me to his apartment for the game, a long with a couple of his friends from Tampa.

Unfortunately, we were all cheering for Denver. Reggiano has been a fan of them since before Manning and Tebow, so he's a legitimate fan; I just wanted Manning to win another Super Bowl to cap his outstanding season; and the other two were too scared to root for the Seahawks because of Reggiano's dangerous enthusiasm for the Broncos. At the very least, I was hoping for a close game... It was barely even a game. The picture below, I believe, captures the theme of the game quite well. But hey, the commercials were entertaining. Football teams' success is fickle, but you can always count on Bud Light, Doritos, and Go Daddy to make the game worthwhile. I mean, Super Bowl commercials these days have plots that carry over into other commercials! It's insane!

But just like December 26th and January 21st, the Monday after the first Sunday in February is a very hard day to get through. The lethargic disappointment of another ended football season hangs over you all day, reminding you that Sundays are now, for the next seven months, just Sundays.

Baseball is my other favorite sport, but that won't start for almost two months!! So for the next forty-some days, I have no sports to pay ardent attention to. No, not even college basketball and March Madness; I've never much been one for basketball, except when someone in my family has the KU game on (Rock Chalk!) or when UA loses... Which, this season, has been only once! Anyway, I kind of think of this part of the year as a "lame duck session," when no entertaining sport resides in office to govern my attention to athletics. Inauguration Day is March 22nd, when the Dbacks take on the Dodgers in Sydney, Australia. Let the countdown commence!

Third Shift

Once every two to three weeks, Rawlings and I work third shift in the parks; that way we can work on the rides when there's no guests around. So on Wednesday I came home from work at 4 pm, ate an early dinner, took a nap, and went back to work at 7 pm to work until 3:30 am on Thursday! Woo!!

That last sentence probably sounded sarcastic, but it was actually a pretty neat experience. We worked on Big Thunder for a few hours, and then we spent the rest of the night touring the rest of the park's attractions that I hadn't seen yet. I got to see Space Mountain, more of Haunted Mansion, and a couple others! I was afraid I'd be dead tired the whole time, but I made it till around 2 am before I finally started to get sleepy.

But the best part of third shift is that we get the next day off! So when I dragged myself back through the door at 4 am, I plopped into bed and slept till 12:30 in the afternoon. Then I had the rest of the day to relax and be productive.

The only rough part was that that particular night was very cold, and very wet. At least by Arizona standards. The temperature was in the low 40s, and there was a constant drizzle all evening. And Big Thunder Mountain Railroad is not waterproof in the slightest. But it gave me an excuse to wear the ASU beanie I bought for the Pac-12 championship game back in December! Didn't think I'd ever get to wear that thing in Orlando, but I was glad I brought it.

Volunteering

Ever since high school, I haven't really done much volunteer work. It's not that I dislike it, I just chose to prioritize my time differently, given that college puts so much focus on academics and career preparation (and just having fun). Plus there's simply less incentive for those who aren't internally motivated to volunteer; they don't offer shiny seals on your diploma for 150 hours of community service in college! And companies are more focused on industry experience than volunteer experience. Engineering companies, anyway.

That's why I decided to take the opportunity this past Saturday to help out at the FIRST Lego League Regional Tournament just a little outside of Orlando! It's basically an engineering/ Lego robotics competition for 9-14 year olds; it starts at the regional level, then comes state, nationals, and there's even a world competition! Rawlings said big engineering companies like Siemens will actually attend the world competition and pay out teams for their ideas! Serious stuff.

One of the guys at the office helps out with it because his wife hosts the competition each year, and Rawlings works as a judge each year as well, so they invited me to come with them! So I helped with miscellaneous things at the competition from 7 am to 4:30 pm. It was pretty fun, and very refreshing to see such happy kids so excited about nerdy stuff like robotics and engineering!

Afterward I met Francisco and Rug and a few other friends in the Magic Kingdom, though it took me a bit longer than normal to get there. I parked in the Magic Kingdom parking lot, then walked to the monorail station, where I got on the monorail, sat down, and waited to arrive at the park. Right as I was thinking I should be getting close, I look out the window and watch the park drift across my window. Picture an innocent person indicted for a heinous crime being taken away in a police car, throwing himself at the window screaming "Noooooo!!" After my frustration and self-loathing subsided, I decided it was a good thing that I'd get to see the full monorail loop. Familiarizing myself with company property, ya know?

But really, it sucked. Twenty wasted minutes I could have used to go on another ride in the park.

Prolonging the Magic

So about a week and a half ago, Rawlings's boss came to me and asked me if I'd like to extend my internship through the summer. Normally my internship would end on May 10th, but this opportunity would take it till August 9th - an extra three months with the company.

Now, I knew this was coming; Rawlings told me when he originally interviewed me that they typically ask their spring interns to extend through the summer. However, I was mistaken as to how quickly I'd be asked to stay. I was thinking I wouldn't have to decide until maybe late February or early March, but this was just a week and a half into my internship! I was caught off guard, so I asked for a week to decide.

Some of you may be thinking, "Uh, why did you need seven days to decide? That's an extra three months of engineering experience at a company you're already familiar with - being offered to you on a silver platter!" But what I heard was, "Would you like to spend another three months away from friends and family and work here this summer?" What it came down to was whether I was willing to sacrifice three months of time with friends and family to gain invaluable industry experience.

I asked Rawlings what I'd be doing those extra three months, and he told me I'd actually be finishing the projects I start in the spring. In other words, if I didn't stay, I wouldn't get to see my projects through to their completion. That means a lot to me, not just in terms of experience, but for the simple principle of finishing what I start.

So, with that in mind, I made the decision to extend my internship through the summer. It will be extremely difficult to spend another three months away from those I love, but let's be honest - I'm spending it in Disney World, "the happiest place on earth." I'm having a great time here!

And no, none of these pictures are my own. I had a severe lack of relevant pictures this week, so I had to rely on the internet for the visual augmentation of this blog post.