Congrats Bucknell Class of 2013

Upon seeing all the Bucknell graduation posts and feeling like I want to cry because I miss it and can't believe it's been a year since I've graduated I couldn't help but remember where the name of this blog came from. I started this blog right after graduation last year shortly before departing for Venezuela and the name came from our commencement speaker's speech. The 2012 speaker was Anna Quindlen, a Pulitzer Prize New York Times columnist. Below are a few bits of her wisdom that were recorded last May on the Bucknell website:

1. Don't ever confuse your life and your work.
2. Open your mouths. Speak your piece. Fear not.
3. Carry your courage in an easily accessible place, the way you do your cell phone or your wallet.
4. Measure yourself against your best intentions, not societal standards, which tend to be punishing and false.
5. Realize that life is the best thing ever, and that you have no business taking it for granted.
6. The voices of conformity speak so loudly. Don't listen to them.
7. Give up on being perfect and take hold of being yourself.
8. Don't give up adventure for safety and security.
9. Learn to be happy.
10. Get a life. A real life, a full life — a professional life, yes, but another life, too.

I thought, and still think, that these 10 pieces of advice are amoungst some of the best that has ever been given to me. It is piece number 8 that inspired the name for this blog. A year later, I still greatly miss Bucknell but in taking the advice that gave the name to this journal, I have left the place where I am most comfortable to branch out and enjoy an adventure (which will be continuing next year as well) and found some amazing things. Congratulations newest Bucknell graduates; I am sure your experiences there were as memorable as mine and that you are equally sad to leave, but exciting things await.

And HUGE shout out to whatever senior engineers stole the hands from the library clock with the poem:  "Early this morning as the dew did fall/Made we an effort at time to stall." That is impressive and I don't know how you did it, but that is the best prank I have heard of in a long time and just another piece of proof as to why I miss that place as much as I do.