Summer 2021
If you are new here, three or four times a year I post a reflection piece, usually after a semester of college or at the end of the year. Now that I have graduated, I’m expecting to do these around four times a year. This (somewhat shorter) post covers from the beginning of May to the end of August 2021.
This summer was a brief respite of normalcy. I got to go on a few trips to my friend’s cabin with the best people. I worked a normal job as a busser and interacted with normal people without a mask. I worked out in a normal gym and went to normal bars to drink beers. I started studying for the LSAT... and found out that I had forgotten how to study. (That part isn’t new, I never knew how to study).
It was short-lived. Whispers of people getting Covid started to circulate again. People close to us, all fully vaccinated, started to come down with it. The masks came back. Twitter once again began to fill up with horror stories from emergency rooms and tales of Lambdas and Deltas. August found me shut back up at home, seeing only a few select people.
I have mixed feelings about this new resurgence. I’m frustrated for sure. The United States knows how to beat this; get vaccinated, and then send the extra vaccines to those in need across the world so they can be protected as well as prevent these mutations. Yet we refuse to take action. It’s like we were handed a copy of the math test by the teachers, and are refusing to copy it because Uncle Roy thinks he knows algebra better than the people who created it.
My hypochondriac ass is tired of staying indoors. If I’m tired of staying indoors, I can bet that most of America is tired of it as well. That makes me worried about the coming months.
There are exciting things to come through. I’m moving to Seattle with six other awesome kids. I am going to start full-time writing. Lots of exciting plans are on the horizon.
These are big changes, and I would be lying if I said I wasn’t nervous. I won’t have the same support that I had in college from the institution and my parents. But all the best parts of my life were from the decisions that scared me.
And I can’t wait to start all of it.
Best from Seattle,
Matthew
Spring 2021
If you are new here, three or four times a year I post a reflection piece, usually after a semester of college or at the end of the year. These posts seek to look back at the last three or four months, reminisce, see what I did well or where I failed, and then look towards the future with goals for the next trimester of the year. This post reviews the beginning of 2021 to my graduation from Gonzaga University in May.
May 18, 2021
I’ve been writing these reflections now for just about two years now, ever since the summer of 2019, and I have to say that these last few months were some of the crazier ones. Not because of what I did, but rather the transition that took place. I went from an intense quarantine to traveling all over the pacific northwest, from college student to college graduate, and even released a book. Definitely different than last year, that’s for sure.
Let’s start with college. I’ll be honest, zoom university was a joke. I don’t think I did more than 40 hours of work the entire semester, and not hard work at that. I spent most of my time either on my extra-curriculars, such as my time as VP of Member engagement for my Business Fraternity and as President of the Net Impact club on campus and hanging with friends. That being said, I am still proud to say I graduated Cum Laude with a Political Science Degree as well as minors in Italian Studies and Hogan Entrepreneurship.
I got to travel again, which was crazy. Due to covid, people stopped taking big trips and opted for more safe visits to cabins and Airbnb’s with people within their bubble, which was more than ok with me. I like that vibe so much more than the party scene, though I do still miss traveling across country and internationally. Hopefully, this summer things become safe enough. Regardless, I was able to take several trips this semester with some awesome people, including trips to Glacier National Park, Idaho (I forget the name of the town, it was like 11 people), and Mazama, Washington.
When I wasn’t with friends or doing schoolwork, I was putting the finishing touches on my first full-length novel, Friday in Florence. I’ve never been prouder of myself than I was when I released FiF, and I swear I walked around with the biggest smile on my face due to the reaction my friends and family gave me. I had people I had maybe said five sentences to all of college coming up to me in the bar or messaging me on Instagram complimenting me on the accomplishment, and each one made my week. It just passed a month since its release, and I am still on cloud nine. Thanks everyone, really, it has meant the world.
Now, however, I have to face the real world. No more house parties or late nights with the roommate. No more frantically finishing papers before the deadline or running into friends at the bar. I took my last walk through campus a few days ago (it was raining of course) and then left. I don’t know when or even if I will ever be back.
Yes, it’s sad. My allergies were definitely acting up those last few weeks, but as I look back I think I came out of college with everything I could have hoped for. I found an incredible group of people I know I will be proud to call my friends for the rest of my life. I took classes that challenged me, got to travel the world, and ultimately grew into a person that Freshman me would be proud of. While it could have been so much more; potential squandered by the global pandemic, I feel blessed to come out of it with the lessons and people that I did.
Now, for the first time in my life, I don’t have a concrete plan. There have always been another four years of school on the horizon, now I am not so sure. Yes, I have a direction in that I am hoping to go to law school after a gap year, but if we have learned anything from Covid it’s that a lot can change in a year. The rest of my life, however it may change, is completely up to me.
This sentence scares the shit out of me. But it is also incredibly freeing. I have nothing else to wait for, no obligations needed to finish. My life is completely my own, for better or for worse, and I can make it what I am able to. I am excited to see what I do.
See you in a couple of months,
Matthew
2020 Review
So, 2020. Not what we were expecting (if you were expecting it, why?) In 2019 I was traveling all over the world; in 2020, I rarely left my house. Last summer, I studied with people from Mumbai, Beijing, and Tijuana; this year, I barely saw my extended family. It was not a great year, but it was not a bad year either. I'll explain that later.
First, though, a review of what I did.
Early January saw my return to Spokane for the first time in six months for school. It was a tough return. I was still adjusting back to life in America, trying to reconnect with friends that, for the most part, I hadn't seen since school let out the previous summer, and it was cold and snowy-a typical depressing Pacific Northwest winter. By February, though, I had broken myself out of the funk. I started going to the gym early in the morning again, and I was in the best shape of my life. I re-found my group and was going out and life it was looking up to be a good semester.
That obviously did not happen. Spring break came, and we all headed home for what we expected to be only a week. That week became a month, then another, then the rest of summer. 2020 became the year of the pandemic.
Being immunocompromised, my family took covid-19 seriously, especially the first couple of months where we were still learning about it. Nobody left the house. We walked around with masks, even before they were recommending them. I think I left the house less than ten times before July.
Yea, it sucked. I lost time in college, which I was still paying for, and lost my internship opportunity, which would pay me. But I was still fortunate. My family didn't have to worry about bills; we could stay home and hang out in our backyard. The biggest problem we had to deal with was boredom and getting sick of each other. I understand the privilege I had and still have because of this, and I am incredibly thankful for it.
Lockdown wasn't all bad. The times I was able to hang with friends were fun. I got to spend more time with my family, which I don't know how much I will be able to in the future. I started writing again seriously. And the weather was pretty nice.
At the beginning of August, I drove back up to Spokane for school. My lifestyle didn't change much; just now, I could quarantine with my friends, people my own age. Which meant a drank a whole lot more beer than I did at home. It was good to see these guys again.
I was able to stay up in Spokane until November. At that time, cases started to spike again, and with the vaccine on the horizon, I decided to head back home. That's where I have been until we drove up to Bodega Bay yesterday afternoon.
Like most people, I set some goals at the beginning of this year, and like most people, I failed at most of them. Covid gave me a good excuse, but for the most part, I wasn't doing too hot with any of them before the pandemic hit. Covid may have canceled the marathon I had signed up for in April, but I still hadn't begun to train for it in March.
I was able to accomplish a lot this year despite covid and my laziness. I read 50 books and wrote my own, which comes out this March. I put together my two best semesters of college GPA-wise, though whether that's due to the classes becoming easier online or because I had fewer distractions remains to be seen. I finished some online courses, gave a few talks, and got a lot better at beer dye and super smash bros. Altogether, I got a lot done.
Next year comes with a lot of uncertainty. I have one more semester before I graduate, and after that, I don't know what I am going to do. I don't know where I will live, where I will work, or what the world will look like pandemic-wise. I'm not worried, though. If I've learned anything from this pandemic, it's that I have already have it all. I have a fantastic family that will be there to support me no matter how bad I fail. I have a group of friends that I look up to and can count on. I've been lucky enough to travel all over the world. I've loved and lost, succeeded and failed, and have few regrets.
I owe most of this to my family, friends, and simply being at the right place at the right time, and for that I will always be thankful. Even though I haven't seen most of these people this year, they've made the presence known, and I am grateful for all they have done. I hope they know that.
My grandmother has a saying, "If you want to make God laugh, just tell him your plans." God's going to get a good chuckle with this one then. I may not know where and what I will be doing in 2021, but I do have some goals. I am going to publish my first book in March. I will graduate college with a 3.5+ GPA, take the LSATs, and begin the process of applying to law schools. I will try to read at least one book a week, two more than I did this year. My final goal is to get to a point where I can honestly say that I am fluent in Italian. Hopefully, God isn't laughing too hard.
I'm excited for 2021. Vaccines are near. I graduate and start a new chapter of my life. It still may be winter, but the days are getting longer, a new president will be sworn in, and spring is on its way. Here's to the roaring 20s.
Fall 2020
Cover photo taken from my backyard on October 10, 2020 in Spokane, Washington
Hello friends. It's been several months since I have posted anything on this website. It begs the question, where have I been? Please do not fret (I know you were); I have been up to stuff. Some of it fun, and some of it not so fun but important, or at least that is what people tell me. Let me tell you about it.
School has been a thing. Technically I still have two more weeks of classes, but there is so little work to do that, to be honest, I've checked out. The plan at Gonzaga was always to move to entirely online after Thanksgiving break, and since this move was anticipated, my professors crammed most of the work into the first three-quarters of school, leaving these last few weeks sparse.
I had many exciting classes this semester, including a couple of political science classes, two entrepreneurship classes, and a journalism class. I've done well despite the barrier inherent in online learning, but I am not sure if that is because I worked hard or my teachers made the course easy. Either way, I'll take it.
I spent most of my time outside of class on two things. One, I have been taking a lot of online classes on Coursera and other learning websites. The two biggest time sinks have been the Google IT Professional eCertificate, and a Finance and Quantitative analysis certificate from UPenn. I wanted to get these done earlier, but 2020 got in the way. This is all part of my grand plan to get hired by someone, as I heard that jobs are where people get their money. I would appreciate having some money. My credit card bill is due in three days.
The other thing has been my book. Yea, I wrote a book. Well, I am still writing a book. I finished the first draft, the second, almost, which just leaves me with the editing. This shouldn't take me longer than a month (the author said naively), so I should finish it by the end of the year. (Update, it took longer than a month. The official release date is now March 31st.) I am proud of the work I have done and am excited/terrified to share it.
There is just a month and some change left in 2020, and I think I speak for many when I say I am just about done with this year and ready for the next. I will have a full-year reflection done at its end. Until then, I hope to start posting more short stories and essays. I have a lot in the pipeline, and I hope you all enjoy them. Until then, stay healthy out there.
Summer 2020
Cover photo taken July 3, 2020, an hour south of Sacramento
What’s up gang. It’s another update post. This time I’m gonna tell you all about my summer. “But Matthew, I really don’t care.” Too bad, I already wrote it, you’re too late. Summer 2020, the last one…let’s go.
Like many of my friends, my internship was canceled due to something called Covid-19 and for the majority of summer, I was locked up at home with my parents and younger sister. Being immune-compromised, I spent the first two months switching between my room, the family room, and the bathroom. It was a blast. With the coming of June, things started to relax a bit, and sometimes I took a walk outside.
It goes without saying that I was extremely lucky to be in the position I was with COVID. My family was well off enough I didn’t have to worry about making it to next month’s rent or meal, my parents were able to work from home, and I had family and friends in similar situations that I was able to see on a semi-regular basis. This is a privilege that I do not take lightly as I see my fellow Americans needing to take to the streets just for the opportunity to have what I have. COVID has brought to the limelight the injustice and hypocrisy of our system that minority groups in our nation have been experiencing since its inception, and it will be up to our generation to change this. I won’t go into that now, but I will in the future.
I spent most of my quarantine either listening to music or reading. I tried to get addicted to video games, but I couldn’t find one that wasted the hours without me getting bored after the first one. (Though as soon as Skyrim 6 comes out, I will be re-entering quarantine until the game has been bested several times.) A quick favorite book list, the Red Rising series by Pierce Brown, The World of Yesterday by Stefan Zweig, and A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles. A Gentleman in Moscow in particular was one of the best books I have read in a while, and I have since gone and read everything else Amor Towles has written. That’s enough of me pretending I’m an intellectual though, let’s move on.
I traveled a bit, (safely). Earlier in the summer, I made the trip to Spokane with one of my good friends to grab my truck and drive her back down to the Bay Area. I had left her at the airport with the assumption that I would return in a week to pick her back up after spring break, but obviously, the plan changed. The problem was that the truck was sitting in an 8 dollar a day parking lot, and many days had transpired since I had been up there. Luckily the airport powers that be were nice to me and only made me pay a portion, saving me several hundred dollars. Later that summer, some of my favorite people and I traveled down to San Diego to celebrate one of my best friend’s birthdays. We quarantined for several weeks beforehand and after and spent the entire weekend in said friend’s apartment, so even I felt safe the entire time. I was happy to see the man; it had been too long.
I was productive this summer, just not in the way I planned it to be. As I said, my internship was canceled, so I had a lot of free time on my hands. A portion of that time was working on some resume-building skills so I can get this thing called a job when I graduate, which I am told is an important thing to have as they give you money. At the time of writing, I am about a week away from finishing the Google IT program and Quantitative Analyst program on Coursera. As someone majoring in political science (or as a friend once said, “unemployment”) I figured adding some extra lines to my resume was something I should probably do.
The other way I was productive was by doing this, writing. Yes, I can (kind of) call myself a professional writer. That is in the sense that I did freelance writing for several months during the summer. It didn’t pay much, but it kept me busy and I was able to convince myself I had been productive at the end of the day. In the addition to freelance, I also began posting a lot more on my site, with essays on topics that were interesting to me and short stories inspired by the traveling I have lucky been enough to do throughout my short life. Check them out and let me know what you think. (Unless you don’t like them, in which case you can kindly keep your opinion to yourself.)
The last thing I want to talk about is a passion project that I have been working on since the end of 2019-before COVID. I am proud and apprehensive to announce that I have been writing a book, a book that is 2/3 of the way there and I will be publishing it at the beginning of 2021. Self-publishing that is, on Amazon since they make it so easy and cheap. If I can be serious for a quick minute here, I have never had a project that has consumed me like this in all my 22 years, and while I’m sure I will be horrified of it two months after publishing, I am proud of the work I have done. More info will come out as I get closer to finishing.
That’s about it for now. Definitely a little different than last summer. Tomorrow I start my last year of college and school for the time being at least. Here’s to ending on a high note.
Spring 2020
Hey. It’s been a while. The last time I posted was January 10, just a week before heading back to Gonzaga for my spring semester. A lot has happened since then. Despite everything that occurred, I accomplished a lot this past semester of college, and wanted to make a post about it. This is that.
This semester I moved into an off campus home for the first time. It was an adjustment for sure, but definitely a positive change. I still can’t cook though. (Somehow this is still true through quarantine, though not for the lack of trying.) Since I was returning from a semester abroad-did I mention I went abroad-I got to connect with a lot of people I hadn’t seen in a very long time. That was fun, but it took a while. Again, it was an adjustment for sure.
I had a lot of interesting classes this semester. For my political science major, I got to take International Law, Intro to International Relations, and the Developing World. All of these classes had some interesting intersections and was fun to go through in the same semester. Outside of that, I simulated running a multi-national lemonade corporation-don’t ask how it went-in my entrepreneurship class and learned the basics of Islam in an introductory course on the subject.
Like the rest of the country, I was sent home during spring break and moved to an online platform for the rest of the semester. I didn’t like it but considering the circumstances I was very lucky. I still managed to do very well despite a crippling lack of motivation during the last couple weeks, scoring my highest GPA of my college career. (I am definitely not bitter about being a thousandth of a point off from making President’s list.) As of right now, I am heading back to Spokane in the fall, but we will see what happens.
Outside of classes, had a great time returning to the business fraternity and social fraternity that I joined Sophomore year. In Theta Chi, I was elected Philanthropy chair and planned several trips to the local Habitat for Humanity site. In Alpha Kappa Psi, I was on the formal committee that quickly cancelled formal but was also elected VP of Member Engagement for my senior year, which I am very excited about. Finally, I helped a senior member of Alpha Kappa Psi realize his goal of establishing a Net Impact Chapter at Gonzaga, a club that I am proud to be president of next year.
Obviously, it was a bummer to miss out on a significant portion of my junior year and the foreseeable time of my senior year, but I understand that it is a privilege to go to college in the first place and be able to continue my education from a safe space at home. I know that many people can’t afford that luxury right now. I am proud though of what I managed to accomplish during the school year and am optimistic about what can be done in the coming months.
In the next couple of weeks, I will begin to release what I have been working on since the end of school. I am very proud of it all and can’t wait to share it with the world. Check back here for more updates. Or don’t, I’m not your dad.
Florence Study Abroad
On September 7, 2019, I left San Francisco International for Rome Fiumicino Airport. For 3 months and some change, I would be studying abroad in Florence, Italy. I had been looking forward to this since I got to Gonzaga. After all, this was one of the main reasons I chose Gonzaga in the first place. I was not disappointed.
My time abroad consisted of three main things: School, travel, and exploring/experiencing the city of Florence. School was fairly straightforward, and well, easy. The classes in my program were significantly easier than those back at Gonzaga. (Don’t tell Gonzaga.) I only took four classes; Italian 301 and 350, Small Business, and the Philosophy of Ethics. That means I had a lot of time for the other two activities.
Of the 12 weekends I was there I traveled 6 of them, with one of those including all of Thanksgiving week. I traveled to, in order, Barcelona, Amsterdam, five cities in Switzerland, Paris, and Prague. Oh, and some day trips to places like Rome and Venice. I wrote a post about each of these trips, which can be found here, but out of all of these places, Amsterdam was the place I loved the most.
I spent the majority of my time though exploring Florence. One of my favorite parts was going out with friends and trying new restaurants or gelato places or a cool view that we heard about. Gonzaga also had a lot of programs that got us into the city. For example, I worked as a tour guide in the Duomo, a famous basilica in Florence. A couple of my classes took us on tours of the city, showing places of history or interesting shops like a fifth-generation metalworker shop or a place that does mosaic paintings. However, my favorite thing to do was a Gonzaga program called English for Pasta. Every Tuesday, a friend and I would take a 20-minute bus ride deep into Florence to meet with an Italian family. For the first hour, we would play games with the kids while only speaking English. However, for the rest of the night, we could only speak Italian. In exchange, they made us traditional Italian dishes and we got to eat dinner with them. I probably learned the most during these nights, and my host family became my second family. I miss them.
Now I am back. Leaving was the most bittersweet, polarizing experience I have ever felt. Half of me wanted to spend the rest of my life there, the other wanted to get my ass home. Being home has allowed me to look back at the experience from afar, (literally) and I have some reflections on the experience. Before that, it must be understood is that there is going to be an obvious bias here. I am Italian, sometimes pretentiously so. I grew up in a family that identified as such, and it is something I am very proud of. So, I may be looking back here with rose-colored glasses.
Italy is a contradicting country. Everything that makes the country special, the culture and traditions, the history and art, the food, don’t forget about the food, is also the very things that holds it back. An example of this is window shutters. In Florence, every building must have window shutters so that the city maintains its traditional look. It looks great, however, that means no windows have screens, and mosquitos can enter as they please. We fought a losing war with mosquitos all semester.
Another thing that I found interesting if not a little bit sad is how the identity of Italy’s cities is changing. Italy’s economy is not doing well, and unemployment is at an all-time high. That means most Italians don’t actually live in Florence or other big touristy cities because of the cost of living. Rather they live in the outskirts and commute in, while Florence and similar cities pivot towards the tourist. Every other person you met/saw on the street was a tourist, most likely not even being able to speak Italian.
This all being said, the times when I did experience the true Italian culture, it was incredible. Italy is a passionate place. They are proud of their culture and country and love to share it. They are fiercely loving and protective of their family members. My Italian family would talk for hours on the history of the dish they made or proudly talk about their children’s basketball team and dance recitals. I saw a lot of what I loved about my own family in the families I was lucky enough to get to know while there.
Regarding the experience as a whole, I learned more this semester than I did for the rest of my college career. Seeing all those different ways of life is eye-opening. I wish there was a less cliché way to describe that feeling but traveling around Italy and the rest of Europe I learned so much, about my friends, myself, and different and better ways of doing things. Amsterdam and Switzerland showed me that public transportation can work, can even be better than cars. Barcelona opened my eyes to foods my uncultured ass didn’t even know existed. I didn’t even know Prague existed before this trip, and it was one of the most alien yet welcoming cultures I visited.
It seems surreal now. That I woke up and lived in one of the most famous cities in the world, where people like Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo lived. We got drinks in the shadows of Palazzo Vecchio, ate dinner right across the street from the Duomo and played poker on a balcony overlooking the city. If money was not a problem and my friends and family were nearby, I could have lived there forever. Until next time.
If you would like to read up on the entirety of my time there, I created a blog just for that trip. You can find it through one of the buttons below.
If you are going abroad, I created a google maps link with notes of all the places that either my friends and I found or were on one of the many lists alumni of the program have made. You can find it here. Make sure to try Sandwichic.
2019 in Review
From January 1, 2019
The theme of 2019 for me was travel. I was lucky enough to travel all over the Pacific Northwest, my home of California, and all over Europe. I did a lot. Here’s a quick summary of it all and what I have learned.
The year started off with lacrosse. I returned to school early and out of shape for fitness camp, which was a fun wake up call. The season was a blast though, even though we had to travel most of it. We traveled all across the Pacific Northwest, from Missoula, Montana to Seattle, Washington, to Boise, Idaho. That might have been the last season I played for the Zags, (The team has gone under due to financial reasons) so I’m glad we ended on a high note.
Despite traveling almost every other weekend, I managed to rush Alpha Kappa Psi Business Fraternity. I learned a great deal professionally and met some incredible people. It was one of the best decisions I’ve made in college. Since I went abroad this semester, I still haven’t had a full semester as a member, and I am looking forward to coming back as one.
Summer was just as busy for me. I started work at the Banana Republic as a Brand Associate, which basically meant I was supposed to stand at the entrance and look pretty and greet everyone coming in. I think I did a pretty good job. I also worked the cash register and standardization for a while. I was great at the register; I was terrible at folding.
I also turned 21 this summer. I’m told that is a big deal. I got to celebrate in Vegas which was a lot of fun with my family and my grandparents. My grandpa taught me how to play poker when I was young so it was pretty awesome to play together in Las Vegas of all places. I lost a lot of the money I made at Banana there.
Early July I quite Banana to start The DISC program at UC Berkeley. I wrote a lot about that experience here. I learned about urban planning, land analysis, and architecture from some incredibly smart experts and met some awesome people from all over the country and world. I actually visited one of the friends I met there later in the year in Barcelona. I also get to say I graduated from UC Berkeley.
I traveled a ton this summer. I was all over the Bay Area with my DISC program, but I also made several trips down to LA, Sacramento, and up to Bodega Bay. I logged a lot of miles in my beautiful truck, ending it with a quick 17 hour trip up to Spokane at the end of the summer. The West Coast has to be the best place in the world to road trip and was one of the things I missed most while abroad
Abroad was the biggest part of my year by far. I’m writing a stand-alone piece for it right now, but I am having trouble with it. It’s hard to capture the experience solely in words. Right now, I will say that it was one of the best times of my life, I miss it dearly, but am happy to be back home. I will link the article here when I have finished it.
It seems cliché’ to say, but 2019 was the best year yet. Here’s to the next decade.
Summer 2019
Oh, look it’s a blog. Yea, I’m writing on the internet now. I don’t know what direction it will take but for right now it’s just for fun. Also because it looks great on resumes, but mostly for fun. And for my resume. This blog at the moment is going to be personal updates on my life, but will hopefully grow in the future. Or might not, we’ll see I guess. Here’s a summary of my 2019 summer to start us off.
This was the longest summer of my life. Not in a bad way, but with the extra three weeks I had at the end from going abroad, I had a full four months of summer with some change. I tried my best to fill those months with things to do, rather than sit on my bed all summer refreshing Twitter, and I think I did a pretty good job. Here are some notes from Summer 2019.
For some reason I cannot comprehend, my cousin convinced me to get a job in retail. I do not like shopping, and I definitely do not like retail. Job is a job though, and early May I walked into Banana Republic for my first couple shifts. Despite being out of my element. I learned a lot. I got a good deal of experience running the counter and roaming the floor, which improved my sales skills, and I also got to work with a lot of awesome people. Great experience overall, but I do not think I will go into that industry.
I turned 21 this summer, which I’m told is a big deal. I still feel weird drinking in public. It’s like you have been driving illegally for the longest time, then all of a sudden the DMV sends you a driver's license without having you do the test. Some people I think should have to pass a test before being able to drink. Anyways, I got to go to Vegas for the first time to celebrate with my family and grandparents. I ate good food, drank a little more than I should, and definitely lost more money than I was planning on. The most interesting part about Vegas is just watching everything that is going on. Seeing the way of life, the glamour and glitz, but also how the entire economy is based on eating unhealthy food, getting drunk, and gambling money. And you see literally every race, rich and poor, right next to each other. It's just a weird environment that would be out of place except for a few certain places around the planet.
I got to play a whole lot more pickup ball with my buddies this summer, which was awesome, even though I’m garbage now. Like, my shot is broken. Most of my friend group isn’t playing basketball anymore, but are still connected to the game in some aspect, whether it's the manager for their college team or just glorified intramural bench players. We used to play at our local park, but one of our friends who is a manager attends a college close by, so we all got to go play in the Saint Mary’s gymnasium once the team was done practicing. I'm super lucky to still have my friend group, most of whom I’ve known since the 5th grade. I know a lot of people sort of drift away from their hometown friends after starting college, so I am really happy to still be able to see these guys as often as I do during the summer. Those were some fun nights.
I mentioned in a previous post that I was able to attend the UC Berkeley DISC Program for several weeks in July and August. While the commute there each day could have been better, the program itself was incredible, and I got to explore a lot more of the town of Berkeley. Even though my Mom and her siblings went there and it’s a world-class institution 10 minutes down the road for me, I have never explored it and was happy to do so this summer. Check out that post here for more on the program, or check out the program’s official blog here.
That was all the important stuff. This summer was one of my favorites for sure, hell it's the only one I’ve ever written about. There were a lot of other fun times as well, Outside Lands with some of my best friends, going to Disneyland with my sisters, or just hanging out with my buddies and getting into trouble, but I have to finish this article. I’m finishing writing this the day before I leave for one of the biggest trips of my life. I will be spending the next three and a half months abroad in Florence, Italy, with some of my best college friends. If you would like to follow along, I created a whole new blog just for it in which I will update consistently and thoroughly and definitely will not forget about. See you next time! Or not, nobody is forcing you to read this.