Before I entrenched myself in the political rant of last entry,�I mentioned a few random updates which I had never elaborated on. So here is my elaboration. One thing I noticed since the anniversary of Ray's death was the absence of "the death wish". It's ironic in a way that his death triggered not only an elevated awareness of my own mortality but also some twisted desire for my life to end as early as possible.

It's more or less the same reason I transferred from a large, very good all-boys high school to a much smaller, mediocre coed school after Freshman year. I was basically following the person who most closely resembled my best-friend, Ray. I was a socially awkward loner who was barely without friends and though I would have had a better education at the larger all-boys school, somehow the move towards Ray was the better move socially. I became naturally absorbed into his social life especially since I got my driver's license and my car first. And the rest they say is history.

Something similar happened in college. I was at a crossroads with my college career, I didn't know what I wanted to be in life so I somehow made the mental leap that I wanted to become a dentist just like Ray. He was becoming a dentist because both his mom and dad are dentists and it was only natural he would inherit the practice. I was becoming a dentist because A) I was a science geek and B) I envisioned a life where Ray and I would be business partners. Back then it all made sense.

So I transferred from DePaul University a selective college to University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) a state college with a much less selective entry criteria to pursue a pre-dentistry/biology track. Things were coming along relatively OK until Ray couldn't keep up with his grades and had to transfer out into a community college. Actually I hit my own impasse at that school as well. I had an insanely difficult time with Calculus and Organic Chemistry and that's when I began realizing that the school I transferred out of (DePaul) was in many ways a better school than I wound up in (UIC). The class sizes were smaller around 30 students instead of an auditorium of 500 and I didn't have to deal with Teaching Assistants whose first language was obviously not English.

But anyway the point which I so aptly digressed from is that I've patterned some of my most major life choices around Ray and in some twisted partially conscious level I wanted to follow Ray into death the same way I wanted to follow him into high school and later into college. I guess now I'm beginning to realize that I have my own path to follow. It may have started alongside Ray and converged at several points, but eventually the forks and the twists and the branches had made own path a unique one, despite how much I wanted it to parallel with my cousin.

As tempting as the probable void of death may be and perhaps the possible reuniting with Ray's spirit, I'm starting to realize that this is my time, this is my life and the path that lay before me, however separate it is from Ray is the one I must take. I may die tomorrow or I may die when I'm 100+ years old, either way there's no sense dwelling upon it. Death will catch up with me eventually, to constantly wish it upon myself is probably not the best way of taking advantage of this one and possibly only life that I am going to have.

I guess one of the reasons for this shift in thinking is the fact that I am very close to completing my degree. Speaking of which, I got my final grade for that last class that I was worried about failing. I was hoping for a C- but was fearing I may have gotten a D. It turns out that I got a B as the final grade. I guess I was fearing that the professor would give me a lower grade if I couldn't get a certain portion of the code to work, when actually he would have raised my grade if I actually had gotten it to work. Not only that, he accepted the second to the last assignment as my final project as well. I guess I added enough functionality to that last assignment, that aside from the last portion of code, it qualified for the final as well. I guess it also helped that I had something to show during the presentation in the last class. Some people in the class came in empty-handed for the last day, so I'm assuming there was also a curve that helped leverage my final grade.

The bottom line is despite life's strange twists and turns life seems to actually be going my way. Not only do I pass the course, but because it's a B I can apply it towards my graduate pursuits. You see, in the graduate curriculum you need a B or better in all the prerequisite courses. It's the university's way of milking more money from it's grad students, but not only that, I think it makes the grad degree that much more valuable. Still, by some miracle, even the really tough courses I wound up getting at least a B if not an A in all my required courses which will make the transfer of credits into the grad school very sweet.

It's not just that one B however, if I hadn't gotten laid off from work, there's no way I would be completing my degree this quickly. Somehow it was a blessing in disguise. In a few weeks, after this summer session I'll be down to 2 courses. I'm almost amazed at how things have fallen into place, how I was able to get a job that financed my education for the last 4 years, how I got laid off right at the twilight of my undergraduate career, how I found an internship at almost exactly the right time for my summer session and how my mom who always complains about being poor suddenly has enough money to finance the last few quarters of my education. I never dreamed things would fall so easily into place, but they did and I guess this helps this newfound appreciation that I have for life.