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Lehigh

This week we played Lehigh and ended up winning 32-0. Despite the seemingly big win, I feel like I did not have my best game, but I am excited for the chance to improve. It is always better to learn from a win than a loss.

Personal Updates

I will start by addressing how I did in the game. I feel like it was a very strange experience to be back on the field again and playing against people I do not know live on TV when the stakes are high. I was lucky that this week's opponent was not as strong as some of our other opponents down the line, and I was able to work some of the kinks out without having it cost the team in any serious way. Actually playing live football for the first time in 22 months was a good wake-up call for things that I need to work on and focus on if I want to hit my goals for this season. All in all I think that I would give myself maybe a C for the game, but at the end of the day, a win is a win and I am happy to be sitting here at 1-0 and complaining about some things that I think I could do better than having a perfect game and losing. I only have 9 more games of college football at a maximum, so I will enjoy these next 9 weeks as I am sure they will fly by.

I was able to have my first religion class meeting this past Monday, and I am excited about this class because I will learn about religion in a different context than I ever had before. It is a seminar-style class so there are long readings and a lot of discussions which are really helpful because many of my classmates are religion majors, or have studied various topics that we touch on in the class in great detail so I am able to learn a lot from them. I also was able to meet again with my thesis advisor this week and also a staff member in the library who is extremely helpful with acquiring the data necessary to start working on my thesis. I will create a game plan for my thesis and try to get rolling during this next week. 

Books/Other

Similar to last week, I really have not found time yet to continue reading, but I have been able to keep up to date on the two main podcasts that I have been listening to, the Daily Stoic, and The Investor's Podcast which also includes their Bitcoin Fundamentals episodes. I have also had time to sprinkle in some more episodes from Huberman Labs which I find very educational and informative. I have a lot of reading that I am doing for my classes this semester, and there is always more to do, so I do not think that I will be able to get through many (if any) books that I am reading simply for pleasure. 

I am reading probably pretty close to a book a week if you were to sum up all of the readings across my classes, so I am definitely engaging with new information and keeping up the habit of reading every day. I am also pretty happy to find that pretty much all of the readings that I am doing for my classes are very interesting to me and I think I can learn a lot from them. In the past, I definitely approached the assigned readings in classes as optional and tried my best to avoid spending the time to do them. It worked out decently well and I was able to get by sufficiently, but so far this semester I have been good at keeping up with everything, and I am hoping to continue that for the next 2-3 months.

Gratitude

This week was the first week that we were able to open up my eating club and also the first time since being back on campus that I was able to participate in a typical night out on campus which I have not been able to experience since March of 2020. I feel like my social life was pretty limited throughout the pandemic, only hanging out with several of my close friends that live nearby and communicating virtually with various friends across the country (or in other countries). It was nice to be back on campus and be able to hang out with everyone in person again. I am grateful for the opportunity to be in close proximity to so many people and be able to have close social interactions again. Although I am taking it slow and getting to know all of the different people on campus, I am confident that I will build a lot of new relationships over this next year which is one of my goals.


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