The Life of Ryan

So, as my life entry on 4/17/2003 hinted, I got a job lifeguarding at the YMCA for the entirety of the summer. I started out just lifeguarding, and then, after I receieved my WSI certification, I began teaching little kids swim lessons. I really hated the teaching because I never prepared for my classes, which would've been just fine if the parents weren't hovering over me watching me come up with new things for their kids to do. On top of that, sometimes I just couldn't come up with enough to fill the 30 or 45 minutes I had to teach. I loved teaching the kids, but teaching just put more stress on me than I wanted (though I am lazy, so you could tell me to clean my room and it would put more stress on me than I wanted).

Anyhow, all throughout this time, I was spending much time with my core bros and not doing too much else.

Then, about a third of the way into summer, my job became not just lifeguarding and teaching, but helping out with a YMCA camp that focused on pool activities. I also provided before and after care for the kids [before care ran from 6-9am, the camps ran from 9-3pm, and then after care happened until 6 - I didn't work all those hours, but I worked quite a few of them.] This became my main job, and through it, I worked 40-50+ hours per week. It was a lot of hours, and it was tiring (sometimes getting up at 5:30 after I had stayed up until 2 watching Adult Swim at David's house), but looking back on it, I loved it. I got to interact with the kids and show them the love they sometimes didn't get at home. I also got paid for splashing around in the pool and playing Othello ^_^.

Since the YMCA job had decent pay and I was working a whole lot of hours, sometime midway through summer, I finally paid my truck off! Having the truck is nice, and being able to pay for it is nice, but the time when I didn't have a job really made the whole financing experience a bad one. Though God provided, I was afraid He'd let me bite it since I didn't need the truck and buying it was a very poorly-though-out decision. It'll take a while before I put myself through that again.

As the YMCA camps came to a close and most schools started their Fall quarters, the YMCA relegated me back to lifeguarding and teaching lessons (but not as many lessons as before). Also, my friends and I hung out less and less since Jeremy went back to Harvey Mudd. (Jeremy seems to be the glue that binds us all together - he has motivation to organize stuff, the rest of us are lazy.) Also, my brother went off to college at Chico for the 1st time. As people were leaving all around me, my time to leave loomed ahead.

It was then that my future roomate, Monty (the same one from Palomar's swim team - in the Aquashape Journals. Henceforth I shall refer to him as John.) and I decided to start looking for places to live when we moved down to San Diego. (We both registered to go to UCSD in the fall, if you were wondering why we wanted to move.) Having only one roomate makes rent very, very expensive, especially in La Jolla/San Diego. So, everywhere we looked, our eyes bulged out of our heads at the price. We finally settled on a quiet complex less than 2 miles away from the school; each of us got our own room and the place was overall a decent size.

Shortly before John and I signed the lease on our apartment, I worked my final day (thus far) as a YMCA employee. Thus, jobless and about to pay way too much for rent, I prepared to move down to San Diego and start school.

I moved down to San Diego on Sept. 15 and moved most everything down that day, with my mom's help (thanks Mom!). I discovered in moving that I have a lot of big, unweildy possessions, but after much lifting and soreness, I had moved down all I needed for survival (actually, a whole lot more than I needed) and was ready to live "on my own" for the 1st time.

The 1st week, I had yet to assemble my computer desk and we had no Internet service, so I had lots of time to read. Most of that time, however, I just wasted playing single-player computer games. During one of these sittings, I tried to do too much with my computer at once and I killed the hard drive. Now, I had everything for this website, a lot of music, some cool programs, and lots of other stuff on that disk, most of which I had neglected to back up. THIS IS THE MAIN REASON I DIDN'T UPDATE FOR SO LONG. There's my excuse, and restoring the disk costs so much money! I planned to restore it sometime (I still plan to sometime), but never had enough money to pay for the restoration.

School's "0 Week" started on Sept. 22, where new kids can go on campus and check out a bunch of clubs advertising themselves and handing out promotional material. I knew the 1st thing I had to down in San Diego was find a church and also to plug myself into a Christian group (on-campus). I also wanted to go on-campus so I could check my email and such (since my computer was dead!). So every day, I walked on UCSD's main walkway ("Library Walk") and signed up for information from various campus ministries and accepted fliers for other ministries. Crossroads Campus Ministries (CCM - one of the ministries that gave me a flier) hosted a bowling night on the Tuesday of 0 Week, and I decided to go. I really liked the people in CCM, and so I decided to attend their general meetings. Also, another campus ministry (IV - Intervarsity) contacted me about a Bible study every Monday for the sub-college (Warren) in which I enrolled, and I decided to attend that, too.

I had a campus ministry and a Bible study, but no church. However, a number of people from CCM attend Lighthouse Bible Church, and one of them offered me a ride to church. Turns out, Lighthouse was just the church I sought. They teach straight from the Bible and strive to uphold the truth in love. During the Fall sememster however, I split my time between Lighthouse and my parents' church since I went home about every other weekend. Nonetheless, God answered all my prayers about finding ways to deepen my relationship with Him down in San Diego.

Actual classes started on Thursday of 0 Week and were far less interesting than what was happening in my life otherwise. In the beginning, I had class every day and even went to discussion sections! For my classes, I had CSE 21, 140, 140L, Math 109, and ETHN 121. The CSE 140s were a circuit-logic combo lecture and lab class. CSE 21 was a kind of survey on a bunch of general Computer Science topics (as Computer Science is my major). Math 109 was about writing proofs and ETHN 121 was a study of Contemporary Asian America (and Americans). Eventually, I stopped going to discussion sections since they were extremely unneccessary. So, I had a semi-busy schedule with class in the middle of the day every day, and then IV Bible study on Monday nights, CCM on Thursday nights (to which I was an hour late every time because ETHN 121 conflicted with the meeting time), and church on Sunday afternoons. My schedule remained like this throughout most of the semester.