Traveling light

I'm only taking the 2 bags above for my 2-week trip to Europe: a laptop bag and a small carry-on. If it weren't for my summer internship at BCG, during which I learned the joys of traveling light, I probably would be checking in a bag full of stuff I don't need.

I've traveled with just these bags before, but it has never been for anything longer than 4 days or so. This trip is going to be a nice way to hammer out any issues before I do the same on my 3-week trip to China. Fortunately, a ton of people have traveled with much less for much longer and shared their experiences online and in person (thanks Vanessa!), so I've been able to draw on their accounts to get ready.

For example, I'm only bringing dark clothes that all match with each other and can be layered. Most of the clothes is light and dries quickly. I've packed a small bottle of dishwashing liquid so that I can wash clothes in my hotel sink every few days and plastic bags of various sizes in case I need to travel with wet clothes. And I know that if I can't find a hotel for some reason, I can always resort to sleeping in airports.

I'm sure that what I've learned so far is just the tip of the iceberg. I can't wait to try it out and learn even more.

This is how much grad school cost me

I spent some time today updating my rough approximation of what I spent during grad school.

	Food	Bills	Misc	Total
Q1	$1,601	$6,566	$13,225	$21,392
Q2	$1,354	$3,551	$4,953	$9,859
Q3	$1,183	$3,682	$1,887	$6,752
Summer	$1,802	$5,823	$8,019	$15,644
Q4	$2,478	$3,964	$3,518	$9,961
Q5	$1,924	$2,990	$2,973	$7,888
Q6	$1,754	$3,436	$1,856	$7,045
Total	$12,098	$30,012	$36,432	$78,541

*Totals may not add up due to rounding

When you include tuition, the tab comes out to roughly $180K. It's a lot of money, some of which would have been spent regardless of if I went to grad school, but as far as I'm concerned, it was a great investment.

...now to climb out of this hole.

Scala & Kolacny Brothers 'Creep' cover

I love a good cover song, and this one is pretty darn good.

It's a cover of Radiohead's Creep by Scala & Kolacny Brothers that was used in the trailer for The Social Network.

From their bio page:

Scala & Kolacny Brothers take classic rock and indie songs and reinvent them as elegiac hymns – to breathtaking effect – with the piano often the sole accompaniment to the voices.

Enjoy!

Travel plans are coming together

I thought that I would end up traveling abroad during grad school a lot more than what I actually did, so now I'm trying to squeeze in some quality travel time before I start working.

Although the details are still mostly up in the air, I'm pretty happy with the overall schedule. At this point the plan is:

• London w/ GF: 7/2 - 7/6
• Paris w/ GF: 7/7 - 7/11
• Copenhagen w/ GF: 7/12 - 7/16
• China: 8/29 - 9/19

All of the flights and hotels are booked for the Europe trip, and there are enough well-known tourist sites on our agenda to pretty much consider that trip planned.

China, on the other hand, is a complete blank slate. Outside of the flights, I don't know what I'm going to do out there, and I'm not going to plan much outside of the first few days in Shanghai. Instead, I'm just going to play it by ear and see what happens.

Needless to say, I'm very excited about both trips.

The progress principle and my recent graduation

I just finished grad school a few days ago, and the week leading up to graduation, one of the most common questions that I got from friends and family was "How does it feel?"

I think they wanted to hear something along the lines of "It feels amazing. I can't believe how happy I am. This is awesome," but instead, my responses was "It doesn't really feel much different than any other day." That isn't too say that I wasn't relieved and happy to graduate, but it wasn't an overwhelming or lasting sense of additional happiness beyond my standard setting.

It seems like some of my friends felt the same way, because I heard from a few of them that finishing school was melodramatic anticlimatic more than anything else. I think you expect to have this rush of happiness after you take your last final or hand in your last assignment, but it doesn't appear.

I recently started reading The Happiness Hypothesis, and I came across the progress principle, which I think helps explain why that rush of happiness doesn't come at the end. The idea is that:

Pleasure comes more from making progress toward goals than from achieving them.

I'll save you from all the details of why this is true, but they are in the book if you are interested.

So, the next time you set out to accomplish some goal, remember to enjoy the journey to the fullest, because that is where you'll find the most happiness waiting for you.