New Post (and a Slew of Questions)

It has been far too long since my last post, and it's about time for another one. One month later, and I still have no idea where this is going. But, at the request of others, and my own commitment to this exercise, I vowed that I would spit out some string of meaningless phrases by midnight tonight.

So, to be completely cliche, and quote Carrie Bradshaw herself,  let me say that "I got to thinking about fate." Carrie calls it "that crazy concept that we're not really responsible for the course our lives take," but I call it "that thing that just confuses me because how am I supposed to make decisions if everything is going to turn out the same way in the end anyway." Or is it? To me, it seems like going in two wildly different directions would lead to two wildly different results. That seems to make the most logical sense. For example, wouldn't it be likely that my career path would be different had I gone to a small liberal arts school rather than a large university to major in engineering? Sure. But if my ultimate goal is to start my own company and make my own stamp on the world, wouldn't that be the result of either education? A-ha! Fate...? Or just the result of a one-track mind? So, if every path leads to one end, why does it matter what I do now or how I do it? Shouldn't I just pick the easiest major, spend less time studying, and wait it out until that I reach that end eventually? I guess that's just not who I am.

But last week, I had an idea. I was sitting in my Systems class, and actually enjoying what we were learning. Professor S was wrapping up his topic on Heuristic Methods, talking about the dilemma of the traveling salesman, and optimizing the open or closed path of travel over a given number of cities. His example was a puzzle; and I like puzzles. This doesn't happen every day, but every once in a while, in some class, I'll find something that sparks my interest. Then, I thought, what if I wrote these all down and found some common thread between them? Would I then know what my underlying interests are? Maybe. But what could brownian motion, heuristic methods, puzzles, game theory, fractals, and computers have in common? The irony here is that I believe the connection lies in Systems Science & Engineering. Fate? I think I'm going to have to let you decide.