Hello everyone!

First, you should know that I'm typing one-handed, so please forgive my typos.  Second, yay, I'm still alive!  Surgery went well (mostly), and I am on my way to recovery.  I am very grateful that my dad has been with me since surgery, helping me in every step of the way.  It's already tough enough managing pain and being one-handed, but doing things with my left hand has made everything even more difficult (and even impossible for the first few days).  Luckily, dad has been there to take care of me.  Besides resting and sleeping my dreams dry lately, I've also used my newly acquired two weeks off to catch up with things I've been putting off, like doing my taxes and completing my citizenship application.

As a very random coincidence -- or a blessing perhaps --, Calvin College had a campus visit for engineering students today that I would have otherwise been unable to attend.  I am very impressed with the engineering program at Calvin College. The international options and design emphasis really got my attention.  Calvin has study-abroad and international internship opportunities in China and Germany, both of which sound amazing.  I also sat at an electronics class with a professor who really knew what he was doing, and who seemed to care genuinely about his students' success.  I loved the class itself.  We covered something about feedback circuits with transistors.  The fact that this is a Christian school just made the day even better -- including the lively service at the chapel and how good-hearted most people seemed.  Anyway, I really enjoyed my visit to Calvin.  I really do wish that my job would allow me to stay part-time so I would not have to leave work to attend Calvin -- a dangerous thing to do in today's economy.  I was accepted to Calvin not too long ago, but financing it is definitely a big issue.

As far as Purdue goes -- that is one school that I am very excited about.  Purdue's Technology Management master's program looks extremely fun, especially the statistics, research, experiments, leadership and thesis/project classes.  The program sounds like the perfect mix of technical/scientific classes and leadership classes to help me advance in my career.  Plus, since it's half online and half on weekends, I could still stay at Spectrum Health learning Informatica and Business Objects while writing some very cool applications in ASP.NET.  Plus, I would not feel like I'm not learning anything beyond the books like in other online classes because I would actually have some face-to-face time with the professors.  On top of all that, Purdue University is a top-notch school, so I am sure the classes would be challenging and interesting.  That means I would not get bored, like I did at Davenport University and Grand Valley State University.  The only thing that's killing me is the suspense of not knowing yet if I will be accepted or not.  I can't wait!

If I had the means, I would absolutely love to attend both Purdue and Calvin.  And then, I would go to Carnegie Mellon or MIT for robotics so I could later build space robots and write poetry for a living.  But that's just me dreaming.... All right, back to la-la land it is.... zzzzzzzzzzz

I am officially registered for surgery on this coming Thursday.  All I can say is... crap. This is scary. This is very scary.  I know it's probably not a big deal, but I just can't help but think of the thousand little things that could wrong.  I feel like this is more of a test of my faith than anything else, and I'm barely passing it with a C and about to drop out with a WP. :(  Seriously, I'm freaking out.

I really, really hope that everything goes well, and that I will finally be pain-free.  This hand is killing me, so I really want to get surgery done and over with, even if the mere idea of having it scares me to death.  Well, I guess it's time to take a deep breath and trust that God will guide Dr. Condit's hands.

Gabriel out.