Hello, my name is Nick Rodriguez, and this is my last first blog post in the Marsh Vocation Internship blog.
I am a senior here at Boston University studying Computer Engineering(woot woot Senior Design).
This year, I am the President of SojournBU and the Vice-President of EpiscopalBU, two of the Christian student groups on campus. They are both great and I am thankful for the community I found there.
I am also an undergraduate teaching fellow (really, I am just a Teaching Assistant, but my old school professor calls me a UTF) in the College of Engineering in an introductory engineering course where students build their own musical instruments and relate it to electrical-acoustics and engineering design. It’s a lot of fun; I get to help students build ridiculously cool instruments and I also get to teach them about circuitry and machinery.
It’s nice to be back on campus. This past summer, I spent my time on MIT’s campus at iD Tech Camps (think like really geeky summer camp with educational coursework) as an instructor teaching a technology course to Middle Schoolers about computer architecture and programming in Python. It was a really crazy and fun course — we would build laptops using the Raspberry Pi micro-controller. Then, we would install a lightweight operating system (a version of Linux) onto them. Finally, using a Python development environment called IDLE, I would teach them as much about Python (a high-level programming language) as I could fit into a week, and then they would make a final project. The friendships I helped build, the information I could teach, and inspiration into STEM that I could give to my students gave me life, and I am really glad I got the opportunity to work there. It was really rewarding when I could see the impact I had on others.
This year, for my internship, I am helping with Children’s Education at Marsh Chapel and I am also helping with leading MOVE (the Marsh Organization for Volunteer Engagement). I am extremely excited to work with the other interns and staff at Marsh!
It’s a little crazy — and slightly frightening — to be a Senior. I have one more year until I (ideally) obtain my undergraduate degree and move onto the next stage in my life. I have to already begin my planning, but I am still not entirely sure where I am going. I know I definitely want to stay in Boston, but I don’t know what I am going to do, and how I am going to mix my eclectic passions in technology, theology, philosophy, and education together.
But that’s okay. I am sure it will all work out.
Over this past year, I have noticed I have grown a lot, and I have certainly become more sure of myself. I think I can finally make sense of what I was trying to say in my introductory blog post last year. I will be completely honest, I have been pulled into the present ever since my summer as a Student Advisor at Orientation(shout-out to Summer ’16). It has been since then that I have been much more alive as a person and feel genuinely like myself.
I have begun to genuinely feel like myself. It’s as if I am now more Nick than I was before. Like I am right now who I should be.
I have changed as a person, I have grown as a person, but I have not lost sight of who I am. In fact, I feel more like who I should be than I have before. This is what I think Jon Bellion meant in his song “He is the Same” which I talked about a year ago in my first blog post.
See, Jon has recently become a much more famous artist, but despite his newfound professional growth, he has not let it get to him, and he has stuck to his values and beliefs. He is still the same Jon Bellion.
So, yeah, here I am. Sitting next to my girlfriend Sarah in the basement of 518, waiting for my laundry to dry and doing homework. Each moment is passing by, and there’s an energy about this semester. Where is everything headed?
I honestly don’t exactly know, I just pray I keep sight of what matters to me and move forward with the life I have been filled with.
And interestingly, the song playing in my headphones is “Don’t Let Me Fall” by B.o.B.