February 21, 1997

Worcester!

I went to grad school at Worcester Polytechnic Institute, graduating in 1993 with an MS in Mechanical Engineering. There wasn't much to do for grad students there, which is probably why my grades were better than they were when I was an undergrad!

My second year at WPI, we had a very snowy winter, and I finally mustered up the courage to learn to ski. Wachusett, a great small ski area, was only a half an hour away in Princeton, Massachusetts. If you haven't tried, it's much easier than you think. I only wish I had started sooner, especially since it's much cheaper to do when one is a student.

Want to know how not to defend a thesis? A few fellow grad students and I wrote the list when we were in one of our silly moods (which was a common occurance). We posted it to rec.humor and rec.humor.funny back in 1993, and since then it's been copied to hundreds of web sites all over the world. This is the "official" one, though.

WPI is located in Worcester, Massachusetts, the second-largest city in New England. Really. It's actually not that bad a place - it's pretty safe for a city that size (about 170,000 hardy inhabitants), and it's close to nearly everything New England has to offer. But you probably can't pronounce it correctly unless you're from around there.

And they finally got around to renovating Union Station! Hooray!