my new-found celebrity crush.

I love learning about this president. Nothing compares to what he tried to accomplish and the trials and tribulations of his life and his exuding presence and personality and his vivacity and his views of diplomacy and policy and so forth are so so admirable and though he did have the Irish Aryan upbringing, he still inspires through breaking religious precedents and ethnic barriers. And his being from Boston doesn't hurt my admiration for him at alll.

I can't wait until break when I can just read and look and be captivated all over again by his simple manner of inspiring a country to care about a variety of issues at his library. Seeing what he did, how he started, and how he overcame all his physical illnesses to become this amazing leader of our free world really makes me think that this is not all for naught. this all is for something. this all matters in some way, and there's without a doubt a higher purpose and goal to every moment and path I tread. and though, i cannot BE john f. kennedy --or president at all for that matter (:[)--i CAN change this world and make it better through my existence.

I can affect a tangible change that will last beyond my small time in this earthly world. But thoughts like that drift me far from the sciences and caring about obscure things like "the future of photoacoustic imaging" or how to program a coin game in C++. I have to constantly reassure myself that world-changing is NOT going to happen overnight, and I can't very well drop EVERYTHING to achieve social change. I have to work within the confines of society, for now. I have to think about how to make the best of this situation. I have to, as corny or ridiculous as it sounds, ask myself "WWJFKD?" And though that answer changes, I know that Harvard JFK would make the best of it, even if it wasn't his cup of tea ( like Latin his sophomore year.) It's endearing to know that THOUGH he did not do particularly STELLAR academically, and was a C-student, he was the one who captured everyone's hearts and minds and hope. He had that magnetic personality. Even when he was basically failing Choate, his family and his friends and the administration did not write him off because he had that intangible fire inside him that could not be put out.

I'd like to think I have even a 10th of that-- the ability to make someone's day or light up that moment for them, or the ability to inject hope in someone unable to make it through. And if not, that's something I'd want to aspire to be. Not a title like "professor", or "lawyer", or "doctor"-- just infectious hope. And when I realize that “What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.” ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson I know I'm going to be okay-- what matters is within me- and that's this desire.