Wolf Can Fly, Too

It's kind of weird how being an engineer sort of takes the humanity out of you. We were trained to be objective, impersonal, rely on hard data, and question every single assumption, every guess work. It never occurred to me that the very live I was training to live is slowly pulling me away from people. You see, a human being cannot survive and retain his/her humanity without some sort of human interaction, and that is exactly what being an engineering graduate student is deprived of. I did not realize the severity of the situation until I found out that a close relative of a friend of mine, who is like a big sister to me, has recently passed away. I could not, for the life of me, think of any word of comfort that I can say to her other than “I’m sorry”. I guess I simply lost the ability to offer comforting words throughout the years. Graduate school kind of take the life and dream out of people, there’s always a project to finish, a deadline to meet, homework to keep up with, and conferences to prepare.

I have heard that there are people who can offer comfort to others through words alone. I wish I can do that, since I am so far away from all my family and friends. There is so little you can do when you are so far away. I just wish I can be right there for her, but all I can do is a few lines on MSN. Life sucks, being a graduate student in engineering sucks, but there’s nothing I can do about it, so I’ll just stop complaining and go back to work, and try to think of something to say to her when I finally find free time.