Category Archives: Transitioner

About transitioning from college to the workplace, moving, buying a house, and other adult things. Effectively “real life.”

Personal Manifesto [Draft]

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I’ve been working on a personal manifesto on and off. I came up with another iteration tonight:

I will always look upon the world with fresh eyes and fascination.
I will not judge what I see, but I will remember it.
I will think outside of the box.
I know that the people around me are the most precious and important thing.
I will be loyal and supportive. I will be sincere and trustworthy.
I will be passionate and excited to learn, create, and improve.
I will always blend learning and creating. Neither exists in a vaccuum. I will learn from what I make, and make things in my learning process.
I will reflect on what I create.
I will not leave myself exempt from this process. I will reflect.
I will have a strong sense of self. I am Ellen Chisa.
Thoughts?

Carless in Seattle

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For the first time in my driving history, I am carless 1.

When I left Michigan, I gave Grover, my trusty Hyundai Sonata (blue) to my brother. His lease was expiring and I fully intended to get a new green, manual-transmission Hyundai Sonata, and name it Oscar.

First my rational for not getting a car was “I’m going to start work first.” Then, “I’m going to find an apartment first.” Then, “I’m going to wait until my parents come to help.” By that point, I was five weeks into my Seattle career.  Since I was already five weeks in, and I’m only here for two years, I was basically already 5% through my Seattle life. If I made it 5% of the time without a car, could I make it the whole time?

Then, I realized this was even easier if I joined ZipCar.

But, there are a few times one might want a car, but here there seem to be solutions around them:

  1. Commuting- Microsoft runs “Connector” shuttles that conveniently drive you to and from work. If you miss those, the public 545 bus does the same thing.  The only problem is when I don’t leave work until late, and then keep procrastinating going home. Since I have an office this isn’t actually a big deal.
  2. Going to the East Side on weekends- I would never do this. I like hanging out in the city better. Invalid scenario. (Ok, and if I really had to, there are buses).
  3. Driving within Seattle- the buses are awesome. I don’t have to worry about parking. It’s great.
  4. Shopping- Zipcar!
  5. Trips- Luckily, my friends have cars. If we want to go anywhere far away we can. Like how we’re going to Ikea later!!!!!

So,  procrastination has resulted in a situation I never thought would happen.  Sometimes I miss driving because I like the act of driving, but I haven’t actually needed a car for transportation.

1 Well, that isn’t strictly true. My first semester at Olin College I was carless. The first two months I was too excited about being at Olin to want to go anywhere. After that it was approximately like torture. My very friendly parents delivered my car shortly thereafter. Anyway, since then, I’ve always had my trusty car.

Parents!

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Again.. lack of updates. Since the last, both Kyle and my parents have visited.

We achieved my mom's lifelong dream of going to the fish locks.

I attempted to photograph the Seattle skyline from a moving car.

Holy crap Giant Octopus! Best part of the aquarium.

More updates tomorrow when my parents leave :)

Packing List: Moving to Seattle edition

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My Life, in four bags.

Things I am taking to Seattle with me:

  • Almost all of my dresses/underwear/skirts
  • Some pants and socks and such
  • Suit
  • Toiletries/Make Up/Jewelry/Straightener/Curling Iron
  • Checkbooks, hiring paperwork, maps to where I am staying.

I don’t know. It’s not much different than packing for a trip. I probably forgot at least twelve important things I’ll be buying.

Transitioner Tip (#1) – Have a list

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Okay. So, as long as I have all this paranoia about graduating and starting work, thanks to SCOPE… I might as well use some of it to be helpful for other people.  Part of why I’m traveling alone is to figure things like this out, after all.

So the first thing: Make a list of things you want to do, or people you want to do things with. Transitioners often become lonely because their friends aren’t in the same places and they are tired. The best way to fix this is to do something that’s immediately doable, and relatively low activation energy.

So, I decided to come up with immediately actionable things to do… I’m starting to make a list, and I’ll share part of it…

  1. Have coffee with [insert name here].  There’s about 10 people in Seattle I know of, but don’t know well, that I’m excited to actually meet.
  2. Read a book.
  3. Go shopping for [list of things I want for apartment and clothes].
  4. Find a new place to “be a regular”.
  5. Plan one of the trips I want to take [Boston, SF, home, Milwaukee, Chicago...]
  6. Contact somewhere to start a new/continue a hobby [flying, scuba diving]
  7. Study for the Series 7 examination
  8. Build an arduino project (chumby project)
  9. Go to bed!! (This usually happens to me at night, I should just go to sleep and start something the next day).

Hopefully I will add to this.

LASIK

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I’ve been graduated for a month, and yesterday I finally got around to having LASIK, or, Laser… no idea what the rest of the letters stand for. Basically, Laser vision correction.

  1. The actual LASIK part was terrifying. They put me on Valium and I was still so full of adrenaline and fear that I was shaking the entire time.  Completely needlessly, as it didn’t hurt at all.
  2. Step 1 was applying the suction and getting everything lined up.  This was the hardest part for me, as, if you know me well, you know I tend to be constantly scanning/looking around. To do this properly, your eyeballs need to stay still. This resulted in a lot of the Dr yelling at me, a lot of me trying to be calm and doing it, and generally failing.
  3. Step 2 was making the initial flap in the cornea and putting bubbles under it. This felt like a lot of pressure on my eye from the suction and machine pressing down. Afterwards was weird, as everything goes incredibly blurry due to the bubbles under your cornea.
  4. Step 3 was pulling the flap back with an instrument. It’s really weird to be able ot see someone pressing on your eye with an instrument but not feel it. This was another part it was important to be still during.
  5. Step 4 was the actual laser, it smelled like burning and sounded like machine gun fire. On the uptside, it felt like absolutely nothing.
  6. Step 5 was rinsing my eye out with water and putting the flap back into place and smoothing everything out.

So, anyway, you often hear that LASIK takes only 5 minutes. While the part with the laser isn’t so long, I was probably back in the surgery room about 45 minutes in total to get it done on both eyes.

Since then, I’ve spent most of my time asleep.  I came home, slept, woke up for drops, slept, woke up, made my brother drive me toa  24 hr mcdonalds to get food, slept, went to the eye doctor, slept, and I’m up now. This is the first time I’ve actually felt like doing something, and the first time I took off my mask:

Anyway, expect more blogging about being a transitioner and my vacations sometime soon, after my eyes are less scratchy and nearby things are less blurry.

graduation events

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Dinner #1: Capital Grille with family and Zach! Including graduation-themed glitter and a private room.

Dinner #2: l'espalier with family, sam and meera, stephen's girlfriend amy, scott, and alyshia! delicious cocktails (rhubarb-flavored!)

Denial: Alyshia and I pretended I wasn't actually graduating, and mixed our playdough. Take that, constraints! Then an aardvark attacked our snow people.

Graduation! We were looking into the sun.

When I left for college, I bought blue and grey pumas. This has been my style of shoes for years. As an homage, I designed converse in the same colors. Goodbye favorite pumas! Hello, new shoes! Hello, Seattle!

(If you couldn’t tell, I am a big fan of using the literary device “bookending” in my real life).