Today in the library we were talking to Ryan, who is in the midst of the job hunt for something to do after he finishes his Master’s. He explained that his choices were either Boeing in Los Angeles or Los Alamos National Labs in New Mexico. Then he carefully added that in L.A. he could live on the beach…but he hates the beach. He loves the mountains. So he figures he can live in L.A. and have no mountains but lots of single women, or in Los Alamos and have mountains, but no single women. I was taken aback that the presence of single women played so largely into his plans, but to everyone else this seemed normal. Now that I think about it, I guess his view is not so bad. No job, no matter how great, could make up for a lack of social life, and I suppose dating is a big part of social life.
Unless you are me. Ha ha.
In other news, today I read about “El Palo Alto.” I knew that the city Stanford is in was named for a tall redwood (“el palo alto” means “the high tree” in Spanish), but I didn’t know the tree still stood. A flood in 1887 knocked down half of it, but it said the other half is still standing beside a creek at one of the corners of campus. So now I have a new mission — I want to go see El Palo Alto! Tomorrow I am going to find the redwood.
Another interesting thing I learned was that Leland Stanford, who founded Stanford along with his wife in the name of their dead son, was quite a cool guy. He grew up in New York but moved out to California around the time of the gold rush. He campaigned for Abraham Lincoln and then was elected governor of California. He made his money in the railroad business as president of the Central Pacific Railroad Company. Mr. Stanford was the one who brought the famous golden spike to Utah when the tracks met to complete the transcontinental railroad, and it turns out the golden spike is actually not in the ground at all, but in a museum here on campus. They had tapped it into the ground in Utah but were careful not to dent it, then they took it back out and Mr. Stanford brought it back to California.
I just thought those stories were so cool. Stanford has so much history! Not that Georgia Tech’s history isn’t great…but Stanford’s is so much more exotic.
