Leap Day, 1992

My e-mail alert from Timehop arrived today noting that a year ago today...did not exist. I don't, however, need an e-mail to tell me what I was doing twenty years ago today. I was in a hotel in Athens, Georgia...just hanging out.

I always want to do something interesting with Leap Day, but I never do. This year, I have toddlers whose care is more important than any goofy plans. In 1992, I visited the University of Georgia to see about going to graduate school there. Actually, my visit was earlier in the week, but I stayed until Sunday to get the cheaper air fare. So Saturday the 29th I just hung out in my hotel room.

The previous day, Carl Pomerance (who would later be my advisor) invited me to go out to dinner with John Selfridge, who I think was visiting before going to a conference. I figured they couldn't possibly want an undergraduate at dinner, and he was just being polite, so I didn't go.

I ended up enrolling at Berkeley for graduate school, where I was fairly unhappy. After a year, I transferred to Georgia, only to find out that people there were in fact nice enough to want an undergraduate at dinner with them.

Skipping Georgia for Berkeley is probably one of the bigger mistakes of my life. On the other hand, I still got to go to graduate school at Georgia, and even got to hang out with Selfridge a bunch of times. I guess that goes to show that even when I've made mistakes in my life, things have turned out pretty well.