Well. Freshman year has come and gone and it did not go the way I expected at all. I guess we rolled with the punches as the old folks like to say. I think though, overall it was a very positive experience. Expectations vs reality were totally different, but honestly it was okay, reality sometimes is wilder than fiction and in this case I definitely feel like it was. I realized things about myself that I hadn’t before and found a niche for myself at the makerspace. I decided to stop working on the rocket in leiu of the makerspace, ( in hindsight a 10/10 decision), failed a class, and am now in full experimentation mode.
Oh also. Ya’ll ever just look up at the sun? I had no real appreciation for sunsets until this year but they’re majestic now that I look at them. It strikes me as one of those qualitative things that’s changed about me, that I can’t quite quantify. I definitely feel much much more mature. I always felt like as a kid, success and happiness in life were always quantitatively measured but now I’ve realized it’s more qualitative and that being present in the moments that matter is much more important. I didn’t particularly enjoy being a kid, so as far as I was concerned, the single most important thing back then was making it to a better future, but now that I’m older and independent, I’m much more relaxed and don’t really care much about the future anymore. I feel as though I’ve achieved a quiet contentment with life. Really looking back on my former years, ( and I can’t speak to how widely applicable this is), but my extreme future thinking was mostly a coping mechanism. Now that I’m better I don’t necessarily look forward to the future as much as I just…try to enjoy the present.
Hanging out with friends in the makerspace, checking out the sunsets, building cool things, meeting interesting new people on the daily…. Heck, that’s pretty great, it’s really really hard to beat that. I feel blessed and extremely grafetul. I feel like, above all else, the feeling of satisfaction and growing into my own skin being comfortable with who I’ve matured into is definitely up as one of the best things to come out of this school year. We had some pretty rough spots, but we rolled with the punches and came out of the tunnel stronger than before.
I’d like to elaborate on what growing comfortable in my skin has meant for me. And in short it means that I now know what I like and dislike, in terms of mannerisms, activities, and just my personal preferences. I previously had low resolution pictures of what this meant for me, but growing up and moving to a place with more independence gave me a much more high resolution picture of what that really means. It helps that for the first time in a year, I had a routine of directing the makerspace. It became my job and I quite enjoy it. It became much more concrete compared to being ‘rocket man‘ which maybe was just a stepping stone along the way, honestly don’t care too much for what the destination is, but am very pleased with this part of the journey.
I’ve recently entered a new phase of exploration. Which is what I think college should be for everyonw fwiw. Having this makerspace has allowed me to expirment with different products and ideas and ways of doing things which all lead me farther along my journey. Now that we’re a few months deep into this, I’ve realized that the right way all along to think about the makerspace is that it’s critical infrastructure. It’s not meant to be profitable, it’s not meant to be a major catalyst for changing the world, it’s not meant to boost my resume ( if this works, I won’t need a resume where I’m going), but it’s meant to be somewhere where people can learn and experiment by building things and meeting new people. That’s it. No more, no less. And anything above that is icing on the cake and extremely pleasing as far as I’m concerned. It’s been a lot of fun starting this up and I’m looking forward to continuing all the crazy fun shenanigans that we do day in and day out.
Let’s talk people. Freshman year would not be complete without talking about the friends we made along the way. I met most of my friends in….very serentipitous situations. Michael I barged into his room, Matthew and Michael met via a Kurgseggat meetup, Lucian we discovered by chasing down his roomate on his janky DIY ebike and I met this new guy by buying fire extinguishers from him recently. It’s just loads of fun truth be told and you never know how you wind up meeting your closest folks. Just keeping your eyes and ears open and staying curious, you’ll find wildly interesting people. People are interesting in a way, specifically everyone has a journey they’re on, consciously or not, everyone you meet has been somewhere, done things and experienced things that shape who they are and these experiences combine into infinitely unique and interesting people. I used to think that interesting people only existed at the tail ends of bell curves, then I realized I was thinking in too few dimensions. Conceptually speaking, there’s multiple, maybe even an infinite number of bell curves on which people could be at the tail end of. Now for each bell curve there’s a point at which each person is and each person has multiple bell curves on which they could be at the tail end of the distribution and the intersection of excellence in multiple fields leads to wildly interesting people. Now this is all a very conceptual way of thinking about this and not particularly useful, only mildly interesting, but the short version is, people are interesting and you should listen to them more. Given a long enough time with a person you’ll learn what makes them special and what makes them tick. You’ll learn what you and them can individually and collectively tolerate out of each other and the environment around you. You’ll realize if you can become and continue to be friends. You’ll realize if you can synchronize wavelengths and create something greater than the sume of it’s parts.
Note, this is not the only metric by which you should gauge people, but there’s much more to it than I care to compress into these words. Now to be clear, not every person on Earth is interesting. I’m saying that the number of people that are interesting in a given landscape is higher than you’d except because of what I just explained. No, if everyone was interesting, then the word would lose it’s meaning. Generally I like to look for people who build things, or do things of their own accord that aren’t just blindly following others. Typically that’s who I’ve best gotten along with, and the easiest way for me to find common ground with strangers.
First group of friends was my roommate and the guys I met at the mosque. All of whom are of excellent character and fellows I’d like to spend more time with, but got sidetracked from. Then I infiltrated Tamu RED and found David and Joseph, who seemed to be the most competent people in the room and the most open-minded to some non-stereotypical aerospace expertise and critique. I found them to be very interesting guys and recruited them to my fledgling rocket team (which is now in hibernation) and David was our very first makerspace member, so we’ll always remember him for that. David was the only person in that room who showed up with something that he had built and immediately stood out for actually caring, showing curiousity and being willing to experiment on what he was working on.
And then there was Steven. Steven’s a character. A great character. A behind the scenes kind of guy who’s biggest talent is talking to people. He’s like Bob Ross, except that you’re the canvas, and he paints by connecting disjounted parts of what you know and like and he helps you explore yourself and what you want to do, expsoing to you what ideas have been put in your head by other people and are not what you truly desire. Steven’s been one of our biggest fans and supporters and he came and visited me for the first time in October for a week and crashed at my place. That proved to be…. a shockingly catalytic experience, because he taught me the power of just collecting cool people in a room. As part of his time at A&M, I tried to connect him to all my friends and show them to him and have everyone talk and have him work his magic. So I just wound up having multiple social events in the span of that one week, where I’d just invite cool people for pizza at my place and we’d talk and observe interesting things. Little did I know those socials would later blossom into the makerspace as we know it.
It went from those socials to weekly socials around odd places on campus, shortly thereafter, we raised the famed makerspace round ( ykw, I’m just calling it that now, can’t stop me) and decided to get a bigger storage unit to see if anyone actually gave two hoots. So we got a 400 sq. ft. unit and we started assembling a mini-makerspace which proved highly interesting to the small group of people we were showing it to and convinced us that this indeed was something people wanted, so we spent all winter break looking for properties remotely. Michael found our current building in an obscure loopnet listing ( seriously Culpeppers that thing sucked lol), it was totally unclear what the property was, or how big or much of anything. One thing led to another, and we got the space. Now it’s ballooned into the icon it is today. ( hey the rest of the world may not think it’s an icon, but in my heart and in the hearts of those around it, it sure as hell is).
There’s a certain quiet peace about the place in the mornings empty that I can’t properly describe with words, although pictures I think could do it justice.
Now we’ve slowly grown and staff and members have all begun trickling in. Our media game is lowkey atrocious, but it’s okay, I think the growth has been just fine as we figure things out. Besides, we’re getting better at it. At the makerspace we’ve got a pretty cool friend group going with the staff and some regulars, honestly refreshing and entertaining. Besides, growth hasn’t felt forced, it’s felt quite organic.
You’ll notice. I did not speak one bit about my classes…. I will not change that. They truly were not at all in any way shape or form interesting. Except for one entertaining class, which was Urban Planning 202 with Dr. Wen. That class was fun and engaging and let me have a creative outlet. I don’t vibe well with classes that don’t allow me a creative outlet. I wrote 2x 13 page essays for this class. What was requested was 3-5, and 5-8 pages respectively. I really like writing, when it’s about things that are interesting or allow me to express my creativity in some form or fashion. The rest were honestly not relevant or pleasant.
School is interesting to me at least for one reason and that is the buildings are pretty. Not from the outside in the slightest. I think that A&M just got a really good deal from one drowsy brick supplier and got way too comfortable with what may honestly be the ugliest color brick known to man, but on the inside the buildings are interested and multifacted. There was a time, before I built The War Machine ( my desk lmao) where I would study on campus and I really enjoyed studying in places where I shouldn’t be, including but not limited to: inside the art gallery presentation room in the architecture building, in many a random empty study room which I just waltz into, right across the hall from the ILSQ makerspace ( it’s not open yet and I have very little info on it) mostly to spy on them.
I have fond memories of sneaking into the AERO building basement and meeting what may have been the most uninspired and depressed graduate student of all time ( no judgement, but truth be told he wasn’t working on particularly interesting stuff) and clowning around campus with the 2^n wheel gang.
I gotta explain that one. For a while, me, Michael, and Matthew ( makerspace directors), had 3 different modes of transportation. Matthew rode a OneWheel, Michael rode a bicycle, and I rode a skateboard. The number of wheels we had was 1, 2 and 4, leading us to very naturally name ourselves the 2^n wheel gange. Now Michael rides a onewheel so the rule is broken unfortunately. A hobby of ours was riding around at night, exploring Aggie Park and random buildings. PS 10/10 park btw, honestly baller. Loads of fun to ride around in and hang out at.
I enjoyed eating a ludicrous amount of mcDonald’s and Taco Bell which expose to me just how real estate is about location and truly not much else. I could go to 50 different restaurants within a 10 minute walk. But you know what, why would I do that when I can skate to mcDonalds in 1.5 minutes, have my food and be back at the shop chilling with the homies in 4 minutes flat? Seriously the location proposition there is crazy. It inspired me recently to think of a plan to redevelop our local mall into a crazy high density mixed-use center, with apartments galore in the top floors and parking lots, with grocery and various activity shops/businesses downstairs. This would be so much fun. I haven’t got the slightest idea how much it would cost, but if I go into real estate this is the caliber of project I’d like to take on. I’m just so much more vested in this kind of thing rather than cute little suburbs.
I discovered a love for commercial real estate. Let me say this plainly. I love commercial real estate. You have very few people to whom you are liable. 1) the landlord, 2) the city. That’s it. Our landlords are great, they asked a whole lot less questions than residential landlors and approved us quickly. We both are clear with each other on our goals for the property and so so long as we continue paying rent, everyone is happy. It may not come across it in the text, but getting into a commercial property was counterintuitively way easier than a residential one. No guarantor necessary, slightly more insurance, but just a general $1m policy works just fine. It wasn’t particularly hard to get either.
Overall. This year was a blast and I’m now entering a phase of exploration and attempting to start businesses making things that people want. I’ve started making tshirts and my next project is to make a set of cornhole boards.
I feel like I missed something, but it’s time to wrap this essay up. In conclusion, this year was a blast. It was a time where I quietly grew into my own shoes, and made peace with who I wanted to be. It was a time where we spread our wings and left the nest for good. It was a time where we stumbled towards an unknown destination, but made friends along the way with whom we’d smile and who’s company we cherish. It was a time where we started something new, something bigger than ourselves, and learned valuable lessons along the way, trial by fire style. It was a new experience in a place that now feels like home, that quenches all the pains of the past.
Cya,
Ismail
Congrats on your freshman year dude. What a year. I remember your senior year post and it's all crazy how everything connects even those random socials ended up being the whole maker space. Who knew you'd be opening a maker space this this time this year, everything happens for a reason!!! Take care and cheers to more adventures