Hung Truong: The Blog!

The Costs of Internet Fame: SI Visiting Days 2009

March 23, 2009 | 1 Minute Read

So I met some cool prospective students (I call them n00bs) of the school I go to for the annual visiting days. It’s funny to talk to them because they’re pretty much in the same place I was two years ago. It’s nice to answer questions and help them make the hard decision of what the heck to do about grad school. Personally I couldn’t be happier with the way things turned out, so I generally say good stuff, but I guess I could also tell them to leave and never come back if I wanted.

Anyway, it seems as though I’m the only person who ever wrote a blog about applying to grad schools. Because a lot of people who meet me at visiting days tell me they’ve read my blog. This is kind of weird and kind of flattering as it means my page rank for certain queries is high, and also that these people know stuff about me before even meeting me. One guy even knew about my side project, Anime Nano and listened to my podcast! I playfully referred to the people who knew me from the internet as my “stalkers.” Hopefully I won’t ever have real stalkers. The crazy kind. Anyway, it wasn’t weird hanging out with these people or anything. I was actually pretty stoked to meet a “user” of one of my sites in real life! Plus I’ll never actually see these peeps again since I’m graduating before they come here.

And yes, I intentionally titled this blog post to get another entry high in the Google query for “SI Visiting Days,” though it seems that one of my peers is beating me at the moment.