Otis Otieno

In my three years at Caltech, I have learned one undeniable truth: winter terms are the hardest. If you aren’t grinding through core requirements, you’re battling the occasional rains and winds. If not the weather, then some burning bush (literal and metaphorical). The moral is simple — in winter, things just happen.

“I’m going on an adventure,” shouts Bilbo Baggins in the first moments of The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, after accepting Gandalf’s request to join the dwarves. A huge Hobbit fan, I’d never given the line much thought.

I am a big believer in destiny, that commander of events that places people where they need to be exactly when they need to.