New! Super Mario Desk 2: Yoshi's Island

I got a hand-me-down desk today that a family member wasn't using, thus I completely removed my old black desk. This one is white and a great deal smaller, but it gives my room more room and somehow finally gives me space to have a paper and keyboard in the same space. I can finally do physical homework with a keyboard in front of me. As I'm writing this I'm procrastinating on my chemistry homework. 

This is pretty much all I have to share today. 

Math Books and "Calculature"

You can infer from my most recent YouTube post (https://www.youtube.com/post/UgkxcWlsbQ-UTqbLsD7ipZcJYUlmtPIhrzZ6) that I'm sort of looking over the next concepts of math. And perhaps the only, only thing that is appealing about opening this book is the gloss of the pages. 

So I scrapped that and left the book siting open on my desk. Later at a track meet, a friend (who's in BC, super smart) helped me understand how to do it a little bit better. Another (BC) teammate told me that learning stuff from a textbook is hard because it often makes easy concepts sound/look much more difficult than it really is. That made sense. When I looked back through the book at the theorems and definitions I already know, the verbiage and notation were pretty confusing. 

This isn't to say learning via a book is impossible, but maybe it would help to use it in conjunction with the limitless (pun intended) online resources. Or, you know, just register for a college class if you want.

If you're going to be a senior in high school someday, I'd strongly recommend taking AP Calc and AP Lit concurrently if your school offers it. That way you can say you took "Calculature". I know some students get ahead in math and take Calc before their senior year, but at the very least, I think that AP Lit should strictly be a senior course at ALL schools. 

As a bonus, here is the math my friend did during the meet: 

IIRC the question is on the left side, and anything that seems like nonsense is because it's other work from other questions or just explanations.

Don't accidentally

 Don't accidentally spill some 6M hydrochloric acid on your finger. It feels like pineapple on your tongue, on your finger. It should make sense to you why it feels like that. Still, scary!

A thought that rushed in and intertwined with me

Isn't it so characteristically American to gawk over Fridays? I guess I'm feeding into that—and flexing my American muscle—since recently I've thought of how satisfying the past Fridays of this year have been.

After admittedly being thrust into a zero period by a mistake of my own fault (that still angers me to this day), the world nearly crumbled around me. I couldn't bear the thought of being forced to wake up early for something as repulsive as math, let alone calculus. Despite my complaints and childish protesting, I did have to be the one that drives themselves to school to do calculus at seven in the morning. 

Looking at it now, it's really not that bad. I drag myself out of bed at around 5:50 AM to give plenty of time to eat and drink coffee, leaving the house at about 6:55. Every morning, without fail, I squeegee the dewy windows of the car before heaving my backpack into the backseat. Then, I plug in the iPod shuffle into my auxiliary cable, flick the seat heaters to full blast, and clutch the parking brake down as it disengages with a click. Normally I would scoff at a methodical, rigid routine like this, but the fact that it hasn't really changed at all is the only source of comfort I get from this zero period. No, I'm not autistic, I just like stupid shit like this that I can think about later.

Twisting between the windy heights is a rare time to let my mind wander as I stare at the yellow line dividing the empty street. I love the distinct sound of the car's engine only audible in the quiet side streets. Maybe this is the only reason that makes me want to go to zero period to learn about stupid derivatives. 

Fridays, on the other hand, are a nice change of pace. It's the only day of school I can sleep in, since school doesn't start until 9:00 AM. 9:00 AM! In my case, it's a weekday that has the faint taste of a lazy Saturday morning (another defining feature of this blog and my channel). I love seeing the sun almost fully risen when I wake up, and I love being the last person to the leave the house.

The drive to school is energetic and void of that dreary morning sky. An elementary school near our home is about to start, so naturally it makes me happy seeing all the families walking to the school with their children tagging along. When I arrive to school, the parking lot has a "high-schoolly" bustle and a good mood that's absolutely missing on a 7:00 AM Monday morning—obviously. Once I'm done saying my hello's and jumping between the passenger seats of cars, I head inside to the busy quads of the school just as the first bell rings...

I can almost feel the weekend.

I get it: my little pleasures of life are soon to change when I get hit with the reality of the real world. Still, allow me the time to enjoy it one last time like all my other peers.

A video...

My revelation on what to write about today came to me this evening. I just saw a video on YouTube that angered me a bit.

It was of some chump who ranked popular extracurricular activities in high school on a scale of 1-10 based on how good they look on an application. Already, the premise of the video is extremely generalized and reeks of clickbait. How is it possible to casually rank random, unorthodox extracurriculars on a frustratingly simplistic scale? (It's not). Chump, we're not ranking someone's looks. You're ranking activities with depth, layers, and complexities you didn't bother all to mention in your 1 minute video.

The chump claims they collected this information "based on years of direct conversations with admissions officers, thousands of real application files I’ve analyzed, and repeated patterns I’ve seen while helping students earn spots at top universities", but what I fail to understand is how the vast amount of alleged data they've gathered is adequately packaged into a one minute video and reflected across the mere 8 activities mentioned in the video. Regardless if her "advice" is good or not, it is misleading and shady to make a video essentially slamming some extracurricular with a simple line like "almost every above average student is in it". What if they've done considerable work while in it? What if they were in other activities alongside it? What if it was the only thing their school offered? None of this is considered, and the activity is simply ranked at a 3/10. I don't think it's fair to dismiss an activity you find generic or "boring" because a lot of people are in it. Again, even if it is generic, there wasn't enough in the video to discuss the layers or why it may be considered that way. Looking at it as a whole again, I don't understand the point of this video. Are you trying to instill fear in people that did 3/10 activities and cause unnecessary anxiety? Are you trying to brag about yourself by ranking activities you likely did at 10/10? Or are you just trying to make money and be an influencer?

One might argue that a smart, capable student (who obviously wishes to go to an Ivy League) is probably able to deduce that the specifics and exceptions are missing, but that doesn't dismiss the fact that the video itself is wholly unrepresentative of the true process of fleshing out one's extracurricular choices and how they choose to display that on the application. Seriously, what normal student looks at some stupid video from a chump on the internet and decide "Duuuuuuuuh... Guess I'm not doing that..."? (I hope you're able to tell that I'm being facetious).

Unrelated to this, you probably suspect that I disagree with a lot of the push to race for top colleges. If your portrayed journey on that application is untrue to yourself, your identity, and your being, then what's the damn point? Many of the comments on the video focused on the fact that you should do what you like and what truly represents you, because you shouldn't waste your years doing otherwise. I know some are going to disagree with me on this. I know that for some, getting into a dream school is pretty much their only purpose in life from birth to senior year, and whatever happens after is...unknown. That's okay. Please continue to have your opinion.

This is a short rant that I wanted to do just from that video. I think it goes back to the issues of short-form content that plenty of people have noticed, and in this particular case the unnecessary glamorization of college admission and this sort of mentality of one-size-fits-all in being admitted (This is this chump's entire online persona, and probably their personality for that fucking matter. For god sake, there is more to life than this, and really who are you as a person when you're suggesting people essentially give up their soul in a not-so-obvious-but-obvious manufactured "blueprint" of college admission journeys instead of just letting them grow themselves? Wow, it's ironically the most backwards and controlling thing to suggest something like that when the chump's supposed purpose is to encourage students to authenticate themselves and show that to colleges.). The fact that it's allowed to be up and circulating is kind of disheartening.

Above all else, be careful what and especially who you listen to—even me.

My Reliance on Coffee

Have I not made it clear that coffee is a huge theme of this blog and my online personality? If not, I'm here to drill it in again.

It was just one of those Mondays, because today I left the house for school without my coffee. With my luck, this was only apparent when I was well past the "point of no return" from home to the school. Cue the audible sigh. I know that this is probably the most minor first world problem you've ever heard in your life, and I hear you saying "Quit your complaining", but honestly this morning sucked without it.

I am obviously well beyond addicted to coffee, so this morning felt extremely sluggish and irritating. Coffee gives me this little kick inside me to make me actually (sort of) want to go to school and pay attention in class. It was all too noticeable when I didn't have it; today I felt lazy and bored in class.

To make matters worse, the effects of my lack of caffeine carried on throughout the day like an annoying little parasite. I had a headache the entire day and a much higher appetite than usual, since I guess coffee curbs your appetite as well. Knowing the demoralizing effects of a coffee-free life, I think I'm going to keep drinking it and turn a blind eye to those who claim it's bad to be addicted to it at my young age. 

And tomorrow morning, I'll be sure not to forget it this time.

Procrastinating

As I procrastinate my assigned text, East of Eden, I've been practicing some of my own writing (usually in the form of prose) while watching videos and browsing online resources on creative writing. I'm both surprised and not surprised at all the complexities within creative writing. 

I like to draft up contemporary fiction short stories for nobody to read but myself. They are flawed, horrible, and probably embarrassing, but it's a good way to see how the things I learned can manifest themselves on the page. Like a bit of a caveman, I'm writing them with pen and paper. To be honest, this isn't something new that I'm trying now––I've actually been doing this for a while since I first tried my hand (get it?) at creative writing. I have an entire folder on my computer titled "Creative Writing Projects" where most of the drafts and copies are handwritten at first. I vowed that the folder should never see the light of day, but I doubt that anyone will be able to read my shitty handwriting anyway.

Frequently I hear the argument that handwriting slows down the process significantly so that you can think more about what you compose on the page, and that by not using a computer, you're less tempted by all the distractions that can pull you away from staring at a boring looking Google Doc. For me, though, physical writing allows me to easily share my work with the one of friend at school who I'm comfortable sharing my shit with. Plus, I feel more accomplished having a few sheets of written paper that I made organically versus a screen that has no tangibility or sense of "realness"(?) to the work. 

Some online say that writing by hand caused them to refrain from erasing or changing work too much while drafting, but even when I write by hand, I still find myself crossing out words, sentences, and sometimes paragraphs as I draft. By the time I reach the bottom of a page, it looks like a chaotic mess of ink. I don't find this troubling, though. Other manuscripts from famous authors like F. Scott Fitzgerald show intensive crossing out and erasing, which is basically the same as if you're pressing delete or ctrl+x on a computer. But again, it's more intentional and permanent; you will forever see the points in which you are doubting your self or where you significantly reworked a scene. The good thing is is that it's never truly gone like it would be on a computer. 

None of it's bad. Part of the creative process, I think, is fucking up a lot and fixing it and fucking up even worse than what you did before and realizing you should've left it...etc. Whatever method of writing or drafting of a creative project that works best for you is the best.