Semioverachiever

2011-12-02T14:37:00.001-05:00

The 18.02 tests are getting harder--this one took me 25 minutes instead of 15. Someone else finished at the same time I did (or finished sooner and checked their work) and came down to hand it in. The proctor blinked at him confusedly and said "you're done!?!" Sound carries pretty well in the room, and for some reason people thought it was hilariously funny that someone could finish so fast (at least, that's the impression I've gotten). I'm beginning to lose faith in my peers. About five minutes later, someone else got up, handed his test over and said "That's it! It really is! I'm calling my father today and dropping the hell out of this school." He then chucked his writing utensils into the door and stormed out amid mild chuckling (we are apparently not the most sympathetic sort). It was, overall, quite dramatic. I handed mine in a couple of minutes later. The proctor blinked at me, too (I, erm, may have arrived slightly late) but, wisely, chose not to comment.

Quality stuff, that.

In other news, I failed my first test two days ago (it was, of course, not in 18.02). I'm pretty sure it gave me the kick in the ass I needed to snap out of my complacency, at least as far as 3.091 goes. I've been working on chem round the clock, and I've gotten through nearly a month of material in two days. I haven't started the practice tests yet (I get to take a makeup exam on Monday). And I have to write an 8 page paper for Tuesday (I've started the research phase, and I have a general idea of what I want to write, but that's it). And a physics pset for Tuesday, which I also haven't made progress in.

But it's okay. Life is good. Math is fun, physics is interesting, and next semester I'm taking nothing but math, physics, and an extremely non-intensive HASS class.

I look forward to it. The fact that the physics classes are likely to be quite difficult is irrelevant.

Inappropriate Musings of the Kitchen

2011-11-08T10:00:00.001-05:00

Lionel: But semen is a non-newtonian fluid!
Roger: Know what else is a non-newtonian fluid? Ketchup. Would you like some ketchup with your semen?

Roger's list of his five least favorite substances:

1) fake maple syrup
2) vaseline
3) congealed menstrual blood
4) nutella
5) cottage cheese

Lionel: I agree with exactly one of those.

2011-11-07T15:41:00.001-05:00

I'm writing a paper.
No you're not, Tea, you're writing a blog post.
Am not.
Are too.
Am not.
Are too.
Am not.
Are too.
This sounds like the sort of argument I have with my boyfriend.
Your boyfriend sounds like an idiot.
He's not.
Are you sure?
Yes, he's just occasionally somewhat dense.
I don't think you're writing a paper right now.
That's because I'm not.
Aren't you?
Well, I should be. I just don't seem to care enough about why we got into the Iraq war.
But it's important!
But I'd rather do math! Also, Archie just called me. Apparently he's really dissatisfied with the social scene at his college of choice and is going to try to transfer here. I wished him luck, but, well--transfers here don't really work.
I guess this is what comes of trying to play the admissions game.
Don't be mean.
Why not?

2011-10-22T21:52:00.000-04:00

The weirdest thing about sleeping until noon is that it makes the day feel really, really short.

Basically, all I've done today is play Environmental Oversight. I probably shouldn't have done this--for one thing, I have a mountain of work that I should be doing, and I'm still sick (planning on trying to go to a capella tomorrow, but when I was singing nerdy songs on the roofdeck last night, I only got through three songs before I literally couldn't sing anymore, but that was after a good deal of shrieking (can I help it if I react loudly to tickling?), so maybe things will go better), so running around for long quantities of time was even more difficult than it usually is.

But, it was extremely fun. I need to get better at switching weapons, and at not freezing up...and the endurance thing is kind of an issue, to the point where I felt like more of a liability than a help, though we were down enough people in comparison to the other teams that I was probably more use alive than not present. The world unfortunately did end up blowing up, and nobody escaped, but the red team put up a damn good fight.

Now I'm about to dig into planning my presentation for this Wednesday. Well, I'd been planning to do that, but now I'm thinking I want to head over to EC, especially since I have to get up at noon to get to rehearsal at 1. I really should practice, but I just don't feel like it. I'll pack a thing of post-it notes for tomorrow, then stick them wherever I can't keep up during rehearsal, then grind those spots out...

No, I need more practice. The presentation will have to wait.

2011-10-14T18:10:00.004-04:00

I'm with Leila in her room. We just visited her beloved Starbucks and had a generally wonderful time.

I'm not really sure what else to write about. Rube and I talked on facebook last night--it was totally innocuous, but actually rather nice. I guess this is kind of obvious, since I was friends with him for a number of years, but I really enjoy talking to him.

2011-10-06T00:22:00.000-04:00

I will not fail my physics test, I will not fail my physics test, I will not fail my physics test. Somehow the repetition isn't making me feel any more confident in my abilities.

Imagine a sphere of charge Q. It's big. It's really big. Find things about it. Find all the things. Yes, I mean all of them. What do you mean you don't know what a gradient is?

Math is confusing. Taking physics with bonus math before actually taking the material covered in bonus math was probably not the brightest idea I've had. But if I manage to pass this test, I'll have actually learned things. Well, regardless of whether I pass I've learned an awful lot, it's just a question of whether "an awful lot" is sufficient.

On the plus side, I think I passed the chem test today.

Okay, I'm going to go search for productivity now. Also, worry about the fact that my throat hurts.

Rememory and Sturken

2011-09-29T02:12:00.001-04:00

I was looking through old drafts of blog posts, and I found this one. Apparently I never posted it, or, if I did, I went to edit it later and never put it back up.

I am in their house, his house, but the doors are twice my height. My sisters wear large pink dresses, layers of tulle bursting around their legs. They wobble about, unable to support their heavy crowns. Although I must stand on tiptoes to see over the couch, the dresses are too small. I leave the other girls and go upstairs, looking for him. I find him using the computer in the kitchen. I sit next to him, on the same chair but barely touching, and he shows me how to fight with animated soldiers.

He races up the hill in my backyard and I chase him, trying to release the competitive spirit that he has been coaxing from me all night. He trips over a tree root and slows, I slam into him, we tumble down. He catches himself on his elbows before landing above me, but his leg still comes down on mine and I groan. I look down, trying to disentangle, and I see his pale, pale arms, glowing in the barely-there moonlight.

The moon is above us, and we are silhouetted in its light. I dance down the middle of the street, ignoring the glass shards in my hand, forgetting that I’m leaving tomorrow. I dangle the spicy mint he wants so badly in front of his face before snatching it away as he lunges and I twirl down the street, singing “mine, mine, mine.” He gives up, returning to the sidewalk, but I continue to twirl and joy under the dull moon. Then he is beside me, grabbing me, pulling me over and a car runs by so fast I can barely see it, so close I can almost touch it. He saves me. Our mothers say that now we have to get married, like the rescued damsels in distress do in all the stories, and our blushes are hidden by the dangerous darkness. I still do not give him the mint.

We are back, before it all, in Iona, where the beach is close and the tide closer. My sister hit him earlier, and he didn’t hit her back, because he never hurt anyone, not back then. He has taught me to fight the way I could, has taught me not to flinch from pain by hurling ping-pong ball after ping-pong ball right at me, but would never hit a girl, would never hurt a soul, would always save my life. I trust his goodness. Our families are on the couches, spread out and close together, and we play a card game that is more laughing than thinking. I am wet for the first time. I notice, but I don’t know what it means. When I go to the bathroom later, there is a bloody spot on the inside of his basketball shorts, the ones I wear because my luggage is lost. My mother gives me Motrin and a bulky pad and cleans the shorts and tells me that I am a woman now, and I wear her sweatpants to bed and think but I am still twelve, and I am confused by all this growing up when all I really want is to play another round of cards.

I lie in bed that night in a room with my sisters but in my own bed because now I am special, now I am old. I realize, as the last bit of wakefulness leaves me, that my body has just told me that it is ready for sex, for love, for children. I try to picture it, but I don’t know how. The next day, I examine the books in the house until I find one with vivid sex scenes, perfectly specific, and I read until I can see it in my head and have to put the book down because the image disgusts me.

I am fifteen now and he is naked, above me around me within me, sweating, panting, shaking arms dark and glowing in the dim lamplight. I toss and turn, the visual plaguing me even though it has not happened and is based entirely on imaginings, but it makes my insides warm in a way that no other dreams do, and I decide not to chase it away.

It is snowing, and he is at my house, and we chase and run with a flock of children, throwing snowballs, and I see him break a window but he doesn’t know I saw. When the window is found later, no one ever knows that it was he. He wrestles his sister who is less than half his size after she calls him weak and emasculated and worthless. He is pushing her, tugging her, pinning her down with the arms that hold him over above within me. She claws at him, writhes, but cannot escape, and he tries to smother her with a pillow. I scream.

I can never marry him, never be with him, says my mother, because he is angry and only knows how to hit. That’s what comes of having a father like his.

I am sprawled across a couch in my basement, the gangling limbs that I’ve finally come to control and love and cherish stretching all the way from armrest to armrest. He is seated on the other couch, joystick in his hands, voice calm, steering an animated car around and around an animated track, destroying competitor after competitor as he tells me that he and his girlfriend broke up because he got angry and didn’t know what to do, that it just comes out, that, that now he’s not allowed to drive because his mother saw him hit his sister. “I don’t know why it happens,” he tells me, looking only at the television. “I can’t control it, can’t see it coming, I just get angry, sometimes.”

He breaks things.

We stand in the lights of the subway car, close together although it is late and the car is empty, falling into each other with each bump and curve and turn and stop. His eyes go transparent, the pale green-blue washed out by the bright bright lights, and I can see through him and into him and he is mine and I love him and I want him but I see he is not safe.

I bike down roads less than a mile from home but they are foreign now. I go faster and faster, imagining monsters on my tail, fighting to get away, fighting the urge to go to his house and throw rocks at his window and cry that I want him and need him and beg him to hold me. I cannot go there, cannot do that, cannot let him know because even if he loves me, even if he wants me, I cannot have him. I pedal, and I cry, and I pray, seriously for the first time in my life, that this hurt can go away, that this love can run its course and leave me because I am too feeble to fight him and to weak to let go. I must not love a boy who is dangerous.

2011-09-29T02:08:00.000-04:00

I feel like a hand-height section of my torso around the vicinity of my bellybutton has been filled with knives. I know I'd been saying for the past few days that I'd rather have the cramps than the soreness that precedes it, but at this point I'd go back in an instant.

At the very least, now I'm working on my math pset instead of going to a physics recitation. Which kind of counts as being productive. But, mostly, I just hurt.

That was written a while ago. Now it's much, much later, and I'm back at the dorm, and I'm pretending that it's still the 28th because it isn't 6 am yet. Being silly on Bonfire is a heck of a lot of fun. James continues to be highly ticklish, and Ruby is continuing her efforts to learn what girls James thinks are cute (so far--there is at least one computer science girl at AIS who I also know who is attractive. Also, James doesn't want a trophy wife when he grows up).

In other news, Victor's hair is incredibly fluffy, I babble about things I shouldn't when I get tired, and Nicole squees about gay boys and cats. I squee about astronomy, though (not, as Nicole thought, astrology. Good god...), so it kind of works out.

Now, I really should sleep. Even if sleep is for the weak.

Someone said that in 13 Days, which we watched for my foreign policy class. "Sleep is for the weak." So the statement could not have originated with Becton.

Lowlight of 8th Grade English

2011-09-21T20:53:00.000-04:00

I found, also, the poem I wrote describing my depressive episode during the winter of that year.

Down

You feel down,
Down so low it feels like there isn't any up.
It feels like the hurt
Of all 6 billion people in the world
Has been dropped
On your shoulders,
And it's weighing you down,
Even though you don't know what it is.
You cry and cry,
For no reason, no reason at all, it seems.
You stand on the wall and look down.
You are sad, but somehow can't feel a think.
A voice in your head says jump,
Fall from this wall that you stand on so high
Above a world that can't understand you;
Fall from the people who never even try to listen.
You run from the voice,
But running from yourself you can't get very far,
And it follows you,
Taunting that you are too stubborn to ignore it,
And you are scared,
'Cause even though it says jump you don't want to,
But you wonder,
If you listened,
How long would it be before someone realized you were gone
And that you were never coming back?
You look down at the water,
And your heart says walk until you are gone,
And the voice says let go of everything,
But a little tiny piece of you,
The piece that is the real, lasting you,
Says stay,
Stay in the world that hurts you so much,
Because it's all that you have.
So you sit on the wall,
And cry until it feels like you've cried forever,
Like you've cried out your brain and your heart and everything that is you,
And you turn around and leave.
Go back to your room,
Pretend nothing happened for a little while,
Because you are smart,
And your brain is good,
And nothing can be wrong with you.
So you hide it,
Until you can turn around and cry again,
Because you are scared of yourself,
And you think,
What if I took that razor over there and dragged it across my wrist?
Would I feel better, then?
What if I pushed this hammock so hard that I fell and cracked my head into a
Million tiny pieces?
What about then?
And all those thoughts,
of ending it now,
Freak you out so bad that you can barely think,
But you can somehow still feel the weight of 6 billion frowns on your shoulders.
And you bite your hand,
So hard that your teeth hurt,
And the mark lasts for days,
Because it makes it all go away.
The real pain, the kind you can feel, makes the hurt stop inside,
And you can breath again.
You're still down,
But somehow
It's better now.
It hurts later, but what else can you do?
'Cause the pain makes it better,
So you can stand back up,
And go on until your next down,
When you need to get back up again.
And who knows what will happen then?
Who can say how far you will go,
And how much you will be able to hold back,
Next time?
Next time,
What if it really is
The End?

This was the poem that got me temporarily kicked out of school for being a danger to myself and others.

I wrote, to accompany the poem (and so as to avoid the mess that occurred the last time it was seen), a letter to my English teacher.

The letter is as follows:

This poem is a part of my past. I am no longer afraid of the downs mention in it. I did some therapy and all that, and I am better now. I am no longer a threat to myself. However, the down part of my life is as much a part of me as the good times with my friends and the embarrassing moments in and out of school. It is something I must look back on, not fondly, but as a lesson. That's why I chose to write a poem about it. It seemed like an event that needed telling. Because of the experience, I am more afraid of things (blood, height, and deep water) but it also makes me more aware of myself. The poem is me, but it is not me. I am not "Girl with a Problem," I am myself, I am my life, and "my problem" is no longer even mine. I now handle downs the normal way, with chocolate and a friend (which, by the way, works much better!). Don't worry. I've already been signed off (twice!) as a normal teenager (assuming you don't count my genius, gorgeosity, and sheer superiority*). I hope that you will not judge me for what I used to be. I am the same person you have known all year. Thank you for understanding.

Sincerely,
Tea

*I hope you understand that was sarcasm. I was demonstrating the typical teenage belief of the world revolving around me. Plus, I couldn't resist being so self-congratulatory. Sorry.

Highlights of 8th Grade English

2011-09-20T22:45:00.000-04:00

One of the fun parts of packing for college is that I've been going through every thing I own. This includes schoolwork, straight back through 8th grade, when I first started saving things. I guess I get sentimental about anything I pour that much time into, which, in my opinion, certainly makes sense.

I found a brief graphic memoir from that year. The scanner isn't exactly functional at the moment, so y'all are going to have to cope with me transcribing the visuals as well.

Frame 1: "MOON" [image of a crescent moon, identical to the one in Starry Night, which was above my desk even then], "By Tessa"

Frame 2: "Gym class: it's some people's favorite time of day, but for others, it's a NIGHTMARE! "(Nightmare is written in squiggly, scary looking letters)

Frame 3: "I am a member of the second group"

Frame 4: [Figure labeled 'me' is in a push up position, with lots of wobbly lines around her arms. A male figure is next to me, also in the pushup position, with no squiggly lines. A teacher stands nearby, labeled "too fit teacher"]. The teacher is saying "Down! Up! One!" I'm thinking "But I can't get up!" and the other student is thinking "this is FUN"

Frame 5: "You'd think I'd at least have friends to complain with, but no! All I had was Barbie!" [I'm sitting with my knees drawn up to my chest while a ponytailed girl, presumably Barbie stands angrily next to me, arms folded. Two other girls are standing nearby with their arms around each other's shoulders]. "Oh my god! Did you see Tessa's shorts? Eww!" says the speech bubble for one of the friends. Barbie is saying "Gosh, Tessa! You only ran 5.8 miles! You were supposed to run 5.86. I'll have to tell Mrs. M!" "The teacher's pet was my new BFF," reads the caption at the bottom.

Frame 6: "I asked the guidance counselors to switch my class." [Three heads, in imitation of the gifted students's counselor, the general 8th grade counselor, and the one counselor I was actually comfortable talking to, were interspersed with the following text] "no no no no no no NO no no NO!"
"I was stuck." (the last is in a nested frame at the bottom right).

Frame 7: "So one day in March" [Mrs. M stands with a basketball under her arm]. Her speech bubble reads "Run around the really big field!"

Frame 8: [An aerial view of the field is shown. One fast person is out front, indicated by a circle with a bunch of lines trailing behind it. The rest of the class is in a large pack. Barbie and Me are both labeled near the end]. Barbie's thought bubble snakes out behind her and reads "Gosh, Tessa, I <3 Mrs. M. Do you think she'll give me an A+?" My thought bubble reads "AHH!"

Frame 9: [I've caught up to the rest of the group. My thought bubble reads "Yes! I lost her." There's a trio of boys immediately in front of me surrounded by the words "Do it!", "Dude!", "Yeah!", "Dude!". In front of them, the pair of mean girls from before are surrounded by "giggle!" and "hahaha."]

Frame 10: "Then, the guy in front of me moons me! (and everyone else behind him)." [the three boys have turned to two. One of them has the waistband of his gym shorts below a behind that has been censored by a black starburst]

Frame 11: "My poor eyes!" [An eye is illustrate]. "That was something I NEVER wanted them to see!"

Frame 12: My face turned bright red [a blushing girl with shoulder length hair (the same me I'd drawn the rest of the time) is shown]

Frame 13: I jog past the two boys. My thought bubble reads "Maybe if I run fast enough they won't notice me." The friend of the mooner, though, has the speech bubble "Man! Did you see her FACE?" Nested in the bottom right of the frame is "Oh well."

Frame 14: "I got back first. Mrs. M hadn't even seen. Not that I said anything--I was too embarrassed."

Frame 15: "The image had been seared into my brain. I was scarred forever." [a thought bubble of the butt, still censored]

Frame 16: "I told the kids on my bus after school." [My younger sister, my friend, and our neighbor with his emo haircut sit listening to me. I look despondent.] My speech bubble reads "And then...he mooned me."

Frame 17: "The thought it was FUNNY!" [Five giggling heads are scattered around the frame in various directions, including Mr. Emohair. They are surrounded by a very large number of "Ha"s]. "They were rolling on the floor."

Frame 18: "No one understands my traumatic experience." [I stare out the window of the bus, grumpily]

Frame 19: A small image of a crescent moon on a dark background.

Visits with the Universe

2011-09-18T14:43:00.000-04:00

I greatly enjoyed my time with Priya last night. She's fun--more friend than child, I think.

I'm trying to work out the Trader Joe's shuttle schedule. Well, trying to find it on the internet. Supposedly, if I'm outside of my dorm at noon, it should magically appear, but that looks like the spring's schedule, and I don't know that it continues to be true.

As it turns out, I have too much work to take time out to go grocery shopping. I'm pretty sure that I have too much work to go to the free tango class that Jason wanted to go to tonight. I've been reading my chem textbook since Priya left this morning, and that was more than three hours ago.

In other news, I'm doing laundry again. I really need to buy more underwear so I can do laundry less often, because I still have plenty of clothing left.

I actually spent a good chunk of time yesterday talking to a group that was entirely female--Sydney, Priya, Nicole, Ruby, and Chelly. It was kind of surprising, and the fact that it's surprising is, on the whole, rather strange. I guess my social life has shifted more from high school than I'd noticed up until now.

Fun Times

2011-09-03T23:37:00.000-04:00

I'm really liking this "college" thing. I stayed up until god knows how late last night (interestingly, I also know how late. It was 4:45) doing vaguely crazy things in the wee hours of the morning. I spent my evening first at my dorm eating liquid nitrogen ice cream, then dinner, then doing a couple of math problems (/sitting on the couch and giggling like a madwoman while a number of my male dorm mates did math problems).

I'm trying to tell this in a reverse chronology, which would be confusing enough without taking into account that fact that I am running on a very small quantity of sleep and can't quite think straight.

I ran into Clarence again before the water war--he was at my dorm (which will now and forever be known as Incidental) helping to fill water balloons. One girl was directing everyone about, and, in an attempt to improve my usefulness, she and Clarence decided to attempt to teach me to tie water balloons.

Okay, it's 10:47, which means that friendly toast is supposedly going to be served on Incidental's first floor. I'll be back.

Collegecollegecollegecollegecollege

2011-09-02T21:41:00.001-04:00

My darling blogosphere,

For some reason, I have been too busy having fun to write you messages glorifying the events of a given day. Also, so much happens in any given day that it becomes very difficult to compress it down in a manner that doesn't involve me spending hours writing it down.

We had a volunteering day today, so I prepared and served food at a women's shelter. I feel a bit guilty about the fact that I have little to no interest in continuing to perform community service, but at the same time, I do have reasons. Shelters are, in my mind, like bandages. They're really important, and, if one gets hurt, they're extremely helpful and necessary and important--but they don't actually heal anything. The root cause, the injury, isn't being dealt with. This is basically the entirety of the reason that I'd rather get involved in political activism than in community service. Yes, politics sucks, but I do think that sorting out issues within our government, and working at macroscale approaches to solving crises, is a better option than turning away as many women as you can feed every morning.

If that makes any sense at all.

But this argument only holds if I actually get myself involved in doing something. And, for whatever reason, there don't seem to be any student groups devoted to causes. I suspect I'm going to have to look off-campus for this sort of thing, because, as a freshman, I am not yet ready to gallivant about and actually start things, interesting as that could possibly be.

The activities expo, though? Lots of stuff. Should have been tons of fun, but having so many people hawk things to me makes me uncomfortable. Particularly when I accidentally made eye contact with a guy manning the pro-life booth. And then he started talking to me and tried to get me to come to a picnic and shook my hand before I realized that he wanted to take away my rights. It made me very, very uncomfortable. Which probably means that I'm prejudiced against anti-choicers, but you know what? I have every right to hate a man who thinks he and his unproven deity deserve to have control over my body and those of all other women.

Sketchy Bowls of Coffee

2011-08-28T15:51:00.000-04:00

I have officially arrived at AIS. And it is, to say the least, completely and utterly awesome. My dorm is really, really awesome. The people are really varied. Some of them, at first, were somewhat intimidatingly strange, but I'm already adjusting to thinking of the oddballs as "normal," and I think it wouldn't take very long for me to start thinking of them as friends.

Anyways, I'm trapped here for the day due to the whole hurricane beeswax. I was sitting lazily in the lounge right outside my room. Then I wandered into someone else's room, where she talked about her lab job and what things are available for painting. Then Yuma showed up, and I briefly communicated with him, then left him and Victor sitting in the lounge when I went up a floor to an even that is being called "Physics and Coffee."

I haven't seen any coffee yet, but there are donuts, and there appears to be some sort of donut-shaped cake. Hopefully Yuma is managing himself alright. I suspect he's capable of that sort of thing.

There are a couple of girls here who got temped in other dorms but have pretty much been spending all of their time at my dorm. For some reason, I find them bothersome, but I think that's just because over-earnestness annoys me. At least, I think that's the problem.

Hopefully the physics starts soon, or I have the opportunity to start eating the donuts.

There is an upright piano in the lounge. An international student whose name I've forgotten is doing math on the board. Something about number theory and bose distributions...COFFEE TIME

Advice on MIT's Application (Part 4)

2011-08-24T09:52:00.000-04:00

Describe the world you come from; for example, your family, clubs, school, community, city or town. How has the world shaped your dreams and aspirations?

When my dad was younger, he wanted to learn how the world works. Like me, he would pick apart what objects he encountered, breaking them down to their barest parts, then trying to put them back together.

I used to think that he could fix everything and, while he did, explain how it worked. I learned the names of each of the screwdrivers in his smallest toolbox, then sat beside him as he worked, learning the name and use for each tool. He built me a tree house of sturdy boards, and I sorted the screws and nails and learned which was appropriate when.

I liked the way that what he constructed came together, but the true reason that I tailed him was to listen to him talk. It wasn’t just “hold onto this piece of the air conditioner,” it was “remember how last night we talked about how when something is compressed all the little molecules it’s made of have less room, so they bump into each other more often and get hot? Well without this part compressing the coolant ...”

My father takes broken things and uses them to learn more, and he is willing to share this knowledge and his passion for it. Whatever I could learn, he would teach me, and as I’ve gotten older, I’ve taken this desire to understand the world and what we humans have built in it with me, trying to fulfill it by learning as much as I can.

This essay is what I meant when I said that my love of science is fully evident from all my essays. Also, this (well, a substantially longer variant of this) was what I used as my big-ass common application essay. My college counselor said that it was by far the best essay on my MIT application.

I find that observation...interesting. Like any of my answers, it's brief but comprehensible, getting the job without too much extra fluff--it doesn't seem, to my mind, to be all the special. But apparently the fact that I managed to write about someone other than me but make the meaning about me is impressive. Plus it fits in with what MIT is about--the whole mind and hand thing--and it shows me as someone who cares about her family. From the perspective of someone who doesn't know a lot about me, it manages to say a lot without having all that many words.

Which I think gets back to what I've been saying about choosing the right essays. Any answer should come from you, and should be something you actually care about. But, these essays are a projection of the self. An admissions officer can't see every facet of you from these. It's like when we look at a 3D graph on a 2D screen. Even though we can rotate it to a few different angles, there are still missing, hidden pieces. We can never quite get a complete picture. But, often, with only a few points of view, you can get a mental idea of what the rest of the graph looks like. And that, truly, is what these essays are about.

One tip: don't lose sight of the second sentence. Even though you are describing some element of your home, you are using it as a vehicle to discuss who you want to be. It's very easy, when writing an essay that isn't focused on yourself, to focus on saying something meaningful about the subject, rather than the writer. Ordinarily, you would be trying to find something meaningful to say about that subject—but this is not an ordinary essay, this is a college essay. And college essays work best when you can find a way to talk about yourself without just saying "I did this. I did that. I am really smart. My resume includes the following actions."

So, yeah. That's all I've got.

Advice on MIT Application (Part 3)

2011-08-23T10:13:00.002-04:00

12a) What attribute of your personality are you most proud of, and how has it impacted your life so far? This could be your creativity, effective leadership, sense of humor, integrity, or anything else you’d like to tell us about.

There’s a certain level of skill associated with being happy and sad at the
same time. It’s a skill that I have, during my seventeen years, managed to
perfect.

This ability to hold a dichotomy of thought is something I’m proud of. I’m
fairly certain that it stems back to celebrating both Christmas and Hanukkah
with my family when I was younger; I was taught that each holiday was
simultaneously true and false. Perhaps it comes from the emotional truth that
each carries for a consummate agnostic, but I’ve never felt any particular
problem in accepting a holiday when I don’t believe its religious
underpinnings.

In Orwell’s 1984, I found a word for this: Doublethink. However, Doublethink
in the book is a monster, used to control the mind rather than free it. I can
see quite clearly that when doublethink is used with respect to the laws of
physics, it’s wrong--as a scientific thinker, that’s entirely obvious--but at
the same time, when taken with respect to emotional truths, which can exist
in one thousand states and one, it’s given a wholly different power.

It’s my tiny portion of doublethink that allows me superstition while
forbidding it truth, that lets me contemplate the existence of fairies with
my younger sister while knowing they’re not there, that lets me laugh
maniacally with my friend because even while we are mourning the recent
tragic loss of her brother, sad to an unknowable degree, we can feel, at the
same time, the glowing happiness of life.

I thought of this one as my chanciest essay--it's definitely not a conventional answer, and the fact that I had to devote so many words just to explaining my idea of doublethink meant that it didn't have any of the narrative flow of other responses I considered. The last paragraph is a bit too flowery--using both "tragic" and "sad to an unknowable degree" is excessive. Honestly, I would have preferred to use the other essay I considered for this, which I'd written about my struggle to become outgoing. I was advised by a college counselor not to use it--admitting to social difficulties, she said, would set off a red flag in the reader's mind that I might not continue to overcome shyness at college.

I preferred that essay because, in my mind, it demonstrated an accomplishment. The doublethink essay seemed overly intellectual and excessively philosophical. I did end up using a variation on this essay when I applied for the Thiel Fellowship. There, I was given 2000 words and told to discuss a unique belief. I was able to sound much less proud of the accomplishment--I'm generally not comfortable with pride, except when I truly feel I've accomplished something, and that doesn't really happen all that often.

My internal musings, though, hardly qualify as advice.

To that end--choose something you're actually proud of. Trust me, it was a lot easier to write the essay about the outgoingness (which I am proud of) than to write about the doublethink (which is interesting, but not something I have to work for, and therefore not something I take pride in). I suppose, though, that the advice of my college counselor stands--pick something positive. Avoid setting off red flags.

Another note: I wouldn't worry if what you're proud of is one of the ideas they gave. It's like fan fiction that is entirely canon but told from a different perspective (guess how I've been occupying my free time...)--it's the way the story is told that makes it interesting.

Advice for MIT's Application (Part 2)

2011-08-22T11:49:00.000-04:00

11b) Although you may not yet know what you want to major in, which department or program at MIT appeals to you and why?

6.2: My favorite science involves electricity. I love that I can
simultaneously see and not see what is going on at the atomic level and
learning to see with my head what I can’t see with my eyes, deepening my
understanding of the world. I want to work in something that matters, and EE,
in this age of omnipresent and constantly changing technology, is nothing if
not important. At the same time, it’s a field where women are
underrepresented, and I want to do my part to further expand my gender’s
sphere of influence.

This was without a doubt the easiest response for me to write. The question is extremely straightforward, and after taking even first year physics, I could tell that I thought E&M was basically the coolest thing ever (AP Physics C confirmed that opinion). At that point, I was like "okay, I'll major in electrical engineering, then." What's funny, though, is that I managed to mess that up. "What?" you say, "this looks like a perfectly reasonable response!" and so it is, but 6.2 is not electrical engineering--6.2 is electrical engineering and computer science. It's a minor gaffe, but it's still a mistake--and it didn't end up mattering.

Writing this, like I said, was easy. I came up with the reasons that I'm interested in electrical engineering, lined them up and turned it into a paragraph. Easy as 1, 2, 3. My only advice for this question is to pick what you're actually interested in, which is a bit of a "duh."

Advice for MIT's Application (Part 1)

2011-08-21T22:51:00.000-04:00

Our feature for the week, or at least the next five days: advice for MIT's application. I recently, erm, stumbled across my own application, so I've decided to pick it apart and attempt to provide some words of wisdom.

1a) We all know you lead a busy life, full of activities, many of which are required of you. Tell us about something you do simply for the pleasure of it.

I play piano. Granted, it feels sometimes as if the piano is playing me, drawing me back and gluing my fingers to the keys so I can play Beethoven’s Pastoral Sonata just one more time, and get that final page of sixteenth notes to flow speedily by. Piano is enjoyable because I choose my own level of difficulty; I find harder pieces to learn, then work on them for years, sticking with them until I can truly play the music. I’m in it for the satisfaction of meeting the challenge and the joy of creating something I can share.

I like this response. I believe that I used it, or some very slight variation of it, for the "extracurricular activity" short answer on the common app. Part of why I chose to write about piano is that it's something I've always made certain is something I do "for fun." I don't compete, I put my school work (and, well, most things) before practicing. It's not a priority, and yet somehow I always find myself making time for it. There aren't a lot of things I do simply for fun, and I could hardly writee about blogging, what with wanting to keep Tea rather separate from the actual me and being advised that any place that had "sex" as a post tag is not appropriate for admissions officers. So I spent a lot of time thinking about playing the piano, trying to work out why it appealed to me so much.

To be perfectly honest, I'm not 100% certain that the reasons I discussed--the challenge--are accurate. Playing just feels good, words aside. But it gave me a chance to be a bit flashier in my writing style, and I managed to twist it to make myself out to fit MIT, seeking a challenge and all that. It worked for me.

I'm not sure how to make that into advice. On the one hand, making a nice bit of writing actually say something can be difficult to do smoothly. I spent a huge amount of time polishing and whittling down a much longer explanation to this little bit. I dug out some old essays of mine, listened to some classical music, wrote, then cut, then wrote, then cut, etc. What I was focused on was finding a way to take something that I truly do for fun and make it say something about me as a person--using the topic of the essay as a vehicle to talk about myself, if that makes any sense at all. At the same time, it's a free-form topic, and if you've got the descriptive skills, it's nice to see them here.

Also worth noting--a good essay doesn't depend on a unique topic. Probably half the math/science kids I know play an instrument, and I don't doubt a good number wrote about it. One of my good friends wrote about running track, and I doubt the 'sports' angle is entirely unique (but she, like me was accepted). It's more about how you write it and why you, as the special snowflake you are, enjoy it.

And, for the record--I still haven't gotten those sixteenth notes to flow. Well, they flow just fine on their own, but they turn into a clunky mess as soon as I add in the clunking base line.

I have saved on my computer two other drafts for this essay question. One is about SHP:

I spend my Saturdays commuting to and from New York City to take not-for-credit courses for high schoolers at Columbia. I love these classes. I love them because they remind me of what I don’t know, that there are scientists out there who understand a thousand times what I do of what I’ve seen, just now discovering what I can barely begin to imagine. I’ve whirled through topics as the role of HDACs in a variety of illnesses, the greatness of dynein, and Ruthorford’s poor, horribly mistreated graduate students, and each one points me towards entire fields of new knowledge.

the other is about reading:

I read. When I’m not reading, I search for books. My bookshelf in my room, which is floor to ceiling and farther across than my arm, is so full that I’ve moved onto stacks, with the ‘to read’ next to the door and the ‘need to alphabetize’ under my desk. The books wait, sometimes for months, as I search for the time for them. I must search because if I start too soon, I am drawn in regardless of work, and I can awaken after days to discover a pile of undone work.

I didn't use the SHP one because it didn't expose anything new about me. My love of science screams its way out of my other essays--this first question is meant to expose some other part of me. This response, while nice, simply wasn't necessary. I didn't use the reading one because I couldn't figure out how to make it say something positive about me. I read for a vacation, and more or less only that. I read my novels cover to cover for something very much apart from intellectual engagement (well, most of the time...some things, like Anathem, manage to couple escapism and intellect, but those a rare). The reading said a lot about me, but I was focused on carving out the part of me that I wanted colleges to see, and that meant not discussing things like my inability to focus on schoolwork when confronted by a good novel. The other angle I considered taking with the books was escapism, but I was unable to write it without veering desperately into cliché, so I decided against it.

Every Day, It's a Gettin Closer

2011-08-20T15:39:00.000-04:00

Movie night last night. We watched The Prestige, which was completely amazing.

My arms are sore, particularly the insides of my forearms. I think it's from doing pull-ups on the diving board yesterday, but regardless of what it's from, it makes typing incredibly uncomfortable.

I miss Julie and Cammie, but at least Julie will be back soon. Snuggling with her with would have been a good antidote to the moie-night-induced "last time I did this I had a cuddle buddy" issue, but it is what it is, and I'm fine.

I'm through the roof excited for AIS. Just like before I left for RSI this summer, I'm spending so much energy being excited that I'm not bothering to savor what I have. But, then, there's not all that much to savor beyond solitude, and I've certainly been savoring plenty of that. Well, there's Nyx, who is currently at her second to last day of work, but I'm probably going to sleep over at her house tonight, and I'll be bothering the heck out of her these coming days, so I'm not missing anything right this second. Julie is in Michigan visiting Timothy, and Cammie is already at college, and Kathrya is long gone, so no dice there. Yuma is around, but I'll see him in a week anyways. There are a few other people, but no one that I'm desperate to see, no one I'm going to be striving to keep up with in the coming years.

Just my family, really, but I spent two weeks ensconced with them, and, well, they're my family. I'll keep in touch with them, and, really, I'll always make time to see them.

I'm ready to go, and I'm excited, and, unlike last time, I'm not going to feel like I'm missing out on anything at home. So this time, I think, all is well.

New and Old and In-Between

2011-08-19T12:21:00.000-04:00

I had never been to Dairy Queen prior to last night. For some reason, it strikes me as a midwestern kind of thing, but I honestly don't know why.

A good crowd came bouldering last night: me (duh), Cammie, Nyx, Argon, Nimue, Kerry, Yuma, and Annika. Granted, I personally didn't do all that much in the way of actual bouldering--it should be clear by now that athletic activity is not my strongsuit--but I did make an attempt, and I did succeed in hauling myself up a few of the V-naught level walls and falling gracelessly down onto the mats.

I ended up sitting for probably more than an hour in a powwow circle with Yuma, Argon, and Nimue. It had been quite some time since I'd talked to Argon and Nimue, so that was certainly nice. It was strange to hear about high school again, because it feels like graduation was a lifetime ago. The senior summer flew by, but, at the same time, it feels like this is the only existence I've ever known, if that makes even the slightest bit of sense.

I'm crossing my fingers for Argon getting into AIS. He deserves it if anybody does (though he is on my mental list of "people who might end up ditching us for that other, extremely geographically proximate school. That boy really ought to actually join science bowl, because I think his help is going to be desperately needed.

In other news, both he and Nimue are taking bucketfuls of AP classes and working on college apps and pretty much sitting right where I was a year ago (well, slightly different--Argon has a more rigorous schedule than I did, Nimue's is less so). It feels so distant, though. I'm a bit worried about getting to college and diving into schoolwork again. I'm worried my mind has forgotten how to be fully intellectually engaged.

Think how bad it would be if I'd taken the fellowship and waited two years. That no doubt would have been a nightmare.

AIS's Admissions Office, though, seems to believe that I am something resembling The Shit. First I was interesting enough to get added to some recruiting focus group (and receive and extremely flattering email requesting my participation), then it turns out that I'm interesting enough to be one of three or four people profiled in some AIS News article about our class. Now I'm feeling...pretty cool, actually. Good thing I'm going to be starting with head deflation (aka classes) in well under a month.

After both bouldering and DQing, Cammie went back to her house to pack up the car and, in the morning, leave.

She's our first departure. Well, technically our second, but no one had thought that Kathrya wouldn't be coming back. I hadn't even had sufficient time to get used to the haircut, but I suppose that's what skype is for. Even so, I already miss Cammie and her silliness--but I know that once I get to AIS, home will be the last thing on my mind.

Besides, it's going to be good to be somewhere new (well, maybe not 'new', but at least not here). I'd gotten way too used to having someone's arm around me on these outings, and I'm not sure now is the time to be thinking about--well, I'm sure you all know.

Ah, well. It is what it is, as always. I think I'm going to try to find a watch and some goggles and swim some laps. It'd be good for me.

Stuffity Stuff Stuff Stuffs

2011-08-18T16:43:00.001-04:00

Finally came up with a name for college of choice: the Academic Institute of Schooliness, abbreviated to AIS.

I'm currently helping Cammie pack for school. Well, I'm using my computer and laughing at occasional funniness. Annika is rooting through all of Cammie's drawers and digging out everything worth packing. Now Annika has given up on that and is rooting through Cammie's drawers looking for things to take.

I'm going to attempt to go bouldering tonight. I strongly suspect that I am far to weak and pathetic to succeed at this sort of activity, but I'm still going to spend $7 trying. It's also another chance to bond with my wonderful high school buddies, and I'll get to see Nyx, which is a particularly wonderful perk.

I'm going to get off of the computer, now.

Visitation with Rickling

2011-08-17T21:33:00.000-04:00

Gunnar came to visit today. I've been, of late, focusing on (in Gunnar's words) firming my social ties, or something along the lines of that, with my high school friends. This means that Gunnar got hauled over to Cammie's house (he declared that Cammie is "interesting," and it sounded like he meant "in a good way" and not "ummm") to watch her pack. Cammie, after all, is leaving town to go to college on Friday, which is, as you might be aware, very, very soon.

The three of us eventually became hungry, and as Cammie is not in the possession of particularly much food (this is a side effect of getting home from Europe less than three days ago), we decided to go out for lunch. This was my first (and, in all likelihood, last) visit to the Shake Shack. Not that there's anything wrong with the place--the food was delicious, and there was an absolutely perfect quantity of it--but I don't go out to eat much, and I'm not going to be here for very many more days anyways. But I did eat a relatively guilt-free meal (I seem to have dropped half of what I gained this summer, which means that most of it was medication-induced bloat, which makes me extremely happy).

Gunnar's family also showed up at the Shake Shack, so I got to see his adorable younger brother again. As we were leaving, we also saw Lucas and Tamir. Cammie stopped to talk to them for a while--well, mostly to talk to Lucas. Gunnar and I stood awkwardly behind Cammie for a minute, uncertain of how the whole 'conversation' thing ought to proceed. Though Tamir's conversation was also limited, I believe that he's less cognizant of a need to avoid social situations in which one is unwanted, so he more or less ignored the awkwardness. Anyways, I said I wanted to call Yuma, so Gunnar and I went outside. I sat on the ledge of the truck's bed and he stood nearby while I scrolled through my phone.

Although I wasn't in possession of Yuma's phone number (Yuma, as it turns out, is not in possession of a phone), we decided to crash his house anyways, despite the fact that none of us, least of all Gunnar, knew its precise location. We drove around Paperclip on our way there, and Gunnar, funnily enough, was extremely impressed by the amount of lab space and the number of AP courses offered--despite the fact that I've always been very jealous of the kids I know who attended magnet schools. I think perhaps the moral of that is that high school sucks for everyone, so the grass is always greener...or something like that.

Anyways, then Cammie and I spent a good amount of time trying to explain to Gunnar what it's like to go to school with stupid people. One of his most significant questions was "how many of them are there?" to which we more or less said "normal distribution." We then started relating the antics of Umber's younger sisters and various other misdeeds. When I apologized to Gunnar later for dragging him along on these trips, he said he was glad to meet my friends because they "showed [him] what going to school with stupid people is like."

"Are you implying my friends are stupid?" I asked.

"No, but Cammie had lots of good stories."

I ended up driving to the approximate location where I used to let Yuma out of the car, then we went to the nearest house and rang the doorbell. No one answered, so Gunnar suggested I take out my laptop and try to get onto someone's wifi and start gchatting Yuma, which I did, but then Yuma came walking up the street with his dog.

As it turns out, Yuma's house is located rather farther back. We sat around there for a while, chattering about randomness--it was good to see Yuma after two months, and it's fun to talk about college with someone who is actually going to be at college with me.

We'd been there for about ten minutes when Yuma mentioned that Peter was supposed to be picking him up to take him to Brian's house in five minutes. I more or less flipped out--this would poke a huge hole in the "avoid Peter" plan of action--and Yuma ended up canceling on Brian to chill with the rest of us (apparently after an entire summer of Brian and Peter time, a change was appreciated), which meant that I drove over to Cammie's house sitting four-across in my pickup truck (le gasp). Julie arrived soon thereafter, and not to long after that I had to bring Gunnar over to Lucas's house and head home for dinner.

All in all, it was a fun day, and it was definitely good to see Gunnar. Now, one more day with Cammie, then a few days of hanging out, then packing while hanging out, and then...college. Holy shiznit.

Arrival

2011-08-16T12:41:00.000-04:00

We got home yesterday afternoon, and then I lazed about (/wiped my hard drive and reinstalled my operating system because one of the changes I'd made left it extremely sluggish) for the evening. I'm almost halfway through Winter's Heart. Weirdly, all I want to do is go clothes shopping, which probably just means that I'm stressed out and desire retail therapy (not exactly news).

My freshman advising folder came out. It included what seminar I'm taking (Conversations You Can't Have on Campus--should be awesome) as well as my AP scores (no news there). It also had a downloadable copy of my college application that was meant for my advisor. I, of course, downloaded and read over it. It's funny to look back at it now. I'm not sure I'd do much differently, though I'd probably have written about energy studies instead of electrical engineering as far as what interests me goes, but, as you can see from the fact that I got in, it didn't really matter.

It did remind me, though (well, that coupled with all the college-app-related status messages among my senior friends) that there are a lot of people working on college apps right now, poor things. I should probably do what I did with the RSI app and generate something resembling advice, though maybe not--there's certainly a lot more existing college app advice out there than there is RSI app advice. Plus I'm lazy. I suppose we shall see.

But now--time for breakfast!

I'm more of a romantic than I like to think I am

2011-08-15T01:32:00.000-04:00

So I've discovered that I have a relative who is a renowned nuclear physicist and an old friend of my research mentor from last summer. Granted, this is not a blood relative (I haven't found any blood relatives with scientific inclinations), but it's family nonetheless.

I had totally prepared myself in case he started asking me about nuclear stuff, but he didn't, not at all. Instead, he talked about how he made his college decisions. First Yale because he had family in New Haven. Then Harvard for graduate school. MIT "just wasn't for [him]," and he wanted to be in Boston because he wanted to marry his wife, who was at Simmons College. So they got married right away, when they were both 20 (she was two years behind him in school, though), and, he said, they weren't prepared for it, not at all. "Could you imagine that?" he kept saying. "Married. At twenty!"

Times have changed, I guess, because it seems like people haven't. Yet they're still together--she's a wonderful woman, and there was something lovely in the way she looked at him that just made me smile inside.

Tired Complaints

2011-08-14T04:15:00.000-04:00

Gedit doesn't work with this version of OS X. Spaces—pretty much my favorite feature of my desktop—doesn't work with this version of OS X. If my sister's computer didn't come with an install disk, I'm going to attempt to get this baby to revert back to whatever the four-year-old version of OS X is called, because this is infuriating. I don't fucking care about intuitive operating systems—my laptop is not an iphone. I do not want my laptop to be an iphone, I want my laptop to be a laptop. I like some of the funcitonality—being able to do all those multitouch gestures with the trackpad is nice—but from what I've seen so far, even getting ubuntu to run on this machine is going to be a trial.

Shelby's being annoying again. She lost her ipod ages ago, refuses to pay to get a new one, and is bugging me to use mine. Well, would be bugging me—I gave her a very curt “no”, and she fortunately decided not to pursue the subject, so I get to continue to be angry here.

Greg's probably going to text me immediately telling me to switch to Windows. I'm going to install it—just need to decide how big to make the partition. I have 750 GB to work with, just need to figure out the proper allocations. This is going to turn into a triple booted machine, I think. This fucking Lion thing is just annoying me too much. Although maybe I'll cave and pay the $20 for the downgraded version...all I know is that I want more customization than exists here. I want to be able to pull up an easily navigable display of all my windows with a key stroke, not the godawful application stacks I'm currently getting. I also want Spaces back. If I use four virtual desktops on my computer at home—which is at least twice the size of this one—than I bloody well need that many on a screen that is a quarter of the size. Currently, all my windows are piling up, and I've only even got four open.

I'm used to being able to have full control over my computer. Maybe that's just the familiarity with an operating system that I've gained over four years of use—maybe given sufficient time, I'd become familiar with Lion, and be able to do all those fancy schmancy tricks for desktop utilization. But right now, I don't have the internet access to search (fucking planes, charging for internet...although this one actually doesn't have wifi. Shelby keeps going on about how I'm “sooooo attached” to my laptop, but that's not accurate. I'm attached to the internet...one of these days I'm going to have to buy a droid, just to complete the image).

Ridiculous, isn't it. I decide to buy the Macbook Pro because I'm so sick of Windows that I want OS X (summerbook editing can do that to a girl), then I get OS X and decide it's not to my liking, so I'm likely going to end up on Linux anyways. Ah, well. I like linux quite a bit, and I'm going to like being able to have something a little more malleable to work with. Plus the macbook is still shiny, and the keyboard is backlit and the touchpad is a bit nicer (I think) than I would have gotten with the toshiba. Not to mention the warranty and whatnot, though I'm not sure how helpful that is if I start messing around with my operating system.

It is what it is, I guess. Not much to be done about it, not really, not much can be done beyond complaining. I love the feel of the Mac, I just really, really dislike the new operating system. I really need to get my hands on the previous one, or I need to find someone who knows how to make this one act like the previous one...or I'll install some linux distro that behaves like the previous one. That's probably the most likely.

I'll just go on complaining, though. It's not like anyone really minds. Well, if anyone really does mind, it's not like I'm forcing them to read...seriously, I kept writing this baby even when I thought no one was reading it, and then I have four people tell me they have been. If that doesn't make a girl feel loved, I really don't know what would.

Sheer Idiocy

2011-08-13T03:31:00.000-04:00

Crazy people are crazy. I really wish I remembered what the one in the bathroom was going on about. She walked in, smiled at me, and then started going on about how desperately she'd needed to wash her hands. I ignored her and went into a stall. While I was there, another woman walked in, and Crazy started babbling on about how she was the devotee of some book. This book had taught her to go outside her body, and she'd been all over the universe, to the stars. It was awesome, and she just wanted to tell us about it. I can't remember the name of the author or the book, now, but Crazy kept repeating it.

It was utterly bizarre--at least it seemed that way to me, but I'm not accustomed to crazy people. My general idea of a crazy person is any Republican presidential candidate.

I'm flying away from Hawaii tomorrow. Getting home Monday evening. I really wish we'd just gone for the two marathon flights--I want to be done.

Heebie Jeebies

2011-08-12T04:14:00.005-04:00

We left the hotel we'd been staying at this morning and drove to Volcano National Park. The weather was cold and rainy--it's apparently like that all the time there. The volcano was pretty neat, particularly after dark when we could see it glowing, but I'd really like to be there with someone who actually knows what they're talking about as far as the geology goes. As it is right now, it's rather like watching a movie that happens to be right in front of you--there's not interaction, and beyond the whole improved visibility thing (which barely exists in my case, as rain + glasses != improved visibility). I'd like to make the trip with a geology geek and be able to listen to them spout off all the exciting facts about the place.

Later, we drove around more of the island to the bed and breakfast we're staying at for the next two nights. I'd copied down directions from google maps before we left the hotel. The directions mentioned that we would be using "condition restricted roads," but I'm from New England, and when I see "condition restricted roads" I think "snow." And it's summer, so there's no snow, so it wouldn't be a problem (the fact that we're in Hawaii and there is never any snow didn't occur to me). As it turns out, they weren't closed due to these restrictions--but we were sent down winding backroad after winding backroad, including a four mile stretch of dirt road where the turn at the end--to a different, unmarked dirt road--was identified solely by the fact that our car's mile marker had changed by the amount that it should have. Then, about a mile later, the dirt path changed abruptly to a paved single-lane road, and a small sign pointed the way to the inn.

When we arrived, there was a well-lit "Welcome" sign that had our names underneath the names of the rooms we had booked (each room had the last name of the resident written in expo marker underneath). We were still somewhat confused, though--after all, what kind of hotel wouldn't require you to check in?--so we walked around looking for someone to check in with. We managed to end up in the kitchen of the people who run the place; we said "oh, we wanted to check in," and they looked at us like we were completely insane.

"Didn't you see the Welcome Board?" they asked.

"Yes, we did," but the board didn't say anything about going directly to ones' room.

The keys had been left in the doors for us, and we were apparently just supposed to go right in and make ourselves at home, information be damned. When we got to the building we were actually staying in--called the Pagoda, or something like that--there was a sign directing us to take off our shoes before entering, and a considerable number of shoes were already outside.

It was completely nuts. Sure, this is in the middle of nowhere, but people just leaving their stuff around (there's no safe in the room, naturally), and leaving the rooms unlocked, and just dropping one's shoes with no compunction for whether or not the other guests decide they look like fair game--maybe I've spent too much time compulsively locking my bike up, or just too much time in Boston and not enough in Hicksville--but it just seems crazy to me. I have no idea what I'm going to do with my laptop tomorrow (probably bury it in my suitcase so it's unobtrusive (did I mention that there aren't enough shelves to actually unpack?)), but I'm way to paranoid for this place. I keep expecting them to break out into new age "feel the healing power of the waterfall" stuff (they haven't yet, thank goodness, but one never knows). It gives me the heebie-jeebies.

Speaking of creepiness, Cammie posted a fun zombie apocalypse chain thingy. As far as I go, my sidekick is Nyx (though I strongly suspect that, in actuality, she would be the one doing the ass-kicking and I'd be the one standing on the sidelines and flipping out). Vanessa will be providing the heavy weapons (I'm pretty sure she wouldn't actually do that, but it'd be pretty fucking awesome if she did (or "ducking awesome", as my phone would say)). Gopika is the idiot who survives (ironic, given that I count her among the most intelligent people I know). Hyunmi is the sniper (yeah, I can't really see that happening...). Jared is the one who loses it (yeah, gotta say I could see him in any of the "kill the zombies!" roles much more than I see him in this one). Zsa is the brains (valid) and Zorah is the first to die ( =( ). Quite the learning experience, wasn't this?

Obnoxiously Large Cats

2011-08-11T04:40:00.003-04:00

I'm still not used to the new OS. I suspect that I'll eventually become so accustomed to it that switching to the old one will be a hassle--maybe I'll even install Lion on my desktop, though I strongly suspect that I'm too much of a cheapskate--but right now the transition is frustrating. I don't want a more intuitive OS, I want the one that I'm used to. Honestly, ubuntu would probably have less of a learning curve for me right now, but this is what I've got, and I'm not sure I want to mess up another computer's hard drive with failed partitions. Maybe I'll try to get James to help me partition it when we get to school...although I think he's not used to Macs. There goes my tech help...well, there goes my already known tech help. This is [college]. If I can't find someone to help me with my computer, I am definitely doing something wrong.

Okay, I need to pack now. These posts have been lame, but at least I'm writing something. Well, I'll just keep telling myself that. Maybe eventually it'll turn true.

Zippadeedooda

2011-08-09T00:10:00.003-04:00

We flew from Maui to the big island (The Big Island?) today, which was a flight only slightly longer than the one I took from LA to Santa Barbara a week ago. There's a lot of volcanic rock here. At least, I think that's what it is. I can't imagine what else could cover everything the eye can see (except the ocean) in crumbling darkness.

Shelby's in the shower, but we're supposed to go to dinner at 6:45. This is inconvenient, especially considering I just exercised (be impressed) and am vaguely sweaty (okay, maybe I could have done with a little bit more on the exercise front, but at least it's better than nothing).

I can't get over how easy this keyboard types. I mean, in theory, the keyboard on my desktop should be the same, but this just feels so much smoother. Maybe I just got too used to the keyboards in the Athena clusters--but I'll be back in those soon enough, so I suppose it all works out.

I really need to figure out how to get ahold of the next Wheel of Time book while I'm still here, because I really don't want to think about getting through the six hour plane ride to San Francisco without one. We're stuck in some far-off corner of resortyness, though, and I'm not sure what the major booksellers are our here anyways. I'm going to have to come up with some more creative googling. Just because there's not Barnes and Nobles doesn't mean there's no anything...right?

Another Banal Update

2011-08-07T03:32:00.004-04:00

Dad's pronunciation of all the hawaiian words is atrocious. He gets the first letter---sometimes even the first syllable---correct, and the last vowel, typically, but then all the letters in between turn into some sort of monkeyish jabbering. It's hilarious, and it drives Genie beserkers.

We drove the Hana (Hanna? Hannah?) Highway today, which meant that we went all the way around Maui in our rented minivan. We visited a lot of waterfalls, spent a lot of time in the car, swam in some pools and drove down the twistiest, most beautiful road I've ever seen while singing whatever songs my sisters and I could remember the words to. It was wonderful.

Now I'm back at our condo, sleeping on the couch (well, I will be sleeping, once I get off of the computer and wash up and crawl into bed, which I expect won't be for a while since Shelby is currently in the shower). There's not really anyone online to talk to--the time difference takes care of that. I started A Crown of Swords today, which is wonderful but a bit depressing, since it's currently focusing on Perrin and Faile, and I keep thinking about the awful mess that they're going to end up embroiled in, which makes me sad, not to mention how many books it is before Rand's craziness issue is going to be improved upon. I'm not sure if the books get darker, or if it's just that the plot lines developing now hadn't been resolved at the point where I last stopped reading, but the darkness of the story is suddenly bothering me a lot more.

I need to decide whether to go back to frisbee club when I get home. On the one hand, I need the exercise, I've missed playing, I had a lot of fun with it this spring, and it will make it 100% clear to Peter that I'm not avoiding him without me having to actually spend any time sorting things out with just him. On the other hand, I really would prefer not to have to deal with seeing Peter, because I strongly suspect that however over it I am now, seeing him is going to destroy that resolve (I mean, seeing Dawson did that to a certain extent in April, and that was a smaller involvement and a greater time lag...but it's hard to say). I also feel like if he wants to see me, that should be up to him. I'm more or less letting my pride lead me at this point, which is probably not a good thing, as I'll more likely than not end up embarrassed (oh, the number of times I spelled that wrong while writing up things for the summerbook....) about something that wouldn't bother me otherwise. I just don't want to let on to him that I'm still affected--that I was ever affected at all--because he's the one who ended things. Frisbee isn't about seeking him out, but I'm worried it'll seem that way to him, and I don't want him to think that, so I'll end up embarrassed and awkward, and then it'll really seem like I'm seeking him out. If I avoid any place he might be, though, that could be a problem. That I won't do. I want to avoid him, but I won't, because that would be both obvious and rude.

This is ridiculous. I shouldn't care. I don't care, not really, but I still worry.

Nyan nyan nyan

2011-08-05T23:04:00.003-04:00

Right before I woke up this morning, I dreamt that I was leaving for college. But, for some reason, the place I was leaving looked exactly like MIT (minus the fact that the dorm was more 'generic dorm' than 'Simmons hall'). I was looking for Cammie and Kathrya and Nyx to say goodbye to them, and Dad was waiting for me. I'd already said goodbye to Julie, as well as some random small child who was somehow someone else I was going to miss. Jared, for whatever reason, was walking with me the entire time, and I knew I wasn't going to actually say goodbye to him until Dad and I pulled away in the car.

Then I woke up. Other than the obvious--i.e. I'm going to be leaving behind my own childhood--I'm not sure there's anything deeply symbolic, but I did remember the damn thing.

In other news, I can list off the top of my head everything I've eaten since waking. I'm not sure whether that worries me, but I'm fairly certain that it should. I swam in the waves, today; they're a lot bigger than the ones at home. I had some fun attempts at body surfing and a generally good time. I also finished Lord of Chaos, which means that I'll probably be starting in on book seven tonight. Isam would be proud.

Three Cheers for Overanalysis!

2011-08-04T23:12:00.004-04:00

I have no idea how to lose weight. I'm pretty good at gaining it (oreos. Lots of oreos. Also, chocolate and ice cream). I know how to keep it steady (live at home and give no thought to what I'm eating. Avoid spending too much time in Cammie's kitchen). But losing it? I have a general idea of where to begin--consume less total calories while burning more of them--but little idea of how to actually manage it.

Currently, I'm working off of "three meals a day, all snacks are fruit." Before, it was no snacks, but I decided that was a terrible idea. Also, I've already bent the snack rule to have some snap pea crisps and pistachios, which were yummy. Plus, the snap peas were green and therefore healthy (I know I'm deluding myself. Please don't ruin it for me). I also spent half an hour swimming laps, and I intend to repeat that. The issue is that I don't know how much balances out how much. Like, am I actually eating less? Or am I just eating healthier? Does it matter? Will excercise alone be enough if it does? Also, how long is this going to take? Am I going to manage to eat in a remotely healthy fashion when I get to school, because I really don't want to turn into more of a lard-ass than I already am.

The biggest issue, I think, is going to be in the Fall. Also, developing enough self-control, and figuring out how best to manipulate myself to achieve these ends. I'm not sure that "be healthy!" is sufficient (i.e. it's not sufficient, not at all). I'm wary of making it into an issue of self-control, though I suspect that's going to be what finally works. Right now, I feel relatively in control of the direction my life has taken; I made my own decision about where I'd be come September, and I'm comfortable with that decision and don't feel an excessive need to micromanage my life. The weight gain thing feels like an issue of self-control, which worries me. At the same time, when I get to college, I'm going to be introducing a lot of new stressors into my life. I'm worried that if the academics get tough, or if the social scene is confusing, I'm going to start feeling out of control in more ways---and that if I think of dieting/exercise a means of adding control into my life, I'm going to end up going overboard. I think, if I'm careful, it shouldn't be a problem (also, I am a loooong way from being anywhere near worrying), but I'm still paranoid.

Vacation, Take One

2011-08-03T22:06:00.003-04:00

Hawaii as a state seems lovely. The geography rather absurd--many changes over very small distances--but pretty darn cool. I need to figure out if the RSI 2010 Rickoid whose nickname I forget (I don't dare attempt to open googledocs and access my spreadsheet on the tenuous thread that is my current internet connection). I miss my Ricklings, though. I'm a bit surprised at the volume of my post-RSI depression---for some reason I'd thought it wouldn't be as bad this year. I'd talked with Jared about it, and we'd both agreed that this year we weren't as emotionally involved and would hardly be upset at all.

The amount of crying I did the last day definitely belied that statement, as did the fact that I was too depressed to sleep the following night (so many empty rooms...).

My internet connection is shit. This is incredibly frustrating. I always forget how dependent I am on high-speed wifi until I no longer have it.

That said, my new macbook pro is phenomenally shiny, as I demonstrated for everyone in a recent bedcheck by holding it and its built-in webcam up to a mirror. So much shiny. Lots and lots of shiny. I really need to get it a hard shell to protect it from scratches. And maybe a plastic sheet for the screen, and definitely a keyboard cover. If this baby is going to get me through the next four years, I need to be nice to it from day one.

In other news, I'm too lazy to unpack and my clothing is accumulating. Snorkeling was fun and I saw a shark. I continue to believe that snorkeling should be spelled snorkling. I'm really hungry (this whole 'dieting' thing doesn't agree with me, but I'm pretty sure that just plain 'eating healthy' is not going to make me drop the 10 lbs I picked up, and I really don't want to continue to have the weird gut I currently have going). The Wheel of Time is awesome. Hawaii is pretty. I want dinner. Life is good.

Ends

2011-07-30T13:06:00.002-04:00

The kids are all leaving. I've cried a couple of times. It's really, truly heart-wrenching every now and then, though it's also sometimes just "eh."

I'm not getting the MIT blogger application done. I quite simply don't have time, unless I just dig up an old story and mail that. Maybe tomorrow, but I doubt it. I'm busy--very, very busy--so it's looking like it's going to be me, you, and some more Semioverachieving for the next four years.

The stupid dryer didn't work, so all of my damp clothes are scattered around my room. Every surface has some sort of drying object on it. I really need to get Jared to come back and yell at me until there isn't anything left on my floors.

Love always,

Tea.

Just like I signed all of the summerbooks.

Quotes of Win

2011-07-25T00:55:00.011-04:00

Obtained from a late night of summerbook editing.

Beatrice: Exploding chest hair is a big no-no

Beatrice: I just know I spout stupid crap all the time. It's like a talent. Being stupid!

Tea: Where did Jared go?

Beatrice: He died.

Tea: What?

Beatrice: He is dead. We must push on.

*Beatrice returns to editing*

Olive: I had this waking dream that I was the stack of papers that had to be returned. That my body was made out of papers. This was after the dream I had that the entire C-tower was blown up, and everyone died except for me, Greg's group, and Tea's group. And I wanted to know--would we still make them turn in their papers?

Beatrice: What the fuck am I doing? Tea, did you just transcribe that? Why would you do that?

Tea: I'm going to the bathroom.

Beatrice: No, you're not allowed to pee! Just kidding, Tea, you can pee as much as the hell you want.

Tea: AH!! It's Monday! I MISSED GETTING PAID AGAIN!

Jared: It's Sunday.

Tea: Oh, okay, I'll go tomorrow.

5 minutes later

Tea: What day of the week is it?

Beatrice: Sunday

Tea: Really?

Jared: Erasmus. Erasmus. I like saying his name and I like saying Aquafina's name. Coincidentally, they're also both very annoying...Erasmus needs a quote. Do you want to make one up for him? Sorry, I was sleeping? Sorry, I was late? Oh, I was confused...

-------

Beatrice: Are you still transcribing?

Tea: I was going to, but then I realized it would be inappropriate.

Beatrice: Take it up with Jared, he has a stick.

Beatrice: Most embarrassing experience: showing up to a week's worth of lectures on time.

Jared: Notepad is a wonderful program

Beatrice: Did you just say "no pants are wonderful!"

Jared: No! Notepad is wonderful! It opens instantly. UNLIKE OTHER THINGS.

Olive just attempted to toss Jared (who was 5 feet away) a flash drive. It hurtled into the arm of the couch next to me (I was further away than Jared) and Jared began to laugh hysterically.

Stuffy Stuffs

2011-06-25T13:38:00.002-04:00

So I'm having this issue where a number of my Ricklings read this blog. This means that I can't really write about them without it feeling, to me at least, somewhat gossipy. Thus, all I really have to write about are things that don't involve them, but I have a feeling that Olive would strangle me if I started giving explicit details of my romantic life (erm, not that I get involved in anything that could be termed explicit), I am left with my to-do lists.

From Friday:

Finish section 1A of 18.02 (did not complete)
Eat breakfast (done)
Compile list of 10 Cambridge eateries (did not complete)
Start account at MITCFU (did do)
Bike to TJs and buy groceries (did not do, as wallet was lost between dorm and grocery store)
Obtain a "learn to cook" book (done)
Eat (healthy) lunch (done, but only kind of healthy)
Print and fill out Moody's form (done)
Research 1st scientist on energy list (not done)
Authorize Dad as payer for college (done)
Cook dinner (did not due, as wallet was missing and could not buy ingredients)

For today:

Interview (great success)
Respond to email (i.e. accept job offer---will do shortly)
Send sweet text to boy (done)
Police report (done---the MIT police are soooo nice)
Clean room (lolz)
Make graffiti nametag
Look into license replacement
Login to MIT Police website and report lost item

Yay, things to do!

Worrisome Items

2011-06-16T12:42:00.002-04:00

I leave for RSI tomorrow, so I've been packing furiously. So far, I have filled and sealed three bags, packaged my desktop up in the box that came with it (I can't handle not being able to check my email first thing in the morning), and hauled out my sleeping bag and laundry bin.

I filled my silver rolling bag first. This is a silly bag to bring somewhere that doesn't involve airports, but I'm flying off on a family vacation right after RSI so I need to have it with me. In this bag, I have:

16 t-shirts
11 tank tops
5 skirts
2 flannel shirts
8 pairs of socks
3 sweaters
9 pairs of underwear

This makes up a considerable portion of my wardrobe.

I then packed the red duffle bag, which contains:

1 pair of socks
5 pairs of shorts
2 cargo capris
6 dresses
1 pair of leggings
1 pair of capri-length sweats
6 shirts
1 swimsuit
6 pairs of shoes
1 raincoat
2 lightweight jackets
7 sweaters/sweatshirts
1 pair of flannel PJ pants that I probably won't wear
1 pair of jeans
1 belt
4 bags of various types
1 bathrobe
1 bath mat
2 bath towels
1 face towel

Yeah, the red duffle is really, really big.

Next, I packed the aqua duffle, which is smaller and holds only:

Many hose and tights
Wrinkled white blouse
3 sets of sheets
5 bras
All remaining swimsuits (I wouldn't bring this many, but I'm going to hawaii afterwards and I'll want them then)
Purple cami
"This is what a feminist looks like" t-shirt
Assorted mismatched socks
Leggings
Black hoody
Lightweight PJ pants
5 PJ shirts, including RSI shirts

I'm now working my way through the purple duffle, which so far contains:

Soft blanket
Blankey <3
Throw blanket
Computer power strip
Feminine hygiene products (lol)
Paperclip High frisbee
Umbrellas (2, both small)
TI-89
2 regular bras
2 sport bras
2 formal shirts, both currently dirty

It should be noted that I don't advocate bringing this much stuff. It's just that I have a double to myself, so a ton of space to store it, and I'm hoping to leave it up in Boston so I can just bring it all to school in the fall. Also, I was the heaviest packer last year by a longshot---I think I might still be bringing the most stuff, despite the fact that I am bringing neither my keyboard nor my guitar. But whatever---I love my clothes.

On a more troublesome note, however, I've discovered that I'm missing approximately a laundry (need to stop trying to spell that as laundrey...) load worth of clothing. I've been writing down everything I can't find, so here's that list, just to be thorough.

Purple northface tee (tree)
New Ann Taylor tanks
New Ann Taylor cargos
Bleached blue cargos
Knee-length dark cargos
MIT shorts
full-length black sweats
Baggy dark purple "Dream" Gap shirt
flipflops
strappy Clarks
MIT sweatshirt
bleachy blue sweatshirt
bed roll
fan
D.E. Shaw shirt

I find this disturbing. There goes the garage door---hopefully it's Mom coming back to help me search.

Zee Prom

2011-06-12T16:07:00.005-04:00

The actual prom was strange. That's the best word I can think of for it. It's funny, because by the next morning I was, shall we say, very comfortable with Peter (I mean that literal sense, not in the hanky-panky sense), but at the start of things I really wasn't.

The party bus was bizarre. We weren't allowed to drink anything, even water, while we were on it. It fortunately not a model that included a stripper pole, but terrible music was blasted, and it was so loud we could hardly talk at all, and the liqueur cabinet (which I think was actually just full of empty bottles and what looked very similar to the jugs of bleach we have at lab) kept swinging open, so Peter and I spent half of our time yelling at the cabinet door and the other half attempting to kick it shut. For some reason, this was considered fun. He also did that terribly awkward "Here I am yawning and oh, look, now my arm is around you!" thing. I leaned into him reflexively when he did, even while half of my brain was asking the other half why I was encouraging him when I'd already decided that he was boring (answer: I was cold. Also, it only just occurred to me that this was why he would not stop asking me if I was cold, despite my vehement denials. Would have been a better excuse than an awkward yawn. I feel somewhat pathetic for not realizing this sooner).

The eating bit was fine. The gang of however many of us there are got a table together, and we made cheerful conversation about things like someone's---it was Cammie or Kathrya---propensity for spilling drinks. Then music started, and there was dancing, and that was the point at which I got really uncomfortable.

I'm still not totally clear on why I felt so out of it. I think part of it was the sheer number of people around me, all of them darkened, and large, and just too much---I've never been good with crowds. And then there was Peter, who kept wanting to touch me---not anywhere inappropriate, mind, just my hands, and then my waist, but he's so much taller than me that all I could see was his chest, and his face was completely obscured, so I just kept swaying with the music, even as I wanted to shrink into nothingness and retract my sweaty palms and run off to somewhere, anywhere, just not right there right then. I danced because I didn't know what else to do, but it felt perfunctory even to me, this half motion, but he was moving less and I couldn't figure out why he kept resisting my attempts to stop (the touching, I know now. And now that I'm more comfortable with touching him I'd quite happily go back and run the whole thing again, but right then I was miserable). It's funny, because I understand what those sexual assault videos were saying, even as I recognize that I wasn't in a bad situation at all; even when I wanted to leave, even when all I wanted in the world was to be gone, I stayed there and I danced his dance, because he was big and it was dark and there were so many people and I didn't know how to explain that I desperately wanted to leave in a way that didn't make it sound like I desperately wanted to leave him, because I didn't. I like him, and I could remember that I didn't want him to think that I didn't want to be there, but it felt like I couldn't remember why.

I'm not sure this makes any sense at all. It's everywhere-writing, the stuff I got halfway decent at last year, but I'm not sure it works here. I just remember the everywhere emotion.

I still don't understand, though, why I got so scared. No, that's not right---I know why I got scared. I just can't for the life of me understand why I suddenly stopped.

I fell asleep on Peter during the ride home. He gave he his jacket so I wouldn't freeze, and Vincent was sitting across from me, who I hadn't seen since his strange visit to math team just to say goodbye to me. There were couples everywhere, and his girlfriend kept touching him and he kept looking at me, so I closed my eyes. I vaguely recall Peter tucking me into him and sliding closer, because he was warm, and then next thing I can remember was the bus arriving at Cammie's house and then getting annoyed with Yuma for photographing my sleep.

The actual prom was very, very strange.

The Before (Kind of)

2011-06-07T21:41:00.003-04:00

The experience of prom was substantially more fun than I thought it would be. Granted, I thought it was just going to be a giant puddle of awkward (which, notably, it stopped being---well, to the extent that Mr. Tall and Awkward is capable of being not awkward). The picture taking was fine, and I can't remember talking to my date's mother at all. I talked to my mother, and she threatened me with certain doom if I didn't go and pay some attention to said date (I had slipped out to watch her to Ginny's makeup), and I was perfectly civil and we were not altogether pathetic on the whole.

That paragraph makes no sense. I can tell that it makes no sense, but I am uncertain as to how to resolve the problem.

My dress was, I think, shorter than I'd previously realized. Everyone else looked gorgeous. I still think Cammie looked like a Grecian goddess of awesomeness.

I'm having trouble remembering little details and conversations. I can clearly remember Yuma bringing onion rings and mozzarella sticks for Ginny. I'm thinking that the gap between pre-prom and the time I got some solid sleep is long enough that I can't remember preprom.

Okay, I'll cover the regular prom later....yup. Lab today was fun. I got made fun of for skipping out before happy hour last week. Good stuff.

The Afternoon After

2011-06-05T17:13:00.001-04:00

There are more posts---one about how I've only just realized that I'm leaving, at least one about prom---but I'm exhausted, so, for now, all you get is a transcription of the latest weird dream. This one occurred during my accidental three hour nap. Corrections to my atrociously written post-wakeup writing in italics.

I was at a hotel with Nyx, Cammie, and others (actually, I believe it was our prom group + Genie + Peter's mother and brother (who was named Reggie and does not, to my knowledge, actually exist)). I do not (written in journal as "donot") remember all of the mechanics of things. I know the three of us had been up to no good (I think there was swimming involved) and were covered in slimy blue stuff. Cammie was in the shower. The hotel was fancy. Nyx, who was in the midst of lecturing me about my need to be more spontaneous, declared that she was going skinny dipping.

"Where?" I asked, but she had already climbed out the window.

I stripped off and ran after her, clad only in Peter's tux jacket (which was long enough to make me perfectly decent, somehow) and carrying an orange towel. I rushed after Nyx, and she continued to iterate all of my flaws and all of the changes I should be making.

The road we were walking down turned into my street, and the hotel transformed into my house. We went in the direction of the culdesac. I saw Brian and asked where Nyx had went, but he didn't seem to know. I rushed on. When I was nearing the end of the street, Peter showed up in front of me.

"You are not going to do this." Coincidentally, at that moment a police helicopter swooped over us. "See, it's illegal!" he finished, though we both knew that he didn't think the copter was at all related to me.

"No," I said. "I need to be more spontaneous, I need to be more spontaneous."

He tried to get me to put on more clothes, but I just kept saying no. He slid his arm over my shoulders and walked me around the neighbor's garden party, continuing to repeat that he wouldn't let me. We both ate food. I think he had me convinced. Then my mother woke me up.

Fantabulosity

2011-06-02T23:15:00.004-04:00

Today started with getting to sleep in, so it really seemed good from the beginning. Unfortunately, my beloved youngest sister got into a screaming fight with my mom at the time my alarm would have gone off anyways, so my attempts at rest were thwarted.

On the plus side, I then spent many hours lolling about the house and being generally unproductive (and by unproductive, I mean "covered two more mini-units of vector review," obviously). Then I drove all the way to somewhat-far-off-town, successfully using the car's built-in GPS to locate the photography studio. It was easily identified by the nerdy looking kid wearing khakis and a blue shirt, just as ordered.

I derived a surprising amount of enjoyment from the photo-taking. I realize that the people there are supposed to go on and on about how beautiful the photograph-ee looks, but that doesn't mean that a mountain of compliments isn't fun. Posing with Rodney was probably more fun on the whole, though. We got lumped together after the photographer+assistants asked if we knew each other---not if we liked each other, mind you, just if we knew each other. This meant that as they posed us in various relations to each other, we got to make jokes at their expense, which more or just meant calling them crazy and then laughing a lot (you'd laugh to, if you were uncomfortable). There are also some photos of us making James Bond poses that I'd love to get ahold of at some point in the future.

Also, I met this cute guy from Tennessee who rides Tennessee walking horses (or something like that) professionally and wants to be a large animal vet when he grows up. I kind of really wanted to attempt to set him up with Kathrya, but then I found out that he is only a junior. Well, that and I remembered that Kathrya has a boyfriend, but these are minor details.

Later this evening, I went to movie night. It was a painful decision between settling down with a new way of thinking about projection vectors and going to watch A Fish Named Wanda, but I think I made the right decision. The movie was hilarious. Also, I got to meet Timothy, at long last. He is every bit as adorably nerdy as expected. I already want to be his friend, and he totally fits right into the group, which is lovely on the whole. He and Julie are colossally cute (I actually said to Yuma "they're like you and Ginny. It's adorable!", so I'm now officially on record on finding Yuma and Ginny cute rather than nauseating).

The evening ended with eight of us sitting hunched over in the back of Josh's car, eating ice cream out of the carton and discussing internet browsers in great detail. It was amazing. Nerdiness to the point of perfection.

The best terrible pun I can remember (I love puns so, so much) was Josh saying that Julie was covered in mud and therefore "so dirty." So much pun. So much wonderful.

Nyx also said, at one point, "this is so much more fun than getting drunk."

"Agreed," I replied.

"I really wouldn't know," said Brian.

It was then realized that none of us actually knew, but we nonetheless agreed that this sort of activity is in every way superior.

I love my friends.

Eeenteresting

2011-05-30T13:56:00.000-04:00

I don't know if I've ever mentioned this, but I absolutely love babysitting elementary-school aged children. There are few things as wonderful as being paid to watch TV or do my homework after they've gone to bed. And even before the kids crash, they generally make perfectly good conversation. Aside from that, making $90 on a Saturday night is totally worth missing a night out with friends.

I saw that nasty substitute teacher who I saw on a flight to Florida at the deli near my house. This was the second time I'd done so. Let me just say that I will never, ever be happy to see her. Never never never.

I'm trying to work out the order of dorms for my housing lottery form. I have a paper to read for internship that I really need to actually read. I have some free time on my hands and very little to fill it with.

I have a lot.

The actual Thiel Fellows got announced a few days ago. I suspect that they were going to have 25, and I wasn't replaced, but perhaps not. 24 is a nice round number in its own way. I don't feel that I regret the decision I made---I wasn't ready, and I recognize that. Unlike some people (I kind of want to make a comment about Jeff here), I've been trying not to let all of this go to my head, though I'm uncertain as to whether I've succeeded. I suppose if I'd actually taken the Fellowship, and I'd spent recent days giving interviews and whatnot, I'd probably be even worse in the arrogance department than I am now.

I'm trying to figure out how many pegs college will knock me down. I know it'll be hard, but how hard? Hard enough that I should take regular-level multivariable calc? I've been looking at the psets, though, and they're manageable. I'm thinking I might not work during the days this summer. I won't make that much money in comparison to what I already have, and there are too many productive things I want to do.

I want to make those black box cost estimates I was told would be a good idea. I also want to use the online resources to teach myself the difference between this year's multivariable calculus and 18.02 (yeah, the school anonymity thing is totally not working out), because I'd like to try to ASE out. I think that, given the fact that I only have a month, those are sufficient goals. One is less structured, one is much more regimented, but I like it, and I like the idea of spending my days learning. And the fact that my parents are buying me a laptop saves me the equivalent sum of money to what I would have spent buying one.

So, on the whole, I think it's a good idea, and I think the productivity will mean more to me in the long run than the extra cash (my savings have been doing pretty well after this year, despite the rather large crash-related hit).

These are my plans. They may not be grand, but I think they'll be just as good.

A Wonderful Feeling

2011-05-26T23:09:00.005-04:00

Today, my grandparents got back from their winter in Florida, so, of course, they had to come over for dinner. Mom made something yummy, and Grandma found a way to make a dessert that Mom wouldn't object to.

My grandparents, having been in Florida, naturally had not yet seen my prom ensemble. So I left when we were about halfway through washing up to zip myself in and slide (or, erm, wrestle) on my shoes. I love the way the dress feels when I put it on---just the right weight, just enough give in all the right places, the perfect shade of purple. And it's soft on me, and light, unlike the layers I've been piling on for lab every day.

I went into the kitchen and did my best imitation of a model's strut. I stood still and twirled while they preened, Papa being his typically skeevy self and Grandma being nothing but kind. It was nice to be preened over, nice to be the center of attention. When I was, at length, dismissed, I went upstairs rather than back to my room---the closest full-length mirror to my room (discounting my younger sister's, which is small enough that I can't see my entire person in it) is in the exercise room upstairs.

I clacked up the stairs, and I stood on the rubberized mats, and I looked at myself, and I was beautiful. That's how I looked to me, anyways. The right balance between legs and curves, the perfect dress, the perfect shoes, the somewhat glowy smile---perhaps I wasn't wearing glasses, so I couldn't see the flaws, but, in that mirror, I was as sexy as sexy could be. I looked at myself and I saw that ugly duckling daydream, of the great nerd---who is really only nerdy because of her glasses and involuntary participation in some variant of Quiz Bowl---showing up at prom and being suddenly beautiful, suddenly breathtaking, and leaving them all in awe. It's ridiculous, I know, but I felt like I could be Taylor Swift at the end of that cheesy, cheesy music video.

And I didn't care. Seriously. I was more excited about getting into Harvard than I was about this---which is saying something, since the only reason I was even glad I got in was that it meant that Bryant hadn't fared any better than me. I looked at myself, and I could see the dream existing, that little thought in the back of my nerdy mind that I was the belle of some imaginary ball, and I didn't care.

I liked the way I looked, sure. I hopefully will still like it once I get through the actual event (with any luck, it'll be enough to allow me to survive prolonged contact with Peter's mother). But it paled in comparison to my academic accomplishments. RSI, MIT, April 30th, Thiel, even last night's High Honors dinner, was worth more to me than the discovery that someone pretty lurked underneath my cargo shorts. What matters to me is exactly what I have.

It's a triumphant feeling, somehow. I'm not at all certain that I'm expressing it properly, though maybe it doesn't matter. I feel, to use something Meg Cabot liked to have Mia worry about in those Princess Diaries books (the books, mind, not the movies), self-actualized. I'm not sure Mia ever realized what it was---or maybe she did, and I wasn't old enough to appreciate it, so I've forgotten whatever life lesson she picked up---but it was something about knowing who one is and being excited about it. And being an adult, or mature. But I think it was understanding of oneself and satisfaction in that understanding. And right now, I feel like I get it.

It's a wonderful feeling.

For Science!

2011-05-24T21:27:00.006-04:00

As far as the title goes: please click (link credit goes to Greg).

Science Symposium today. Stupid Jeremy beat me out for a physics award (insert grumbling here). At one point, Billy received an award for being generally great (or something like that...I was sitting in the back reading Quicksilver and not really paying attention). In the department head's explanation, he mentioned that "Billy does an excellent job of showing people that science isn't nerdy---it's awesome!"

I was like, "Wait, what? Science is nerdy!"

Yuma turned to me, his face shocked. "It's awesome because it's nerdy."

Thank you to Yuma for selecting the appropriate response.

Progressive Progress

2011-05-22T18:43:00.000-04:00

Having a life is substantially more time consuming than I'd originally anticipated.

Since going on internship--well, really since I decided to stop putting effort into schoolwork--I've actually been going out, seeing random movies, shopping, treating myself to tacos, begging Chao to come visit me (I'd count "watching my grandmother get married", but if that had happened first semester I'd still have gone). It's nice, but I feel busy. Which is, I suppose, a good thing. Being not-busy makes me go all twitchy in my head, and then I feel unproductive and silly.

Business is best.

My internship, too, has been phenomenal. I'm learning about obscure genes, and I'm learning biology lab protocols. I successfully didn't contaminate my cells on the first day (though I did flub up on the final step and accidentally suck most of my sample into the vacuum pipette). I also apparently show a talent for tissue culturing, so hopefully that will pan out.

Though I have another paper to read today, and I need to work out some lab protocols, I think. So this post is going to be short.

I really need to devote some time to the mafia game. I keep getting wrapped up in unrelated things. It's a good thing I decided not to be god.

Whhheeeeeee

2011-05-17T20:50:00.001-04:00

Chem. We learned organic nomenclature. Yuma still does not appreciate being hugged.

Science Research. We watched interviews with Feynman on youtube. I read more of that bio paper I really need to read even more of.

Fiction. Boredom. Book talks.

Math. Again, nothing was done. I think I did four practice polar integrals before the boredom overwhelmed me. But then we went to lunch, which involved food, which is always nice, and then I got Yuma and Ginny and Brian and Nyx to play Contact, which made everything still more better (and the multiple ands? Totally necessary).

Then I at last made up my David Copperfield essay test--for some reason I was required to answer two essay questions, and she only gave me one test booklet, so I wrote two separate essays, each crammed onto two double-sided pieces of extra-wide margin paper. Yay! Talking excessively about Uriah Heep and making uninsightful points!

I then went prom dress shopping with my mother. We went to a bunch of stores, and decided on something that is pretty and purple and not-too-short-not-too-long, which was pretty much exactly what I wanted anyways. Then I went home and didn't do homework.

Not doing homework is becoming a disturbing trend.

The fact that I'm not longer willing to use this medium as a mode of expressing my general sense of "gahh, boys are stupid, mrgh" has made this post somewhat boring. My apologies.

An Actually Somewhat Grand Finale

2011-05-17T19:31:00.000-04:00

My last day of high school is now over.

Well, technically, it's still underway--I have a month of internship before I graduate. But no more classes. No more awkward lunches with Peter (though, really, I need to just get comfortable talking to him, because if I don't get over myself prom is going to have a high suckiness potential). No more terrible talent shows, no more "quiet in the halls", no more permissions to enter public spaces of the building.

Not that hacking is going to be allowed, just that it'll be different. I look forward to the entire experience.

That said: no more homework, no more books, no more teacher's dirty looks.

On the plus side, though, my beloved friend Julie wrote me a poem that was read aloud during the pilgrimage. I'm typing it up here so that I don't lose it, because it was far to sweet and far to lovely for me to let myself forget it.

Her name's but one way she is always known:
Her purple hair, her brains, her happy tone,
What other ways are there, the color green?
That, too, is a descriptor often seen.
And our Tea towers over most of us,
Though when we comment, she may make a fuss
And say she'd not prefer to be so tall.
Admittedly, she tends to trip and fall,
The only little drawback to her height.
I know that she has college in her sight;
She'll be somewhere in [redacted] in a year,
or sunny Cali. She's a pioneer
and has a plan for the electric grid:
Flow batteries! She just received a bid
To spend two years and start a company,
That's far beyond the reach of you and me.
Between these two she now will have to choose:
Start college, save the world? She cannot lose!
Oh, our Tea, we all know, does love to read
Those math and physics texts, though she will plead:
It doesn't suit her to be just a geek;
Conviction's what you hear when she does speak.
Politically, her goal is women's rights:
One of her main concerns is thus the plights
That girls, when in her field, will sometimes face.
Impostor syndrome: they feel out of place
And never understand what they can do.
She says: if I can do it, you can, too!
In many classes, Tea, she always draws;
Her doodles on her paper are not flaws,
They're simply an expression of her thought,
And still she takes her nots. She really ought
to concentrate a little more in class,
But does well anyway: give her a pass!
Before she graduates and leaves this school,
She'll be on internship at someplace cool:
For four weeks she'll be in a bio lab
And know cells microscopic as a dab.
Before I also say goodbye and leave,
I'll tell her she'll succeed---to just believe.

This continues to make me all warm and fuzzy inside. It also seems to sum up a lot of what I do, which makes me love Julie all the more for knowing me so well. For the record, any of the rhymes/syllable counts that sound silly were created by me in an attempt to account for changes in my name and location.

I also wrote my own little piece for Yuma.

Oh dear Yuma, from not quite here, his hair's
Not long nor short and neither is it fair---
It's black! His glasses once were rimmed in wire
But then they broke. He used some glue and fire
To make them whole, but bought a different pair.
Today, more stylish glasses he does wear.
He serenades beloved Gin upon
His uke or small guitar. When she bent on
A-polishing his nails, she made them shine
Gray-silver like robots of his design.
Each week he spends much time a-working hard
To train the frosh to be of high regard.
I say---a lab partner beyond compare
Except, perhaps, in Gretchen, to be fair.
He's great at stats and all things math. I think
His random samples are quite neat. The clink
Or thud of Frisbee falling to the ground---
It is to him familiar a sound.
I wish you luck in measuring the height
Of rolling coins. Do keep your smile bright.

I think I should win some sort of prize for the number of hints to my identity I managed to squeeze into it without being obvious about the hintiness to people other than Yuma. Regardless, the pilgrimage was quite fun, and now I've got the poems recorded for posterity. Good is good.

A Very Much Not Grand Finale

2011-05-16T21:47:00.003-04:00

Well, I've finished my last high school homework assignment. It's a piece of almost-shit. The characters are still trying to find consistency, the events don't quite flow, the end isn't really even the almost-ending that short stories can get away with. But I'm sleepy, and I'll still pass the class just so long as I find something to hand in. Thus:

Sarah and Charlie were sitting in the airport. She sat up straight, her ankles crossed, her back not in contact with the back of the chair. Her straight brown hair was in a low, smooth ponytail. Her clothes managed to look neat and unwrinkled despite the four hours they’d just spent in the air. Charlie was pressed back, as far as he could go. His legs were stretched out in front of him, his arms fanned out onto the back of the two adjacent seats, Sarah’s included. He looked tired at best, exhausted at worst. His hair—also brown, also straight—was overgrown, half covering his eyes. He made no effort to remove it.

“This is crazy,” said Charlie.

Sarah remained quiet, her lips tight together.

“Seriously, what are we doing?”

“Waiting for the van service,” said Sarah.

“You know that isn't what I meant.”

She ignored him and removed a folder of travel information, pulled out a paper labeled “Airport Transportation,” then used her cell phone to call the number.

Charlie, now, was the stationary one.

“It's waiting outside,” she said, standing up, her back remaining in a forced straight line. “Come on.”

They didn't talk at all during the van ride; they merely looked out the windows. Sarah's eyes focused on each building, and she seemed to be cataloguing everything as it flashed by. Charlie's hair was still in front of his eyes, which were open but not moving in time with the van.

They eventually arrived at the house they'd be staying in. They walked together down the halls, peering into each bedroom. There was the master—large, well-furnished, where their parents would stay when they arrived. A second room had a queen bed and was covered in pastels. It bore a remarkable resemblance to Sarah's bedroom back at home. The next room had two twins, and the entire space was bright. The walls were a deep red, the bedspreads yellow.

“This would be Sia's room.”

“Charlie.” Sarah's voice was sharp.

“It's just like her. She always says her favorite color is 'sun.'”

“Said.”

“What?”

“It's 'said,' Charlie. She always said.”

“Do we have to do that?”

“You can't just pretend she's not dead,” said Sarah, her voice still even.

“Well.” Charlie took a breath, paused for a moment, searching for the words.

“You can't just pretend she never existed.”

“I'm not trying to pretend that.”

“Then why do you get angry as soon as I mention her?” Charlie's voice, unlike Sarah's, was raised.

Sarah inhaled and exhaled slowly.

“Why?” His voice broke in the middle of the short word, slipping up an octave.

“Because for whatever reason, Mom and Dad decided to send us off on this godforsaken vacation while they sorted out the details. They want us to be happy. Sia would be screaming at us to be happy. And I can't be happy when I think about what happened to her.”

“Then think about her before!”

“It's not that easy!”

“Really? I thought controlling her own thoughts would be easy for Ms. Always-in-Control?”

Sarah turned away from him and walked to the room she'd claimed as hers.

The next morning, the two ate breakfast silently—Sarah an omelette cooked perfectly, Charlie an overflowing bowl of cereal. He pushed his hair back a few times and looked at her. He opened his mouth to speak a few times, but seemed to decide against it. She kept her eyes trained on the food, following each bite as it entered her mouth. She finished eating, washed her plate and pan, then went to the door.

“Charlie, I'm going for a walk.”

“Okay.”

“I'll be back later.”

“Okay.”

She walked down the unfamiliar streets for quite some time. The houses varied—in some places, they were simple, cookie-cutter imitations of their neighbors, but in others, they towered behind hedges, each home sculpted differently. Sarah didn't look at the houses, though. Her eyes focused directly ahead, and she walked with even steps, carefully. She didn't know where she was going, not really; she only knew that she had to go somewhere.

She walked on. She walked past neighborhoods and streams, coffeeshops and boutiques, locals and visitors. She saw what she passed, but could not recollect where she'd been even moments before. At some point, she reached a road with an end. The dead end turned into a parking lot, and nested next to this parking lot was a small church.

It wasn't grand at all, just a simple stucco building painted the same color as those around it. Sarah wouldn't have known it for a church at all if not for a billboard behind glass outside.
Sarah had never been one for churches. Dead men on crosses seemed silly, the lessons of the Bible seemed unnecessary explanations for innate wrongs. Yet here she was, at the end of a walk, and here was the church, at the end of a road, so she walked up to the door and entered.
She hadn't realized while she was walking that there was sound, but when the door thudded shut behind her she was startled to discover that here it was silent, quieter than breakfast, quieter than she had been these past days. The windows were dusty and almost-dark, and the light flooded out from them as a dull gold. The pews were empty but for evenly spaced Bibles, and at the front of the room stood an intricate cross, the very sort that usually made Sarah uncomfortable.

Here, though, it fit. She walked forward, her steps echoing through the room without breaking the calm. When she reached the front, she sat down slowly, crossing her legs like a child—like Sia—would sit. She sat there for a long time—seconds, minutes, maybe hours. Her head was tilted up, her body every bit as still as it had been. After a time, though, she began to move. Her spine drooped, her eyes dropped, her hands fell to the ground. She began to cry—quietly, but with tears—and then to shake. Her hands clutched at the floor as she let the rest of her self release, quake, and then calm.

After a time—minutes, seconds, or hours—her tears stopped and her body stilled. She looked up, again, at the cross she still didn't quite understand. “Take care of her,” she whispered.”
“Take care of her,” she said again, louder this time.

She turned and walked out of the church, then walked back to the house, step after step after step. Charlie was inside, still at the table, an empty bowl of cereal in front of him. He spun his spoon, round and round and round, and he peered at a spot on the table in front of the bowl.

“Charlie?” said Sarah.

He looked up.

“I'm home.”

Minor Happenings

2011-05-15T22:35:00.006-04:00

This evening, I went on an event that resembled a date with our (not so) dear friend Peter. It was boring and not really worth much of the worry that lead up to it. On the plus side, I've emerged with renewed confidence (I can do better!) as well as improved comfort in my independence (I'd have had more fun by myself or with a friend!). Great success!

In other news, we're beginning a new game of mafia. I can say no more without risking death by beheading from Frank, our beloved overlord, so that is all I can reveal with regards to that specific category.

Last night's girly sleepover was quite fun and extremely enjoyable. Organic soda is delicious. Air mattresses are comfy. The companionship of Julie, Cammie, and Gretchen is wonderful.

Why is it that a bad date makes me so happy? More importantly, is this analysis worth performing? Probably not.

I also have a fiction assignment due Tuesday. I have to fictionalize the following memoir and hand it in:

Last summer, on August 2^nd, Annie died. She was six years old. She was the child of my father’s stepsister, but I’d known her for all of her six years. I could remember, way back when, visiting her family after she’d just been born, looking at this teeny tiny baby and marveling at how any human being could be that small.

She’d died of a brain hemorrhage. It was bizarre, completely uncontrollable, completely incapable of being healed. There was nothing we could do, though, and I’d never seen death before, never been to a funeral. I hadn’t reached the place where I am now—I suppose it takes a second death for that.

But, regardless, my family had splurged on airline tickets to Colorado months before, flying away for the first time in two nearly two years.

We didn’t want Shelby to have to go to the funeral—Shelby, my baby sister, who already thinks that she’s psychic and is about as emotionally overwhelmed as it’s possible to be already. So my parents stayed for the funeral, and they sent my sisters and I jetting off across the country. The three of us spent a week in a house by ourselves, learning independence, messing up the cooking, wandering off, looking for our own sources of closure. Sometimes, the funeral doesn’t help.

Q&A

2011-05-14T20:16:00.003-04:00

Question: Have I always been insane?

Answer: Yes.

Question: I would like to put a label on this so I know what's going on.

Answer: So, should we go this week or next week?

Notice the differences.

Whhheeeeeee

2011-05-13T19:32:00.000-04:00

Chem. We learned organic nomenclature. Yuma still does not appreciate being hugged.

Science Research. We watched interviews with Feynman on youtube. I read more of that bio paper I really need to read even more of.

Fiction. Boredom. Book talks.

Not doing homework is becoming a disturbing trend.

The fact that I'm not longer willing to use this medium as a mode of expressing my general sense of "gahh, boys are stupid, mrgh" has made this post somewhat boring. My apologies.

Developments

2011-05-10T22:23:00.002-04:00

So Yuma came off the waitlist of [school of choice]--I really need to come up with a nickname for said school, but I'll get to it later. Anyways, I am adding Yuma to my list of college buddies, and I'm probably going to get even more annoying about talking about [school of choice], but I am super duper excited and really proud of him for being one of a very small number of students admitted off of said waitlist.

Well, there was someone on here whose nickname was Clay prior to today...I've decided to change it. So, now it's Peter. This made no difference in anybody's life, I'm sure, but, trust me, it was necessary. People whose blog names look like real-life names of different people get to be confusing, particularly in light of current developments (why yes, I did just insert the title of the post into the post in a deliberately cheesy fashion).

Lucas told me a story today about Gunnar, one of my campers this summer. Apparently, one time in his younger years, Gunnar ate so many tootsie rolls at Lucas's grandmother's house that he upchucked. This is funny because Gunnar is very intelligent and does not usually do things with such clearly negative consequences.

Yeah, terrible story. I'm going to change all the Clays in the archives to Peters now.

Things Found While Cleaning My Room

2011-05-08T20:12:00.000-04:00

Five buckeyballs
My RSI Summerbook
The block of wood I cut when first learning to use a table saw (note: this was two weeks ago)
Money
More money
Saudi Arabian money
JSHS Pen
A broken watch
My Princeton Preview lanyard, which I'm keeping for the summer because it is very high quality.
A "This is what a feminist looks like" bumper sticker
A sexy silver lanyard I have no recollection of previously seeing
5 towels in various stages of dirtiness
The bookmark I got for buying a prom ticket
70 more buckeyballs
Approximately 600 tampons (note: hyperbole)
My MIT CPW folder (MIT! <3 <3 <3)
This was the point at which I became fed up and threw everything remaining into one large bin.

In other news, I went prom dress shopping and came home with two new pairs of shorts and some chocolates for my beloved mother, but no prom dress. Sweet success!

A Not-So-Grand Finale

2011-05-07T23:24:00.001-04:00

Today was my last SHP class ever, and I missed all but the last 40 minutes of it. My wallet somehow managed not to be in my bag when I got on the train. I didn't get my ticket checked until the train was in Stanford, which meant that I waited 50 minutes for the next train, then rode another half hour back to home, where I removed my wallet from the truck--my parents, blessed beings that they are, had found it and brought it to the station for me--and sprinted to the tracks in hopes of catching a train that had just arrived.

I was, unfortunately, unable to catch that train, but I managed the one about 15 minutes later, so that was alright. However, in the process of chasing after it, I discovered that I am, in fact, very much not in shape. This means that, if ever I run after something important, I will not be able to reach it, which is, of course, undesirable. I am going to attempt to use this as an impetus for further athletic activity. Whether or not I am successful remains to be seen.

Regardless, I was able to meet two of my future charges after class--they are adorable. I am already mentally babying people less than a year younger than me! So excited!

Musings on Nothing

2011-05-05T19:41:00.001-04:00

I am cold. For some reason, the temperature of the air when I'm walking outside in the sun doesn't translate well to the inside of my room.

I am hungry. Apparently the cupcakes I devoured during lunch were not sufficient to hold me over. The dry rice crispies that my tutor-ee and I ate while I was teaching her to classify triangles was also not enough...Shelby just came in to call me to dinner. More later.

It is now later. Dinner was chicken parmesan, and it was delicious. I wish that I was capable of spelling delicious without the assistance of spellcheck, I really do. I'm now trying to think of what happened today in an attempt to come up with something halfway worth reading. The squabbles in the truck on the way to school with Genie and Shelby, for example, do not qualify as interesting. Nor does the fact that our household ran out of 2% milk.

I keep wanting to add \ to the front of the percent. LaTeX is slowly doing me in.

I have been be-ticketed for prom. I let Peter pay for my ticket--I'm not sure that I should have, but he said that he was in a brook-no-arguments sort of tone that really ought to have bothered me but didn't. Dad advised me, when I was worrying over it later, that his mother was probably paying for it, and she'd given me at least eighty dollars of grief over the years, so I really shouldn't worry. Ginny and Yuma have also both be-ticketed themselves--I'm not totally clear on whether her parents are aware that she's going with Yuma, though I don't know how much they'd care at this current point in time anyways.

I hope Ginny starts blogging again when she gets to college, because I'd like to have some way to keep up with her life. Hopefully I will have more to write about than just psets, and this will be a decent medium for keeping up with my life.

The second half of my physics final was uneventful. At least, I think it was uneventful--first period isn't usually clear enough in my memory for trustworthy recollections. My free periods in the caf dragged on for far too long. Facebook ate a bunch of notifications. I should probably play the piano but lack the motivation.

I've continued reading Woolf's The Voyage Out. Her characters are remarkably realistic. I feel like I know them, and they're tangible, and yet they're far too complex for me to predict their behaviors. It's a big departure from Sanderson's characters--his women in particular seem to all be somewhat similar, a complaint that's frequently been made of Jordan's work, which is interesting. But, then again, Woolf is on a whole different playing field.

I'm going to go back to my reading.

Finishing The Way of Kings

2011-05-03T18:31:00.000-04:00

Brandon Sanderson sure is good at writing an ending. His beginnings can get confusing--I feel like he occasionally forgets that not everyone has an extensive background in the worlds inside his head, but hanging on through well-written confusingness is far from a chore. There was a period in the middle that lagged; because so many characters were started up at once, it took a while to figure out and care about where the plot could actually be going. But the ending? Awesome. Tied together plot lines cleanly without the barrage of Elantris, while still leaving room to grow. And just generally amazing. I'm seriously desperate for the next one to come out, now.

I keep coming back to what someone told me a few weeks ago, that all of his books--at least, I think it was all, though I'm not certain of Warbreaker (or whatever the one with the colors was)--exist in one universe. I feel like there are connections there that I'm only just beginning to piece together, overlapping bits and pieces that half make sense...I love that feeling. It's like the moment of embarking on a good research project, once you've working out your direction and know that the answer is there, and you know where to look, you just need to figure out precisely how, and then get down and look for it.

I love that feeling.

Mom wants help with dinner, so I've gotta go. Think of Ginny and her "day of wreckoning" construction hat while I'm gone.

Physics Study Party

2011-05-02T20:33:00.000-04:00

Things I have done since embarking on this ridiculous task:

Chatted on facebook with Leila
Gchatted with Maxwell
Talked about testicular tension with Nyx and Josh, the my two fellow participants in this party of ridiculousness.
Drank tangello juice
Read over the list of MIT housing seminars
Attempted to find a complete online physics test
Gave Nyx unnecessary advice on how to study
Removed 96% of the clothing on my floor from my floor
Spot treated my mattress pad
Listened to Nyx explain rref in matrices to Josh
Facebook chatted briefly with Jordan, who is on my list of people I want to be friends with when I get to college.
Stopped chatting with Jordan because she said that the AP Physics test was hard, and she went to physics camp, so I figured I should study--though she's probably just one of those people who says stuff is hard that isn't, I dunno.
Played with Buckeyballs
Ate dinner
Started one AP Physics problem
Got bored
Announced intention of not studying
Gossiped
Sent emails about prom dress shopping
Worried about prom being awkward
Laughed at the spelling of the word awkward
Worried about the fact that this list is probably not as funny as previous list
Noted that nearly all of Josh's clothing is logowear related to his future college
Congratulated self for using the proper where/wear in the above bullet point
Listened to Nyx talk to herself

Societal Implications

2011-05-01T16:19:00.000-04:00

When I visited Princeton, my host Eve had to ditch me to go to crew practice pretty much exactly when everyone arrived. I also managed to arrive while all of my fellow prefrosh were involved in a mandatory activity, which meant that I was alone. I was also in an unfamiliar place, and tired, and Princeton is always pretty quiet, so there weren't even random people around for me to go talk to, so I was lonely.

I went to a meeting of the entrepreneurial society. It was boring--most of the people seemed like they were leaping after whatever idea could net them a lot of money. It bugged me, since my motivation was to make a difference in the environment and electricity distribution and generation anywhere I could (at this point, I was still deciding whether to take the Fellowship, so this was relevant). At some point, another prefrosh (I don't know his name, but he had an orange lanyard and was very attractive (not that the second bit is at all relevant)) left, so I waited about a minute and then skipped out. I texted Julie soon after that, and went to meet her in a courtyard (Princeton has a lot of courtyards. So many that I think they may cease to be courtyards and just turn into a giant field of grass that happens to be occasionally interrupted by buildings). It should be noted that chronology is loose, and events may not have actually occurred in the order they appear here.

Julie was sitting with two of her host's suitemates as well as another prefrosh (I actually ran into this prefrosh again at Visitas. She recognized me. I didn't remember her. First, I blamed it on thinking she wasn't a prefrosh, then on the fact that she'd been wearing sunglasses). The girls started talking about the best places to party on campus--not a topic of great interest to the three prospective physics majors. Then we got a detailed description of the eating clubs, including some rude words about the fact that the engineers just like to hang out at their's on your average Friday night.

I have to admit that, by that point, I wasn't particularly fond of them.

I know there was a reason that I decided to tell this story. I have this recollection that the point of the story was the conversation with Julie and the others.

I remember! The students asked us what we did as extracurriculars--how do we occupy our time not at school?

Forgotten prefrosh said dance, or something like that.

Julie said track and The Challenge, I think.

They looked at me expectantly. "Um...science?"

"No, outside of school."

"I do research. Or go to different classes. Or read about science or apply for sciencey things."

They looked at me as if I were some sort of alien. It was disconcerting, to say the least.

--------------------------------

I believe that I also promised the complex manifolds story, so here goes that.

Once upon a time, long, long ago (so long ago that it was, in fact, the weekend of April 9th-10th of 2011) and far, far away (so far away that it was, in fact, in Cambridge, Massachusetts), James fell asleep.

Now, James is the sort of person who does not like to admit that he would fall asleep unintentionally. However, his good friends Tea and Hyunmi, as well as his new acquaintance Victor, were aware of this fact. Thus, Hyunmi recorded a video of Tea talking about the fact that James was sleeping, as well as the visual of James sleeping.

When James awoke, he claimed the video was a forgery, but I'm sure you all know who was the right in this argument.

Regardless, the following weekend, the group--not including Victor, who had had the good sense to make his college decision early--was reunited. They spent much time in each other's company, not sleeping.

On the second night of not sleeping, it was 3:30 am, and they were very tired. However, they knew that this would be their last night together for a very long time. They also knew that if they left the common room of this random dorm that Felix had so kindly let them into, they would be unable to return.

Thus, it was with heavy hearts that they decided to take a two hour nap. Tea fell asleep quickly. This storyteller is unable to comment on the time to sleep of James and Hyunmi, but is confident that it was quite short. Tea awoke two hours later to the quiet conversation of Hyunmi and Felix. James, however, was still asleep.

Tea, Hyunmi, and Felix attempted to wake James. They spoke his name loudly. They laughed loudly. Tea poked and prodded him repeatedly. Hyunmi also participated in some quantity of poking and prodding. Eventually, it reached a point where his eyes were open, but he was not yet capable of logical conversation.

However, Tea embarked on the ambitious task of keeping his eyes from staying shut. Whenever they dropped, she would poke him again. This went on for some time. Eventually, Tea grew tired of leaning all the way over to reach the other couch. She pushed James's legs over and sat on the other end of the couch on which he was no longer sleeping. The next time his eyes were open, she informed him on no uncertain terms that, in the event that his lids fell again, she would sit on him. Even this attempt proved unsuccessful--both threats and actual sitting were insufficient cause for wakefulness.

Tea settled back onto the other end of the couch, annoyed at the ineffectiveness of her methods.

Then, James began to speak. "What are my soles connected to?" he said.

"What?" asked Tea.

James mumbled. She poked him.

"What did you say?"

"What are my soles connected to?"

She looked at his feet. "My hip?"

Hyunmi and Felix were watching him, somewhat concerned.

"No, no," said James.

Tea looked to Hyunmi and Felix for help. They laughed, but could provide no further clues.

James questioned them a few more times before they decided to leave him be for a little while. When he eventually awoke, they asked what he had been asking.

He tilted his head, his eyes looking at the same far away place that people examine when they perform mental calculations. "I thought," he said, "that we were in a non-euclidian manifold."

The others laughed. Few people other than James would use that sort of vocabulary to describe early-morning hallucinations.

"But what does that mean?" asked Tea. "I don't speak math."

"Oh," said James. "It's a manifold that doesn't always simplify to a plane. Some of its points are connected to points that aren't necessarily nearby, as we'd think of it. Like, I might drop my cellphone and it would reappear above my head, because points below were connected to those on the top."

"But what were you asking?"

"I thought my feet were connected to something else, and I was hoping one of you would know."

So I meant to go to sleep

2011-04-30T23:12:00.007-04:00

I told James that I was, and it'd be rather rude for me not to, now that I said I did. Particularly since I was up well past midnight last night. I'm not sure what I was thinking with that--probably that my body doesn't seem to care, and that Mafia and the subjunctive tense are more entertaining than whatever else I was up to.

I still haven't made a "sleep" tag for posts. I refuse to. Sleep is for the weak, as Becton would say.

It's ridiculous, isn't it, how frequently I talk about RSI people, months after the fact. I still hang out with them, too--I almost got lunch with Gopika today, I spent so much of those preview weekends with Rickoids--I feel bad about how many awesome people I'm not meeting, but whenever I'm not with my summer buddies I miss them. I've turned into a "One time at band camp..." person, but it's science camp, instead.

I went looking for "This one time at band camp" on tvtropes, since I assumed it must be something of a trope, and it turns out it was repeatedly used in American Pie. Or, it's frequently referenced from there. The line in question is "And this one time, at band camp, I stuck a flute in my pussy." I'm telling you this so that next time Cammie launches onto the topic, I won't be the only one feeling somewhat uncomfortable.

SHP is still fun, even though I barely comprehend cosmology and I'm alone on the train because no one else bothers to show up. It's good to see Gopika. It's occasionally even good to see Rube, though not usually.

I haven't really talked about any of the college previews here...I need to remember to talk about James and his complex manifolds, though I've already told most of my readers it, I think. Ah well, it rarely hurts to repeat a funny story, and there could be people I don't actually know who would appreciate it! Right? Right...

On the plus side, James is coming to college with me, bringing [my school] to 2 more committed Rickoids than [other school]. Which means that we're way more awesome. Duh.

Day Off

2011-04-29T19:21:00.000-04:00

Last science fair was today. It kind of sucked, actually. On the plus side, I made a couple of new friends--Karel, who knows some RSI folks and is super legit, and Dayton, who I am currently chatting with on facebook and have pressured into contacting me if she visits [college of choice] in the future. I also had some quality time with Dr. Verona, who got annoyed with me for referencing that time he talked about drinking and deriving during class.

I left early, what with getting out during the first round (Karel did too, so I'm not that mad, but still) and went shopping. Tried on a buttload of random clothes and dresses, came home with one pair of cargo shorts. It was fun, though, and finding dresses that fit was pretty easy, which makes me think the great prom dress search won't actually turn out to be quite so great.

Then I came home and read half of Squire, which is every bit as good this time around. I also played The Sims 2 for the first time in a while, which was pretty fun. Now I'm talking to people on the computer. When my hair gets a bit drier, I'll get dressed and head over to Josh's house, and that'll be that.

Title Forgotten

2011-04-28T18:00:00.001-04:00

I spent most of yesterday lolling about and being unproductive. Today seems very likely to be similar. I've been reading, and I got back on the Python horse a little bit--though I think I'll probably end up taking the Python programming class at my college of choice.

Speaking of college decisions--May 1st is rapidly approaching. I'm going to click my commit and decline buttons tomorrow at some point. It's been a relatively easy decision for me--I was pretty emotionally attached to one school going into the preview weekends, and nothing I saw made me doubt my decision, so that was more or less that. I know what the best fit for me is, and that's where I'll be this Autumn.

I know it isn't that easy for everybody, though. I spent nearly an hour and a half today talking with Avon. She's deciding between two schools, both of which are pretty good, but she's worried about the nonpremed academic programs at one, and I don't know how much of her fear is legitimate because I honestly haven't done the research. That said, I've been more or less telling her to go to that one because she seems pretty emotionally attached to it, but she'll make whatever decision seems like it's best for her.

I'm now listening to music on my computer--the current song is Run, by Benton Paul, whoever that is. I'm also talking (internet-talking, but you know what I mean) to Maxwell. I'm recounting the tale of my ditching Arthur at prom because I'm uncomfortable dancing with dudes--he called the move courageous and said that it was quintessentially me. I think he's a little bit insane, but I suppose most people are in some way.

My last science fair is tomorrow. I'm not sure if I wish I'd done them sooner--they're fun, but I'm glad for the uncompetitive attitude to science I currently have. I'm still looking forward to it, though. Science! Yay!

End of the Fatzone

2011-04-26T21:49:00.001-04:00

Well, I said I was going to blog, so I'm feeling this compulsion to, well, actually blog. But at the same time, life feels rather boring, and I don't feel as if I have much to say.

I had a bizarre dream last night. I was on the rag, but I still definitely has sex (should be noted that I only remember the aftermath but not not the actual activity) with my dream-boyfriend, who was super attractive and very innocent looking but actually a prostitute. Then he became friends with my mom. I woke up, and my first thought was "holy *expletive* I didn't use a condom and I'm going to get an STD." My second thought was "oh, that was a dream." My third was "damn, he was attractive, too." Then I pressed the sleep button and I can't remember much else.

Math was fun, I guess. I like hard problems, the the one we did--the sum, from n=1 to n=44 of cos n/ sin n--was definitely difficult, at least for me. Gretchen seems to have permanently ditched us, though--Nyx overheard her suggesting to Dino that he could either pull up a desk or "sit with them." And, well, that stings, quite a bit, particularly since whenever she does bother to be with us she's perfectly wonderful. I know she's on some campaign to get Clara to go to college with her, but that doesn't make it sting any less.

The obesity presentation went fine, I think. I hope we do well, if only because I'd rather not get beaten. Plus, well, a little bit of money would be nice. A little bit of money is really always quite nice.

Brian apparently just asked Nyx if she used to date Tamir. I'm too busy laughing to finish writing this.

The Last Presentation

2011-04-25T16:11:00.000-04:00

Julie and I are chilling at school. It should be boring, but Julie is awesome, so it isn't. Yay!

We all were just practicing for our Super Student Challenge presentation tomorrow. On Overcoming Obesity. That was our title until Gretchen started saying that the Os looked like little fat people. I actually wanted to put little fat people in, but then Yuma came up with the name "Shaping Paperclip," which is really much better anyways.

Julie says hi to the world.

I'm worried about the presentation--not really stage fright (I have stage fright for Julie because I'm getting nervous for her), but there's the fear that, like last year, the presentation might be the thing that keeps us from winning. Not that we really know if that was it, but I'm still nervous.

I'm also sad that our little team is dispersing after this. No more Science Bowl, no more Moody's, no more this, no more math team (not that Julie was on math team or Ginny showed up, but still!). The posse of awesomeness, or whatever we want to call ourselves, won't really exist anymore, and it's sad. They've been good to work with, and I've really gotten a lot out of the experience of working as a team with people who I can actually depend on academically. And I've really gotten to know all of our strengths and weaknesses--we're so well meshed together, it's a pity to break that up.

But we will. Because we're graduating. Internships, summer, college. I am so so so so so excited.

Diplomacy

2011-04-23T23:34:00.002-04:00

I played my first game of it today. We only had five people, though, so the dynamic wasn't quite right. It was me, Genie, Julie, Peter, and Josh (though Cammie did eventually show up).

It took us an hour and a half to read the rulebook. This was partially because Julie outright refused to read it out loud, which meant that we read over it individually while the remaining people were talking. Genie actually never read it--she listened to my explanations and then repeatedly flubbed up the rules during gameplay.

We also were not particularly diplomatic. We tried, but it's difficult to make teams with only that many people, so alliances were boring and not that interesting. I allied with Julie, who turned out to be somewhat useless, and then we all kind of went off on solo campaigns. I attempted to worm information out of Peter, but he refused to tell me anything and said he was "planning a psychological invasion of Germany." Totally not helpful.

But whatever. In Soviet Russia, Diplomacy diplomacize you. Or something to that effect (I was Russia...though not Soviet, of course. Early 1900s and all that).

Okay, it is officially way too late for this. Goodnight world.

A Feeling

2011-04-22T10:12:00.000-04:00

Do you ever have that feeling like you're the only one alive in the world?

I do, sometimes. I don't really know why, though it probably has something to do with the fact that my parents are working and my sisters are sleeping.

My aunt is trying to work a bit of money out of the school I'm matriculating to. As such, I was not supposed to reveal to said school that I'd decided to matriculate there. Unfortunately, I made the mistake of telling my friend who works in the admissions office, and she went and told someone working there. Hopefully I'm not important enough for it to get back to the financial aid people, but we shall see.

I haven't even spotted my dog. I really don't know where he went.

Firefly is absolutely awesome. I finished the first episode this morning--it took me a couple of days--and it is all so incredibly cool. It makes me so happy. And it boosts my nerd cred at the same time! All is well with the world.

I need to write up my "Thanks, but no thanks" letter. I need to finish my chemistry homework. I need to do other things, I'm sure. I hope my Lit teacher got my poem--I'd post it here, but that would defeat the whole anonymity thing. I wonder who wrote about me.

In other news, I really ought to clean my room. I think I'll take my sisters out today to paint new mugs for our mother. Diplomacy tomorrow. Presentation preparation the next day. I will not fail at public speaking, I will not fail at public speaking, I will not fail at public speaking.

Why is my house so quiet?

Return

2011-04-21T13:13:00.002-04:00

I've been gone for a while, to say the least. The main reason for this was that I felt I'd outgrown the semioverachiever label. I was feeling like I was past whatever impulse drove me to start the blog. I'd also gone somewhat public, which was disconcerting (kind of gets in the way of rambling, emotional, boy-related posts). There was also the matter of the name itself.

Right now, I don't feel like a semioverachiever. I feel like an overachiever. I don't sleep enough, I'm busy, and I keep winning things and getting into colleges. I found that magic formula, got in everywhere I applied, and then got accepted to a gap year program every bit as prestigious. I keep winning at life, and I've started to feel like I'm actually powerful, like I could actually change the world, like I could actually make a difference right here right now.

I've lost sight of who I am. I don't mean that I'm supposed to be less of a beast, but I've been letting it get to my head. There are so, so many things I haven't learned yet. So, yes, I've managed to be the perfect applicant, and yes, I was told by a girl who is smart enough that people's jaws drop when they hear of her accomplishments that I "ooze brilliance," and people are impressed by my vision and insight and all that bullcrap--but I don't know how to right a rigorous proof, or maximize output from a wind farm, or build the designs that sit in my head. I don't know even basic statistics. There are huge, huge holes in my knowledge.

I need a college education to fill those holes. Sorry, Mr. Thiel, but I'm not ready. I'll take those two years after college, before grad school. They won't be with you, they won't have that safety net, but you know what? This won't be the only opportunity. I'm going to go to college with some of the smartest students in the world. I will come out of it feeling like an idiot--which is the point--but I will make opportunities.

I may not be ready to be a grownup, but I am ready to make this decision.

That was a digression, to say the least. I'd intended to discuss why I was coming back. The reason I'd stopped writing is that I felt I'd outgrown the label. But I haven't, not really. Yes, I'm 18, but I'm not an adult. Yes, I apparently win a lot of stuff, but there are a lot of things I don't win, and there's a lot that I have still to learn. I haven't become an overachiever just because I've been busy. I'm still just me, and I still care more about my friends than I do about being top of my class.

I can overachieve later. For now, I will return to attempting to be myself, whatever that entails.

RSI admittees

2011-03-18T06:31:00.002-04:00

Congrats, well done, etc. I have to go to school, I haven't had time to blog in 6 weeks for a reason, so that's about all you're going to get. Send me an email (semioverachiever@gmail.com) if you'd like to join the RSI 2011 facebook group.

Today

2011-02-09T21:18:00.003-05:00

I found this really awesome applied math paper called "Forecasting Hourly Electricity Using Time-Varying Splines."
I read half of said paper before recalling that I should be doing more pressing homework.
I wrote about half a sentence more on my "better get done in the next few weeks" paper. Note to self: work faster.
I rewrote my abstract (will anyone notice if it doesn't match the one on the poster?)
I sent an email stating that my poster is free-standing.
I took an accidental 1.5 hour nap. I got out of the shower, wrapped myself up in a towel and began to read Act II of "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf." The next thing I knew, I was lying groggily on my side and Shelby was saying "If you don't respond to the question of when you're eating dinner, I'm going to unwrap you." I fortunately discovered that I only have three pages of the act left.
I ate dinner with my mother. We talked about how I've already picked up the MIT habit of referring to everything by either an acronym or a number.
I freaked out about how much work I had to do.
I decided I really like applied math and drew up more drafts of courses. If I take the math courses, plus the energy studies program, the 5 electrical engineering courses I want to take and the flex major in physics, I will have a reasonable schedule (4 courses a semester (yes, I factored in HASS and GIRs). If I do the focused option, it would result in overloading. I suppose this is something I can worry about in another 1.5 years, once I've taken more of these courses and have a better idea of what I actually enjoy.
I wrote a blog post.
I became hungry and went to eat more food.

Well, I will anyway.

On Organization

2011-02-08T22:17:00.004-05:00

I have decided to start using Google Calendar. So as not to overwhelm myself, I am programming in regular activities one day at a time for the next week (thus far--great success!). I am making bunches of calendars so that I can color code (well, like 3...but they are well color-coded). I feel on top of the world. Something about preparing to do work makes me feel very productive.

This is kind of like how, in my attempts to get going on creating a research paper out of battery project, I wrote half of an abstract (still need to write the paper to determine how I want to phrase the whole "results" thing, what with this being a design rather than an actual experiment), worried about the fact that I haven't done an experiment (I'm going to faiiiil, etc. Particularly since I could always just submit my other project). I then copy and pasted the introduction from the relevant patent (the one I wrote...I am not plagiarizing, thank you very much). I panicked due to the fact that I had an insane number of windows. I spent a good half an hour enabling and setting up "Spaces" on my computer. I hate spaces. I want ubuntu, where I can just drop windows off into different desktops. This stupid thing makes me separate by application, which means all recreational web use is currently relegated to Chrome, and Firefox has been updated and is now being put to use running programming tutorials and displaying papers. I also dropped TeXShop, TeXWorks (yeah, my capitalization is probably funky) and NeoOffice in that space, so I'm using MS Word in space one, which means my poor compy is running about 10,000 applications, which is stressing it out a little bit.

I also discovered Asus is coming out with a new laptop that is not unreasonably priced, and is light, and pretty. I like pretty things. I like Asus. Yay laptops.

In other news, I have paid off 44% of the fees due to my *cough* errant driving. Oooooh, we're (almost) halfway there (wooooaaaah).

Moving along, moving along.

It's late. I'm hungry. I always get hungry right before I want to go to bed. I'm pretty sure it's giving me tooth decay (cue a round of "my shiny teeth and me" for no reason other than that I want it to get stuck in someone else's head). I suppose this is why JSHS allows for a "Late Night Snack." Fortunate, that.

I also apparently never got a sixth judge in the science fair. I assumed 2 groups, like it said on my sheet, was what was necessary, but apparently I should have waited through lunch for that additional judge. So weird. Certainly a bit of a confidence-booster, though.

Also, the AMC was fun. So much fun! I love math! I love fun! Wheeeeeeeee =)

Another Month Begins

2011-02-01T17:05:00.002-05:00

February. It's almost Shelby's birthday (I have bought her nothing). Nyx's has already passed. Mine is coming up. I'll be 18. Old. Very old. But only two years after I started this blog.

It feels like longer. But then, so does the time since I've been in high school, the weeks since I got into college, the months since this summer. My perception of time is horribly skewed.

Part of that, though, is that I don't do anything with it. My computer and I are very well acquainted, but there's not much aside from that. Especially given that the current weather is keeping me from getting out of the house.

Stupid snow, pretty though it is.

This Has Been

2011-01-30T13:27:00.010-05:00

A lovely weekend, all told. Nyx came over on Friday, and we lolled about, chattered, and made origami. On Saturday, I went to SHP for the first time in ages. I was placed in cosmology along with Gopika, Rube, Sarah, and this random talkative girl who seems really familiar (there was also a girl from Rube's school who had heeled rainboots (no comprendo) who sat next to a different girl who looked really familiar (I think she was at Math Prize for Girls, and is one of those people who is all into math competition gossip, because that was the discussion while waiting in line for the bathroom)). I don't know if Rube signed up for cosmology because of me, or if he landed his second choice, but I'm not going to ask. I was kind of late (I wanted a latte more than I wanted to be on time), so I ended up between him and this adorable girl from New Jersey (not Gopika, actually). It should also be noted that I really wished the namesake for the Gopika I usually talk about was still around (she's two years older than me, sadly), because our instructor is quite cute. Based her comments to the 15-year-old me back in our neurobiology days, she's the sort to appreciate a good-looking teacher.

I've also been devoting much time to rereading Anathem, which is every bit as engrossing the second time around (I'm hoping to finish it up today, in keeping with the three days I managed it in last time...I also don't think I'm going to get any homework done until it's finished, so I ought to take advantage of this brief period of no-homeworkness).

After class on Saturday I took the 1 line really really far to meet Chao in Chinatown. Her family took me out for dim sum, which was just as yummy as I remembered, though she was on the whole very disappointed in my inability to identify or remember what I'd eaten in the past. I always figure I'm not allergic to anything, it smells halfway decent, I might as well eat it (we discovered, however, that chicken claws (or whatever those were) kind of weird me out). It was nice to meet her family, and the food was yummy. After that, we spent a few hours wandering through Chinese groceries. I saw fish (alive, dead and whole, dead and chopped up, dead and dried, dead and dried and chopped up...I could go on), and all sorts of unusual (to me) fruits and veggies, including something that looked like giant grapefruit. On the whole, though, it was mostly just nice to see Chao.

Since then, I've been at home. I messaged with Gaea a little bit last night, and I think I sent her some ramblings around midnight (though probably before...it was before I left bedcheck (where "bedcheck" refers to "discussing international politics with James in a forum visible to members of the RSI '10 community")) regarding my current internal debate, which is what I want to do with my life. For some reason, "SCIENCE" is insufficient. I have this urge to find a meaningful place in society. I could probably do this by having children, but I was sitting on the train last night and listening to a group of mothers discussing how they managed to get their children enrolled in public school gifted programs (because, as we all know, those are designed to assist whichever students had the most outside help...), and it struck me that I couldn't do that. I am not a person who will be capable of making her family into her life--I love family, I think I want to make my own someday, but that will never be enough for me. I need more--I need science.

But what sort of science? I love physics, but where in physics. Do I do something that has the potential to actually change the world--nuclear fusion, for example, the plasma physics Julie so adores--or do I follow the piece of my heart that wants me to leap off the deep end into the math-heavy world of something like particle physics. I'll probably end up in the former--I love math, and it's beautiful, but I put it under a header more like art, and while art is beautiful, I probably will never create a masterpiece, and I don't want to sit at the edge of my life and realize that for decades of work, I've created a few small pieces of a few small formulas that will be rendered obsolete by the tides of history. But who's to say I'd make a mark anywhere else--how do I know? Why am I so obsessed with creating something enduring when nothing truly endures in the first place?

I'm not sure where I'm going with this. I found out yesterday that I'm still in the running for the Thiel Fellowship. I think, if I land it, I'll take it, because it might be a chance to do something. But I'm also terrified that I don't have the expertise, that the funds won't be enough, or that living by myself would do me in, or that my ideas have no merit, I'll find that out within a month and then be stuck twiddling my thumbs for two years (realistically, I'm not the sort of person to do that, but I worry nonetheless). It would mean going to college while feeling like an adult--I'm not sure how well that would work--and also heading into one of the most rigorous undergraduate curriculums in the country while not having done any schoolwork in two years. But if I actually accomplished something meaningful, it would be worth it, I think.

But that argument is likely irrelevant, as it's highly probable I won't land the fellowship and it won't matter. I'll still be stuck under wondering how I want to change the world--I'm a bit worried my daydreams of academia have become another microcosm of the "what if I just gave up all of this ambition" question--but then, getting to a point where I'm doing research is ambitious.

I have a feeling when I'm older I'll look back at this and laugh, regardless of whether I'm doing theoretical work or telling a large group of engineers what to do.

Another Weekend

2011-01-28T15:55:00.002-05:00

Midterms are over. I have no idea how they went, both because they haven't yet been graded and because I have a library accountability the size of a good-sized mountain (but not the size of those beautiful huge ones in my dream the night before last. Those were lovely.). I studied for chem instead of studying for physics, and I will probably be annoyed if I don't pull off an A in both--and I was definitely right in that physics would be more interesting if I didn't know what I was doing.

Beyond that, everything is a hazy blur of blurriness. Today is Ginny's birthday, I remember that (HAPPY BIRTHDAY GINNY). I got a phone call from MIT this other night, during their callathon (I keep wanting to call it a telethon, but I believe those are on TV). I wish I'd had a bit more warning--I ended up dithering for a bit, then asking about what the individual speaking to me (yes, I didn't write "girl" because I was distracted by the inherent problem of using girl instead of woman) liked about MIT--she said the best part is that everyone gets her nerdy jokes.

Speaking of science (was I speaking of science? No, but as we all know, science is everywhere, so this transition is always applicable), I have lined up an internship at a genetics lab for the spring. I am so excited, and it is requiring a great effort to refrain from utilizing all-caps. I am going to do science! In a real lab! With real scientists! And real mammalian cells! And pipettes and plates and all that other awesome stuff!!!!!!

It appears I couldn't hold back on the exclamation points. Ah, well. Science is worth it.

Extended Weekend of Awesome Awesomeness

2011-01-19T20:57:00.001-05:00

This can also be referred to "the time that Tea decided not to study for her midterms, and instead elected to enjoy her spontaneously week-long school vacation."

No, I am not kidding about the week bit. Wednesday was a snowday, Thursday had a delayed opening, Friday was staff development, Monday was Martin Luther King Jr. Day, and Tuesday was another snow day. Yes, this is a lot of no-school, so, of course, I did a lot with it.

Thursday afternoon--ran science bowl practice. I made a list of all this stuff to look up, then didn't look it up. In my defense, my teammates said they were unwilling to start learning it before midterms anyway. Drove Julie home from ScienceBowl Practice. Well, not quite home--I started the weekend off with a bang by getting into my first ever car crash. Yup. Good stuff. Julie was giving me directions while talking about her sexy boyfriend (not that I'd know if he was sexy because I STILL HAVEN'T MET HIM!!!), she broke off midsentence to say "you should have turned there." I then totally misjudged the truck's ability to break (I blame it on the fact that the entire bed was full of snow, but I didn't think of this until the next day, so it's not a very good excuse), turned anyways, and whipped straight into an oncoming car. The driver of that car was really, really really really pissed, but I stayed relatively calm, even after she (totally unnecessarily, I might add) called the police. Then I called my dad, who untangled the vehicles, both of which are still totally drivable. Cosmetic damages, people. I drove the truck home, explained everything to my mother, then panicked about how much money I was going to lose.

Friday: I discover that the deductible on the insurance is a mere $500, so I'm only down between 500 and 627 dollars (those gosh-darned police gave me a ticket for driving on the wrong side of the road, which I'm likely going to argue because I wasn't driving on the wrong side of the road, I swerved into the wrong side of the road due to an inability to judge the breaking ability of my father's pickup truck...but I digress). This was immensely comforting. I also rediscovered the buckyballs I got for Christmas and proceeded to spend most of the day attempting to build a 6x6x6 cube (for the record, I did eventually succeed). I also took my younger sisters shopping at Delias, where I bought a gray sweater, new boot-cut jeans (note that I've stopped referring to the clothing that now fits me as fat pants), and a $20 jacket that I am head over heels in love with. Shelby spend a lot of money in exchanges and gift cards and is still pretty excited about it. I'm just glad that I have pants that fit that I can wear with boots, because given the current snow situation, boots are a must.

Saturday: I spent all of the daylight hours milling around and feeling like I ought to be doing something. I probably started in on my final project for Mideast. I finished reading the entire archive of Ben Jones's blog at MIT, then read the entirety of Laura's. I went to a yoga class, where I failed miserably at giving off the appearance of having any idea what I was doing. The fact that my calves are so tight that I can't do a proper downward dog (apparently a very important portion of vinyasa), and my arms are so weak I can't do this weird lying down thingy we had to do a kazillion times, and the my blood pressure is still so low I felt like I was going to black out by the time we reached the 10,000th forward bend--where was I going with this?--oh, right, did nothing to diminish my enjoyment of the class. It was not quite as successful as the first class was--I spend a good three days after that one feeling sexy (no, I do not know why, but it probably was some sort of hormonal thing meant to reward me for finally getting my ass off my swivel chair)--but still nice. Then I came home, inhaled my dinner, and spent three hours ice skating. The ice skates made circular bruises around my ankles for reasons as-yet unknown. I felt so active on Saturday night, you have no idea.

Sunday I don't really remember, which means it was probably boring. I think I got the oil changed on the cars, but that might have been Thursday. Or Friday. I think it was Friday, actually, now that you mention it. And I've just remembered that Sunday wasn't boring! Kathrya came over, ostensibly to do homework (we didn't). We skyped with Bart! Saudi-Arabia-dwelling Bart! Kathrya was so excited I'm kind of surprised she didn't implode. I enjoyed the opportunity to actually put my computer's built-in webcam to use (also, talking to Bart was fun).

Monday I did stuff. What did I do? Again, I'm rambling because I don't remember. Stuff probably happened, most likely. I slept pretty late. I went to Borders and exchanged one book my parents got me for Christmas for a host of other books, including 2 Eloisa James romance novels (I read one, but the second one isn't really working for me, since the protagonist is like 20, very much unrelatable, and is pretty definitely going to end up with a 43 year old. Laaaame). I also got Ned Vizzini's autobiographical essays written at age 19. I am in love with teenage Ned Vizzini. It is unfortunate, but it is true. If he was my age, he'd probably have a blog. I should probably find blogs of random teenage guys to read, so that I develop weird writing crushes on people my own age, instead of the historical version of older people. I'll work on it later--for now: Hot Guys Reading Books!

Tuesday I set my alarm for 6:10, called the snow line with my eyes closed, then slept for another three hours. I read books. I played the piano. I hid in my room while my sisters cooked both dessert and dinner (I'm really going to need to get over my irrational fear of cooking). I played with buckyballs some more. I ignored messages from Rube and Bart while I was reading, didn't manage to respond to Bart until he wasn't there anymore, never responded to Rube, talked briefly to Greg before he had to go to lab (but not before Olive stole his computer and started typing to me). Then I started reading Yan's blog over on MIT admissions, got about halfway through her freshman year posts, then saw that she got a UROP at Sadoway Group. Then I had an absurd jealous breakdown, followed by a decision to actually read some of the papers by the group to make certain that my minor obsession was founded on fact and not some imaginary "OH MY GOSH FLOW BATTERIES" thing, since they work on other stuff (that said OH MY GOSH FLOW BATTERIES AND HE WAS REFERENCED IN THE CANON THE DAY AFTER I WENT BY HIS LAB AND MET WITH RANDOM GRAD STUDENTS OH EM GEEEEE. Plus he teaches intro chem and is apparently really awesome. And the lab appears to be doing cool stuff). Pardon the all-caps, but I have limited self control. I started reading one of the papers (well, I saw that layer-by-layer is abbreviated LbL, giggled madly, then went to the living room to collect my laundry). I decided to write this post instead of reading the paper, took note of my current more-intellectual reading (it's about the fact that gender bias and subconscious-driven gender discrimination is damaging our nation's school children, and it's particularly awesome in that it's addressing the fact that gender bias is harmful to both girls and boys (something that a lot of boys with high feminist-potentials seem turned off by is the whole "only girls are being damaged" thing)), then came back to my room, where I proceeded to while away the hours until I was tired enough to go to sleep.

Chrome vs. Safari

2011-01-18T19:36:00.002-05:00

I have made the switch to Google Chrome, and I do not regret it one bit. I am a Safari-user no more. For some reason, Safari got slower (I don't know if it was some update, or if my computer is getting old, or something unrelated), and began doing this awful thing referred to as 'crashing' when I opened up too many windows and tabs (an unfortunately frequent occurrence).

I love Chrome because the tabs operate separately, so when one crashes, I don't lose all the others in that window. I love chrome because I can drag and drop the tabs all over the place (I may have been able to do this with Safari, but I'm not sure). I love that I can 'go incognito' and have a spy dude with dark spectacles, a trenchcoat, and a hat keeping watch for me--I especially love that opening an incognito window displays a message warning me that incognito browsing does not protect against "people standing behind you." I found this entertaining enough that I used incognito browsing totally unnecessarily until I realized how dependent I am on being able to search my history.

Aside from that--Chrome is fast. It is faster than firefox on my machine, though both are faster than Safari. I will admit that I have not tried Opera, and that Chrome probably just provides another way for Google to stalk me, but I get so excited when I type one or two letters in the top bar, press enter, and arrive at my frequently visited sites that I honestly don't care.

Promiscuity vs. Abstinence; Science vs. Religion: Two Issues, One Fight

2011-01-16T09:06:00.003-05:00

I'd had a few requests for my paper, so I'm going to post it. I plan on following it with a discussion on what I actually agree with from it. It should also be noted that I'm not sure why I'm doing this, as the paper was not, overall, that readable, and while I'm glad I've finished writing it, I'm still not sure I actually like it.

Regardless:

Modern technology has rendered virgin brides obsolete. It used to be that abstaining from sex until marriage prevented spread of sexually transmitted diseases, but this is not so in a world where condoms are commonplace. It used to be that a virginal bride was the only guarantee that a man’s child was his own, but this is not so in a time where technology can evaluate parentage. It is no longer even true the virginity is identifiable; if one wishes to practice deceit, surgeries can restore the hymen to all of its former glory. For hundreds of years, if not more, there has existed a paradigm in which women are expected to remain chaste until marriage. This “is a tenet of nearly all religions” (Stephey), but this particular sort of ideology had an altogether practical purpose: keeping bloodlines clean, preventing disease, and insuring that children had two parents. Technological development, though, has virtually eliminated these issues. In modern-day America, virginity is unnecessary.

However, in this same country, the abstinence movement is growing in strength. This group advocates for a complete lack of sex—and often sexual activity—prior to marriage. Members of the movement preach that a woman who has consensual premarital sex is a “broken victim” (Valenti 44) whose sexuality has become a metaphorical “poorly wrapped, saliva-fouled sucker” (41). Never mind that this woman is likely left with few physical marks—her chastity has been destroyed, and she now lacks her nascent goodness. By proclaiming that “sexual purity” is a “substitute … for real morality” (39), the virginity movement perpetuates the idea that a virgin bride is a necessity; no man should wish to marry an immoral woman, and, in the eyes of the movement, sex is all that it takes. Modern members of the virginity movement also fight for abstinence-only sex education, which avoids any teaching of contraceptives, and often include false scientific information. These programs typically “have a background in or connection to Christian organizations” (Kanabus). This exclusion of science in a religion-based discussion of sexuality is indicative of the degree to which modern Christianity pushes back against science. The abstinence movement has become not just a moral issue, but a microcosm of the constant battle between religious rule and scientific progress.

This fight is one that is believed to have begun “when Christianity began to obtain political power,” and it exists with “the expansive force of human intellect on one side, and the compression arising from traditionary faith and human interests on the other” (Draper). This struggle manifests itself in many ways, but it had a particularly strong presence during the 16th century, when the Catholic Church “was under considerable threat … [from] the Protestant Reformation” (Jordan). Fearful of allowing anything to subvert their power, church leaders executed Giordano Bruno, burning him at the stake for attempting to popularize the Copernican model of the universe, which placed the sun, rather than Earth, at the center of our solar system—a theory “contrary to Holy Scripture” (de Santillana 313). Galileo, the man who found proof for this idea, was eventually forced to swear to “abandon the false opinion that the Sun is the center of the world and is immovable” (312). Religion, in an attempt to maintain political control, stood directly against the cause of science. The philosophy of Young Earth Creationism has followed a similar—albeit somewhat less dramatic—path, with the belief that God created earth some 6000 years ago in conflict with confirmed scientific findings (“Biblical”). The pattern occurs with relatively high frequency; something from scripture is questioned and there is a split as to what is believed. Invariably, the religious take up arms against the science just as the science gathers enough strength to discount some portion of traditional theology.

It seems somewhat illogical, though, that this is the same issue at the root of the abstinence movement. The members of the movement, however, seem to have no difficulty accepting this idea. There is a considerable Christian history of lashing out against technological developments perceived as creating a benefit to sexual activity. It was the push against premarital sex that gave Gardasil, a vaccine against the sexually transmitted Human Papilloma Virus, the nickname the Promiscuity Vaccine, as it was believed by many that young women “may see [the vaccine] as a license to engage in premarital sex” (Gibbs). This fear has been versed again and again, about “introducing anesthesia during childbirth, or using penicillin to treat syphilis” (Gibbs). It was the belief of staunch Christians that sinners ought to suffer for their sins—regardless of the fact that the definition of fornication as a sin may have originated because of the associated health benefits in a pre-technology society. This makes it quite clear that, from the side of the Abstinence Movement, modern technology is a threat.

This is likely because the original practical purposes of abstinence have been buried beneath a sea of religious doctrine as a result of attempts to make people actually abstain. From the time that Christianity was first codified into the Bible, the First Epistle of Paul to the Corinthians has been included (Pitre). This book contains direct statements against premarital sex, warning the faithful to “[f]lee fornication” (6:18), as “fornicators”—those who engage in premarital sex—are among those who “shall not inherit the kingdom of God” (6:9). These words and others, after a considerable quantity of time had passed, governed life in Puritan America. This is the setting of Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter, and purity from sin is a state that most of the novel's characters try and fail to reach. Closely related as purity and virginity frequently are, virginity is only explicitly discussed once, in reference to the young virgins who flock to the minister. These women are “victims of a passion so imbued with religious sentiment that they imagin[e] it to be all religion, and br[ing] it openly, in their white bosoms, as their most acceptable sacrifice before the alter” (118-9). There is the “white” of purity linked with the more sexual “bosoms,” but, more importantly, there is the conflation of religion and sexuality; “passion” applies equally well to religious fervor and sexual acts. For virgins, Christianity is this passion, because religion, like virginity, is good. It is unclear whether Hawthorne considers this the truth of the matter—the passion is “imagined … to be all religion” rather than simply being so, but it does proclaim that passion is something to be “sacrifice[d] before the alter”—to succeed religiously, sexuality must be surrendered, and, prior to marriage, virginity is the way to assure this. Religion promulgates the desire for abstinence, replacing the initial practicality of abstinence with something much less earthly, lacking the more rational reasoning that may have driven the creation of the original laws.

Just how important virginity became can be seen in Tess of the D'ubervilles. Tess, the heroine of the novel, is raped by a nobleman and eventually gives birth to a sickly child who soon dies. She keeps the identity of the father a secret, as well as her own unwillingness, so it is difficult to determine if the magnitude of the villagers' opprobrium would have differed had they known the truth. Tess eventually marries Angel, who is the son of a minister but elected not to enter the clergy. When Angel speaks with his father about what the woman he marries ought to be like, it exemplifies the link between goodness and chastity and shows that these views were present in the late Victorian era. Angel's father suggests “a pure and saintly woman,” and Angel agrees with the parallel “good and devout” (200), clearly connecting purity with both “goodness” and, in general, any “truly Christian woman” (199). When Angel goes on to reject Tess because of her previous defilement, his name adds a quantity of religious sanctity to his actions—a religious stamp on the idea that the loss of virginity is all that it takes to become undesirable, even is this loss is the result of rape. Angel's behavior is indicative of the oversimplification of women's morality that Valenti points out in modern America: virgins are good and sexually active unmarried women the opposite. The book also demonstrates that the ideal of pureness had somewhat overtaken its religious basis; although Angel was willing to forgive Tess' lack of intellectual knowledge of religion, it took many years for him to forgive a sin that she did not bring down upon herself. It should be noted, again, that it was neither the child nor any particular risk of disease that bothered Angel; it was the fact that his Tess was not the “pure” Christian woman he believed her to be.

The idea that abstinence is driven primarily by religion and associated religious morality is one that exists strongly in modern America, centuries after Tess' story took place and an ocean away. Organizations within the abstinence movement make no secret of the fact that their commitment to religion comes before all else. True Love Waits, for example, is an abstinence organization that, as of 2004, had received 400,000 pledge cards. Signing a pledge on the internet or in person involves making five commitments, to “god,” “yourself,” “family,” “friends,” and “future mate and children.” Each commitment is explained using a quote from the Bible, because even after all these years, Christian doctrine is still considered the primary motivator for premarital abstinence. Religious educators do their best to get the ideas across early—Souther Baptist churches teach youth that “[s]ex is dirty” from before they even know what sex is (Baines). At the same time, scientific progress is denied and misinformation is spread in the name of sexual education (Connolly). Organizations fighting HIV must regularly struggle with the fact that, because “according to church teaching … sex before marriage is wrong” (Rochman), many people—including Pope Benedict XVI (Butt)—do not support providing condoms to stop the spread of HIV, as this would be tacit acceptance of premarital sex.

Science, however, marches on. The development of the internet makes it harder for abstinence education programs to spread misinformation. Contraceptives are being developed for the opposite gender (Schieszer), and Pope Benedict actually changed his mind on the role of condoms in disease prevention (Randall). At the same time, however, the ever more present media has enabled sexualization of younger individuals (Durham); it seems that there is more to protecting youth than merely preserving their virginity. By shutting abstinence so thoroughly out of the purview of secular logic, it has become that much more difficult for those creating new developments to insure that people are protecting themselves and their partners. As it stands now, the only true way to escape the stigma that is attached to sexuality—a stigma that is only the echo of that in Puritan America and Victorian England—is to follow in the path of Virginia Woolf's Orlando. Orlando becomes sexually involved with a number of individuals, and lives by the motto “Life! A Lover!” (244), finding each within the other. Orlando is able to be relatively promiscuous without being scorned because of her complete disregard for gender norms—this is a character who literally changes characters halfway through the text—and her immortality, which allows her to exist as someone somewhat separate from the cultural rules of her era. In today's actual America, however, the battle continues; the religious man the battlements in defense of ideology that is has lost its purpose when under the fire of development.

Works Cited
Baines, Steven. “Sex and the Church --- Teaching Abstinence in a World Awash with Sex.” General Board of Church & Society of The United Methodist Church. 19 Dec. 2010. Web. 6 Jan. 2011.

The Bible. King James Vers. Project Gutenberg. Literary Archive Foundation, 1 Aug. 1989. Web. 6 Jan. 2011.

“Biblical Young Earth Creationism.” Northwest Creation Network. Web. 7 Jan. 2011.

Connolly, Ceci. “Some Abstinence Programs Mislead Teens, Report Says.” Washington Post 2 Dec. 2004: A01. Web. 7 Jan. 2011.

Draper, John William. Preface. History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science. By Draper. Comp. Charles Keller and David Widger. Project Gutenberg. Literary Archive Foundation, 21 Aug. 2008. Web. 6 Jan. 2011.

Durham, M. Gigi. The Lolita Effect. Woodstock & New York: The Overlook Press, 2008. Print.

Gibbs, Nancy. “Defusing the War Over the 'Promiscuity' Vaccine.” Time 21 Jun. 2006. Web. 5 Dec. 2010.

Hardy, Thomas. Tess of the D'ubervilles. New York: Barnes and Noble Books, 2009. Print.

Hawthorne, Nathaniel. The Scarlet Letter. New York: Barnes and Noble Books, 2009. Print.

Jordan, Robin. “Galileo Galilei vs the Church: Incompatibility of Science and Religion.” Florida Atlantic University, Fort Lauderdale. FAU Science Courses. Web. 6 Jan. 2011.

Kanabus, Annabel, et al. “Abstinence and Sex Education.” Avert. 2011. Web. 6 Jan. 2011.

Pitre, Brant. Outline. “The Origin of the Bible.” Catholic Productions. Web. 6 Jan. 2011.

Randall, David and Roberts, Genevieve. “Pope Signals Historic Leap in Fight Against Aids.” The Independent 21 Nov. 2010. Web. 7 Jan. 2011.

Rochman, Sue. “Sex, Abstinence, and the Church.” HIVPlus Mag Feb. 2004: Web. 6 Jan. 2011.
de Santillana, Giorgio. The Crime of Galileo. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1976, pp. 312-313.

Schieszer, John. “Male Birth Control Pill Soon a Reality.” MSNBC 1 Oct. 2010. Web. 7 Jan 2011.

Stephey, M. J. “A Brief History of: Abstinence.” Time 19 Feb. 2009: Web. 6 Jan. 2011.

“True Love Waits.” Lifeway. 2007. Web. 5 Dec. 2010

Valenti, Jessica. The Purity Myth. Berkeley: Seal Press, 2009. Print.

Woolf, Virginia. Orlando. Orlando: Harcourt, Inc., 1973. Print.

Impostor Syndrome

2011-01-14T08:42:00.006-05:00

I'm writing this post because I felt the urge to talk about a little feminine problem, and I'm hoping that this will also teach me to spell "impostor" properly.

Impostor syndrome is, according to wikipedia, "a psychological phenomenon in which people are unable to internalize their accomplishments . . . Regardless of what level of success they may have achieved in their chosen field of work or study or what external proof they may have of their competence, those with the syndrome remain convinced internally they do not deserve the success they have achieved and are actually frauds. Proof of success is dismissed as luck, timing, or as a result of deceiving others into thinking they were more intelligent and competent than they believe themselves to be."

I feel like there's some issues with plural/singular nouns and pronouns in there, but it does get the point across. And though I called it a feminine problem, wiki also states that it's present in both women and men. I just hear about it much more in women, partly because of the whole affirmative action thing (I wonder if there's any difference across races), and likely for some other reasons.

I know I've felt it. There were plenty of times this past summer when I was certain that my work was vastly inferior to everyone else's, and that it was only a matter of time before that program higher-ups figured me out (this is, legitimately, the main reason that I have this paranoia of not getting the counselor gig). When Gretchen and I spent two hours during Moody's running manual congressional seat allocations, I truly believed that I shouldn't have been there, that the team really deserved someone who actually knew what he or she was doing (i.e. knew how to program...though I do legitimately think that having someone who knew how to program would have been a boon. This reminds me of the fact that I should really do some more practice on the python front). If I end up in electrical engineering, you can bet your ass I'll spend a considerable amount of time worrying that my lack of experience can never be made up for (is this influencing my current decision to focus on physics? Who knows.). Even if I end up in physics, or math, or whatever else, I'm going to sit around and worry, like I did this summer, that I'm not capable of accomplishing anything in the field, that I got this far by some sort of trickery and that, when I'm actually working, I will be unable to find new material, and I'll end up waiting tables at some tiny restaurant in the midwest.

Do I know, intellectually, that I wouldn't have reached this point if I wasn't capable? Yes. But that doesn't mean that I truly believe it. I'd say that I'm better about it than I've been in the past--I've developed a level of confidence in my abilities that I really hadn't had before--but the problem still exists. It's one that I hear out of Julie, too (hopefully she doesn't mind my sharing); she's not good enough, she doesn't deserve this, she wouldn't have gotten in if it weren't for x, etc. (Jules? You deserve every bit of it, and when you go to college and kick the metaphorical butt of your selected institution, perhaps you'll come to agree with me).

I'm still not sure what I'm trying to say with this. I guess it's a reminder to myself to be more certain of my accomplishments. I noticed at RSI that a huge number of people--including some of the very best (Gopika, I'm looking at you)--seemed convinced that they were the one person who shouldn't have gotten in, that they would be the one person who didn't get into xis college of choice. It's like how someone--I think it was Carlisle, but I honestly don't remember--had a bit of a breakdown to someone else--I think it was Kaylee--about the fact that he'd only published two papers, and everyone was so far ahead of him and what on earth was he doing here?

It doesn't get us anywhere, the worrying. I force myself not to, I guess because I realize that it won't get me anywhere. But what is it, culturally, that pushes us into this feeling that we don't deserve what we have? Why are we all so convinced that we aren't good enough? It could be that RSI is built up so much that no one, except perhaps Patrick, thinks themselves good enough, but then why does it exist in other places?

I'm going to find some books on the subject, read them, and then do a lot of thinking before not actually deciding. Hopefully the books both exist and are nice to read.

Rude

2011-01-09T19:51:00.004-05:00

I should probably sign something announcing that I will never again call something "Part 1" unless I have already written "Part 2." Because my languishing party post is unlikely to ever get finished, and it's a bit rude of the title to suggest that it would.

I've recently realized that "rude" is the worst insult in my arsenal. I realize that this sounds patently ridiculous, but after some careful analysis (that I haven't performed yet but will perform right now), I've decided that this is true. I'm also debating whether using cuss-words in a vaguely academic context is allowable, and I think that it is, so be forewarned, rude language awaits ye who read onwards (see what I did there? Geddit?). Rude isn't ridiculous enough that it doesn't get taken seriously (or is overused by rappers...wait, there's that Rihanna song, isn't there? Shoot.) For example, I do not call someone a ho-bag really mean it. I don't like slut because I think it's a fundamentally sexist piece of the English language, and because I consider people's sex lives their own business, and I think it's rude of others to insult someone for something that's really a matter of personal preference.

Notice that I just used rude again. It's so multi-purpose. It's rude for people to call people names when they shouldn't be call names. It's rude to use bad manners when eating. It's rude to play really loud music while others are trying to do homework (speaking of which, I just went and yelled at Shelby to shut up. She called Genie and I "poops." It was very creative of her, but not really that bad of a word--for instance, it was actually enough to make Angry Genie start laughing). It's rude to steal, it's rude to do a lot of things--but, to me, it encompasses any action performed without thought to the effect it will have on others. I'm not sure how I gave it that broad of a definition--I'm fairly certain it's a lot broader than it should be--but, in my book, to be rude is as bad as it can get.

Some Highlights of my RSI Notebook

2011-01-07T13:25:00.003-05:00

We will ignore the fact that I may have already done this, then forgotten.

On the first day, we learned about The Odyssey. "Odysseus ~ Hephaustus (skill, craftmanship). He knows the value of disguise and restraint, except when he's hungry." In bio, nothing funny happened. In chemistry, I was confused: on June 21st's chem sheet: "Look up: ELECTRONEGATIVITY". On the side--"what is this electronegativity?" Oh, how naive I was. We also talked about the oil spill, and I legitimately contributed to the discussion by suggesting that we nuke the source. Our professor also produced this gem: "Before petroleum, the world was a much darker place . . . literally." The solutions we examined included "hair"--using the stickiness of hair to absorb the oil--not kidding--and "petroleum eating microbes"--though an associated flaw is "NEW ORGANISM AAAHHHH" and "SCOTT WESTERFIELD = EVIL." I'm not really sure where I was going with that one.

The next day, we learned about The Odyssey again. I drew a lot of pictures. In bio, I noticed that the teacher did that thing where she pronounced Ws with an h in front, like hwere, and hwat. Also, mitochondrial issues can be described as when the "mitochondria go rogue," which I have to say sounds really cool. In chem we learned about birth control. At first, emmenin was extracted "from the urine of pregnant women (yum.....)", but premarin came from a "less squishy source" (thank you, prof. Michael)--horse piss. An interesting bullet on this page is "-chem stuff that supposedly makes sense."

Day three involved a lot more pretty pictures during English and a couple of very coherent quotes a la "life sucks after you die." In chem, we learned about why mountain dew isn't transparent. Day 4, I finally stopped taking notes during English. In Chem, we made a nice chemistry vs. biology comparison chart. Bio left, chem right.

Temperature

body temperature/whatever you want

Presssure

1 atm+/whatever you want

Concentration

1mM to 1 micromolar/ .1M -1M

Sequence

sequential transitions/one step at a time

Solvent

Water of pH 7/non-polar

Energy

thermoneutral and reversible/exothermic

Specificity

very specific/general

I then have notes on the one grid study meeting I went to (where notes is defined loosely as "a titled page with a lot of doodles"). Weirdly, I have "what is a parallelepiped" in my notes from the first few days in the Nuclear Sciences department; I distinctly recall getting to math this year and not knowing what they are." From here on...it's my research notebook. The only interesting things are the song lyrics scribbled in Teaish in the margins, which looks to be a lot of "You! Me! Dancing!" The only remotely interesting thing remaining is the doodletastic page shown below.

Unattached Musings

2011-01-03T18:14:00.007-05:00

This is, *ahem*, a serious post. Somewhat unusual for me, I suppose, but I've been feeling rather moody all day (whether this is due to the comment we're about to discuss or to the fact that I'm back at school after a phenomenally luxurious break is currently undetermined) so this post gets to bear the brunt of it.

What set it off was a conversation with a certain Nyx regarding a certain Warburton (I'm currently trying to ignore the fact that it's entirely possible that Warburton will read this and recognize the description of himself...I'm still adjusting to the fact that people legitimately read this thing). Warburton is one of the many individuals who have emailed me in search of RSI assistance (my last count is 26 total); his email was one of the more memorable, though, as it was about four pages of sleep-deprived babbling, followed by an offer to play scrabble. I spent a couple of days pointing and laughing at the email, the read it closely enough to work out what he was asking and try to respond to that. After we had worked out that he was not, as I originally suspected, completely batshit crazy, I gave him Nyx's email because she wanted a scrabble buddy. She reportedly stayed up way too late talking and playing scrabble with him, and they reportedly had a bit of a nerd cred contest.

Nyx defines nerd cred as indie cred for nerds. Indie cred does have a wikipedia entry, so I suppose this is legit. I define nerd cred as "that thing I am always trying to get more of. Bryant probably defines nerd cred as "that thing I have so much of that I don't bother trying anymore." Bryant has an amount of nerd cred comparable to the level of indie cred held by a band that only its members have heard of. Warburton's nerd cred, from what I can tell, is more along the lines of the band that doesn't exist yet--so, basically, dude is a completely, ridiculously smart. I'm exaggerating a bit, but for the sake of the analogy, it is at least somewhat funny.

As I was saying, Nyx and I had a conversation on the way to school (it should be noted just how terrible I am at sticking to a serious topic). She said Warburton has more nerd cred than me. I agreed, saying that he should get into RSI as a result, but one never knows. She agreed with me, and I said that I wonder sometimes how I got into RSI when there are all of these awesome people out there. She gave me the look that said that I was missing some important point.

"You're a girl," she said, as if that was all the reason that was needed.

I can't find it on the website (so maybe it's not true) but I recall being informed, multiple times, that for those selecting an RSI class, affirmative action is not used. This is how we end up with 1.5 minority students and only 1/3 girls (I just checked flipped through my summerbook at counted the American students--30%. I cannot imagine it would be that low if affirmative action was used). The website does say that students are selected "solely on the basis of their accomplishments and intellectual potential," but this was in reference to costs rather than gender/race/what have you, and I'm not the sort of person who will seriously quote out of context.

Regardless, it hurts. It hurt when Dino said the only reason I was selected for SHP at the end of freshman year, when he was not, is that I was a girl. Because obviously my test scores are lower, or the same--I couldn't possibly have a greater level of scientific knowledge beyond the biology that I will freely admit he is better at. It hurts that when I am sitting at the top of my AP physics class (well, I'm not certain my grade is actually the highest, but that's because I'm being lazy and not working as hard as I should), class that has 25 boys and 2 girls (though I grant you the vast majority of these guys are jocks who probably should not be in the class), and people continue to think that I got into college because I'm a girl, that I had this opportunity and that opportunity because I'm female and not because I am a very intelligent person who has spent years working my ass off.

But I'm a secure individual. I know that shouldn't bother me, because satisfaction rests within the self. I believe that I am both capable and deserving, so it shouldn't matter what others think. The only reason that it should bother me is the same reason that the previous sentence says "believe" instead of "know." I am not as certain as I think I am. Nyx's words troubled me because she is among my closest friends, and is one of those I've known the longest and know the best. It makes me wonder: if my best friend doesn't believe in me, who will? And if she doesn't it, is my belief in myself unwarranted?

This is the insecurity that gnaws at me. It continues to live partly because most of the things that people regularly dispute can be attributed to affirmative action, so I can't quite tell myself that they aren't true--but I can't totally blame an outside source. Much of it is a case of "imposter syndrome", the feeling that, no matter what I've achieved, I've cheated somehow, and one of these days, someone is going to notice that I don't deserve my current position. It's common, from what I can tell, among women in the sciences, and I'll discuss it later, but I went on a huge tangent below, and I think that a discussion of that idea deserves its own post.

The insecure feeling is similar to that which troubled me when Kathrya assumed I wouldn't land something because I'd be competing against international students, and they'd all be better--though in that case, it bothered me less, because I'm well aware that the best of the rest of the world is substantially better than me. I'm well aware that a lot of students in this country are better than me--but in what I've dedicated myself to, the number is damn small. There are probably tens of thousands with my grades, but if you throw in research and everything else--there are a number that do better, but from what I can tell, there are a few hundred of us that are about on par with each other (maybe closer to 1000 or so, I'm not entirely sure), maybe a bit more or less--though I'm getting stuck on this one, because while it's easy to make sweeping judgements, I don't know what everyone else is capable of, and I still don't know precisely where I stand.

However, any of these people would be qualified, overall, for RSI. These are the people that will do research at Caltech, Harvard, Yale, Princeton, MIT, Stanford (though a smaller number of them will end up at other schools). I don't really know what separates those who got into RSI from those who didn't--RSI is literally too small of a program to accept all of the qualified applicants, particularly if we take to heart MIT's constant statement that it, too, cannot accept all who are qualified--but regardless, there are more people sitting at the level of "totally awesome" than there are people at RSI. And at this point, I no longer remember what the purpose of this discussion was--something along the lines of being the best here, but not the best everywhere, which doesn't totally make sense. My 1000 estimate of people who are really into research--well, that's not a very conservative estimate. I would probably be better off with a few times that. And if "the best" includes that many people, what really qualifies me to say that I or anyone else is the best? If we make our definition broad, we pick up people who are good at many things. If we make it narrow, we discount the most intelligent.

I think I just made a point, but it has no relation to anything else I've talked about. I wanted to say something about affirmative action, I think. About how horrifically bitter Gretchen is because, from what she can tell, being an asian female puts her at a disadvantage in the college process. About how worried I feel that I've been receiving things I haven't deserved, even as I am fuming over the fact that others don't believe I deserve them. So where does it help?

It helps the statistics. It makes schools have the right numbers. And as I said before, with the huge numbers of the best, you could quite possible fill an MIT class with asian females and have the whole class be amazing. You could probably do the same with white Europeans. I don't know enough about the numbers to say if one could do the same with blacks, or with hispanics--I have a feeling that there aren't enough total people in research positions already. You could probably fill a class with people capable of succeeding, but it's quite likely that they wouldn't have had the same training. Just like I wouldn't have had the same training if I hadn't been accepted to the programs I was accepted to--because that's what enabled me to be one of these best people.

I feel like my reasoning is going in circles. The problem is that any equality in receiving an opportunity can go two ways--you can try to equalize people based on what they've had access to, and accept based off of that. Or you can actually take the people who have done the most, sum total, to be the most qualified. It's confusing, and I don't totally get it, and I'm tired, and I have a feeling that I'm going to offend people, and I'm a bit annoyed about the fact that I'm no longer anonymous, so I'm probably going to offend real people.

*insert curse word here*

A Party for the Holy Days, pt. 1

2010-12-19T18:05:00.009-05:00

For the past few days, I've been in D.C., preparing the RSI christmas party. We had a buttload of people come (and, unfortunately, a lot of people who didn't (miss you Leila, Zsa, and everybody else)). Apparently there's a number of people who want more mentions here, who I'm going to need to talk about, but I haven't had a good sleep in a considerable number of hours, so it's hard to keep track. I'm also going to have to share the spreadsheet...I'm starting to think it'd be a good idea to compile RSI nicknames separately, but, well, effort. Meh.

Anyways, I went in with Hyumni and Gopika--though I've pretty much been with Hyumni nonstop, since she's staying with me--and Gopika was, per usual, completely and utterly exhausted. Hyumni and I came bearing unnecessary chocolates, but the trip was fun (including the $20 cab fair *insert emoticon involving Html-prohibited characters here*). We arrived in a relatively punctual manner, and then I, at least, proceeded to spend a good long while trying to reacquaint myself with everybody.

I had no idea how awkward it was all going to be (I love that you're all going to see this now and be like "lol, Tea's awkward", but that's hardly news). It's weird to see all of these people and assimilate the changes in the social structure--i.e. who I've been talking to online along with who I used to talk to in person. It turned out to be alrgiht--I ended up in a crew of ten-ish people fighting over couch space. We spend a solid quantity of time ignoring Ash because he had skipped Rocky Horror to sleep (laaaame), as he was planning to skip the majority of this event. Ash decided to rebel by trying to steal James's spot, which, naturally, involved forcing James horizontal, lying down on top of somewhat-horizontal James, wedging James's head into my collarbone (ouch) and Ash's head into my skull (double ouch), and me into Iditri, who was actually relatively untroubled by this complete invasion of personal space.

Ash caved before James did, so we all managed to keep our spots, but our ability to keep Ash from sleeping turned out to be very, very limited. We eventually left the couch--videogamers took over the TV, and it's very difficult to resist the lure and remain in the same room, so we moved first to the third floor (we here refers me, James, Greg, Hyunmi, Iditri, Zorah, and Tramar). We spread out on the fantabulously plush carpet, and Zorah started fiddling about with her laptop. James, Tramar and I spread out under the table, and I continued making Greg pass me things (he's very useful like that), and I don't totally remember this portion of time, other than that I recall being very comfortable.

This shall be finished at a later date, because I am so goshdarned tired.

Shopping For Shirtsies

2010-12-11T22:09:00.004-05:00

Please note that I am not actually purchasing said shirts...just looking for geeky ones. Some awesomes:

A Fibonacci sequence...in BUNNIES
Our beloved Ginny probably likes this one
Awesome on a number of levels
Someday, I will exist in an environment where I can wear shirts that say things like "bitches" on them'
Chemistry win
Physics win
If it weren't for the inaccurate Bohr model of the atom and the color I can't quite pull off, I would want this shirt
Kathrya would like this one
SO PUNNY
And one for Julie
Lolz
Redundancy!
This one may never get old.

Okeedokee, that's enough for now.

Reasons

2010-12-05T20:47:00.005-05:00

REASONS WHY I COULD NEVER MANAGE A TRADITIONAL HIGH SCHOOL RELATIONSHIP

1) I am way too busy

2) The people involved in them always seem really into it. I take one look at romantic and think "sappy, sappy, sappy." Unless it's in romance novels, but even then, there are times when I just end up yelling NARM in my head. Like I did out loud during the HP7 movie when Ron was going on and on and on about that ball of light. For reals, I'm a big Ron/Hermione shipper, and I thought it was too much.

3) That busy thing, again.

4) I can't remember the last time I had free time.

5) But really, if I did, I'd rather spend it reading webcomics.

6) We'll ignore the fact that my last relationship did a very good job subsisting on webcomics.

7) Including during the breakup.

8) That goddamned idiot.

9) Seriously, if that's what high school has to offer, I am more than happy to leave it alone.

REASONS WHY I AM WAY TOO BUSY

I am smart.
But not smart enough to only work hard enough to skate by.
In fact, even when I could work a lot less hard than I do, I put in a lot of effort.
I like to think of it as dedication.
Also, I'm kind of trying to hold down jobs.
It's a fun time.
I talk online too much.
I don't know how to "reflect" in a timely fashion.
I take too much time to draft my English papers.
I get distracted and read books.
I get distracted and play tetris.
I develop headaches and lie down.
I don't have effective time management skills.
Except when I do have effective time management skills, but then I forget to eat

REASONS WHY I ONLY ATE ONE MEAL TODAY

Scones are really filling
I've eaten five scones during the course of the day.
After eating half a pack of blueberries, I forgot to eat breakfast.
Then we had Channukah Brunch at 2:30.
At that point, it didn't make sense to eat dinner.
Then I wrote my Lit X paper again.
That made me forget about food

REASONS WHY I AM STRESSED OUT

I really want to go to MIT
I applied early action to MIT
I don't actually know when the early action decision comes out
It's probably not far enough away for me to finish my list of things I need to get done by that date.
My college essays are crappy.
If I don't get into MIT, I'm going to cry, and I don't particularly enjoy crying.
My room looks like a tornado blew though.
No, seriously, a tornado. It's getting really bad.
All I want to do is read.
Then sleep.
I miss sleep.
Also, I want to sit at home and work instead of going to school.
Because school is not productive, and I need to have complete productivity until I finish this shit.
I'm actually kind of looking forward to winter break, because even if I don't get in early anywhere, I can work uninterrupted. Kind of.

REASONS WHY I SHOULD NOT BE STRESSED OUT

Probability states that I will get into MIT
Even if I don't get into MIT, I have lots of solid backup plans, and it's a hard school to get into, and no one will think less of me if I don't get in.
If anyone does think less of me, I will take them down.
Well, I'll try to get Nyx to beat them up, which is kind of the same thing.
I have super awesome friends (like Nyx), who would totally be mean to people if people were mean to me.
People are not, generally, particularly mean to me. As a nerd, I could have it a lot worse.
Early Action decisions might come out late, in which case I'll have more time to finish my to do list.
I will edit my college essays until they are not crappy.
I always get all my work done. This will be no exception.
I can sleep when I'm dead.
I can also sleep next semester.
It's almost CHRISTMAS PARTY TIME
and then it's CHRISTMAS TIME
I AM SO EXCITED
WHOOO
YAY
LOOK HOW NOT STRESSED I AM RIGHT NOW

I wish that I wrote something other than college essays

2010-12-02T20:23:00.001-05:00

Because then I would have interesting things to put here. As it is, all I have are not-so-interesting stories, bad jokes, and rants over nothingness.

I think I'll go write a backpost.

I do not want to do my homework

2010-12-01T18:59:00.003-05:00

I don't want to deal with life, or my endless to do list, or my room, or my family, or really just about anything.

I hate that I get like this sometimes, and I hate that I don't know what triggers it. I just need to stay calm, and keep working, and hope that it all blows over by the morning.

Which it will. Because it always does. Then, in another week, all I'll want to do is curl up in the fetal position and cry, like I do now.

I hate feeling like an emo teenager. When I say that I want to be "more normal", I mean that I want to drive around on Saturday nights with a car full of screaming teenagers, and dance like a maniac to bad pop songs, and sigh over boys, and cry about silly things, and be rude to my parents and talk on the phone too long and maybe, every now and then, actually fail a test.

Sometimes, I want to stop being responsible, and figure out what living is. As Louise Gluck wrote in Meadowlands, "Those/with the smallest hearts have/the greatest freedom" (Penelope's Stubbornness). Because if I didn't care for the world, or my future, or my family, or my friends, or the people who care, I would run off somewhere and die in an errant attempt to find myself.

What has the world come to, that teenagers suffer from midlife crises?

I Cried Last Night

2010-11-28T10:46:00.003-05:00

It's funny, because I thought that I ran out of tears a month ago. It felt like I did, during the service, because there was so much happy in with the sad that tears would be difficult--though a cold made the sniffling easy.

I should have noticed that it was becoming too much. I should have noticed that something was amiss, because Gretchen usually can't make me laugh hysterically for fifteen minutes, she usually only manages seven or eight. But I was grinning, and my insides were warm, and sometimes it's easy to forget.

There needs to be a word like happysad, or angrykind, or hatelove, for when there are so many emotions that all of them exist at once.

I didn't even realize that tears were going to come until I got home and saw Dad lying on the couch. I put my bag down, walked over to him, sat down, and curled up, my head on his shoulder. We lay like that for half an hour, my crying, barely able to talk, and Dad rubbing my back, then just holding me.

It helped, as much as anything could.

I love you Dad.

More on those RSI essays

2010-11-27T11:44:00.004-05:00

Now, unfortunately, I'm not going to be able to post my essays or those of anybody else here, because all of us liberally copied from them for our college applications. Now, all advice here is the opinion of one former participant--I make no promises as to its veracity

In each Research Field selected in Question 2, please state what you perceive as the one or two most interesting questions/problems in this field. Explain why they interest you.

I'm happy to email my answers to this question to anyone who will tell me what fields they're applying with (I don't want anyone to feel like they can't use a response because I already wrote about it). My answers to these questions took up almost the entirety of my first page. These answers have three purposes:

The are used to match accepted students to prospective mentors.
They provide you with a vehicle with which to illustrate your critical thinking.
They provide you with a vehicle with which to demonstrate your knowledge.

I realize that the last two points are relatively similar, but they're significant in separate ways. As far as the knowledge goes--you should know what you're talking about. Don't just pick some random topic because it sounds cool, go into what interests you, what you already know about. Do some research. My secondary field was the part of my application I put the most time into, because I hadn't done research on it in well over a year, and I had very little information on the topic I decided to write about. I did some research, talked to a teacher in the subject to double-check that my proposal hadn't already been answered, then wrote about it. For me, the first question was answered to show knowledge, because it was one that I'd studied. The second one included many more questions and suggestions, pointing out a number of avenues for research. In both cases, I focused on the complexity of the issues at hand, and why I found that interesting. My two very, very different fields were tied together by a more unified interest in systems/networks, but this tying together (which wasn't done explicitly, and which I've only just noticed) is unnecessary.

Even though the research for the questions may take time, these should be the easiest to write because, for once, it's a chance to write about something more interesting than yourself.

What are your long-range goals?

This answer, for me, was about 2/3rds of a page. First, I discussed a desire to continue some research I'd already done, mentioning how I really need more experience to do what I've tried to do (and RSI would be super helpful, wink wink nudge nudge). Then I said that, as I'm rather young, I'm still flexible about what I want to be studying. I talked about my major interests in the past, going back to the first scientific paper I ever read, the summer before my sophomore year, and how that really threw into light the fact that no matter where I end up, I want science to be a major part of my existence.

The big thing with this is that it's okay to say that you don't have everything all planned out--I don't think that anyone expects you to, but if you do have a fascinating future mapped out, that's cool too. This question is both wide open and very specific, so you have a lot of leeway. I'm inclined to advise that you talk about science here (or, if you don't, keep it brief. You only have a limited number of pages, and you want to focus on your passion for math/science/research/life). If you're really into your research questions, this would be a place to reiterate your interest in pursuing them over the long-term. If you want to use engineering to save the world, put it here. If you want to grow up and be an oddball professor who make Rube Goldberg machines in her backyard, again, that goes here. When you go to sleep at night, what do you dream about?

Because me? I'm going to continue dreaming about electricity.

What extracurricular activities and/or hobbies demonstrate your interest and ability to undertake scientific or mathematical research? (Give some measure to the extent of your participation and/or accomplishments in math or science competitions, research internships, and awards received.)

Remember: it's not a list. You have three pages to indicate promise as a scientist. If you've won enough awards and done enough super-legit stuff that your promise as scientist is super duper evident, then you can make a list. However, if you've won that many awards, then you've probably got your application under control, and you're probably not going to bother reading this.

For the rest of us, this is a chance to further reiterate whatever point we're trying to make--and that is, more or less "Why You Should Accept Me." I talked about only two organized extracurriculars and two hobbies (if you count summer-research-in-my-room as a hobby), but I went into depth about each and how they demonstrated by ability and interest. This is mostly because I didn't have a lot of experience--I had to go into depth, because I didn't have the laundry list that other people do.

My best advice for this question is to be yourself. Talk about what you've done that has mattered to you, and don't be afraid of mentioning something just because it isn't a traditional extracurricular. It's about what you do, outside of class, to improve scientific understanding. This is a chance to take whatever it is you've done and use it to shine. Even if what you've done is super lame sounding (sometimes, I like to stargaze, for example), you can make it into something bigger (the feeling that the universe is bigger than me had really inspired me to go out and try to learn more about it, as I did in y internship or by reading z textbook (no, I didn't use that one, I'm just making up an example)). Accomplishments in science competitions, etc., should be mentioned if they exist, but don't flip out if you don't have them.

Describe your involvement and participation in extracurricular and community activities that do not relate directly to science, technology, engineering, or mathematics.

Hi, my name is Tea, and I have a life. I play a musical instrument. I sing in church choir and help out with outreach stuff there. I am a person beyond my research.

I grant you, I wrote a bit more than that, with a lot more depth (i.e. specific piano pieces, that time I played for a show, how I sing at church because school choir got ditched for science research) but it was only a quarter of a page. Athletes probably went into sports, people who do major charity stuff probably went into that, but this is mostly a "are you well rounded? Are you spread too thin? Have you done something really cool that you couldn't mention anywhere else but would like to say here?" opportunity.

Briefly describe any past experience with computer programming, modeling, and data analysis.

My response:

I excel at data analysis with Excel. I did a project in my science research course this fall analyzing sunspot data over the last hundred years. I had enough data points that I ended up having to dig into Excels slightly technical series names and split them in half, because it was overrunning the graphing limit. I did boxcar smoothing, modified standard deviations, and used a few other methods to examine relative peaks. My modeling abilities max out at what I can do on paper using concepts learned in algebra and calculus. For programming, I’ve just begun learning perl, teaching myself with a book appropriately titled Learning Perl. If I keep working my way through the text at my current rate, I’ll be through the book by February. My hope is that perl will give me enough grounding to work my way further through the puzzles on projecteuler.net. All of my manipulations in Excel are proving insufficient in getting through the fourth problem, since, although I managed to trick it into identifying primes, I still haven’t figured out a way to get it to recognize a palindromic number.

So, to answer that question, no, you don't need to know much in the way of programming to answer this. (Though it should be noted that, unfortunately, I stopped progressing at that current rate once holiday vacation ended). This response was, again, about a quarter of a page.

How did you hear about RSI?

Options:

Person at my school went last year, says it's amazing, I'm applying.

Friend went some year, says it's amazing, I'm applying.

Teacher knows students who went...

Teacher is obsessed with MIT...

Looking for summer programs on the internet...

Stalking MIT on the internet...

I did USABO, and it's run by the same organization...

I accidentally entered an RSI game of Mafia on efnet...

This random chick in my astronomy class told me to apply...

The guy in the white van told me to apply before I stole his candy...

I won my position in a national science fair, so this response is unnecessary...

My parents went to RSI...

My sibling went to RSI...

My cousin went to RSI...

That's probably a sufficiently long list of options. This can be a sentence, so as to limit its effect on your ability to write a ton of stuff for everything else.

Some Tips for a Successful Research Science Institute Application

2010-11-26T08:56:00.007-05:00

It's application season. This means that I am frantically writing my college apps (which is unfun), but it also means that this year's batch of juniors is starting in on their summer program applications. Well, this year's batch of prepared juniors--I sure didn't start mine until mid-December, and I did just fine program-wise, but I've started getting messages of "omg plz hlp me so confsd!" except spelled a lot better than that, because these are intelligent, motivated individuals.

Regardless, RSI applicants are getting nervous, and I'd been telling myself I'd get this blog to be a good resource (we'll ignore the fact I haven't finished writing up my posts from the last week of RSI, which was months ago), and, I think, showing some parts of a successful application would be helpful.

First, though, we should look at another blogger's post from last winter, about how not to write this very application.

I have no idea what the name of said blogger is, so we'll call him Joe. Or her, I suppose, since I don't know the gender, but Joe it is. Italics are quotes or paraphrases of Joe, non-italics is yours truly.

Good Advice from Joe

Send application in a punctual manner. Rumor has it that someone in my year got wait-listed (then accepted) because his application came in late.
The odds are really slim. Joe seems to view this as something discouraging (and claims that applications are, as a result of high interest, given less attention than they would otherwise). This is probably not true--the number of applicants we usually hear numbers well under 5,000, and everyone (aside from the international mathematics olympiad silver medalist) could be heard at some point during the program worrying that they were the stupidest one there, and that everyone was so much smarter, and why were they accepted, etc. Including a guy who had "only published one scientific paper" (for comparison, I have published no scientific papers). So all the odds do is guarantee that everyone who is accepted is totally shocked, and the people who aren't accepted know (or come to realize) that it's not the end of the world. I don't remember what the point of this paragraph was....oh, right. Odds are slim. It's worth applying, because no one expects to get in, but disappointment if you don't get in should not be allowed to crush you.
Ask for teacher rec letters well in advance.
"Go on a brag fest without exaggerating to levels you can't actually follow up on." Don't understate your achievements, yes, but don't turn the application into a list of every single thing you've done awesome on ever. Talk confidently about your potential as a scientist, about your abilities in research, about mathematics competitions, whatever. But avoid avoid avoid making a resume.
"StarCraft is not an acceptable extracurricular." Joe is underestimating the amount of StarCraft played at RSI . I'd say that one line about StarCraft, relating it in a positive way to yourself as a scientist, is acceptable. That said, don't allow StarCraft to interfere with your mentorship work at RSI. Because your privileges will be revoked.
Don't lie. Duh.

Bad Advice from Joe

Scores are everything. This is not true. The CEE, like any high end college, wants to see that you're smart on paper, so you need to have reasonably high scores. Top percentile scores. On SATs, you should break 700 on each subject. If you're the sort of person who wants to spend his/her summer totally entrenched in scientific research, you probably have those scores. If you don't, you were probably so busy designing nanobots that you didn't study for the verbal portion of your SAT (that's a joke. Seriously, if you're crap at testing but love doing research/learning science, talk about that in your app and hope that it balances out, but don't not apply).
Don't ask your junior year math/science teachers for recs. If you're top of the class, hang out afterwards to talk about quantum mechanics, know the teacher, whatever, don't be afraid of doing this. Pick someone that knows you, but that doesn't mean junior year is bad. Also, if you're a science person, don't be afraid of picking two science teachers to write your letters. I did it, and it worked for me.

So, that is some advice. Now, Joe also made A Formula designed to determine if someone will get into RSI. I think we might as well dig through that, and then, tomorrow, I can give you the blow-by-blow of my own application. My comments are bulleted underneath.

Start at 50.

Take Dec-01 2010. Check your application’s date of submission. Subtract 0.2 for every day of difference if submitted later, or add 0.2 for every day earlier. Subtract 5 more points if sent a week before the deadline.

People who overnighted it got in. People who got it in way early got in. You're better off getting it in sooner, but I'm not sure how much it matters.

Subtract 15 if living on the East Coast or in a state with above-average student performance.

What, no points off for Cali?

Subtract 2 if not a US citizen. Subtract a further 8 if nationality is East Asian.

It's a meritocracy. This shit don't matter.

Add 15 if URM.

Would you like me to repeat myself? We had 1.5 URMs my year. It doesn't matter.

Add 25 if female. Swear silently if male.

What part of "this is a meritocracy" do you not understand? My year was only 1/3 girls for the Americans. The international situation is almost worse, because Singapore and Saudi Arabia (12 total students) send only guys.

Add 3 for each AP/IB course taken, except Calculus and Computer Science (add nothing in those cases, unless Computer Science AB was taken, in which case add 1).

Okay, this is legit. Even though I'd only taken 1 AP test (and I'd taught myself the difference between my non-AP music theory class and that test).

Subtract 1 for each mention of non-AP courses completed on or prior to 2007.

I'm too lazy to figure out what's significant about 07.

Add points for each 200+ university course taken (CHM 304, MAT 217, COS 226, etc.); exact amount of points added is the leading digit times 2 plus one-tenth the numerical designation mod 100. (For example, COS 226 would be worth 2 * 2 + 26 / 10 = 4 + 2.6 = 6.6)

This is probably legit.

Subtract 1 for each “Other” field with non-AP/IB courses irrelevant to engineering/math.

But what if you think the courses are realllly cool?

Add 0, 2, 2.5 points (beginning, intermediate, advanced) in each programming skill level chosen.

If you're not doing anything with programming, this doesn't matter, though I did talk about how I was learning perl. Unfortunately, I stopped trying to lear perl around April, so I'm still terrible at it, but I don't feel bad about saying it because I was learning it at the time.

Add 5 bonus points for mentioning Python, but subtract 5 for mentioning BASIC regardless of skill level.

I'm going to pretend I know what this means.

Add 1/2 extra points each if intermediate/advanced in the following: Java, C++, Mathematica, MATLAB, SQL, XML, PHP, Delphi, and Ruby. Disregard Assembly/TOY, HTML and Flash.

Computers. Heh.

Add 5 bonus points for advanced LaTeX use, or add 2 for intermediate LaTeX use. Double the bonus received in this section if you used LaTeX in your short responses.

Using LaTeX for free response is beast (and indicative of geekiness), but they teach everyone LaTeX regardless--this is mostly used to place people into their first week computer courses.

Add WIN for mentioning StarCraft in any way in your application.

Dude, I *told* you it's a legit extracurricular.

Subtract 2 points for every 10 points lost on the PSAT/SAT II tests (disregard language/history/English tests).

I'd say to start this countdown after you get below 700 or 750. Because perfect vs. 1/2 wrong is not a big deal (except on SAT-IIs, where you've gotten more than one wrong)

Subtract 5 points for each use of a test score from 2007 or prior.

Unless used to demonstrate severe precociousness a la Gabriel See.

Subtract 8 if research field choices were copied from this.

I see nothing wrong with copying field choices so long as you can write coherently about them.

Subtract 5 for each failure to meet “PSAT math scores should be at least 75, and combined math, verbal, and writing PSAT scores should be at least 220.ACT minimum math scores should be 33 and reading, 34.”

Okay, yeah, sure.

Add 5 for pointing out the grammatical mistake on the teacher’s recommendation form.

No! Don't do this! Rude rude rude rude! Hide your head beneath the sand!

Subtract 15 if at least one of your answers to question 3 was one of the six remaining Clay Math Institute Millennium Prize Problems. Disregard if you included proof/disproof as supplement.

Lolz, math.

Add 10 for each research internship with a reputable organization. Subtract 5 for each deliberate mention of petri dish washing internships or paper shredding internships.

Legit.

Subtract 3 for mentioning programs that depend on ability to pay and not merit.

But what if it's ability to pay *and* merit? (I have no idea how to answer that question)

Add 5 for being a Intel STS semifinalist. Add 15 for being a STS finalist.

Yes

Add 8 if undertaking of personal research is demonstrated. Add 12 more if said research has been published or reviewed.

Hear, hear! However, this should be worth a lot more points than being female.

Add 8 for every piece of creative “supplement” sent with the application that demonstrates personal talent.

Kevin Hu! Google him, he's legit.

Add 17.5 for each non-frivolous patent held (Meaning not including any of these or similar)

If you're just applied for one, I think that counts, because the review process is long enough that for you to have one, you'd have to have filed before high school.

Add 1/2/4 for every bronze/silver/gold medal (or equivalent honor) received in reputable competitions (USAMTS, HMMT, PUMaC, etc., and not just math ones.)

Helpful, yes, but not necessary for acceptance. Plenty of non-competition people attend.

Subtract 5 for each long-range goal that alludes to money, power, or cars.

Yeahhhh.

Subtract 4 more for each long-range goal not involving science.

Unless it's saving the world.

Subtract 3 for every other piece of “padding” content.

What is this padding you speak of?

Subtract 2 for deliberate inclusions of school-wide extracurriculars or exclusively in-school recognitions.

DON'T MESS WITH MATH TEAM GODDAMNIT!

Subtract 3 for mentioning non-national MATHCOUNTS trophies.

Math, lolz.

Subtract 5 if you asked a teacher who did not know you well beyond the course to write your recommendation. (Subtract 15 if both teachers fall under this.)

True dat.

Subtract 10 if question 6 was not answered in a straightforward manner.

How do you discuss extracurriculars in a non-straightforward manner? I'd love to see this.

Subtract 25 if you flagrantly mention that you are applying to TASP.

Poor form.

Subtract 10 if answer to question 7 fails to use any of the languages mentioned.

I DID THAT!

Subtract 2 if postcard was not enclosed.

Why?

Add 10 for each USA_O contest attended, minus ones open to public registration.

Kk.

Add 15 for each I_O contest training camp or contest attended.

Legitimate, this.

Add 25 for each I_O medal, +25 more if gold.

Okay, these metals should be worth way more than being female. Seriously.

Add 5 for mentioning Project Euler. Add 0.1 for each problem completed.

I did that! I need to get back to those problems.

Happy Thanksgiving!

2010-11-25T14:35:00.002-05:00

Tea sits on her bed, studying chemistry. She idly scratches a freckle on her leg with her pencil as she thinks. The freckle moves. Tea panics.

Then she realizes that the freckle is actually dust.

I am thankful that my freckles haven't fallen off.

I am also thankful for my wonderful friends, then many opportunities in my life, the fact that in less than a year I will be out of this town, and the really awesome desserts I'm going to eat tonight.

Super Hot Physics

2010-11-20T18:33:00.003-05:00

AKA learning about stars...at SHP! (am I clever or what?).

I took the train in with Clara, who is by far the calmest person I know about college decisions (well, it might be close on Kathrya, but she is nonetheless very chill). This is in marked contrast to my own behavior...which we're going to try not to think about. Because if I don't write it down, it didn't happen.

For your entertainment, I've compiled some quotes by my astro professor:

"The moon looks like a barren Italy...sort of like Afghanistan. I mean, really, why is anyone fighting over that place? Its three major food groups are metamorphic, igneous, and sedimentary."

"Fools and Galileo do not suffer each other gladly."

"The Galileo spacecraft looks like someone put it together with an erector set while drunk."

"Atoms are like tuning forks."

"Thermal physics is kind of like Sweden."

"So, if I assume that the sun is made of doughnuts, I can use this assumption to calculate its lifetime."

"Rivers are instrumental to the gradual destruction of life as we know it."

STS

2010-11-16T20:33:00.002-05:00

It's like four college apps. Plus a thesis paper. Wait--it *is* four college apps plus a thesis paper.

What am I getting myself into?

In other news, MIT? Please take me. Not that I'm anonymously begging or anything. Because we all know that would be silly.

Things I Do Not Like

2010-11-15T21:40:00.003-05:00

People who willfully cause pain to others.

Computer software with a trial period.

Ubuntu partitions that don't function.

Cellphones with diminished battery capacity.

Poorly written books.

Poorly written fan fiction.

Poorly written scientific papers.

My lab partners.

My scientific paper.

My inability to properly work a scanner.

The lack of image editing software on my computer.

My innate stinginess.

The fact that I still haven't practiced piano.

How loud my leg-twitching habit is.

Undercooked cookies.

My ex-not-boyfriend.

Mean people.

Whoever invented menstrual cramps.

Evolution deniers.

Feminist haters.

Feminist haters who argue incompetently.

People who talk faster than I can think.

College applications.

The fact that I am still obsessed with MIT (even Yale couldn't break me).

Headaches.

Menstrual cramps.

Why are English papers so much work?

2010-11-07T15:51:00.002-05:00

Because I devote hours and hours (and pages and pages) to the following drivel:

The intersections of morality, religion, and sex.

How does an individual define what is right? When people choose a path, what makes them determine in which direction they want to bend? Society influences, yes, but in what ways? How so?

The power of religion. Decisions are made around it, people join or flee it. Yet it is defined, more often than not, but the individual.

Religion and the conscience. How do we decide things?

Tess of the D'bervilles

-innocence destroyed by rape

-rape defines a marriage

The Purity Myth

-goodness of women is defined entirely by what they have between their legs.

But is it? Really? Truly? The fallen woman can be seen in so many places, but she redeems herself in the eyes of the reader. But what is redemption for the men?

Gender and atonement: what sins are worth a life?

Jane Eyre—he's redeemed himself, but has she?

Orlando—a man, a woman, both at once, but he is not a man who ever needs redeeming

Tess of the D'ubervilles—Tess, obviously, spends a lifetime trying to make up for a sin that wasn't hers, but it seems, in the end, that it is religion understanding, not atonement, that drives her (with the death of her 'husband' she returns to her husband). For Alec, though, what is there? He turns to religion, then believes that the only way he can make it up is through marriage, a life's commitment.

Redemption is sacrifice.

What is it that makes an individual good? How do people define what is right and what is wrong, and to what extent is this dichotomy of thought present in our everyday lives?

The Purity Myth, by Jessica Valenti, centers on the idea that the societal perception of a woman's morality stems entirely from her chastity. No quality is as important, no trait as worth protecting, as virginity.

Is this true? Judging by the books, the answer is resoundingly yes. In Tess of the D'ubervilles, we have a woman who, after she is raped, is a ruined woman; her eventual marriage falls apart, her life is spent searching for redemption.

When old books—centuries old, not whatever your grandmother considered popular literature—are read, it becomes very clear that from a modern perspective, with its own take on what is morally upstanding and politically correct, the good can be far more evil than the author intended. Who today would consider the ivory trade savory, the oft-said 'nigger' polite? This is made even more clear when considering opinions that haven't changed. In past centuries, marriage has shifted away from a sacred institution, defined by God.

The lack of stagnation in moral perceptions is demonstrated clearly by shifting perceptions of marriage. In days of yore, marriage was defined by sex.

You should see how much worse the handwritten crap is.

The Difficulty of Remembrance

2010-11-06T22:08:00.006-04:00

Delayed my train by 23 minutes. Quite a nuisance (though I hope whoever was unwell has improved). This, of course, meant that we got stuck behind a local train, which in turn meant that I was really, really late to class.

Which I care about. Clara and Helga care less, so I bid them goodbye at the campus gate and proceeded at a very brisk walk, mostly because I couldn't take another minute of not talking. As I was approaching Pupin, I heard the slapping sound of someone running in flip-flops and thought to myself "well, at least I'm not as hurried as whoever that is."

Moments later, a slightly breathless (which means he was probably running for a good while) Rube pulled up (yes, I'm using vehicular terminology) next to me.

"Hey," he said.

I blinked. "Hi."

"I'm late."

"Me too."

"I woke up really early, and I assumed that my parents were going to make me breakfast, so I lay down on the couch for a few minutes--"

I wished that I didn't know what his couch looked like, that my mental picture was less vivid.

"--And then I woke up, and it was 9:47," he continued. "So I got a cab, and here I am."

"There was a medical emergency on the train. Before I got there."

"I didn't eat breakfast."

"Oh."

We continued walking, his pace slightly faster than mine, because my shoelace was undone and I didn't particularly want to stop long enough to fix it. I looked down.

"Your feet must be freezing," I said, because, as I'd thought from the sound, he was be-sandaled (yes, that's a word).

"Eh."

"My toes would be blue. Or purple. Probably purple."

"When they go numb I can't feel it."

I believe I snorted. Let us pretend that it was a lady-like snort.

Anyways, we eventually got inside, and I went for the elevator, to which he said "elevator, really?" and I said "I'm on the thirteenth floor" and he said "reasonable, then."

Because it is reasonable. Eight flights of stairs is a lot.

He entered the elevator with me, even though he didn't need to. He'd held the door, too, when we entered the building. I can't think when that trait stopped annoying me when present in males. Perhaps when I realized that there are better outlets for feminism.

I flopped against the wall of the elevator, and he did the same, against the other. I realized, abruptly, that we were alone, and then, just as suddenly, that he wasn't wearing a hat. It was messy, too long, curling while flat against his head in that horribly adorable way, and I wanted--I squelched the thought.

"I'm sleepy," I said, though I wasn't.

"I'm not," he responded, as the elevator stopped for him. I stood in the elevator by myself as it rose the last six floors.

I walked out, across the hall, stood in the bathroom, alone. I began to laugh, perhaps just because of how fittingly him the exchange was, but also because I didn't need it. It was interesting, yes, fine, good, but uncomfortable. More comfortable than that last night, but not something I wanted more of.

I'm trying to reclaim the music he sent me. I went down to the beach last night, after leaving Cammie's. I played the Los Campesinos song that is so much fun, You! Me! Dancing!, with its wonderful exclamation points. The one that I played whenever I missed him over the summer.

I stood on the cannons, the song loud, looking at the sky. I thought about him, briefly, but then about the stars. About the sky, about the world, about where I wanted to be and how, in a moment, in this chill cold air, I could just feel. I jumped from the cannons to the ground, then danced, as erratically as if I were drunk, down to the water, singing lines that felt right. I thrust my hands into the water, splashed it on my face, then twirled back up to my truck.

It sounds like a baptism, now. I'm going to call it that. A new beginning. A fresh start, not for him, not with him, but for me, for myself, with, well, anyone other than him.

I am made clean.

Today, Today

2010-11-05T19:05:00.002-04:00

Oh Friday. Beautiful Friday, lovely day at the end of an oh-so-lovely week.

Someone said something funny during Chem. But I don't remember what it was. It was probably something about how if you sit on a pencil hard enough and for long enough, you make diamonds. Fun fact!

Please disregard that at the forces that can be provided by the human body, this would take millions of years.

I'm currently at Cammie's house, hanging out with her and Kathrya. We're making cookie dough. To eat, like, just the dough. It's gonna be delicious.

I'm going to mention Nyx now. And the fact that I have an English essay to write this weekend. Because I'm trying to even out the tag numbers, even now.

Frisbee club was fun. Ginny is indecisive about everything, but it's a trait that's adorable in her and obnoxious in Rube. It's odd, how that happens.

Lemocy

2010-11-04T16:21:00.003-04:00

What a beautiful, beautiful captcha. I bet Dino cried at that.

So, what is occurring in my life? I'm reading The Purity Myth and freaking myself out.

"Have you already unwrapped the priceless gift of virginity and given it away? Do you now feel like "second-hand goods" and no longer worthy to be cherished? Do you ever wish you could re-wrap it and give it only to your future husband or wife? Guess what? You can be abstinent again! You can't change the past, but you can change the future. You can decide today to commit to abstinence, wrapping a brand-new gift of virginity to present to your husband or wife on your wedding night."

--from this website, from which we can also learn that people who have sex like to do so "when there's no one around."

"Your body is a wrapped lollipop. When you have sex with a man, he unwraps your lollipop and sucks on it. It may feel great at the time, but, unfortunately, when he's done with you, all you have left for your next partner is a poorly wrapped, saliva-fouled sucker."

This is a) a mixed metaphor and b) sexist. Because nobody bothered to compare men to these. Unless they're saying that men would become one of those if they have sex with other men. In which case we should all just be lesbians. Screw men.

I'm not sure I can take much more of this.

Overheard in the Library

2010-11-03T13:32:00.002-04:00

Girl: You look like you need a hug.

Boy: Um.

Girl: Doesn't he look like he needs a hug?

Boy: Uh...

Girl: I would hug you, but I don't like touching people.

Doughnut Fun

2010-11-02T19:07:00.005-04:00

Today, Ginny and Yuma came over. We made doughnuts. It was fun.

Apparently donut and doughnut are both acceptable spellings of this delicious food. I blame dukin' donuts. I also apparently make all of my paragraphs of my college essays too short, and admissions officers will see this and assume that my writing is imperfect, when I see the shorter paragraphs as a way to hold attention.

I think I've been reading internet news for too long.

Anyways, the donuts (yes, I am defaulting to the one with less letters) were a lot of fun, and the recipe worked out well, though I'd recommend halving the amount of nutmeg. Also, for future reference, the sugar is 7/8s of a cup, or something along those lines. It took the three of us, gifted math students that we are, an age to go from the recipe's grams to our manageable cups.

We are so talented.

Also, Ginny? I tell you this now so that you'll blush less if it gets brought up in person. During dinner tonight, Dad said, "How long have Jennn"

"Ginny"

"Yes, how long have she and Yuma been a, how do you say it these days? An item?"

"I thought they were just friends," said Mom.

"They are," I said, then gave Dad a funny look.

"So why isn't she allowed to go to his house again?"

"Because he's a boy."

"Right."

Monday, Lovely Monday

2010-11-01T19:38:00.003-04:00

There's a title that will probably never get repeated. Oh, how happy I am that there is no school tomorrow.

My younger sister's carpool buddy for swimming got a foot through the sclera and she's at the hospital. My stomach churns just thinking about it.

Ginny and Yuma are coming over tomorrow and we are cooking chocolate donuts. If Ginny's mother asks, we are working on physics. All of you, remember this.

In other news, I should be practicing for math team, but I'm putting it off because I'm busy. I should be working on college applications, but I think I'll be able to get my drafts done by tomorrow morning. I should be talking to people, but I'd rather read.

I hope that Kathrya is doing well, and that she continues to do well in the coming days.

I need to get going on The Purity Myth, which I think I'm going to add to my Lit X paper. The first three books (Orlando, The Scarlet Letter, Tess of the D'ubervilles) are from very different eras, but I think I can make it work, and I'll possibly be able to incorporate Lolita as well, in which case I'll be done with the reading phase of the paper. My current plan, though I haven't yet read the nonfiction text, is to focus on marriage and virginity through time. My main point is that the definition of marriage has changed considerably, granting much more power to the female counterpart (I'm going to have to think of any modern books I've read that would support this well, but I'll hopefully be able to find something...I wonder how Jane Eyre would fit into this analysis. I'd also rather like to read The Age of Innocence, which seems applicable. There are so many things I want to do in so little space!), while the societal perspective of virginity, placing it on such a pedestal, giving it this grand significance that is so similar to the power it has in Tess of the D'ubervilles (loss of virginity is equated with marriage to the partner in the text) is in a marked contrast.

Yay for plans!

Sniper No Sniping!

2010-10-31T12:02:00.006-04:00

So I nerd sniped myself last night in the middle of dinner by derailing to entire conversation to prove that twin primes always surround multiples of six (answer: in a given set of three numbers, one will be a multiple of three, and this cannot be one of the primes, so it's the middle value. Additionally, primes are odd, but odds and evens alternate so the middle number must be even. Even multiples of three are multiples of six. Proof made).

Last night I also didn't sleep enough (shocker) because it was my beloved Cammie's birthday. Well, birthday party, but it amounts to the same thing. We had a Harry Potter role-playing battle at the park, then went back to her house, watched Moulin Rouge (or however it's spelled), and stayed up until 3 am talking. In our defense, we thought daylight savings time was applied, and it was actually 2 am, but this turned out not to be the case.

Aside from that, MIT applications are due tomorrow, but I already finished mine, so this doesn't really matter. I ought to be studying for my chem test, and I think I need to read Candide this weekend, and I should figure out where I'm going with my Lit X, and write my college essays, and do a thousand other things on my to do list.

They'll get done. Someday.

Yeah, yeah, yeah

2010-10-10T09:51:00.003-04:00

I've been a very bad blogger, I know. I'm working on it. I am, I am, I am.

To start with making it all up to you, I'm going to dive into my old schoolwork. Because I know you all really enjoy that (I know that a lot of you don't. But I'm doing it anyways.) Yay!

From what I can tell, I left off work in the middle of the Science Research folder of freshman year. So, basically, back when I actually did work for that class, instead of just continually reformatting my paper.

The first article is a study which found that leukemia with slower cell division is more successful, partly because it allows them to avoid therapies designed to destroy cells that divide quickly (this is why hair falls out during radiation: it divides quickly. At least, I think that's why...). Scientists found this by studying the p21 gene. I wonder if all p-genes are related to cancers.

The second article is about which transcription factors must be turned on to render somatic cells pluripotent. Prior to this study, Oct4, Sox2, c-Myc and Klf4 were needed to change fibroblasts into stem cells (genes have such fun names). This work found that Esrrb can replace the last two entirely, as it regulates expression of Klf4 in stem cells. It can also bind to the reprogramming factors Nanog and Oct4, thus inspiring (not the right verb, but whatever) pluripotency.)

The third article is no longer at the link I have. According to my notes, embryonic stem cells are derived from preimplantation embryos, which I've known since I did my independent study project on stem cells in sixth grade, but it apparently is still a piece of information that needs to be included in discussions of science. These cells have normal karyotypes, but I don't remember what karyotypes are (google newsflash: it's the number and appearance of chromosomes in eukaryotic cells). These cells have high telomerase activity, and telomerase is that protein that reverses telomere reduction and is totally going to cure aging someday. The cells have pluripotent markers and can divide for an über-long time. If they differentiate into neurons (or, as Sadie would say, nyoo-rons), various growth factors, antagonists thereof, and morphogens become activated. I miss bio, but not enough to give up physics. Apparently, though scientists try to control this, they have trouble making all cells differentiate to the same thing. It still sounds cool, though.

The fourth article is about how the reprogramming factors work. Scientists examined when in the cell cycle and to what genes the pluripotency factors bind, and they found some nifty stuff. I just got really distracted by the fact that I now have access to Cell, where the actual journal article I couldn't read way back when I was doing this research is located. There are pictures. I can see them! I love summerschool's database access.

The last article is basically investigating the whole chimeric embryo thing. It found that differences in karyotypes and mitochondria will prevent inter-species hybrids from being formed. These scientists made a bunch, and none of them divided particularly much. I was kind of confused, because I thought human-animal hybrids were illegal, but apparently not.

I have now relearned something today.