Eeenteresting

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.

Things Found While Cleaning My Room

• 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!

On Organization

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 =)

Extended Weekend of Awesome Awesomeness

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.

Things I Do Not Like

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.

Menstrual cramps.

Menstrual cramps.

What I've Found Under My Desk

Because I'm cleaning, despite my possibly broken but probably just badly bruised pinky toe.

• Notes, in Spanglish, from a debate in Spanish (ex: niños have a right to choose what they see.") Written on the bottom, in Tea-ish is "why care."
• The second page of my Rockefeller application, an essay about PHD finger proteins that is covered in black scribbles.
• Practice Intel essays from October regarding my promise as a scientist, mathematician, or engineer.
• a torn piece of paper with nothing written on it
• An outline, in pencil, of the essay about PHD fingers, written on the bottom of a Nature paper.
• Fallen, the Sturken paper, printed with only every other line because the printer is running our of ink.
• All four pages of Dr. Verona's resume.
• The first page of the PHD finger article, with exactly two 'annotations.' The first is a box around Hox and a note, "hox = important." The second is a circle around "A control group of mice" and a note, "the importance of a control."
• Oh, wait, just found another page of Dr. Verona's resume. I guess it had five pages.
• The envelope that Nyx's birthday present came in.
• Introduction to Anthropology worksheet.
• First page of Spanish dialogo, with corrections.
• The schedule for the first day of school. As in, Tuesday, September 1, 2009.
• An AP math problem about a diver.
• Our entire Super Student Challenge paper.
• the first page of the Rockefeller essay with scribbles all over it
• The Rockefeller personal statement, without any scribbles.
• A middle page of the outline of my research paper.
• A piece of notepaper with "PLAN" written on the top, followed by a roman numeral I with "Batteries" next to it. The rest of the paper is blank.
• The entire contents of my Anthropology binder, minus the actual binder.
• A black sock that is actually dirty.
• Mistborn, by Brandon Sanderson.
• Two separate miniature notebooks
• Some Anthropology notes that never actually made it into the binder.
• A letter from Duke University
• A Paperclip High School Directory.
• A void railroad ticket
• 8 index cards covered in Utexas calculations
• Two bank receipts. The first says I have $1,011,01, the second says $1145.16. I'm assuming that the second is more recent.
• My $18 SAT score report that I didn't look at.

Now, time to cover the rest of the floorspace...