Positively Jubilant

I'm really happy today. I'm even going around smiling like a dweeb. A nonchronological, disorganized list of reasons why.

• I stayed up late watching the dorkiest physics video on black holes. Stars of the movie included Stephen Hawking, Homer Simpson, and of course, black holes. Mellifluous British accents also assuaged my ears throughout.
  
• Wednesday was my first ever official poetry reading. Despite the subpar quality of the poetry (well...I stopped paying attention), Yusef Komunyaaka had some enlightening things to say about art and literature. It almost rekindled a spark of interest in humanities. It's funny how I find theory much more interesting than the actual, tangible work.
• The weather is gorgeous. Yup, even Google agrees. I managed to change the theme of my Google homepage, so the background is a bus stop, and the weather in the background syncs up with the weather in Acton. My homepage is so pretty and sunny. So is my window. I just took a really nice walk too.
• Dinner at Friendly's last night with Karm, Liz, Mary, Avanti, and Megan was really fun and relaxed. Much better than the tension in the afternoon. Gobs of grease cling to my tummy and hair, but that is all forgotten in the spirit of good cheer. (Look at that end rhyme!)
  
• The Yale rejection letter. When it didn't come in the mail today, I finally broke down and checked it online. It took a few permutations, but I guessed my password in the end. I knew Yale was a sure-fire rejection (haha...that interview...), so the rejection didn't faze me. The letter even made it happy--and not in the thank-god-i-got-rejected kind of way, which given my dislike for Yale, probably should have been true. Going from past contact with Yale, I was expecting a cold, curt rejection, but this letter made me all warm and fuzzy inside! I leave with a much more positive impression of Yale than before. :D
  

See, I want to smile dorkily for no reason. :D I only wish other people can be as happy as me.

People don't take rejection well do they?

That's why I choose to live in blissful ignorance. I'm a bit aggravated right now, for several reasons. My ignorance is blissful, but other people want to know too much.

College rejections are no excuse to fall part.

Shattered Childhood Dreams

In third grade, my teacher used to make us draw pictures of our future selves, and inevitably, it evolved into the question of, "What do you want to do when you grow up?" Whether it was a latent brown-noser in me or genuine interest, I drew a blackboard, some chalk, and an apple. I wanted to be a teacher.

What folly! Teaching is a last profession I want right now, closely behind toilet plumber and president of the United States. Seeing the mud, slander, and gossip we throw at our teachers now, I shudder to be the recipient of that. And perhaps the worst thing is a private problem: I take everything too personally.

All those things I do unconsciously--filling out crosswords in class, whispering notes to my friends, giving up on hard problems, scrambling to class late because I had to print my essay -- these things would make me feel awful as a teacher. Disappointment leaden with inertia. That's how McClung feels every time physics devolves into toddler play. That's how Crick feels when students turn in papers a week late. (Does Crick have feelings? Ah, we shall see.)

That's how I'm feeling right now. It's too easy to take things personally when people don't do the work you assigned them. I'd be an awful teacher...and an awful leader. I can't stand disappointment, and I'm not charismatic enough to persuade them otherwise. Acadec screws with my mental health.

Wait...list?

Because the MIT decisions came out today (a ridiculous number of ABers got in! Class of 07 rocks!), I spent some time trolling around on CollegeConfidential again. After perusing the usual amusing High School and College Life threads, I made a segue back to an old haunt--the CC Top Universities Forums. Washington University in St. Louis hadn't been visited for a long time, so being bored, I clicked the link, only to find a humongo Official Class of 2007 RD Thread.

Apparently, decisions have been online for 3 days already. But they don't mail them until April 1, the official date. I was rather confused why there were two different (and very far apart) dates, so I went to the website to check for sure. I stumbled into the status site, finding an inconspicuous link buried among many others called Check Your Admissions Status.

Official Decision: Wait List

This either means I'm underqualified (self-explanatory) or overqualified (WashU's infamous yield games). Academically, I find it hard to believe I'm underqualified, but there are many other factors at work. What's strange is that WashU uses waitlist the way MIT uses deferrals: it represents the bulk of the decisions. WashU was scratched off my list when the scholarship notification came negative, so this isn't much of a deal. I just hope this isn't a sign of things to come. It would be awful if I get all rejections/waitlists in the next few weeks; I would have wasted so much time and money when I'd already gotten into my first choice.

March 29 to April 1 is going to be WTF awful.

L'ennui et la melancholie

Good weather causes good moods, right? The contrapositive to that statement suggests that awful moods imply bad weather. Both statement are patently false, the current weather and my current mood prove that.

This daily grind I suffer through has become vraiment impossible, said in the snottiest tone of a French existentialist. I can't even point my finger at why. I just can't stand it anymore. I'm not even going to qualify this entry with some self-conscious nod to emo-ness because there some times when I'm okay with myself, but this is certainly not one of those times. Maybe it's how I can't breath without getting nauseous in my own house, as the dank odor of my grandparent's bathroom infiltrates every square inch. Maybe it's how the TV drones on incessantly, spatting out canned Learning English phrases or annoying Chinese songs. Maybe it's how my mother sees fit to yell at everyone, everything, everyday. Maybe it's how I'm inundated with work I neither like or deem useful. Maybe it's how everyone is sick or grumpy, and communication has degenerated into mumbling and grumbling. Maybe it's how one earlobe is throbbing on the verge of an inflammatory response. Maybe it's how I can't bring myself to care about anything, blase to things I once loved. Maybe it's how other people don't care about things I want to care about. How I talk too much when I shouldn't and talk to little when I should. How I either let people walk all over me or be a bitch, unable to strike a perfect, normal balance.

I sit on front of the computer, clicking and munching and eating, even as my stomach is engorged and my eyes are numb. Looking for something to make me feel better. And it doesn't come. I want passion and drama, and all I find is ennui and blitheness.

I don't know why I feel so down when today wasn't that bad. Weather is by all means terrific: the sky is a cheery blue with the perfect balance of wispy white clouds. Here are the things that made me happy today because really, I shouldn't be this malheureuse. After all, even Albert Camus decided wallowing in misery was not the way to go. Revoltez!

• I single-handedly deflated Anna's massive bag of chocolate and candy.
• I have wonderful friends who have licenses and cars.
• English class was a silly and amusing exercise in futility.
• UChicago has a new admitted student website aptly called the ThickEnvelope, and they spoil their early admits. It's nice to be wanted sometimes.
  
• We're staying at the swanky Hilton in Hawaii, not some cheap motel.
• Word Racer at 7!
  

There is nothing more fucking satisfying than proving someone wrong.

This is a general observation.

Bibliophilia

Today is one of my favorite shopping days of the years: the Acton Memorial Library book sale. What I love about these book sales is that they're a bit like surfing the Internet. You never know what you're going to find -- and specifically trying to look for something is a futile goal -- but the messy, wayward search is the fun of it. Amidst the crowds of people and stacks of books is a hidden book waiting to catch your fancy. And best of all, everything is cheap enough that you can indulge every fantasy.

I only ended up getting 4 books. (Haha, I haven't even read anything I bought last time...) All of them are a little worn, but that gives me license to read, use, and abuse these books to make them my own. I'm always intimidated by brand new books because I hate marring something perfect. So I got an anthology of modern short fiction, Crime and Punishment (I have to read it someday), Waiting by Ha Jin (whose short story When Cowboy Chicken Came to Town still haunts me), and a giant tome called Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell. I'll be tackling them sometime this summer.

Since high school started, my reading as degenerated and devolved, mostly transposed to blogs and forums online. Academic fatigue is also a factor, making me blithe and blase to the written word. I was trolling around the Internet today, aimlessly clicking links, until I got to a Wikipedia list of Newberry Medal winners. As I clicked through the list, I realized that from 1990 to 1999, I had read every single Newberry Medal winner with the exception of one. I was quite voracious reader in elementary school. All of these books were some of my favorite as a kid, and I own many of them. (But everything after 2000 I haven't even heard of.)

1999	Louis Sachar	Holes
1998	Karen Hesse	Out of the Dust
1997	E. L. Konigsburg	The View from Saturday
1996	Karen Cushman	The Midwife's Apprentice
1995	Sharon Creech	Walk Two Moons
1994	Lois Lowry	The Giver
1993	Cynthia Rylant	Missing May
1992	Phyllis Reynolds Naylor	Shiloh
1991	Jerry Spinelli	Maniac Magee
1990	Lois Lowry	Number the Stars

Missing May is the only one I haven't read, but I love love love all of the other books on this list. (Walk Two Moons and Shiloh and lower on the love list, but still overall positive impressions.)

This list prompted me to dig The View from Saturday out of my bookshelf. Why?

"It documents the story of four 6th grade children, Noah, Nadia Diamondstein, Ethan Potter, and Julian Singh, along with their paraplegicteacher, Mrs. Olinski, as they form a group they call "The Souls" and make their way to the New York State Academic Bowl Championship."

Oh man, these sixth graders are so much cooler than us. Seriously. It's not even funny.

Rejection, Deferral, and Weird College Emails

On Monday, I conspired to maximize time away from English class by signing up for the latest possible blood donation slot. My altruism/selfishness was for naught because I apparently have no veins. Instead, my blood diffuses through my body under a thick layer of subcutaneous fat. I walked into English class only 1 minute late. It was all very tragic.

Tuesday was a brief Acadec meeting that only confirmed Crick is severely disappointed in us. Either that or he is severely distracted.

I opened up my inbox today seeing an email about "Your Harvard Application." "Great," I think, "I forgot to send in my transcript." My concerns played out less seriously, but the email asked for a few of my Spectrum articles. What? I find it hilarious that the fate of my application rests on the quality of my Spectrum articles. Oh golly gee.

The Surreal Life

Last night, I was trudging through the mall parking lot in sweatpants, surrounded by a flock of teenagers dressed in black suits and ties. I had in tow a coffee mug, a pink shoe box, and an obese backpack.

These things only happen in Acadec.

States was actually a bummer. After the adrenaline and oxytocin pumped meet in November, states was so much of a letdown. As the perpetual state champs of MA, we carry the arrogance and expectation of winners, so a win, even one by the same 5000 point margin as in November, was just not good enough. Crick was giving us the death glare during the entire team-wide Superquiz fiasco. (Correction: Honors totally pulled its weight in Superquiz and was then awarded a magic 200 extra points. Either my ditziness worked in my favor or something very very strange happened.) We won states with the lowest score ever and even lost Superquiz. Though we were somewhat vindicated when we got 2nd in Superquiz when Crick had predicted 6th or 7th.

But honestly, I'm more disappointed in myself than the rest of the team. I have plenty of faith in my teammates to step it up at nationals, while I apparently need to magically acquire more charisma.

It's days like these that I wonder why I do Academic Decathlon. Back when I was a wee freshman, my parents picked Acadec as one of the activities I had to join to get into college. That's right: they picked it for me. Freshman year was also the year of 2004, the year of CM and VW--the epochal year of ABAD. With this mantle of expectations upon me, I tried Acadec junior year, bombing a few math tests and doing surprisingly well on a well econ ones. When I realized the amazing awesome of last year's Honors team, I promptly slinked away and disappeared from Acadec. But this year, I was determined to try again, even before Crick started his guerrilla recruitment campaign and even before I found out Nationals was being held in sunny Hawaii. But why? It wasn't my parents any more. I had long stopped listening to them, snubbing piano and athletics in favor of less college-worthy but more enjoyable activities.

Maybe it's for the glory. Long ago, I realized that my true strength in academics lay not in a photographic memory or innate smarts, but my ability to take multiple choice tests. In US and World history classes, I'd fly through the MC in less than 7 minutes, as the rest of the class was still puzzling over question 15. And while the rest of the class bemoaned MC questions, I aced them, banking points and time for my essay scores. (Euro is an entirely different story, but let's not go there.) So Acadec is my one chance to capitalize on the skill that frankly is useless in real life. I might as well make the most of it while I still can.

But glory is short-lived. Even if Crick harps incessantly on the 2004 team, nobody outside of ABAD knows what he is talking about. People study, win medals, and move on. In the world of college, Acadec is just another activity you did in high school, and you'll be just another person who won some competition.

What I've always regretted most about high school is never being part of a team. Participating in athletics is an intense bonding experience while you push yourself to your physical and mental limits. Acadec is a "team," even if it often doesn't feel like it and the limits are only mental. During the awards ceremony, our school got accused of having no team spirit, which may be true to some extent. (It's also because we get too many medals to properly cheer without being obnoxious, and by the time golds are announced, half the team is already on stage...That sounded obnoxious, but that's only because MA Acadec is just not that great. I'm really puzzled why other schools don't do better since our team doesn't study or practice, at least compared to CA and TX, but I digress )

There definitely some weird team dynamics, but I'm being wistful if I wished everyone would love each. When you combine students from all strata of high school (as Acadec does attempt to do), you will doubtless have tensions and cracks. But I really do like all of the team. Maybe even love the team as a whole. And yes, I would gladly keep in contact with all of my teammates next year regardless of whether I'm in Illinois, Texas, or New York.

After regionals, I came back replete with <3 and joy abound, but yesterday evening was much more subdued. Superquiz meltdown aside, subjectives were also surprisingly low, but we can do better. We will do better. If we don't, there's too much talent and intelligence on the team going to waste.