So I finally decided to continue posting on this blog. For a brief moment at the start of my senior year in high school, I thought I was good at writing because I had a good Common App essay and got As on my English papers, but I can’t seem to express what I really want to say. I can’t look at a writing assignment on the whole and eloquently write something totally on-topic, so I’m going to practice by constantly writing, hopefully with some comments from friends and strangers that will help me improve. Now that I’ve established what’s up, you should probably get a feel for my main interests.
Computer Science had been the strongest interest of mine; however, since April 2009, I have developed new ones about which I feel nearly equally passionate. I originally started delving in computer programming because my father works for CSC as a programmer, and I wanted to understand what he does. My friend gave me a copy of Dark Basic, an environment for creating what appeared to be terrific games, but was in the awful Basic programming language and did not sufficiently explain how to work with it to make those games. As a result, I gave up and kept up with my other extracurricular activities at the time: gymnastics, piano, and soccer. A member on my gymnastics team, however, took a summer class on C++ and inadvertently inspired me to give programming another try. Dark Basic made programming seem tedious and boring, whereas my friend’s experience with C++ included constructing and understanding clever algorithms as well as writing practical applications without a lot of overhead. After teaming up to write some elementary software, I decided to pursue the unthinkable: create practical GUI applications that other people could use and use easily.
The hardest part in that leap was understanding that there is more than one solution to do anything in programming, especially when the complexity of the application increases. The first assignment I gave myself was to write a Java Applet that mimicked the infamous MS Paint program. I started writing it in 9th grade, and while the concepts were all fairly basic, they were all new to me, which made the process much more exciting than I had anticipated. I took Physics in parallel with writing the program and decided to extend it to do basic operations with vectors. I showed the program to my Physics teacher, and he told me that he also programs on the side, so we helped each other with programming problems for the rest of the year.
The next year, I took AP Computer Science and finally built a solid foundation of concepts that I still use today. The course covered Object Oriented Programming, data structures, trade-offs in terms of space and time, and algorithms, all of which were applicable to my further studies. Now I mostly use Python/Django when I program, though I’m familiar with most of the popular languages and concepts and consider myself able to pick up anything new with little difficulty.
Now in late March/early April, my interests expanded. Throughout high school, I had done almost no physical exercise, but at this time, I decided to start ballroom dancing with my friend Kathryn as my partner. I had my driver’s license, so I was very flexible when it came to scheduling lessons, and she and I progressed quickly. We almost immediately settled in and became friends with our coaches and the other dancers in our level. When I decided to start dancing, I did not realize that I would enjoy it as much as I do, or that it would be as hard as it is. There were so many times when the dancing skills would not come naturally for me, but I enjoyed dancing so much that I practiced whenever I could and always improved. It has become a great way to take breaks from homework and has greatly contributed to my physical and mental health.
After a successful summer and after having success in trying something new, senior year became much easier than any other year of high school. I was taking harder classes, but I had previously unimaginable confidence and interest. I began to try new things. I spontaneously joined the Speech team at my school as a member the group in the extemporaneous speaking event and have followed current events more closely as a result. I also found myself learning each subject more deeply by spending a lot of time thinking about it. Each subject was no longer something that I had to suffer through; they were actually interesting and worth learning.
I chose the subjects (AP Calculus BC, AP Physics C, Economics) based on what I thought I would want to study in college, and understanding what they really are has been fascinating. I already knew some Calculus before taking the course, but I did not realize how practical it is, and we’re not even a quarter of the way through the material. I loved Physics freshman year, but I expected AP Physics to be significantly harder and more boring. Fortunately, I was wrong. The problems expand my way of thinking, and I find it exciting to figure out problems on my own that have practical applications. I had no idea what to expect for the Economics class, but because there is no curriculum, we often have interesting discussions about topics that originally sparked my interest and led me to take the class.
You should now have a vague idea of who I am and what I like. I hope that my upcoming posts go into depth where I left ambiguity and that I gain confidence in my writing before December.
