Those powerful lyrics: first world problems. I, with regard to anything deep in life: jaded.

Now that I think about it, though, it’s hard to say whether I should really be proud. Sure, I learned a lot of things, and I’d like to think that my writing improved tremendously, but as I wait for colleges’ responses, I can’t help but think that they will find it challenging to overlook my past failures—especially when I also keep in mind my peers’ successes.

I know that there will always be someone who is better than I am in some area, whether it’s math or programming or dancing or juggling, but that seems to make it harder to continue moving forward, to think that no matter how much effort I put in, my life is already irreparably ruined, for I will always fall short of my expectations when I have such high hopes for myself.

I think that if I were given the chance, I could really do something great. Even though things are looking pretty bleak, I somehow still believe in myself, and I am always looking for an opportunity to prove myself and excel in something that would distinguish me and set me further than the people whom I wish I were. I don’t want to be someone else; I just want to be a conglomerate of positive attributes from many people, which might just be why I’m never going to be satisfied.

Maybe everything will work out against the odds. :\

I recently finished two long papers: one for Physics about the invention of the brassiere and the other for English about death in Hamlet, No Country For Old Men, and Jacob’s Ladder. Both turned out great in my mind, but the “done” feeling seems prolonged and is seriously affecting my judgment when it comes to doing work and going to sleep at a reasonable hour. Even now, I’m writing about my life instead of going to sleep and perhaps having a better day tomorrow.

Oh, and when I should have been focusing on work this whole time, I started learning Haskell, one of the most useless popular programming languages. It’s definitely fun, and it’s not like there would be a better time, but it feels so wrong.

Peace out.

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.

Kathryn is not a regular person. She is unlike any other partner because she acts like a little kid and generally embarrasses herself and me. I do not usually mind what people think of me, but I don’t know the people at this dance studio. I feel like her insanity hinders — or even ruins — possibly good relationships with the other people at the studio. In addition to all of this, she does not show the same determination that I exhibit in order to be the best or nearly the best. For fuck’s sake, she does all sorts of drugs, is not good — or diligent — about managing her diet, and even smoked pot before one of our lessons. I can’t see this dance partner relationship working out, but I feel stuck.

The people who go to the dance studio are retarded, cocky douche bags. I look at them and see myself becoming something like that in the future. They’re great dancers, which I aspire to be, but from talking to them, they are clearly bad people.

Now, why did I title this post “Chemical Imbalance”? I am being pulled in many directions. There is the dancing side with its advantages and disadvantages, as well as the school aspect involving regular academics, ACTs, SATs, et cetera. I do not know what to think about it all anymore, so I just hope that something good comes my way to help me get on my feet. I’m dying inside.

Recently, I have come up with, in my opinion, great ideas for programs/servers which I could put on my nonexistant CV. The promising of which is a website that I could call modernscholar(.org), a free service for schools, teacher, and students to better organize the classroom resources by providing something like Blackboard but free and prettier . It seems promising to me because if I can get people to use the site by the end of the summer before senior year, then it would look good for colleges and might make up for my poor grades due to illnesses throughout the past three years. It isn’t school, though, that has been preventing me from persuing my programming ventures; it is that I am helping with something that hardly helps me — P2P shit. The problem with helping with that is that it is usually illegal, so I cannot put my name on it. The benefits are pretty minimal for now, but I guess it would be worth if it if I could get any movie whenever I wanted…

/rant

¹ http://www.wsu.edu/~brians/errors/onaccident.html