Goals I Have Set and Achieved

In my life, I have set a lot of goals. I have also achieved some of them:

1. Write a novel- done x4. I began writing in eighth grade, and my goal from the beginning was always to write a novel from beginning to end. I've written a few so far, and some of them have turned out pretty good. I'm working on editing one right now.

2. Do a back handspring- done x a lot. I started gymnastics when I was in elementary school, but I think it was in when I was in fifth grade that I set the goal of wanting to learn a back handspring. It took a lot of work, but eventually, when I was in eighth grade, one day... I just did it. And it was awesome.

3. Get in to college- done x8. I didn't really care about college at all until junior year. I didn't even THINK about college until "College Night" last January. I spent the spring and summer searching and deciding where to apply, and I spent the fall applying to colleges. In all, I applied to 11, and got in to 8. Not bad.

4. Write a paper for school about Harry Potter- done! Although I have written papers and reports about many awesome things (such as C.S. Lewis and Roald Dahl books; and Good Charlotte, Simple Plan, and Angels & Airwaves), I have never had the chance to write a paper for school about Harry Potter... until now. And I must say, it feels awesome.

5. Record a song- done x several. I love writing songs, and I love recording songs, so recording songs I've written is pretty awesome. I've done it a few times.

6. Get an A in AP Physics- done x1. I had a B+ in AP Physics in Fall term, and I got an A in Winter term! That felt pretty good. I definitely worked hard for that.

Goals I Have Set, but Have Not Yet Achieved:

1. Read the entire Harry Potter series continuously (with some breaks for sleep and eating). Some would say this sounds like a complete waste of time. I say it sounds like completely awesome.

2. Get something I've written published (somewhere... somehow...).

3. Get straight As/A-s one term/semester. In Spring term of sophomore year, I had 5 As (or maybe 4 As and 1 A-, or 3 As and 2 A-s) and 1 B. Last term, I had 3 As, 1 A-, and 2 B+s. I have not gotten straight As/A-s for a single term/semester since middle school. It would be cool to do it again... sometime...

Decisions, part 6 (final)

So today I received in the mail my final college decision, which looked something like this:Okay, it didn't look exactly like that, but that's a pretty good approximation of what the letter looked like. There was also a small blue card where I could check off if I wanted to remain on the waitlist or not.

So, overall, I've been accepted to 8 colleges, rejected at 2, and waitlisted at 1. Considering my GPA is less than 4.0, and my ACT is less than 36, and my extra-curriculars are not that exciting (no national awards or recognition, nor am I a nationally ranked athlete, sorry), I think I did pretty well.

Decisions, part 5; school colors and mascots

Yesterday, I logged on to my Lehigh application tracking portal, and saw this...
I haven't gotten my letter in the mail yet, but supposedly it was mailed Thusrday, so it should come soon (I'm not far from Lehigh).

So far I've gotten accepted to 8 colleges (Rose-Hulman, Rutgers, Case Western, Wash. U, USC, RPI, Carnegie Mellon, and Lehigh) and rejected to 2 (that Institute of Technology in Cambridge; and that Institute of Technology in Pasadena). I think I'm doing pretty well. The only college I haven't heard from yet is Pomona.

Also, I'd like to talk about school colors and mascots.

My high school's mascot is kind of lame (something having to do with the fact that the school was founded before the US-ofA was technically a nation... or something). Our colors are red and black, which isn't too bad.

As for the colleges I've been accepted to-

*Rose-Hulman- Rosie the Elephant; old rose and white.

*Rutgers- knights/raptors/raiders (seriously?); scarlet.

*Case Western- spartans (that is cool); case blue, white, and case gray.

*Wash. U- bears; red and green.

*USC- trojans; USC cardinal and USC gold.

*RPI- the red hawk and puckman; cherry and white.

*Carnegie Mellon- Scotty the scottie dog; cardinal, gray, and tartan plaid.

*Lehigh- mountain hawks; brown and white.

I've gotta say, it's impressive the amount of ways there are to say "red". I also think that Carnegie Mellon has the best school colors (I'm pretty sure it's the only school that has plaid as its school color).

Decisions, part 4

Initially, I had three "top choices" when applying to college: that Institute of Technology that's the only Institute of Technology most people have heard of, that Institute of Technology on the West Coast, and that University that is the only university in the country that is extremely excellent in both math/science/engineering and the arts.

After getting rejected from the Institutes of Technology, I was kinda upset, no lie, but I wasn't too upset since I had already gotten in to a few colleges, and plus I had yet to hear from the University, a.k.a. Carnegie Mellon.

So I heard that Carnegie Mellon would start mailing decision letters Friday, March 20th, and would post decisions online either 3 or 4 days after your letter was mailed. Nothing came in the mail Monday, nothing was online Monday either. But I figured I might as well stay up till Tuesday/Today/24th/midnight, because maybe my decision would be up. I'm glad I stayed up, because:
(In case you can't read it, it says Decision: Accept, a.k.a., I got in).

I think that's one of the most beautiful screenshots I've ever seen, ever.

Epicness on Teh Internetz

So, instead of blogging about just one thing, I figured I would create a blog dedicated to epicness on teh internetz- basically, epic websites.

1. Picture Is Unrelated- A collection of pictures that just make you go... WTF? Wtf is going on in this picture? How did this situation occur? Why are these people/objects/animals in this situation? More importantly, why is someone there to photograph it?
2. This Is Why You're Fat- A collection of "deliciously gross food". Most of it looks gross (bacon chili-topper cheeseburger? no thanks)- a lot of it has meat of some sort involved (bacon, pork, chicken, beef, steak...), and I'm a vegetarian. Some of it is humorous (the "porkgasm" is a pig-shaped collection of all variants of pig meat), and some of it is beyond unhealthy (deep-fried White Castle burgers), and some of it simply large portions of normally unhealthy food ("Behemoth Glazed Donut" appears to be a regular glazed donut, except, you know, bigger). My personal "favorite" is "Meat (In) Loaf":
3. Oddee- Oddee is basically a collection of epic lists of awesomeness, whether it be lists of "Most Bizarre Musical Instruments", "Mad Scientists", or (one of my favorites) "Awesome 3D Pavement Illusions", such as the one below.
4. Myspace- zomg, teh myspace iz sew totally epic! lulz. In all seriousness, Myspace is pretty awesome. It was around before Facebook, and it has more members than Facebook. Also, I've found Myspace to be an awesome way to find out about really great bands... and then you can be all "Hey! I know this band!" when you hear one of their songs on MTV. I'm listening to The Mile After as I write this blog, and they are rock/powerpop/pop/amazing.

5. The Click (from The N)- Thanks to The Click, from The N, I can watch Degrassi... WHENEVER I WANT... for free. For those of you who don't know, Degrassi is the best show on television. It's a Canadian Teen Soap Opera/Drama, basically, and if you don't speak Canadian, that means it's amazing. It's overly dramatic, it's stupid, and oh my god, I've seen all 158 episodes, some (er... most) of them at least twice.

Decisions, part 3

So I applied to MIT, knowing it was a stretch, knowing I probably wouldn't get in (but wanting to get in, even so). I logged on to the decisions website today, and was greeted with this screen:

As much as I wanted to get in, I knew I probably wouldn't. I like how they say they're "unable to offer me admission". That's a nice line. It's a pretty stark rejection letter (that's not the whole letter, but I think you get the point)- I mean, gray? Though, I guess it would be kind of mean if there were, like, fireworks in the background or something- "Congratulations on your rejection!"

But later, I logged on to check my decision for RPI (Rensselaer). Not only did I see the following screen, I also heard music in the background!


So, that was a pretty nice thing to see. So far I've gotten accepted to 6 colleges, and rejected from 2. I predicted I'd get accepted at 5, rejected at 5, and waitlisted at 1 (I applied to 11 total). I've already beaten my own prediction!

***EDIT 3/15/09- I just found out that I got a nice merit scholarship from RPI. Hey, it may not be my first choice, but that's still cool!***

Lifeguard Training

I have always liked the pool and swimming and being in the water. So in 8th grade, my mom looked in to lifeguard training- turns out you have to be 15 to take the class. In 10th grade, I was old enough (15), but I was recovering from knee surgery and couldn't swim breaststroke (like, at all- and one of the requirements to take the class is that you have to swim 100 yards breaststroke). In 11th grade, I could almost sort of swim breaststroke, but I had wayyyy too much homework.

But I figured that this year- senior year- would be a good time to do my lifeguard training. The classes are 5:30-9:30pm, Tuesday and Thursday, so not much time for homework (or tv watching) on those days.

I arrived at the pool at 7:30pm last Monday to take the pre-test. I was totally prepared to swim 300 yards continuously (100 yards free, 100 yards breast, 100 of either) and swim 20 yards, surface dive, grab a 10 pound brick, swim to the other side, and get out of the pool within 1 minute 40 seconds.

It turns out we also had to tread water for 5 minutes without using our hands. This wasn't on the website, but whatever. I have a "secret" for easily treading water without using my hands- I use the eggbeater kick. I learned how to do it when I took synchronized swimming classes at the YMCA (when I was in 3rd grade, for all of... a few months). It's so much easier (at least I think so), because you're "sitting" in the water, as opposed to just being straight up-and-down vertical.

I passed the test, thankfully, and the next night, I went to the first class. So far, it's been going well.

Class #1- We spent a lot of time in the class room, learning about safety and things. In addition to "lecture", we watching Red Cross lifeguarding videos, which I'd say can be accurately compared to Driver's Ed videos. When we got to the pool, we learned 3 different entries- slide-in entry, stride jump, and compact jump. We also got to jump in and swim with the rescue tube. The rescue tube is the red foam thing that lifeguards always carry that looks like this:Rescue tubes are actually extremely buoyant. These things can keep you and two (or three) of your buddies afloat- making them very helpful for rescues.

Class #2- We learned more about safety and general procedures and "patron surveillance" (that's the technical term for watching people in the pool). When we got to the pool, we practiced rotating (that's the technical term for when one person's shift ends and the next person has to come and take over).

Class #3- In the classroom, we learned about procedures in case of an emergency, and rescues. In the pool, we learned how to rescue both active and passive drowning victims at the surface, fake-whistle and all. In addition to learning how to rescue, we each had to take turns pretending to be the victim. It's kind of weird "pretending to drown" when you're not actually, you know, drowning.

Class #4- We took the first written test, on basically everything we've learned so far (thankfully, I passed). Then we learned about more types of rescues in the video. Once we got to the pool, we learned how to actually perform multiple victim rescues, and shallow-water submerged victim rescues. Being one of the victims in the multiple victim rescue was interesting. My fellow victim and I basically had to be on top of each other ("Grab each other around the neck!" the instructor said. or something), which was awkward. Doing the submerged victim rescue was challenging, as you have to let go of the rescue tube to get the victim, then put the tube under the victim. Luckily, I was able to do it.

Next week, we're learning about first aid and CPR- we already got our "student first aid kits" and CPR masks- and probably AED, too. In addition to getting "lifeguard" certification, I'll also become certified in first aid, and CPR/AED for the professional rescuer. Lifeguarding and first aid certification is valid for three years, and CPR/AED for the professional rescuer (as opposed to normal person CPR) is valid for one year. Last August, I was certified in CPR/AED for the professional rescuer, but I've pretty much forgotten, well, everything, so it's good that I'm getting certified again.

There will be a written test for CPR/AED/first aid, and then (at least) one more written test (final exam) for lifeguarding (on the last day of the class). On the last day, we'll also have a "practical exam". I'm kinda nervous for that, but I'm glad I'll (hopefully!- assuming I pass) become a certified lifeguard.