Wednesday, October 31, 2007

Happy Halloween... or Not

Yes, so I love how I spent my Halloween indoors, sleeping and finishing college applications.

Not that I go out anyway, but can't I just have one afternoon to relax?

Apparently not.

Did I mention I have two tests tomorrow too?

Hooray for A.P. Calc and A.P. Lit... my, how I love you both.

Because who doesn't love failing?

The best part is that on top of everything, the CommonApp site is being a total bitch and is making life so much more difficult than it needs to be.

Yay for unnecessary stress.

Friday, October 26, 2007

Animals

It was dark and silent as I stood outside in the October chill. The warm yellow light of the building beside me contrasted dully with the very gray cloudy sky above, and when I turned my head right and peered inside I assumed that the workers were probably talking amicably with each other.

I flipped my phone open. After a moment, it read 4:30. I wondered if she was coming. Suddenly however, I heard noises from my left, distantly, and as my gaze slowly shifted I saw that three young preteen boys were rowdily working their way towards my direction from the fields. They laughed without breath, and ran haphazardly in no particular pattern. When they were closer, the fastest one made an announcement to his friends and then took extreme pride in his stunt when he managed to jump over a very unassuming bench, backless and certainly less than two feet high. The second followed suit, and a bit later I heard one of the three shout from behind me.

"That almost gave me a heart attack!" the boy panted.

Turning around again, I looked at the speaker and realized that it was the third, who had stopped before the bench. He was rather round and plump and sported a bright blue jacket. Nonetheless, keeping my comments to myself, I turned to face the road again, where I saw that she had arrived and was waiting to turn in.

As I waited however, I had the strange experience of finding a little boy looking up at me from right beside me. "What are you doing?" his friend had asked him with a laugh, and then with my heightened senses, noticing his bright blue jacket out of the corner of my eye I turned abruptly.

I cannot recall whether I was intrigued or utterly appalled by this movement that was most uncalled for. He appeared to be peering into my possessions, and I could not help but think that such actions were only exemplified by dogs, and like a dog who had been caught, he staggered back a foot or two. After a moment passed, straightening himself out a slight bit, his round cheeks bright red from the cold, he then spoke meekly.

"Are there any-- um... are those Munchkins?" Then he pointed to the box I had in my hands.

Pausing for a moment, I replied, "Yes."

"Oooh," he squealed excitedly. "Can I have one?"

Seeing her finally pull up I became even more reluctant and unconcerned, so as his friends sniggered I opened the box and let him take one. Then they, surprised from my response most likely, looked at each other and then shot up from the cold, damp cement they were sitting on and I offered it to them as well.

It quickly turned into chaos though when, to my surprise, the meek, blue-clad boy greedily grabbed another, prompting the others to dart their hands crudely into the paper box and grab what little they could get as well. Like wolves yet much less elegant, they ravaged the box that they tore from my hands. Even as I boarded and told the kind driver where to go, they continued to rip the box from each other's hands, never even caring to say a mere "Thank You."

As I looked out the window from my seat, I saw them laugh at the destruction, half-chewed pieces falling carelessly out of their open mouths, and as we pulled away, the driver's sweet voice propelling a conversation that I was actually quite happy to respond to, I could not help but think that even animals have more manners than that.

Wednesday, October 17, 2007

Too Much

Sometimes I wonder if it's worth it.

All this suffering, all those sleepless nights, over the years their effects have accumulated and their consequences are marked dark on my face. I feel them upon my eyelids. Heavy, weighty, weary, they just want to close, and my brain, saturated with newly acquired knowledge, pulsing from the tediousness of the task, simply wants to rest. And this is always.

My brain is tired. My body is tired. I am tired. I want to sleep. I want to rest. I want to be given the chance to live.

I want
to be happy.

Is that too much to ask?

But I am afraid they have asked too much of me.

And they have asked. It is not my fault. If you are about to die, are you asked if you would like to be saved? For me, for people like me, this is the only option.

A textbook is now my pillow. The lightbulb is now my moon. I no longer see the darkness. And I don't dream anymore. I can't dream anymore. There isn't enough time for dreams.

Is that right?

This is the life I live in hope of having a happy future.

But what about now?

Will I even get that far?

With no guarantees in this world...

It's just too much...

Sunday, October 14, 2007

You're A Good Man

Charlie Brown Gets the Blues

Good Grief!

Beautifully written, here are two book reviews of Schulz and Peanuts: A Biography by David Michaelis. After reading them, it really does make me wonder about both his life... and my own.


They're both pretty long, so if you're feeling lazy, here's an excerpt. Though I believe for it to have its full effect, you should actually read the entire article, I personally found this paragraph from the first review to be most touching:

In December 1999 Schulz addressed a letter to his hundreds of millions of readers, announcing that he was going to retire; no one would succeed him in drawing the strip. Two months later, on Feb. 13, 2000, “the Sunday paper carrying his last cartoon arrived with the stunning news that Charles M. Schulz had died in his sleep of complications of colon cancer,” Mr. Michaelis writes. “Just hours later the final ‘Peanuts’ strip appeared in newspapers around the world. To the very end, his life had entwined with his art. As soon as he had ceased to be a cartoonist, he ceased to be.”

Release Date: October 16, 2007

Friday, October 12, 2007

Animosity Dissolved

We worked hard. We played hard. But it paid off. We finally did it. We were the official undefeated league champs.

But despite having a winning team with great skill, I never seemed to get along with everyone. The team is cliquey, and that's the truth. It's hard for me to talk to all of them, and even harder for a couple of others. I often felt left out, unappreciated, nonexistent even, and while they laughed with each other I would almost feel myself fade into thin air.

Did I hate them? Maybe, at certain moments. But as we shared a pasta dinner, all seemed well. We ate, we laughed, we enjoyed ourselves. We played ping-pong and talked, and somehow I was seated well and so I felt very much involved with the conversation even though I could not quite contribute to the gossip.

But I was relaxed, and after a horrible, horrible week, it was exactly what I needed. I laughed freely, and they were welcoming. Although they are indeed cliquey, I wondered if I had perhaps been mistaken this entire time. Maybe they didn't mean to exclude me after all.

And maybe they do appreciate the team. And maybe after all this time, all I needed to do was learn how to take a joke, which, I'll admit, I don't always do or do well.

Though they could give a little more effort to include some other teammates. In protest, the truth came out.

"Yeah, they're so antisocial. They never come over to talk to us." they said, which was indeed rather true.

But I defended them, which included myself at times.

"Well, to be honest though, you guys are pretty hard to approach sometimes."

And they genuinely replied, "Really?"

And at that moment I knew I had been mistaken, and it had pained me slightly to realize that the only problem was a lack of communication. To think the team, the entire team, could have gotten along better had this one truth been revealed earlier, upset me, but the fact that they were indeed oblivious to the social awkwardness that impeded wholesome camaraderie brought a little hope back into my heart.

And for the duration of the party, I sat, smiled, and laughed. For once, I did genuinely love the team, and as I chuckled I hoped they too would know that I loved them.

Because I do, and as I look back, I'm being reminded that it really is hard to turn past another chapter in my life.

Wednesday, October 10, 2007

The Burden

Some people are simply born smarter than others. There is no denying it. There is no such thing as true equality in this world.

This is our burden. We are to aim higher because we can, merely because we can. It does not matter what we want. What matters is what society wants.

And society wants us to aim for better things. Society fills us with hope, with confidence, with pride. But now everyone has hope, has confidence, has pride, and competition with each other has thrown us all into a pool of misery. Society believes that it has helped us. Society, in fact, has wronged us.

How can society teach us to aim higher, when it cannot guarantee paths to our goals? How can society betray us, by allowing a person of lower ambition to stand equally by our sides? How can society mock us, by casting us into mediocrity, by disregarding our hard work, by trampling sacrilegiously upon the paths we shed blood and tears to forge, paths they instructed us to make!

Where is our reward, our redemption, our happiness?

What have they done?

How could they...

Monday, October 8, 2007

Utopia Revealed

Yes, so I finally got the chance to visit the University of Pennsylvania, my first-choice school (don't ask how it was my first choice when I didn't even visit beforehand), and I can't help but say that I'm still in love.

Well, in all honesty, it wasn't all what I was expecting. But on the other hand, when I'm expecting a place to be a manifestation of my imagination and soul, I suppose it's hard to meet those expectations. The campus isn't as close together and centered around a main point as I thought it would be, but aside from that I was very pleased. It's still very pretty, and Locust Walk and the quad are especially nice. More important however, it definitely has the resources I was looking for. The Kelly Writers House (the main hook for me) wasn't as big and bustling with activity as I hoped it would be, though I'm sure it was due to the fact that I visited around 1 PM and not during any scheduled events. The info session I attended did touch upon the Writers House a little bit though, so I did find out a little more about it. But overall, I was very happy, and as I was walking with the autumn leaves falling, I couldn't help but feel my heart ache slightly at the prospect of becoming a student there.

So yes, UPenn remains my first choice school, and the competition is official. To my competitor (or perhaps competitors) at school, if they are really going to take one of us, may the best person win. As strange as it sounds, I believe that if Mr. Franklin wishes me to be a part of his school, he will help guide me along the right path. Hopefully, one day I'll be able to walk on Locust Walk again, and wear the Red and Blue I so desperately desire.

So concludes the college trips. I won't be visiting Stanford or Duke unless I have the misfortune of getting rejected from UPenn but the fortune of getting accepted to one of those schools, and in the case where I have the misfortune of getting rejected from all my schools (and if BU doesn't give me enough money to satisfy my parents), I'll be taking a trip upstate to visit Binghamton and Geneseo.

Wish me luck. I'm applying Early Decision, so I should find out around my birthday. Hopefully I'll have a happy one.

Tuesday, October 2, 2007

Kindness

So I got pissed off today while playing tennis again, and its times like these when I wonder why I like this team so much anyway. When I'm with the team, I feel more disrespected than I have ever felt in my life.

My fellow seniors treat my friends and me like trash. The underclassmen don't listen. It's total anarchy on this godforsaken team.

My friends and I got to the courts first, as usual. Today though, my friend filtered through the trash can to find a tennis ball so we could play before our coach got there, while I climbed over the rusty fence to look for one as well. The balls we found were both dead, but hers could still bounce so we played with that one.

In come some other teammates who demand that we give them a ball. So we did (we gave them the really bad one naturally because we wanted to play too). Then they complain and demand that they get the better one. What gives them the right to have the better ball that my friend found is beyond me. But they stole it from us when they got the chance. Then they laughed and didn't give a damn.

When we finally got the chance to take it back though, they started yelling again to give them back their ball. I said it was our ball to begin with, and they told us we sucked. To avoid any more conflict though, we switched to the other side and took the court behind them.

Then the one little freshman goes weeding through the trash too, and gets them a ball of their own. "I found one," she shouts.

"Ha, we found one," they sneer.

"Good. We found ours too," I replied indifferently.

Then one of the seniors turns around and shouts through the fence. "Fuck you."

So I said it back, for once.

"No, fuck you."

And that was the end of that. But later (though it's nothing new), when we stretch, the underclassmen talk and don't pay attention. Only two or three people at most out of twenty-one are counting. It's ridiculous, and I suppose that's why it sucks to have a team comprised of people who are already in their own cliques. To them, it's just another time to hangout with each other. It's not that I'm against laughing and having fun, but it's unbelievable that this disorganized, disparate team is actually getting the credit for being League Champs. I'm not saying that I suddenly want to start running perimeters and doing drills, but come on, a little respect for your captains, your upperclassmen at least please?

Sigh... I don't know what's wrong with this world. I want to tell them off, but it's really not worth it. There's now less than two weeks left, and we just need to keep our cool and finish up strong. I'll have that title I sought for five years, and I won't have to deal with them ever again.

On another note though, a cheerleader collapsed while doing a perimeter. As much as I'd like to sneer, my friend (one of the kinder, albeit ditsier, girls on the team) ran to get her water, and got help when she passed out.

It's not the only time she's done things like this. She ran out in a thunderstorm to get another girl's wallet that she thought she had lost the day before (even though there's a rather funny story to that), and today she was genuinely happy about what she did.

And it's people like that who still give me hope in the world. Knowing there's still kindness in people brings comfort to my soul.

But at the same time, it makes me wonder. Have you ever seen that commercial where a person does something nice for another person and someone else sees, which then sets off a chain reaction? I kind of wish the world was like that.

Though in sad, sad reality, part of me knows it never will be.

Monday, October 1, 2007

Wonderful Feeling

Yes, so the past few days were rather interesting. As for today, I must say that everything went pretty damn well.

So my paper for the Siemens Competition officially arrived this morning. I told my advisors about it and they both laughed. Apparently, I'm the first person to ever have my paper hand delivered, so hooray for me I suppose? It was completely worth it though. After all the problems I went through...

1. I skipped three days of classes (and an exam) to write this paper (and oh yes, tonight's homework won't be fun).

2. On Friday, I e-mailed my paper to my grad student before I left for an away match (or so I thought). I didn't realize that it didn't get sent until I came home from my match and a school spirit/fundraising event (which was around 8:30).

3. So by the time I did send it, she couldn't finish reading it, and she didn't get to the most important parts. I couldn't get out of work the next day though, so there wouldn't be time for me to finish it and FedEx it out. At this point, I decided that it wasn't worth all my effort if I was to send it out in the state it was in, and that my only option was now to physically drive it in. It was a good choice though, seeing as how she almost completely revamped my end sections.

4. I crashed really early, so I sent the near completed paper to her early Sunday morning. She made the few final corrections, but forgot to reattach the paper, and she had already left for wherever by the time I realized.

5. So it's 3 or 4 PM, and I finally hear back. I make my final corrections and depart for a five-hour round trip to Princeton and back.

So a family friend who I had entrusted it to finally dropped it off at the office in Trenton. She has the confirmation receipt, and I'm all good until Intel rolls around. But my paper is more or less done, so I have less worries. I find out how I did on the 19th. Wish me luck.

As for tennis though, my team defeated our biggest rival, 4-3. We have three matches left. All should go well, and then we'll be undefeated league champs. Ah, I don't remember the last time I was so happy. But I'll keep my fingers crossed.

I think I realized what I wanted to write about for a college essay though. After all this, I don't think I've ever felt so inspired about my own life before. While I still think that we don't act as a team a lot of the times and that the seniors aren't getting the respect they deserve, I must say...

It's a wonderful feeling.