Per. 1: World Literature- Ball
Per. 2: AP Calculus B/C- Korsunsky
Per. 3: Wind Ensemble- Pakaluk
Per. 4: French II- Schang
Per. 5: PE Racquet Sports- Kenworthy
Per. 6: World History- Tiederman
Per. 7: Chemistry Honors- Rocklin
Wednesday, August 29, 2012
Summer of 2012: Debate & Math
Hello, everybody!
School just started a week ago. (1/2 boo hoo) I haven't been posting in a while but that is because I was having... a good summer! And by good summer... I mean productive summer. The funny thing is that you'd expect me to moan and groan about all the work I did for the past 3 months, but I actually enjoyed my summer! It was invigorating. I can get drunk off this type of schedule.
For the first two weeks, I was the typical (and very bad) high school student. I hung out with my friends almost all day. I actually don't even really remember what happened. I just remember being very lazy. Yes, I know. I should've at least kept up my oboe-ing. I guess I just wanted a break from my "oh-so-stressful" freshman year. Hah! Stressful? I shouldn't even be able to deem 9th grade stressful. It was just confusing, trying to decide who I wanted to be and combine that with added pressure from certain people and myself... you have a huge mess! So yes, trying to sort out your own life is stressful. I do agree. But school-work wise, definitely not.
Now the fun part of camp... I met so many amazing people at VBI. I got to know my roommate, Christine, really well. We actually both had health issues at camp, but we took care of each other. During our illnesses, we just went crazy. ("Look at Elvis!") Lots of inside jokes... it's great. Some of my close friends are around the nation... from New York (Ms. Supermodel)! Georgia (HEY Lynn)! Florida (Spigeler)! Arizona (Ms. Fearless)! Texas (Zagorskaahh)! I became really close with people in the local circuit too... like Filsether and Mrs. (oops... can't say it in cyberspace). And man, my lab leaders were amazing, as people and debaters. :3 Just thinking of all the awesome people I met makes me remember all the memories. Ahh... Yes, and camp was in UCLA. So the campus was pretty nice. The food was beautiful. The pasta? Oh goodness, now I'm hungry. Love, love, love. During beach day, I had so much fun swimming in the ocean... for the first time! Thanks, Angela for getting me in there. The support was so nice. :') As for Jae, thanks for bullying me into swimming there. Haha! It was unintentional bullying, I'd say.
Yes, VBI was very, very fun, other than the sleepless nights working on my cases. I think I slept on average about 5-6 hours every night. It depended on who I spent the night with. But it was a losing fight the whole way through. If I stayed in my room, I'd bond with my roomie. If I went out, I'd wander to Sindhoora and Angela's room and start screwing about. Or I'd head to Meera and Lindsey's room and screw around more... Or I'd head to Elissa's room and end up not doing anything... Or I'd see Jared in the hallway and just end up brainstorming stuff that I could never get done during camp (ultimately useless)... The list goes on and on. Overall, camp was an amazing experience.
Long story short, I actually really enjoyed my summer of math. I learned a lot, lot, lot. So I'm hoping that it'll all come into use and my efforts were not in vain.
Overall, I had an amazing summer. I met the most interesting people ever. I learned a lot. I was productive. I did a bit of soul-searching. I actually wish that I could've tackled more in CS or mock trial, but you can only do so much with three months. Hopefully summer of 2013 will be even better than this one. Goodbye to you, summer of 2012. You will be missed. (School updates shall be up... sometime.)
School just started a week ago. (1/2 boo hoo) I haven't been posting in a while but that is because I was having... a good summer! And by good summer... I mean productive summer. The funny thing is that you'd expect me to moan and groan about all the work I did for the past 3 months, but I actually enjoyed my summer! It was invigorating. I can get drunk off this type of schedule.
For the first two weeks, I was the typical (and very bad) high school student. I hung out with my friends almost all day. I actually don't even really remember what happened. I just remember being very lazy. Yes, I know. I should've at least kept up my oboe-ing. I guess I just wanted a break from my "oh-so-stressful" freshman year. Hah! Stressful? I shouldn't even be able to deem 9th grade stressful. It was just confusing, trying to decide who I wanted to be and combine that with added pressure from certain people and myself... you have a huge mess! So yes, trying to sort out your own life is stressful. I do agree. But school-work wise, definitely not.
VBI
The most interesting part of summer came next...! I went to VBI (victory briefs institute) for 2 weeks of hardcore debate camp. I was not prepared for this-- at all! If you could see me right now, I'm just cracking up thinking of what hell I went through at camp. No... it wasn't exactly hell though. It was so physically and mentally grueling, but it was academic haven. I loved it! Granted, the first few days left me clueless. In terms of exposure to LD, I have seen nothing. I knew little to no jargon. I had no idea what was utilitarianism and deontology. Based off my first two statements, you can probably tell that I never had to debate framework before. I was very lucky in my past tournaments not to run into anything too crazy. Phew! I still wished that I went 4-0 at Milpitas though. I kind of wanted to win a tournament for once. (My genius brother already has a huge line of trophies from all the state chess championships he placed in!) So in the whole first week of camp, I was struggling in catching up to my lab's level., and my self-esteem just disappeared. Did I have any clue about debate? No. Maybe I should've stuck with PF? If only I had a good partner! Camp was definitely humbling. But it was great because I learned a lot. I only wish that I knew everything beforehand so that I could actually advance myself further. I have a crazy amount of reading to do on philosophy. (Metaethics? Wow, I think I'm gonna leave that for next year.)Now the fun part of camp... I met so many amazing people at VBI. I got to know my roommate, Christine, really well. We actually both had health issues at camp, but we took care of each other. During our illnesses, we just went crazy. ("Look at Elvis!") Lots of inside jokes... it's great. Some of my close friends are around the nation... from New York (Ms. Supermodel)! Georgia (HEY Lynn)! Florida (Spigeler)! Arizona (Ms. Fearless)! Texas (Zagorskaahh)! I became really close with people in the local circuit too... like Filsether and Mrs. (oops... can't say it in cyberspace). And man, my lab leaders were amazing, as people and debaters. :3 Just thinking of all the awesome people I met makes me remember all the memories. Ahh... Yes, and camp was in UCLA. So the campus was pretty nice. The food was beautiful. The pasta? Oh goodness, now I'm hungry. Love, love, love. During beach day, I had so much fun swimming in the ocean... for the first time! Thanks, Angela for getting me in there. The support was so nice. :') As for Jae, thanks for bullying me into swimming there. Haha! It was unintentional bullying, I'd say.
Yes, VBI was very, very fun, other than the sleepless nights working on my cases. I think I slept on average about 5-6 hours every night. It depended on who I spent the night with. But it was a losing fight the whole way through. If I stayed in my room, I'd bond with my roomie. If I went out, I'd wander to Sindhoora and Angela's room and start screwing about. Or I'd head to Meera and Lindsey's room and screw around more... Or I'd head to Elissa's room and end up not doing anything... Or I'd see Jared in the hallway and just end up brainstorming stuff that I could never get done during camp (ultimately useless)... The list goes on and on. Overall, camp was an amazing experience.
Let's Math!
After camp, I came home to a pretty bland lifestyle. I wanted to skip Pre-Calculus and take AP Calc BC in sophomore year... and in order to do that, I needed to pass the challenge test. I only had about 5 weeks to go through the whole course. I did a little bit of the textbook before debate camp up to conics, but I still had a very long way to go. It was so hard transitioning from free, glorious, philosophical camp to math concepts 300x. Instead of visiting my friends at 2am in the morning, I was stuck in small quarters with my family 24/7. I obviously didn't give my full effort at first. It was just so hard to lose so much of my freedom so quickly. I was extremely frustrated with myself.
Long story short, I actually really enjoyed my summer of math. I learned a lot, lot, lot. So I'm hoping that it'll all come into use and my efforts were not in vain.
Overall, I had an amazing summer. I met the most interesting people ever. I learned a lot. I was productive. I did a bit of soul-searching. I actually wish that I could've tackled more in CS or mock trial, but you can only do so much with three months. Hopefully summer of 2013 will be even better than this one. Goodbye to you, summer of 2012. You will be missed. (School updates shall be up... sometime.)
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