The letter's in the mail. I am officially, after two years of angst and indecision, going to Massachusetts Institute of Technology (and I have learned how to spell it!). Whatever the repercussions, for good or for evil, I am now a fearsome MIT beaver.
Now back to trying to study math/AP gov/AP lit/Ap language... oh dear I still have an essay to write...
In exactly one month I will be entirely done with high school, forever.
Monday, April 30, 2007
Sunday, April 29, 2007
Wow, Justin sent me this link and I'm kind of in shock. I just listened to her speak at CPW! I really liked her too, and what she was doing with the admissions process... weird.
Anyway, tonight I was planning on studying for Wednesday's math semester, but I ended up just staring at facebook for an hour. Maybe I shouldn't have joined. I was messaging the kid from Flathead that I debated in my final round at NFL's though. I noticed the other day that he was a presidential scholar finalist, and I wanted to tell him I really liked his determinism case (and all of his cases), so I messaged him, and he responded. He's very nice, no matter what anyone else on my team thinks.
The topic comes out in... TWO DAYS! Woah.
It's time to send off letters to colleges about where I am going. I still don't know. I'm thinking probably MIT, but my parents don't seem very happy. And I know it's because of this remodeling craziness, and I know it's happening because of me going to MIT. And I don't know how I can knowingly do that to them, no matter how badly I want it. I have to decide within the next nine hours though, which means like now, since I do plan on sleeping (and probably not studying for math).
Yikes.
Anyway, tonight I was planning on studying for Wednesday's math semester, but I ended up just staring at facebook for an hour. Maybe I shouldn't have joined. I was messaging the kid from Flathead that I debated in my final round at NFL's though. I noticed the other day that he was a presidential scholar finalist, and I wanted to tell him I really liked his determinism case (and all of his cases), so I messaged him, and he responded. He's very nice, no matter what anyone else on my team thinks.
The topic comes out in... TWO DAYS! Woah.
It's time to send off letters to colleges about where I am going. I still don't know. I'm thinking probably MIT, but my parents don't seem very happy. And I know it's because of this remodeling craziness, and I know it's happening because of me going to MIT. And I don't know how I can knowingly do that to them, no matter how badly I want it. I have to decide within the next nine hours though, which means like now, since I do plan on sleeping (and probably not studying for math).
Yikes.
Thursday, April 26, 2007
dual worlds
I think that I am rarely clingy. I avoid it like the plague, because I know that clinginess can really annoy people and cause them to leave, and because I don't like being dependent on people (it's emotionally dangerous). But today I was really clingy and really dependent. More than most of the time, I really needed people. I just needed to be with people I loved. I really needed hugs. I don't hug my parents very often, but I hugged my dad today (the last time I hugged him was almost two years ago; I should probably work to make those time gaps shorter).
I am quite hypomanic today, bordering on manic (but not quite that bad). Everything just feels kind of weird. I have been thinking so much about physics and such that everything concrete has seemed really far away, and the world in my mind has seemed much more immediate. I was trying to pull myself back into the "real" world today and away from that crazy, dangerous bit of my mind (it is dangerous because I can see easily how I could retreat into it and cease to need the outside world of things at all; it's like retreating from imperfect reality to a dimension of Platonic forms). Subsequently there were a lot of conflicts going on within me, and the hypomania made me full of tension and charged energy. I think I really needed people because I needed an anchor to keep me from buzzing off into all of the kinds of insanity that pull at me.
When this happens to me, I can describe my day in two ways. I can describe the reality of mind, or the reality of my surroundings. For instance, today I went to school, I went to work on my semester math project with Tony, I went to cello, I played at a violin thing, I went to my cello recital (which went pretty well), and I went out to "coffee" with Erin and Jill. Now it is 10:40 and I have three hours of homework in front of me (at least), including studying AP government for the test tomorrow, finishing my math project, and writing two essays.
Seems real, right? But in my head today I thought about branes and the idea of our dimensions existing only on one brain and exchanging gravitrons with some parallel brane. I thought about string theory and M-theory. I thought about symmetry. I thought about how AP government was a waste of my time when so many more mathematical metaphysical things were more important. I thought about meaning. I thought about our lives, and the way they look. I thought about the hologram idea, that maybe our universe is just a projection (like the shadows on Plato's cave wall) of a higher dimensional world. In this reality, everything feels like it is on the brink of fitting together into some supreme grand unified theory, but it is not quite there. I'm missing something. There's something bigger; there's more dimensions.
When I get too lost in the second world (which is ironically about the big picture idea of matter), I lose a sense of all of the matter all around me. I drive through stop signs. I trip a lot. I take government quizzes that I can't remember taking. I can't think about people, and the relationship they have with me as an individual entity. Erin is physically in front of me, but it doesn't seem like there can possibly be a real relationship connecting us.
I think my dependence today came from the fact that I had been existing primarily in the idea world for the past few weeks, and the reality of people had begun to fade away. Today I kind of jerked into the concrete world, and I was starved for human contact. I was starved for details, like how pink the blossomed trees are, so pink they hurt my eyes. The relationships, the hugs, the blossoms, the holographic world, reminds me that there is something important in this world that I don't get when I get lost in the other one.
In a way, it makes me nervous to be dependent on my friends and surroundings when I am going off to MIT in August. But I can't push everything away. I can't get lost in my mind so that I cease to exist physically.
In the concrete world, I now have a job. I work at Tropical Sno. I start May 14, and during the summer I will work about four days a week for four hours each day. I get a free Tropical Sno every time I visit or work. In the concrete world, state music festival is coming up in one week, and the AP government test is coming up in less than two weeks, followed closely by the AP literature and language tests. Mixed in is the Vigilante Parade and prom. The topic for debate nationals comes out on May first, so I will have to start practicing a lot, and I have to organize and carry out a fundraiser at Taco Del Sol. I have friends that I love and a boyfriend that I am so excited to spend infinity with. Some of these things don't really matter. Some of them (like my friends and boyfriend) are really important.
At the same time, though, I am thinking thinking thinking. If T-duality exists in which really large things become the same as really small things, and the either six or seven unseen dimensions (depending on which theory you look at) exist as manifolds within our usual spacial dimensions, curled up within tiny circles that are smaller than the smallest quantum particle, and our universe is expanding in a radial fashion, as our universe expands and the manifolds remain consant, is there some point at which T-duality applies so that our huge, radial universe is physically the same as a tiny, circular manifold, so that our universe of ten or eleven dimensions becomes entirely curled up in a manifold smaller than the smallest particle of a higher-dimensional universe?
It's a cool idea. Almost as cool as prom.
I am quite hypomanic today, bordering on manic (but not quite that bad). Everything just feels kind of weird. I have been thinking so much about physics and such that everything concrete has seemed really far away, and the world in my mind has seemed much more immediate. I was trying to pull myself back into the "real" world today and away from that crazy, dangerous bit of my mind (it is dangerous because I can see easily how I could retreat into it and cease to need the outside world of things at all; it's like retreating from imperfect reality to a dimension of Platonic forms). Subsequently there were a lot of conflicts going on within me, and the hypomania made me full of tension and charged energy. I think I really needed people because I needed an anchor to keep me from buzzing off into all of the kinds of insanity that pull at me.
When this happens to me, I can describe my day in two ways. I can describe the reality of mind, or the reality of my surroundings. For instance, today I went to school, I went to work on my semester math project with Tony, I went to cello, I played at a violin thing, I went to my cello recital (which went pretty well), and I went out to "coffee" with Erin and Jill. Now it is 10:40 and I have three hours of homework in front of me (at least), including studying AP government for the test tomorrow, finishing my math project, and writing two essays.
Seems real, right? But in my head today I thought about branes and the idea of our dimensions existing only on one brain and exchanging gravitrons with some parallel brane. I thought about string theory and M-theory. I thought about symmetry. I thought about how AP government was a waste of my time when so many more mathematical metaphysical things were more important. I thought about meaning. I thought about our lives, and the way they look. I thought about the hologram idea, that maybe our universe is just a projection (like the shadows on Plato's cave wall) of a higher dimensional world. In this reality, everything feels like it is on the brink of fitting together into some supreme grand unified theory, but it is not quite there. I'm missing something. There's something bigger; there's more dimensions.
When I get too lost in the second world (which is ironically about the big picture idea of matter), I lose a sense of all of the matter all around me. I drive through stop signs. I trip a lot. I take government quizzes that I can't remember taking. I can't think about people, and the relationship they have with me as an individual entity. Erin is physically in front of me, but it doesn't seem like there can possibly be a real relationship connecting us.
I think my dependence today came from the fact that I had been existing primarily in the idea world for the past few weeks, and the reality of people had begun to fade away. Today I kind of jerked into the concrete world, and I was starved for human contact. I was starved for details, like how pink the blossomed trees are, so pink they hurt my eyes. The relationships, the hugs, the blossoms, the holographic world, reminds me that there is something important in this world that I don't get when I get lost in the other one.
In a way, it makes me nervous to be dependent on my friends and surroundings when I am going off to MIT in August. But I can't push everything away. I can't get lost in my mind so that I cease to exist physically.
In the concrete world, I now have a job. I work at Tropical Sno. I start May 14, and during the summer I will work about four days a week for four hours each day. I get a free Tropical Sno every time I visit or work. In the concrete world, state music festival is coming up in one week, and the AP government test is coming up in less than two weeks, followed closely by the AP literature and language tests. Mixed in is the Vigilante Parade and prom. The topic for debate nationals comes out on May first, so I will have to start practicing a lot, and I have to organize and carry out a fundraiser at Taco Del Sol. I have friends that I love and a boyfriend that I am so excited to spend infinity with. Some of these things don't really matter. Some of them (like my friends and boyfriend) are really important.
At the same time, though, I am thinking thinking thinking. If T-duality exists in which really large things become the same as really small things, and the either six or seven unseen dimensions (depending on which theory you look at) exist as manifolds within our usual spacial dimensions, curled up within tiny circles that are smaller than the smallest quantum particle, and our universe is expanding in a radial fashion, as our universe expands and the manifolds remain consant, is there some point at which T-duality applies so that our huge, radial universe is physically the same as a tiny, circular manifold, so that our universe of ten or eleven dimensions becomes entirely curled up in a manifold smaller than the smallest particle of a higher-dimensional universe?
It's a cool idea. Almost as cool as prom.
Wednesday, April 25, 2007
frustration
As my mind wanders further into the insanity of physics, math, psychology, and writing, I write more and more poems about math, fusing the the parts of my mind. What is frustrating is that nobody that reads them (or will ever read them) understands them.
For instance, this poem. I know that everyone can get the main idea about going crazy within society, but there are a lot of intricate symbols and allusions that I really want to explain.
RESONANCE
[it doesn't matter if you scream.
at some point in the discontinuity
you are lost.]
three dimensions aren't enough
for the insane
who vibrate against the forces
of normalcy
on either side
the numbers approach
the point at which it all breaks down
oscillations grow wider and wider
cognitive cells stretch at points
we cannot touch with our fingers
that can be described
with so few coordinates
beat
beat
beat
(the drum of the insane)
RESONANCE
this is when you fall, when you fall,
when you fall
beat
beat
beat
they come in floods,
the men and women
whose minds tear through the tissue
of the known
every string against the system,
damped by reality.
every heart breaking haltingly
with the swaying of the bridge.
it happens slowly, you see.
three beats, one rip in time,
one fall into a place where no one
can reach you.
[you never existed.
pick the lefthand value.
pick the you that never was.]
Yes, the poem was written when I was feeling kind of crazy and thinking incessently. The idea of the poem was that you could describe the oscillations of string theory with a differential equation. I know now that this may not work for what the poem is about, because a string theory equation would require partial derivatives due to the multiple dimensions. There's a few other problems as well. But the poem still holds its basic idea.
For a forced undampened second order differential equation with a first coefficient of one, as the imaginary square root of the first coefficient (1) times four times the third coefficient times negative one approaches the # of the forcing function sin/cos(#t), the oscillations develope beats, and finally when the two numbers are equal, resonance occurs, creating wild oscillations that just get bigger and bigger.
So the normal three dimensions aren't enough for a string or something that vibrates through multiple dimensions. Symbollically, this means that our society's assumptions etc. aren't enough for some people that sense something more. On either side the numbers approach break down because the numbers describing the vibrations of the insane people approach the forcing function, at which resonance, or complete insanity, occurs. As the oscillations grow wider and wider, the insane stretch out of ordinary four dimensional (described with four coordinates) space time. Beats occur close to resonance. Reality can act as a damper, because damped second order equations don't exhibit resonance. The swaying of the bridge is the swaying of reality, but it also represents the equation, as dampened second order equations generally describe bridges. The beginning and ending part in brackets is because the function isn't consistent at resonance, because the oscillations spike to infnity. When trying to calculate the limit of a function at a point of discontinuity (like in Dirac-Delta functions), you're supposed to use the left hand value, which means, since oscillations are essentially a function of time, you choose the value of the position at an earlier time. At a time early enough, the insane poeple cease to exist. So you have to choose the time before they are born.
It all makes sense to me, but nobody else gets it.
For instance, this poem. I know that everyone can get the main idea about going crazy within society, but there are a lot of intricate symbols and allusions that I really want to explain.
RESONANCE
[it doesn't matter if you scream.
at some point in the discontinuity
you are lost.]
three dimensions aren't enough
for the insane
who vibrate against the forces
of normalcy
on either side
the numbers approach
the point at which it all breaks down
oscillations grow wider and wider
cognitive cells stretch at points
we cannot touch with our fingers
that can be described
with so few coordinates
beat
beat
beat
(the drum of the insane)
RESONANCE
this is when you fall, when you fall,
when you fall
beat
beat
beat
they come in floods,
the men and women
whose minds tear through the tissue
of the known
every string against the system,
damped by reality.
every heart breaking haltingly
with the swaying of the bridge.
it happens slowly, you see.
three beats, one rip in time,
one fall into a place where no one
can reach you.
[you never existed.
pick the lefthand value.
pick the you that never was.]
Yes, the poem was written when I was feeling kind of crazy and thinking incessently. The idea of the poem was that you could describe the oscillations of string theory with a differential equation. I know now that this may not work for what the poem is about, because a string theory equation would require partial derivatives due to the multiple dimensions. There's a few other problems as well. But the poem still holds its basic idea.
For a forced undampened second order differential equation with a first coefficient of one, as the imaginary square root of the first coefficient (1) times four times the third coefficient times negative one approaches the # of the forcing function sin/cos(#t), the oscillations develope beats, and finally when the two numbers are equal, resonance occurs, creating wild oscillations that just get bigger and bigger.
So the normal three dimensions aren't enough for a string or something that vibrates through multiple dimensions. Symbollically, this means that our society's assumptions etc. aren't enough for some people that sense something more. On either side the numbers approach break down because the numbers describing the vibrations of the insane people approach the forcing function, at which resonance, or complete insanity, occurs. As the oscillations grow wider and wider, the insane stretch out of ordinary four dimensional (described with four coordinates) space time. Beats occur close to resonance. Reality can act as a damper, because damped second order equations don't exhibit resonance. The swaying of the bridge is the swaying of reality, but it also represents the equation, as dampened second order equations generally describe bridges. The beginning and ending part in brackets is because the function isn't consistent at resonance, because the oscillations spike to infnity. When trying to calculate the limit of a function at a point of discontinuity (like in Dirac-Delta functions), you're supposed to use the left hand value, which means, since oscillations are essentially a function of time, you choose the value of the position at an earlier time. At a time early enough, the insane poeple cease to exist. So you have to choose the time before they are born.
It all makes sense to me, but nobody else gets it.
Monday, April 23, 2007
essay i found that i vaguely remember writing
I wrote this last year for English, I guess. I don't remember writing it or turning it in, but I remember thinking these things, and I still agree with them, so I thought I would post it in case it gets lost in the ether.
The Means Are the Ends We Seek
We exist in a society that lives for the future. The illusory goals of humanity- happiness, utopia, freedom, individual worth, equality of power- can never be achieved under the current American psychological complex, the wavering conviction in the realization of tomorrow. ‘Tomorrow’ never comes, and in that truth lies the excuse for the stagnation of human ideals in
So often Americans seek utopia through consistency; however, the only real consistency in life, the only real control, is not found in the ends we seek, but in dystopia, the antithesis of the ‘perfect’ society. Only misery allows a real sense of security. People can count on the companionship of depression in a way that they can never count on the ends they seek. Because of
The remedy to the situation is the diametrical opposite of the pseudo-utopia
We seek utopia, happiness, freedom, individual worth, and equality of power.
There is the possibility, every day, of all of the ends we’ve ever desired, but the only way to achieve these ends is by absorbing them into the action of living and denying the contemporary American psyche. If we conform to the habits of society, we will never reach the future and never repeat the past. We can exist only in the moment, and only in this moment, through the means of living, can we achieve the utopia we seek.
Saturday, April 21, 2007
incomprehensible
“The most incomprehensible thing about the world is that it is at all comprehensible."
-Albert Einstein
I read "A U.S. Navy Blue Angels F/A-18 has crashed in an "enormous fireball" during an air show in South Carolina, killing the pilot as his family watched."
Can you imagine watching someone in your family crash like that? I can't imagine that kind of helplessness.
One of the most powerful bits of a film that I have ever seen was the part of Bowling for Colombine when it shows all of the people dying while (Ray Charles?) sings "Oh What a Wonderful World."
The craziest thing is that it is a wonderful world. It really is, despite it all.
(meanwhile in my tiny life, I got superior ratings on my cello solo, violin solo, octet, and duet with Erin, but a 2 on my piano solo.)
-Albert Einstein
I read "A U.S. Navy Blue Angels F/A-18 has crashed in an "enormous fireball" during an air show in South Carolina, killing the pilot as his family watched."
Can you imagine watching someone in your family crash like that? I can't imagine that kind of helplessness.
One of the most powerful bits of a film that I have ever seen was the part of Bowling for Colombine when it shows all of the people dying while (Ray Charles?) sings "Oh What a Wonderful World."
The craziest thing is that it is a wonderful world. It really is, despite it all.
(meanwhile in my tiny life, I got superior ratings on my cello solo, violin solo, octet, and duet with Erin, but a 2 on my piano solo.)
Thursday, April 19, 2007
District music festival
I had my piano solo today. The propanelol that I take to keep me from shaking uncontrollably from nervousness when I perform is a double-edged sword: sometimes, if I don't concentrate on it, it prevents me from putting emotion into a song. And let me tell you, The Girl with the Flaxen Hair by Debussy requires emotion (go listen to it- it's amazing). Usually I play it quite well, but I was kind of blah today, and my attempt to get around holding several notes did not go unnoticed or, I suspect I will find out tomorrow, unthwarted.
So I don't think I got a superior, which means that repeating last year's superiors-on-everything district-state sweep is impossible already, now in the first stage.
Blah.
I'm really tired. I've been staring at Facebook, reading blogs, posting in forums, checking my email, and reading XKCD comics rather than studying or doing my homework, so I am up very late every night. It's my fault I know.
Tomorrow is senior skip day (stoner day, Colombine day, Hitler's birthday), but I'm going to school. :-( I skipped school once in eigth grade to go to a peace rally protesting the Iraq war right after it started. My mom wouldn't or couldn't excuse me, so a few friends and I just left. I'm glad I did it. I've never regretted it. But it dropped several of my grades because work from unexcused absences can't be made up (I got my only C that quarter, ironically in orchestra). I can't do that now, because my grades actually matter, and I don't have a noble cause for missing school. And having your parents call you out really is cheating.
Nothing left to do now but go dominate Pat in Mario Kart. He doesn't know yet how amazing I am.
So I don't think I got a superior, which means that repeating last year's superiors-on-everything district-state sweep is impossible already, now in the first stage.
Blah.
I'm really tired. I've been staring at Facebook, reading blogs, posting in forums, checking my email, and reading XKCD comics rather than studying or doing my homework, so I am up very late every night. It's my fault I know.
Tomorrow is senior skip day (stoner day, Colombine day, Hitler's birthday), but I'm going to school. :-( I skipped school once in eigth grade to go to a peace rally protesting the Iraq war right after it started. My mom wouldn't or couldn't excuse me, so a few friends and I just left. I'm glad I did it. I've never regretted it. But it dropped several of my grades because work from unexcused absences can't be made up (I got my only C that quarter, ironically in orchestra). I can't do that now, because my grades actually matter, and I don't have a noble cause for missing school. And having your parents call you out really is cheating.
Nothing left to do now but go dominate Pat in Mario Kart. He doesn't know yet how amazing I am.
Sunday, April 15, 2007
rough start
Okay, so I didn't really have fun at MIT this weekend. In fact, it was mostly traumatizing. It was a very rough start, but I'm still alive I suppose.
I got there, and the first half of the first day my mom stayed with me, but then she said she was going to leave me for the rest of the weekend so it was more of my experience, which was alright and necessary, I suppose.
I really like the campus, and I really like the education there, and I know it's what I want academically, and it turns out that the kids there aren't really smarter than me (and by the way I'm a semifinalist in the presidential scholar program, top 500 in the nation, but I have to make one more all-important cut; I'm still waiting on the NMS). I went to a UROP (undergraduate research opportunities) presentation for the astronomy/planetary sciences UROP's, and I started getting so excited because there are so many astronomy opportunities there (like upper classmen can go to Arizona every spring break to use their awesome telescopes to do research), and I felt that great pressure of excitement in me. So I liked the school a lot (although it was rather cold there).
Everything else kind of unfolded and fell apart. I met up with my host, who took me back to where I was supposed to be staying, and the girls that were staying with all knew each other really well from a summer camp. They were really nice, but all the time I was with him I was this awkward third wheel. All they talked about was how they were all going to get a suite together next year (obviously not including me).
I'm not going to go into everything that happened during the weekend, because much of it just isn't important. I stayed with the girls from my dorm for part of the time, but I ended up getting shuttled all over the place, sleeping in this girl's dorm who they knew from their summer camp etc. It was just really weird, and I was very unincluded, and I felt so alone.
I was trying to be really outgoing for the weekend (and I really was being outgoing). I introduced myself to a lot of people, and I hung out with different people for long periods of time. But everyone, no matter how nice they were, seemed to know each other, and none of them really clicked with me at all. And the more energy I put into being outgoing and trying to find friends, the more desperate and drained I felt when I really didn't get much out of it but that familiar third-wheel feeling.
I always feel inferior, to everyone, in almost every way.
It was better when I just didn't try to be outgoing, and just did everything on my own, and didn't try to fit in with a group of people that I really just didn't know. I never could really figure out how or why everyone knew people, but part of it was that most of them had other people from their city get in, and I was the only person from Montana to even get into MIT this year.
So 4 a.m. on Friday morning I got dragged with them to talk to these stupid fraternity boys next door that were really annoying, and everyone was kind of ignoring me and the fact that I was falling apart, so when I realized I was going to break into tears because everything felt like it was exponentially increasing every instant, every bad thing and insecurity and fear in me, and I told them I was going back to our dorm, and my host told me to just ring the doorbell, which was really inconsiderate of her since she knew the combination and it was only like twenty feet away. Had anyone really looked at me, it would have been obvious that I was losing it, but I guess I'm glad they didn't, but the point is that whether I was losing it or not, they just didn't look at me at all. I was just this ghost that followed people around and tried to strike up conversations that weren't really my own. Every conversation with anyone I talked to all weekend felt fake to me, because I felt like everyone I talked to was either very different from me, or really just didn't care about me and wouldn't have noticed if I'd suddenly gone away, or at least wouldn't have bothered to come back to find me.
On friday morning my mind kind of lost its last shred of sanity, and I just thought screw it all, and I found my way back to a bathroom, and I sat on the toilet and cried for a long time. It was mostly because this CPW thing is a preview at college, and what I am afraid will happen, what I know will happen, at college happened this weekend. I was alone and I fell apart. I felt so suicidal that night. I realized I can't do it. I can't go to college, whether it's at MIT or MSU. I was losing it so completely that all I wanted that morning was for someone to come and take me away and put me in a hospital. It was so terrible, because again there was no escape. Killing myself would be worse. Not going to college wouldn't work (all my friends would still go). No matter what I do, I have to leave, and things have to change, and I CAN'T DEAL WITH THAT.
I guess that is the crux of the issue, and it is what pushed me to fall apart again last night while trying to suppress the pretty terrible memories of my emotions this weekend. I really just don't think I can do this. And I'm not sure that I have an alternative. And I'm not sure what will happen to me when I am forced into a situation like I was in this weekend, but it is permanant. I'm not sure where I will go or how I will cope. I need people to take care of me sometimes. They can still do that over the phone, but nobody will be there to notice or care when I'm falling apart in the frat house at 4 a.m.
I can't go to college. I can't do it. I'll fall apart. I'm not stable enough.
If I have to go, it will be to MIT. But at the end of this weekend, I didn't feel like I could get out of the shower, much less out of th door, much less out of my state and my friends and my life and into oblivion.
I got there, and the first half of the first day my mom stayed with me, but then she said she was going to leave me for the rest of the weekend so it was more of my experience, which was alright and necessary, I suppose.
I really like the campus, and I really like the education there, and I know it's what I want academically, and it turns out that the kids there aren't really smarter than me (and by the way I'm a semifinalist in the presidential scholar program, top 500 in the nation, but I have to make one more all-important cut; I'm still waiting on the NMS). I went to a UROP (undergraduate research opportunities) presentation for the astronomy/planetary sciences UROP's, and I started getting so excited because there are so many astronomy opportunities there (like upper classmen can go to Arizona every spring break to use their awesome telescopes to do research), and I felt that great pressure of excitement in me. So I liked the school a lot (although it was rather cold there).
Everything else kind of unfolded and fell apart. I met up with my host, who took me back to where I was supposed to be staying, and the girls that were staying with all knew each other really well from a summer camp. They were really nice, but all the time I was with him I was this awkward third wheel. All they talked about was how they were all going to get a suite together next year (obviously not including me).
I'm not going to go into everything that happened during the weekend, because much of it just isn't important. I stayed with the girls from my dorm for part of the time, but I ended up getting shuttled all over the place, sleeping in this girl's dorm who they knew from their summer camp etc. It was just really weird, and I was very unincluded, and I felt so alone.
I was trying to be really outgoing for the weekend (and I really was being outgoing). I introduced myself to a lot of people, and I hung out with different people for long periods of time. But everyone, no matter how nice they were, seemed to know each other, and none of them really clicked with me at all. And the more energy I put into being outgoing and trying to find friends, the more desperate and drained I felt when I really didn't get much out of it but that familiar third-wheel feeling.
I always feel inferior, to everyone, in almost every way.
It was better when I just didn't try to be outgoing, and just did everything on my own, and didn't try to fit in with a group of people that I really just didn't know. I never could really figure out how or why everyone knew people, but part of it was that most of them had other people from their city get in, and I was the only person from Montana to even get into MIT this year.
So 4 a.m. on Friday morning I got dragged with them to talk to these stupid fraternity boys next door that were really annoying, and everyone was kind of ignoring me and the fact that I was falling apart, so when I realized I was going to break into tears because everything felt like it was exponentially increasing every instant, every bad thing and insecurity and fear in me, and I told them I was going back to our dorm, and my host told me to just ring the doorbell, which was really inconsiderate of her since she knew the combination and it was only like twenty feet away. Had anyone really looked at me, it would have been obvious that I was losing it, but I guess I'm glad they didn't, but the point is that whether I was losing it or not, they just didn't look at me at all. I was just this ghost that followed people around and tried to strike up conversations that weren't really my own. Every conversation with anyone I talked to all weekend felt fake to me, because I felt like everyone I talked to was either very different from me, or really just didn't care about me and wouldn't have noticed if I'd suddenly gone away, or at least wouldn't have bothered to come back to find me.
On friday morning my mind kind of lost its last shred of sanity, and I just thought screw it all, and I found my way back to a bathroom, and I sat on the toilet and cried for a long time. It was mostly because this CPW thing is a preview at college, and what I am afraid will happen, what I know will happen, at college happened this weekend. I was alone and I fell apart. I felt so suicidal that night. I realized I can't do it. I can't go to college, whether it's at MIT or MSU. I was losing it so completely that all I wanted that morning was for someone to come and take me away and put me in a hospital. It was so terrible, because again there was no escape. Killing myself would be worse. Not going to college wouldn't work (all my friends would still go). No matter what I do, I have to leave, and things have to change, and I CAN'T DEAL WITH THAT.
I guess that is the crux of the issue, and it is what pushed me to fall apart again last night while trying to suppress the pretty terrible memories of my emotions this weekend. I really just don't think I can do this. And I'm not sure that I have an alternative. And I'm not sure what will happen to me when I am forced into a situation like I was in this weekend, but it is permanant. I'm not sure where I will go or how I will cope. I need people to take care of me sometimes. They can still do that over the phone, but nobody will be there to notice or care when I'm falling apart in the frat house at 4 a.m.
I can't go to college. I can't do it. I'll fall apart. I'm not stable enough.
If I have to go, it will be to MIT. But at the end of this weekend, I didn't feel like I could get out of the shower, much less out of th door, much less out of my state and my friends and my life and into oblivion.
Tuesday, April 10, 2007
bad news for us Star Wars fans
Being the nerdy person I am, I have been reading about particle physics, and an alarming truth has been called to my attention.
All particles are either Bosons or Fermions. Fermions have to obey the exclusionary principle, meaning to Fermions can't be in the same place at once or pass through each other or anything (the same way I can't move my hand through the book or walk through walls). Bosons, however, don't have to obey such an exclusionary principle.
If you shine a laser in the air and shine another laser through it, because photons are Bosons, the beams will pass through each other.
Therefore, if light sabers are really concentrated beams of photons (as can be assumed by the word light in their name), it doesn't matter how advanced the technology is, physical laws demand that the beams of the light sabers would pass through each other rather than clash. They could still be dangerous to flesh the way that lasers are, but they would be terrible weapons because you wouldn't be able to block a blow or do any of those cool Star Wars moves.
It's so sad the way illusion dies. :-)
Anyway, I'm going to Boston tomorrow morning. I'm nervous, but I'm also really excited. I'll be there until Sunday night.
All particles are either Bosons or Fermions. Fermions have to obey the exclusionary principle, meaning to Fermions can't be in the same place at once or pass through each other or anything (the same way I can't move my hand through the book or walk through walls). Bosons, however, don't have to obey such an exclusionary principle.
If you shine a laser in the air and shine another laser through it, because photons are Bosons, the beams will pass through each other.
Therefore, if light sabers are really concentrated beams of photons (as can be assumed by the word light in their name), it doesn't matter how advanced the technology is, physical laws demand that the beams of the light sabers would pass through each other rather than clash. They could still be dangerous to flesh the way that lasers are, but they would be terrible weapons because you wouldn't be able to block a blow or do any of those cool Star Wars moves.
It's so sad the way illusion dies. :-)
Anyway, I'm going to Boston tomorrow morning. I'm nervous, but I'm also really excited. I'll be there until Sunday night.
Sunday, April 08, 2007
Easter
(I have decided that I will probably try MIT even if I'm not smart enough, because it is my dream school, and because I will not refuse to do something just because I'm afraid of failing. Thank you all for your incredibly kind and reassuring words.)
I have been thinking about Christ, as it is Easter, and I have been thinking about this phrase from Death Cab for Cutie:
Love is watching someone die.
There's a great amount of grammatical ambiguity in that phrase. "Watching someone die" could be a noun verbal phrase (I think the term is 'gerund'), which would make it a metaphor comparing love, something abstract, to watching someone die, something concrete.
Or "is" could be a helping verb and "love" could be the subject enacting the verb "watching," which would make the phrase a personification (fancy term 'pathetic fallacy') of love.
Either way is terribly sad and reminds me of Easter. What greater love hath man than this, that he lay down his life for another?
Even if I didn't believe in religion, I would still be amazed at the love of a man who died to save humanity.
I have been thinking about Christ, as it is Easter, and I have been thinking about this phrase from Death Cab for Cutie:
Love is watching someone die.
There's a great amount of grammatical ambiguity in that phrase. "Watching someone die" could be a noun verbal phrase (I think the term is 'gerund'), which would make it a metaphor comparing love, something abstract, to watching someone die, something concrete.
Or "is" could be a helping verb and "love" could be the subject enacting the verb "watching," which would make the phrase a personification (fancy term 'pathetic fallacy') of love.
Either way is terribly sad and reminds me of Easter. What greater love hath man than this, that he lay down his life for another?
Even if I didn't believe in religion, I would still be amazed at the love of a man who died to save humanity.
Thursday, April 05, 2007
I'm not smart enough to go to MIT...
Don't tell me I am, either. I know what kind of kids go there. I know what kind of prep schools thery've been at for the past four years. I know how many AP classes they've taken.
I'm from Montana. I 'm behind. Our school only offers three AP classes. Physics is a joke. I'm behind, and I'm not smart enough. I'm going to be crushed.
The panic is setting in. I have to decide, and I can't decide. I can't decide yet. What will happen to me?
:-(
Don't tell me I am, either. I know what kind of kids go there. I know what kind of prep schools thery've been at for the past four years. I know how many AP classes they've taken.
I'm from Montana. I 'm behind. Our school only offers three AP classes. Physics is a joke. I'm behind, and I'm not smart enough. I'm going to be crushed.
The panic is setting in. I have to decide, and I can't decide. I can't decide yet. What will happen to me?
:-(
Tuesday, April 03, 2007
college, take fifty billion (give or take 49.9999 billion)
I got the Oberlin scholarship, $12,000/year. Caltech actually offered me $3,000/year in grants, crazily, since my expected family contribution is sky high. I didn't get the Chicago scholarship, so I guess I'm not visiting Chicago this weekend. I'm going to MIT next week. At this point, MIT is where I'm going. Unless I hate it, I'm MIT-bound as of today.
I'm excited. I was looking at the MIT website. I'm excited to learn about math and physics and cognitive science and to live in Boston. I'm really worried that I won't be smart enough. I'm worried everyone else will be a genius, and I'll just be plain old me. I'm worried I'll collapse under the course work. I'm worried I'll decide after a year and a half that I want to major in English or something they don't have a stellar program for at MIT. I'm worried that I'll feel extremely isolated and have a mental breakdown because I'll be all the way across the country. I'm worried I won't make any friends or something.
But I'm lucky. I'm extremely lucky this has worked out, because I didn't believe it was possible for a long time. I kept dreaming, and the naive part of me began to believe, but the practical part of me was never convinced. Now, because my grandfather shifted some money around (some meaning $50,000), we can pay for it. I'm going to Boston.
So... here's to a future, I guess. I'm excited, but right now I'm more terrified. I oscillate. Apparently my friends do as well, though. It's a common malady for us.
On a different note, I finished reading The Catcher in the Rye for the third time, and this time I am definitely sure of what I sort of thought the first few times. I really think the book is about child abuse, specifically sexual abuse. I'm not just pulling that out of nowhere. We talked about it today in English, and I defended my position, and it really is plausible. Holden is so focused on protecting kids from people that he thinks will violate or hurt them. He's pretty asexual. When his teacher pats him on the head, he violently reacts with anger, and then he begins to make up excuses for the teacher. He says that sort of thing has happened before. He's desperately trying to protect his innocent, Platonic relationship with Jane. It really does all add up.
That book bothers me so much. I don't know why. It just really throws me off every time I read it, which to me is the biggest indication to me that it's about sexual abuse. I just have such a visceral reaction to it. It really, really hurts me in a way.
Well I still have a lot of homework to do. I guess some schools are actually going to check my second semester grades, including, I think, MIT.
I'm excited. I was looking at the MIT website. I'm excited to learn about math and physics and cognitive science and to live in Boston. I'm really worried that I won't be smart enough. I'm worried everyone else will be a genius, and I'll just be plain old me. I'm worried I'll collapse under the course work. I'm worried I'll decide after a year and a half that I want to major in English or something they don't have a stellar program for at MIT. I'm worried that I'll feel extremely isolated and have a mental breakdown because I'll be all the way across the country. I'm worried I won't make any friends or something.
But I'm lucky. I'm extremely lucky this has worked out, because I didn't believe it was possible for a long time. I kept dreaming, and the naive part of me began to believe, but the practical part of me was never convinced. Now, because my grandfather shifted some money around (some meaning $50,000), we can pay for it. I'm going to Boston.
So... here's to a future, I guess. I'm excited, but right now I'm more terrified. I oscillate. Apparently my friends do as well, though. It's a common malady for us.
On a different note, I finished reading The Catcher in the Rye for the third time, and this time I am definitely sure of what I sort of thought the first few times. I really think the book is about child abuse, specifically sexual abuse. I'm not just pulling that out of nowhere. We talked about it today in English, and I defended my position, and it really is plausible. Holden is so focused on protecting kids from people that he thinks will violate or hurt them. He's pretty asexual. When his teacher pats him on the head, he violently reacts with anger, and then he begins to make up excuses for the teacher. He says that sort of thing has happened before. He's desperately trying to protect his innocent, Platonic relationship with Jane. It really does all add up.
That book bothers me so much. I don't know why. It just really throws me off every time I read it, which to me is the biggest indication to me that it's about sexual abuse. I just have such a visceral reaction to it. It really, really hurts me in a way.
Well I still have a lot of homework to do. I guess some schools are actually going to check my second semester grades, including, I think, MIT.
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