I try to clean once a week; today was the day I did that cumbersome ritual. I wiped my coffee table and picked up the clothes and paper that propagate atop the carpeted flooring. I grabbed all the trash on my bedside table and desk. I even made my bed (a task not typically high on my to-do list). Yet, there is dust all over my room, no matter how much a clean or wipe it off it never seems to go away. Every week I fight it and every week it returns, I mean how do you even get rid of it; when you wipe it away half of those pesky particles fly into the air, only to land back where you just cleaned just after you finish. Maybe the dust is why I keep getting sick, full Interstellar mode. The reason I’m thinking about dust though is that today during my incumbent chore the dust was floating through the air really beautifully, it was sparkling in the sunbeams coming through my window and just caught my attention. I wish it wasn’t so dirty, otherwise, I might add more dust to my room.
We’re supposed to start writing our essays for college applications, but I’m a little stuck. The issue is, I have an essay that I really like, that is probably the best thing I’ve ever written, but there’s a limit to how many words our essay is. The limit is 650 words. Want to guess how many my essay is? 1371 words. One thousand three hundred and seventy-one. That is over double the maximum amount of words allowed for an essay. This means I either have to start from scratch or somehow trim down the essay until it’s only 650 words, both of which would be very difficult. And of course, these essays are going to be really important to my applications because, for the UCs at least, colleges won’t look at my SAT score which was actually pretty good and which I will probably improve upon. They only look at GPA, extracurriculars, and essays, so my essays have to be good. Anyway wish me luck, I’m gonna need it.
I have two other brothers, and they always did everything better than me; which I always feel so much pressure doing something with them. I always doubt my ability to do anything, like anything. I began the thought of I just can’t do it right. This year, I become a senior, ready for college. You have no idea how much pressure I have on myself. I don’t want to give up and go to random college, meantime, I still keep believing that there is a 1 percent possibility I can make something beautiful. A couple of weeks ago, Penn State needs a requirement of 120 scores for the English Language Proficiency. I spent my own money and took it almost twenty times, my highest score is 115 still couldn’t reach 120. Penn State can be an easy school that most everyone can get into. However, I’m still stuck in that dumb English test and couldn’t think of any way to improve it. Recently, most of the decisions came out, I got rejected by UIUC and LMU. I am not surprised at all because I know those types of good schools won’t accept me. Until this Tuesday, I got an email from Syracuse University. I just want to say, I think I’m dreaming right now. I got accepted! At that time, I told myself that I’m not that bad, not bad. Meanwhile, I’m so thankful that my brother and friends are there always supporting me. I just can’t believe it, really can’t. I can say I am really proud of myself, and I should love myself more.
I’ve been really tired recently. With the stress of applying to colleges and school, I really need a break. There are a lot of tests and I did pretty bad at them while I needed to finish my college application. There is just too much stuff I need to do, and I really don’t have time for myself to review for all the tests. One of the most annoying things recently is that I need to retake the test for English Language Proficiency. I’ve taken this test more than ten times, and I just couldn’t get to the minimum score. I’m really tired of this. At the same time, every senior already gets into some good college except me. I haven’t got any acceptance and I’m so worried about whether I am able to get accepted by any college. Every day started to feel the same and I’m tired of it. Wake up, breakfast, school, and sleep. It’s just so boring that I couldn’t do anything more than that. I just don’t know how people wake up and get so excited for their day or have so much fun in school. I just don’t know-how. I only eat less, even skip lunch or dinner, and get tired every other day. How can people look so normal, and be happy every day?
Starting from my 9th grade, I can feel the time passing so fast. Every year passed with a blink. I kept complaining about school and life until recently I noticed that I only have a couple of years left being a student. I started to like being a student actually, the only struggle is homework every night. Otherwise, I can just have fun and do anything I want with my family and friends. With my work experience before, I imagine in the future, I will need to wake up so early and do my work until 9 pm. When I get home it’s probably 10 pm, plus, doing some stuff and taking a shower will be at 11 pm; Afterwards, I need to sleep at least before 12 am so I won’t be tired from tomorrow’s work. I also imagine that every day will feel the same. Nothing surprising will happen to me. It all just feels so complicated.
In this case, I want to give myself a goal. Although I might be busy working in the future, I still want to do something that I always wanted to do, which is to become a Youtuber. I’m not sure about when I am going to start, maybe from college or maybe after college. I love taking videos and editing them. Some of the successful jobs started from interest, and my interest is editing videos, so I give myself a goal to start the action and share those videos I made with everyone. I’m thinking the content of the video I will be posting is about a vlog or some prank video with my friends. To be honest, I haven’t started yet so I don’t know what the content will be. However, I wish I could do or even try anything I want to do before I get old and couldn’t move my body anymore.
Leading up to the college visit trip I took last week, I was adamant about applying and going to NYU. So adamant in the fact that I was prepared to apply early decision, meaning if I got in I would have to attend.
When I tell you I was saved by a thread I mean it. I was millimeters away from making the worst decision ever.
NYU was not the place for me. I had thought that going to a school without a campus would be fun, my experience this summer in New York made me feel free, and living in New York and attending school seemed ideal. This was mostly because I was with one of my closest friends whose sister went there, so we spent most of our time shopping and eating rather than being students. It was a whole different story at the school. The tour guide talked more about her getting cut from the quidditch team than student life and did many other similar things, making me realize that maybe I wanted more of a college experience.
I had just gone to see Michigan before NYU, where I went tailgating and sat in the student section at the Big House. My friend who goes there showed me around and showed me what it is like to be a student at a big school. I had the best time and realized that this is something I can’t go without in college. I also thought the traditional campus layout would make studying easier, everything was just more simple.
These two factors combined and made me realize what an idiot I had been. Judging my college choices on a fun week I had without considering schools, sheerly basing the biggest choice I will have made in my young life on location.
I feel super relieved I changed my mind about applying to NYU early decision, and that I went on the tour as the feels at the schools were different than the ideas in my head of what they would feel like. It feels surreal that I was that close to making such a big choice based on nothing.
This month is the season for seniors to apply to college if they want to apply for Early Action (EA) or Early Decision (ED). In fact, I was planning to apply to Early action, but everything wasn’t going the way I want to be. My plan was to finish all the essays for every college one day before the deadline. The deadline is closer than it appears. I always thought I have time, so I do a little every day and sometimes I don’t even do it. Without a doubt, I couldn’t finish it and doesn’t have enough time to send it to my counselor and correct it. Two days left before the EA deadline! I just can’t believe how fast the deadline has shown up. I spent two nights burning the midnight oil, trying to finish it all. Of course, I still can’t finish the application, and I have to give up on EA for this time.
Yes, I took my lesson, I should be taking this seriously. Once it passes the deadline, there is no way back to regret it. I started to feel the “Real” stress from college applications. “College deadlines are no joke.” My college counselor always tells me that, and now I understand that it’s really not a joke.
This is just a compiled list of stuff I have liked or thought is cool recently
Vests:
It is most definitely vest season. Recently, I have been waking up in the morning to an extremely damp 55 degrees, enduring 85-degree highs on the hill, then returning home to frigid cold. Ventura County can’t decide if it’s winter or summer, still clinging on to aspects of summer while embracing parts of winter. I guess it’s fall but I like my longwinded description better.
Anyways, I’ve been super hyped on vests recently, specifically this Stussy Sherpa Vest:
PC;
Mine is purple and green. It’s sick.
I like to wear it with shorts, a white tee, and my Birkenstock Bostons (which we will touch on later), but it can also be worn with jeans and a tee-shirt or literally anything. That’s the beauty of the vest.
Birkenstock Boston’s:
The most comfortable foot experience ever.
If you’ve been on the hill in the past month you may have noticed I have worn clogs every day for 2 months now and it’s safe to say there is no going back. I used to be really into sneakers, but recently, I find myself picking birks over every other shoe.
In my current period of grinding college applications and AP class homework into the midnight hours, I care far less about my appearance in the morning: as long as I apply the stick of Old Spice Fiji floating around my truck before being around my peers, I’m valid. That’s not to say these shoes don’t look great with most outfits, I just have been putting less thought into outfits and my tan Birk clogs are perfect for that. They are also great for slipping into after hours of cramming my feet into soccer cleats for 2 hours or for skipping down chicken trail.
They are just the best
PC: Birkenstock
The Top Gear Radio Special:
Top Gear is my favorite show of all time. I was not a car guy when I got into it and still wouldn’t categorize myself as one, but there is just something about the humor, wit, and gab Clarkson, May, and Hammond have that makes me keep coming back. This is a radio segment from when the guys took over a random BBC station outside of London in 2006. The old news and hilarious traffic advice make this a must-listen. I play it in the car on my way to and from school periodically, and I really enjoy it. You don’t have to like cars. You don’t have to like Brits. Just listen. Trust me.
VC: Top Gear (posted by freshrigi)
Anyways, I might make this a recurring thing. Consider yourself
Last night I got home and figured I’d watch a single episode of Squid Games before I did my homework.
6 hours later, it was 12:22 and I had finished the series. I knew I had homework. Homework I wanted to do. I knew it would take an hour or two, but I just kept watching. I ended up going to sleep at 1:30, throwing to the wayside the two supplemental essays I had planned to draft.
This morning, I absolutely mashed snooze on my alarm. I woke up at 7:30, the time that I need to leave my house to make it to school. I showered and ended up leaving at 7:45 getting here decently late.
The show was so good. I think because of the language barrier, some of the cues that would have made the storyline more obvious didn’t hit me, or the millions of others watching the show right now. I asked a Korean friend about his take on it and he said it was super obvious the whole time, but all of the twists didn’t hit me.
The binge I got caught in was not so good. I wanted to stop watching but I just didn’t. I still got the truly necessary work done but as usual, my head was barely above the water that is missing homework and B’s.
This is something I want to gain more control over, but can’t seem to achieve. I think it might be because I tend to be able to do work very well at the last moment. I have operated this way my whole life with a lot of things, but with certain things, like projects and papers, I know I should be starting earlier.
Especially heading into college, I want to be able to get things done early. I say early, but this definition of early refers to what I would imagine is everyone else’s regular.
I am slowly getting better at managing my time, some days go fine, but oftentimes, say once a week, I push things to the side and get LAZY.
I have no idea what college I’m going to. I mean I have another year to think about it but like I don’t even have a dream school. And tuition fees are just going up and up with a lot of schools charging 70-80,000 dollars a year. Everywhere is so expensive and its harder to get in to places. I dunno maybe I’m overthinking all this but I really have no idea where I wanna go. There’s so many cool places with awesome programs, but not all of them have good scholarships. My mom tells me I shouldn’t worry about the money side of things but we can’t pay for 80,000 a year without student loans and FRICK student loans. The wage and finance system is rigged against the working class and I am the working class. But I guess I’ll figure it out when I get to it.
OVS Journalism Blog 
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