112A — I'm trying to hold my breath...
This post was pinned because of the discussion of psychological concepts, and poetry.
Today was better than the first Monday after break deserved to be, but that doesn't mean it was necessarily good. I couldn't sleep for a long while, pinned awake by emotional stresses, and I thus spent some time upping my spirits by going through the parts of my email which I save just for times like these (labeled "Fun" and "Achievements.") I also discovered that my mentor at RSI has an Erdos number of 5, which means that (with some fudging, since RSI papers aren't published) I have an Erdos number of 6! Also, because successful mathematicians often have a lot of students, my mentor's "mathematical lineage" traces up to Gauss, Laplace, Lagrange, Poisson, Fourier, Dirichlet, Lipschitz, Weierstrass (who formalized the definition of a limit), etc., which is quite impressive to be honest.
I ended up getting up around 6:50 or so, and after breakfast and whatnot eventually arrived at school just about at 7:30. There was snow on the ground, which made parking between the lines more difficult, but that concern was not as big as it initially seemed.
I printed out some Psych stuff in the morning and slowly made my way through the process of doing a crossword for that class due on Wednesday (along with a slew of other activities). AP Psych was actually relatively interesting today, not because of the material, but instead because of my personal thoughts on top of the material. This is not earth-shattering stuff, of course—most of these thoughts have probably been considered or tested, but they were new to me.
First, we discussed the just-world phenomenon, which is the idea that people tend to believe the world is just and thus people who have harm done to them deserve it (and inversely the people who have succeeded also deserve it). Maybe I'm just cynical, but honestly I don't feel like as many people fall into this as the book seems to believe, because it's fairly obvious that "life isn't fair." It's possible this result holds for more privileged people (as might be tested by university studies), or that the point is that there's an effect, however small, but it seems like a really godawful idea to me. Personally, I feel more antagonism towards the rich than I do the poor, but maybe that's just my cynicism. Or my liberalism.
Second, we discussed social norms (we did a project on it, that's why I'm up slightly late tonight), and why some people choose to be "social deviants." Now, I'm totally okay with social deviancy, but people who purposefully deviate from the norm for no apparent reason annoy me to no end, because they do so under the assumption of privilege, in that they have some comfortable tolerance to causing self-deviancy because they exist inside social normality in every other way. This privilege is squandered by acting differently for different’s sake, when it could be used for positive change by supporting people whose existence in and of itself is socially "deviant." This is actually known as a social trap, where they act in individual interests, harming a collective good.
Third, the Pygmalion effect is an effect whereby "others' expectations of a target person affect the target person's performance," essentially stating that gifted students are self-fulfilling prophecies. I'm willing to chalk up most of my (limited) abilities/successes to this, because it seems utterly and completely true, given the opportunities and whatnot I've kind of just been handed because of some belief that I'm better than others. It doesn't explain all of it, of course: parents, the fact I moved here after some more rigorous preschool, etc. might all have some cumulative effect, but I'm willing to bet this effect has a bigger influence than I would initially expect.
Fourth, we talked about "ingroups" and "outgroups," which are interesting because they are groups we feel like we have a common identity with vs. groups outside of it. I think the reason I talk about RSI so much (among other things) is that perhaps I finally found myself a completely encompassing ingroup, as opposed to the relatively less encompassing ingroups I experienced along the way. I fit in perfectly there—no where else so far in my life.
Fifth, and finally, I wonder how many of these thoughts, especially relating to being a minority and being different, are a result of me having discovered I was bi at 15. Maybe that novel experience of remarginalization shaped a lot of my thought processes as I was capable of understanding and exploring those concepts at a higher level by then. Maybe I would have had the same general feelings simply as a result of being Asian in South Dakota. Some analysis could be done, but ultimately this is a question that is unanswerable.
Spanish was interesting; we went over future and conditional tenses again (and were exceptionally confused by wonderment and probability), before starting a story about a child who was declared dead and sold to merchants. Orchestra was fun too; I played decently, despite not having practiced over break, and the music is becoming more fun as we go. During lunch, I discovered my predicament with MIT financial aid had been resolved, and I spent the rest of the time doing nothing in order to keep my mind sated and relatively non-stressed. However, I did spent some of that nothing time reading MIT Admissions blogs, which only continue to solidify my want to go there if accepted. We just need to continue to wait until "Mid-December," as the admissions committee has yet to arrive at a date when decisions will be released. That time couldn't come soon enough. I had dumplings for lunch though, so that made things quite a bit better.
Cardio was fine; the activities were a little more intense than usual but that was a good change of pace from my inactivity during break. Calc was interesting; we started going over new content (the divergence theorem). The best part of class, however, was when I learned I only need 2.1 more points to guarantee an A in the class. If I can get a 2.1/3 or higher on the next test (Wednesday), I don't need to take the final. (The teacher actually said that he would not print people with an A already a final.)
I went home after Calc, and after some tepid attempts at work, I napped until about 5:45. I then started to work on some homework, before I had to leave for NHS induction, where I also worked on homework while we formally inducted this year's new members. Wheeee... This took up about an hour of my time, and following it and a small reception (cookies and lemonade!) I returned home for dinner. I then worked on homework (after being given an AIME problem to solve which I promptly failed at solving oops) until around now, when I started writing this blog post. (To be fair, I've spent probably twenty or thirty minutes on this post in particular, so it's probably around that much time ago.)
Tomorrow: no Calc, the start of Science Bowl tryouts, Psych homework, and maybe some violin practice for once. We'll see! To close out this blog, however, a poem I wrote this morning (which requires indentation, so if lines are wrapped it may not be displayed in its original form):
Today was better than the first Monday after break deserved to be, but that doesn't mean it was necessarily good. I couldn't sleep for a long while, pinned awake by emotional stresses, and I thus spent some time upping my spirits by going through the parts of my email which I save just for times like these (labeled "Fun" and "Achievements.") I also discovered that my mentor at RSI has an Erdos number of 5, which means that (with some fudging, since RSI papers aren't published) I have an Erdos number of 6! Also, because successful mathematicians often have a lot of students, my mentor's "mathematical lineage" traces up to Gauss, Laplace, Lagrange, Poisson, Fourier, Dirichlet, Lipschitz, Weierstrass (who formalized the definition of a limit), etc., which is quite impressive to be honest.
I ended up getting up around 6:50 or so, and after breakfast and whatnot eventually arrived at school just about at 7:30. There was snow on the ground, which made parking between the lines more difficult, but that concern was not as big as it initially seemed.
I printed out some Psych stuff in the morning and slowly made my way through the process of doing a crossword for that class due on Wednesday (along with a slew of other activities). AP Psych was actually relatively interesting today, not because of the material, but instead because of my personal thoughts on top of the material. This is not earth-shattering stuff, of course—most of these thoughts have probably been considered or tested, but they were new to me.
First, we discussed the just-world phenomenon, which is the idea that people tend to believe the world is just and thus people who have harm done to them deserve it (and inversely the people who have succeeded also deserve it). Maybe I'm just cynical, but honestly I don't feel like as many people fall into this as the book seems to believe, because it's fairly obvious that "life isn't fair." It's possible this result holds for more privileged people (as might be tested by university studies), or that the point is that there's an effect, however small, but it seems like a really godawful idea to me. Personally, I feel more antagonism towards the rich than I do the poor, but maybe that's just my cynicism. Or my liberalism.
Second, we discussed social norms (we did a project on it, that's why I'm up slightly late tonight), and why some people choose to be "social deviants." Now, I'm totally okay with social deviancy, but people who purposefully deviate from the norm for no apparent reason annoy me to no end, because they do so under the assumption of privilege, in that they have some comfortable tolerance to causing self-deviancy because they exist inside social normality in every other way. This privilege is squandered by acting differently for different’s sake, when it could be used for positive change by supporting people whose existence in and of itself is socially "deviant." This is actually known as a social trap, where they act in individual interests, harming a collective good.
Third, the Pygmalion effect is an effect whereby "others' expectations of a target person affect the target person's performance," essentially stating that gifted students are self-fulfilling prophecies. I'm willing to chalk up most of my (limited) abilities/successes to this, because it seems utterly and completely true, given the opportunities and whatnot I've kind of just been handed because of some belief that I'm better than others. It doesn't explain all of it, of course: parents, the fact I moved here after some more rigorous preschool, etc. might all have some cumulative effect, but I'm willing to bet this effect has a bigger influence than I would initially expect.
Fourth, we talked about "ingroups" and "outgroups," which are interesting because they are groups we feel like we have a common identity with vs. groups outside of it. I think the reason I talk about RSI so much (among other things) is that perhaps I finally found myself a completely encompassing ingroup, as opposed to the relatively less encompassing ingroups I experienced along the way. I fit in perfectly there—no where else so far in my life.
Fifth, and finally, I wonder how many of these thoughts, especially relating to being a minority and being different, are a result of me having discovered I was bi at 15. Maybe that novel experience of remarginalization shaped a lot of my thought processes as I was capable of understanding and exploring those concepts at a higher level by then. Maybe I would have had the same general feelings simply as a result of being Asian in South Dakota. Some analysis could be done, but ultimately this is a question that is unanswerable.
Spanish was interesting; we went over future and conditional tenses again (and were exceptionally confused by wonderment and probability), before starting a story about a child who was declared dead and sold to merchants. Orchestra was fun too; I played decently, despite not having practiced over break, and the music is becoming more fun as we go. During lunch, I discovered my predicament with MIT financial aid had been resolved, and I spent the rest of the time doing nothing in order to keep my mind sated and relatively non-stressed. However, I did spent some of that nothing time reading MIT Admissions blogs, which only continue to solidify my want to go there if accepted. We just need to continue to wait until "Mid-December," as the admissions committee has yet to arrive at a date when decisions will be released. That time couldn't come soon enough. I had dumplings for lunch though, so that made things quite a bit better.
Cardio was fine; the activities were a little more intense than usual but that was a good change of pace from my inactivity during break. Calc was interesting; we started going over new content (the divergence theorem). The best part of class, however, was when I learned I only need 2.1 more points to guarantee an A in the class. If I can get a 2.1/3 or higher on the next test (Wednesday), I don't need to take the final. (The teacher actually said that he would not print people with an A already a final.)
I went home after Calc, and after some tepid attempts at work, I napped until about 5:45. I then started to work on some homework, before I had to leave for NHS induction, where I also worked on homework while we formally inducted this year's new members. Wheeee... This took up about an hour of my time, and following it and a small reception (cookies and lemonade!) I returned home for dinner. I then worked on homework (after being given an AIME problem to solve which I promptly failed at solving oops) until around now, when I started writing this blog post. (To be fair, I've spent probably twenty or thirty minutes on this post in particular, so it's probably around that much time ago.)
Tomorrow: no Calc, the start of Science Bowl tryouts, Psych homework, and maybe some violin practice for once. We'll see! To close out this blog, however, a poem I wrote this morning (which requires indentation, so if lines are wrapped it may not be displayed in its original form):
nothing
my mind opens and yet
nothing
I feel—
the bed below
the blankets above
the cold air sneaking its tendrils into my warm shelter
but thoughts run—
into a wall
out to a broad
empty
consuming
void
Cogito ergo sum.
am I?
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