129A — And someday as I sing my song, a small-town kid'll come along...

This post was pinned because I loved it. It was replaced by a much sadder post.

Today was a good day. I almost can't believe how long this week has been—it feels like an eternity has passed since I got my audition results on Monday—but it has also felt blissfully short—the days have not truly dragged in the run-up to MIT decisions, and my anxieties have not yet began to show, possibly because I've started engaging in the Caltech community, and they're also pretty exciting, but also partially because I've entered the phase (where I should've been many weeks ago) where I am resigned to my fate, and, as this blog from MIT admissions puts it, one way or another, I will end up becoming myself, and that's what really matters.

I started off this morning early (after sleeping relatively on time?) for Orchestra, which went relatively okay. I'm gradually getting accustomed to the actual responsibility and enjoying it a bit more, so at least that's a good thing. AP Psych followed, where we went over more notes and started a video about the psychological effects on drugs (which was actually quite interesting, especially because some of these drug addicts probably function better than I do on a normal day (or at least a sleep-deprived day)). Spanish was interesting, as we continued working on...something. I don't quite remember it, and it's a little bit of a blur, but there were plenty of interesting activities to be done, and I think that's a change that's here to stay.

Normal Orchestra, on the other hand, did not go quite as well as it needed to, as I felt myself falling asleep and getting worse and worse at counting. I spent my lunch time entirely in the library, writing my Year in Review, and following that was Cardio, where we ran the mile. This actually went relatively well; I was aiming for a pace of 7 minutes, which meant 35 seconds per lap over twelve laps, and the first six laps kind of breezed by. As time went by, it became more difficult for me to continue, and I stopped calculating lap times, but in the end I only ended up losing 14 seconds for an overall time of 7:14, which I'm pretty proud of. It's not great by any means, but it's good enough for me. It was interesting, however, to feel myself go into autopilot as laps went by, and only be able to judge my lap count by approximate lap times.

I went home and slept after that. Following that, I got up and did homework for essentially the rest of the day. There was some rest here and there, and some working on debate stuff, but in general the slow pace of the work felt deserved after a long week. Of course, the week is not yet over, but Saturday edges ever closer, carrying a decision that may be extremely good or extremely depressing. We'll have to see. Less than 36 hours remain.

Some other thoughts for today:

One of my friends got into Harvard today, and I am very extremely proud of her. (It's kind of funny because we share our initials and certain other characteristics. Of course, we are still very different people, but it's interesting enough.) I had an interesting thought about it, however: our stories are inextricably linked; not just hers and mine, but rather mine and all of my friends. We are not ourselves in a vacuum, but rather we have been keenly shaped by the people around us, and that process not only means that ultimately we are not solely responsible for our success (which is actually relatively self-evident, although some people do forget it) but also that we are responsible for the success of others, and to be little, positive parts of other people's stories is perhaps the best we can hope to be, as we ourselves travel through life. I am proud of my friends than I am of myself, and to know that I have been a part of their lives and their paths to success in some way, however small, is perhaps more important than my own path to success. You are but one life, but the people you affect can be many.

In this vein, I've recently been thinking about concepts of self—it's weird how much of our allegedly coherent narrative is truly situational, and kind of frightening how unknowable what selves you are killing when you make any given decision. What effects are you having on the world? In my case, what would've happened if I hadn't skipped a grade? What will happen if I choose Caltech over whatever other early school that I hopefully get? These questions are unknowable, and eventually the self that exists will be yourself, but it's just really interesting and kind of intimidating to know that you are denying one existence in exchange for another.

And, beyond that, what does it mean to be yourself in front of others—to present who you are? I keep coming back to the idea of "covering" and being out so that you can support others—I think the energy I spent keeping myself from being out in the open does exert a strain on me, but I remain afraid of opening up. With that, do I risk not helping others who might be in a worse situation by not showing them I care, I'm an ally, and it's okay to be out there? Closing this up with the thoughts from earlier—if I am to be a positive part of more people's stories, I should be out, even outrageous, as myself. ("No straight man would go up there and sing that song the way [you] did.") We'll figure out more of this as we go, I guess. First to try it somewhere more liberal again, past RSI? Hm...

On a different note, I've been using the phrase "I'm not straight enough for this" relatively often in the past few days, which for some reason I just find really funny. I'm not sure it's actually applicable to any situation I've used it in, but something about the inversion of roles in this situation makes it too tempting not to abuse.

And on a different different note, this blog has reached 10000 pageviews! I'm actually relatively proud of that; the writing will continue from here.

And finally, tomorrow: three periods of class, where we will be doing...something or other, and then a debate tournament in Spearfish! I'm excited—I'll be doing extemp and Congress, and hopefully the competition won't be too rough. Also, UIUC decisions come out tomorrow. If this one is also good, we'll be 4 for 4. (I'd ask if UIUC yield-protects, but I hate people who do that because it's super pretentious. We're just hoping for an acceptance. Full stop.)