131A — It's only a matter of time...

This post is pinned because even though it heralds bad news, the emotions in it need to be conveyed.

"We have completed our Early Action review of your application and have chosen to defer it to our Regular Action review."

Well, the streak is over. Honestly, I'm not sure how I feel right now. I'm really proud of all my friends who did make it, but it's really weird because I felt like I would either be devastated or be able to just shrug it off, but right now it's just kind of sinking in my soul, certainly not positive, but not too negative either. It almost feels like the biggest consequence of this decision is a requirement to write and edit more essays, but it feels like that shouldn't be it. I'm not sure, but I suppose reality has acted as it normally does, not the best-case scenario, but also not the worst. Just a vast sea of middle outcomes, which don't inspire hope, but don't crush it either. We'll submit the February update when time calls for it, and we'll see what happens from here on out. I did say 50-50 odds at the time, after all, and even from before the decisions I felt that my MIT application wasn't quite as strong as Caltech because of the word restrictions. All that matters now is to wait, again.

I started today at an early time; something like 6:15, which wasn't great, and we moved from there to breakfast (noodles) to debate. After a long bus ride where I did nearly fall asleep again (and where I got a lot of good photos of the sunset), the first round today was Congress, where I have a few decent speeches (I don't quite remember them but I did remember holding opposing positions to what I actually believed), and proceeded from there to extemp.

I spoke at 10:21, and this tournament is a WiFi-not-allowed tournament, meaning that I couldn't check decisions until 10:28, after I finished my speech on "Will Isabel Marcos' conviction on corruption charges in the Phillipines provide any sense of justice for victims of the Marcos regime?" (Or something like that.) I checked my decision after that—deferral. At least quite a few of the RSI kids made it, which was good.

Our last Senate round was by far the worst, as I only gave one speech which was at best decent. There were some good memes, however—arguments against democracy, "to quote Senator Ted Cruz: Sam I Am, I Am Sam...", etc. Afterwards, I found out I had missed extemp finals yet again by a few ranks (end me), and then we to eat lunch at Subway. When we got back to the building, I found a corner to keep myself comfortable in, and got some alone time, calling an RSI friend in the meantime. During that time, I also did some...self-care by listening to "Connection" by OneRepublic on repeat and centering myself in the moment. I remembered the MIT admissions blog post—eventually I will become myself, and that's what matters. What that means will vary in the future, but at the moment that means I focus and accomplish what needs to be done. I will not let this define my experience of these coming days, nor my experience of today. UChicago is on Monday. Harvard, Stanford, etc. are all due in January. Time to write some high-quality essays. Things will turn out the way they are supposed to turn out.

This is not to say, however, that my emotions did not gradually take a turn for the worse during that time. It became a little hard to focus, and the anxiety that I didn't quite feel beforehand hit me like a rock. What now? Immediate actions remain an open question, and that is not a great place to be going into two weeks before deadlines. I really just want to be accepted to MIT eventually—but the only thing I can do in the meantime is apply to Stanford, Harvard, and (tentatively) CMU, Columbia, and Duke, and if I don't get UChicago on Monday either, possibly Yale and Northwestern. These plans have been come up in a mental state that is not quite settled, of course, and thus they almost certainly will change.

Eventually, however, after a time that felt almost like an eternity, awards came. Senate was the second event to be called, and as they slowly read names for 6th through 2nd, my name was not called, making me first! This year's trophies were...slightly more depressing than last year's, but at least the Universe did not deny me everything today. Just one. (Okay, two, but still.)

In many ways, this award was no more than a pity award. After all, I received 2nd at this very tournament just one year ago. Yet I'm not sure quite how I would've felt without it—I needed at least one thing today, and I suppose that I got it. No matter how much I tried to keep my hopes down, I had hopes of planning new adventures with RSI kids, with 2n+1, and that didn't happen today. Maybe it will happen in three months, maybe it won't. Only time can tell, and time is my least favorite aspect to deal with.

On the bus ride home, I read ballots. I had gone 3 2 1 2 (or something like that)—I was kind of salty that the judge who cut me off early gave me a three, but otherwise those were decent scores, and they left me very, very close to making finals in extemp, but yet still too far. On the other hand, my Congress speeches had gone generally very well—I placed first in the first three sections (and the last one didn't specify so we'll wait for full results to come out), and got very high speech points (5, 6, 6 in round 1, 7, 7 in round 2, 8, 8, 7 in round 3 and a 7 in round 4, with all scores out of 8). Maybe I should be a politician—after, my moral grandstanding seemed to accomplish something today, at least in the judges' eyes, if not the eyes of my fellow competitors.

I also sang a lot of songs on the way back, letting the slowly building sadness fall out of me with the words in the music, but this method was not entirely effective. With the end of the bus ride, I belted out one of my few remaining "Piano Man"s (a song we sing at the end of every tournament), and then drove home. My parents seemed to be more concerned about me than I would honestly have expected, but my general tiredness prevented me from fully functioning. I started drafting bits of various essays; after all, if I am to get in to these new schools, I will need to focus and not just halfheartedly fill out these applications. At the very least, all of these schools are Common App, and I know my personal statement there is at least decent; after all, it got me into Caltech.

I think as I write this (and as time passes) I get angrier and angrier with myself. In almost every way, my deferral is nothing but a reflection of myself. There are no external factors to blame—perhaps the environment, but that is accounted for in my essays. I could direct my anger at the admissions officers, but what's the point? They have done their job, which is mostly likely harder than anything I have ever done. The process is fair, and as such my deferral reflects some form of inadequacy of person that I continue to fail to overcome, inadequacies that I've explored on this blog in various forms (here and here).

I also despise my jealousy of the people from RSI who got in. I am certainly proud of them, and they are all wonderful, but part of me continues to yearn and say "I should have been part of that group. I should have had the opportunity to revel and discuss this with my friends." That not only isn't healthy, it's untrue and debasing. College admissions is a difficult process—the people who are chosen are end up being the people who deserved to, and the people who didn't are the people who didn't. Comparing myself to them neglects situational factors, and drags them down to some form of dog-eat-dog world that not only doesn't model the real world, but also results in a propagation of negative feelings.

And these feelings are absolutely useless. It changes not one iota about my current situation. This is especially relevant in light of the fact that there continues to be work to be done—homework in AP Bio, Psych, Spanish; a concert in Orchestra on Tuesday; essays to be written. Chris Peterson has written in many different places that "this too shall pass." But it hasn't yet, and that feeling traps me here, in this moment, in this blog.

Right now, I'm surviving. I haven't cried yet, but I kind of just need to pour myself out to someone or something, and this blog is serving that purpose. I know I'm writing and publishing this blog early, and that there are more things yet to come today, but that's about all I can handle right now. Maybe I'll sleep early today as well.

Tomorrow, writing. Lots of it. Homework. and hopefully a diminished feeling of sadness, and some more specific debate results. Good night y'all.