actions, not words.

Today was a decent day. Getting up in the morning was hard (although I slept way before midnight as a result of being tired even while reading), but from there the day continued on as normal. We were slightly later than usual to school, but at the very least there was no Mathcounts this morning, so it was not quite as painful as it could have been. That was a good thing. Morning time in the library was fine—today's theme was throwback to grade school, so I was wearing my glasses, which, combined with the normal sleep deprivation, was enough to make me more than a little dazed during this time. I printed off my AP Psych notes, and turned them in during AP Psych. AP Psych was relatively chill, as we went through the language section of the unit quickly, and from there we moved to Spanish 4, which, when combining the lack of students during a significant portion of the class period and the existence of a presentation on countries, resulted in a content-wise short class, which was pr...

Today was a relatively mediocre day. I slept a very long time, and I got up around noon, which was awful because I had a headache from the start, not having breakfast and in general not having had food for a relatively long time. This headache persisted for the rest of the day, which hindered all of my productivity for the entire day. I did some limited homework before we went to a party with the Chinese Students Association for a departing student. This lasted for a very, very long time, until almost 3 PM. This resulted in a greater headache, as I spent a significant amount of time just staring at my phone reading Hidden Figures  and whatnot, so by the time I got home I no longer had the capacity to think. I spent the rest of the day working on AP Psych homework very slowly. (I still have a lot to do tomorrow, but that's the way it's going to have to be.) My sister and I also watched an episode of Sherlock , and two hours later, after some more very slow homework progress,...

This post is pinned because poetry. I had four poems I thought were at least pretty good from the first twenty. They all have wildly different styles, which I think is quite funny, but I've decided to include them all because I absolutely despise decision-making, and this is a venue which I control. Here goes. The first poem was written on the second day in response to the prompt "The Unrequited Love Poem." (All of these prompts include more details, but this one is relatively straight-forwards.) It is titled: "There is a song". There is a song I've sung, so many times before. A song to the void. A call without response. A nothingness, into which the flickering candle of hope plunges. But the candle does not go out. The candle does not go out, because that would be too easy. The candle does not go out, because the world is rarely so simple. The candle burns. The candle burns you until are reduced to sentimental ash. The candle burns your hear...

Today was a good day! I've left some slightly more depressing notes I wrote really late last night after reading Hamilton  for a bit, but that in no way affected my mood today, which was probably good. I woke up at 8:45 AM, again slightly too late to get to robotics on time, but eventually I arrived, and I was immediately deterred by a problem with a specific motor controller. This took us about an hour to solve, which was frustrating since it deterred us from working on actual work, but we eventually solved the problem, which was nice. Eventually, however, we started bashing out the mathematics and programming the Arduino's and the robot to successfully achieve our line-following code. This was especially interesting, because the mathematics was actually easier than I expected it to be. I got it in essentially one shot, although it's not perfect  per se. Maybe my math isn't as rusty as it used to be. Maybe I'm just lucky. In any case, we were at robotics all th...

Today was slightly better than yesterday, but not by much. My body continued to be exhausted even after sleep this morning, and I almost lacked all my motivation to even get up today. (There's a (prose) poem about that later in this blog, stay tuned.) From there, my day went slightly better, but not by much, and only because I had to put off the debate work from today to tomorrow to save my soul and ability to function. I got to school at a reasonable time, and proceeded to trundle my way through AP Psych (mostly boring, notes and work time), Spanish 4 (which was better, because political discussion, but also because it was swear word day!), and then Orchestra, where I was once again assigned to an ensemble with low motivation and no music selected (at least it gave us an excuse to not play? I kind of need to play though, so that's a mixed bag). From there, lunch, during which I watched the House conduct its daily business because I could find nothing better to do that I co...

Today was exceptionally exhausting, and absolutely horrible. I was out of the house for almost 14 hours, and 10 or more of those hours were spent actually being productive, which I honestly think is more than some people do at their actual careers. That, combined with a variety of other factors, tore my day to shreds. It started off poorly, when my sister and I overslept our respective alarms, and I still felt exhausted, despite my relatively reasonable sleep time. From there, the drive to school went okay after I dropped my sister off at Mathcounts, but NHS was exceptionally boring, and from there AP Psych was also not the greatest (although, to be fair, it never is). Spanish was okay, but there was a lot of high-level discussion of politics which I didn't participate in most of because I find that I am never capable of adequately expressing my more complex thoughts in those sorts of discussions. We got solos in Orchestra—I'm playing a piece from Suzuki book seven that I r...

Last Year + Context Last year’s version of this can be found here: https://www.alanzhu.me/2018/01/2017-year-in-review_1.html “This is mostly a document for me to look back on and read in a couple of years or something, so I’ll have some memory of what I actually did in my high school years, though this is probably focusing on detail that will seem unimportant in a few years.” Since most of the events that occurred this year were covered by my blog, this will be a brief(-ish)­­ summary, followed by a series of other reflections I’ve done in the past. An accompanying photo album can be found here: [ redacted, contact author] A “Summary” of the Year’s Events January I started this (iteration of this) blog on January 1 st , 2018. I rang in the New Year at an actual New Year’s party, finished the second draft of my novella, got contacts, read Much Ado About Nothing , started my first build season at robotics, applied to RSI, was outed to my parents via my own blog, did a ...