155A — Makes you give in and cry, say live and let die...
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 really need to look over, but all-in-all shouldn't be too bad. We also played some pieces that our teacher considered too hard for us, but honestly I really wanted to do them. I'm kind of sad we're not, because then the repertoire won't be challenging enough, but oh well.
From there, I went to work on my debate case during lunch, then ate lunch, and then sent a reply to my Harvard interviewer with something that resembled a legitimate resume. (That interview is happening next Wednesday, probably.) Cardio went relatively smoothly as well, and from there more debate case-writing was done. (It's coming together okay, but only two hours of work have been put into it and it shows and that makes me want to die.)
That ended before Science Bowl, where we went relatively slowly on some harder packets (I made so many mistakes today it was unbearable). From there, I went to debate, which really pulled everything I had left out of me. I first helped some friends with their PF case, which was actually interesting, and then spent essentially the rest of practice making the decision between doing extemp and policy. I would have had a lot more fun doing extemp and judging, but I ended up choosing to do policy out of a sense of obligation to the team and my partner, which is honestly typical. (More on that later.) That instantly set me pacing, because this tournament will kill me. I'm debating with someone who has never really done policy, and this is especially bad because I am debating varsity, on a circuit where I have a decent reputation which will be absolutely ruined, along with my self-respect. Oh well. And so it goes. From there, I went to robotics, somewhat late and exceptionally non-functional.
Robotics was, subsequently, very limited in productivity. We installed some software on the robot, set up our chassis we will be testing with, and then hit a dead end with vision processing, not caused by our code, but rather by our setup of the libraries, which is honestly exceptionally frustrating. At least some progress is being made by other members of other subteams, which is slightly more important right now. In any case, that process lasted two hours or so before I finally went home, arriving almost at 9. I ate dinner, wrote today's very, very short response to the prompt, titled "Dream-catcher\False." And then, this.
Now for today's exceptionally depressing thoughts. First of all, in AP Psych we've been discussing different types of coping at a relatively high-level. There are two types of coping—problem-focused (actually solving the problem) and emotion-focused (not solving the problem but feeling better), and honestly I'm so out of energy to do problem-focused that only emotion-focused is possibly, and that is a depressingly unsustainable course of action. At some point it's all going to fall apart, and I'm not excited to find out when. At the very least however, I maintain some idea that I control in general my outcomes (even if it does result in a feeling of inadequacy and incompetence), so I have some internal locus of control, which is apparently a good thing.
The past two days have focused on my own inadequacies, but for once I would like to cast some external blame (even though it doesn't really do any good). I feel like I do my best to keep my ends of bargains and put in work (even if I don't like it) to fulfill obligations to others, possibly before even my obligations to myself, but it feels scarcely returned, even on the most trivial of tasks. (I asked a friend today to put our names on a signup sheet. He failed to even do that and I had to write us up after hours. Maybe I just failed to comprehend and need to check it again, but I feel like this was gross negligence on their part.) Inability doesn't bother me—it's perfectly natural, and it's how we grow. But when I need someone to come through for me, and I have expressed that to them, and they have agreed, I need for that action to happen. And in many cases, that doesn't happen. I can understand not being able to do something, but for the love of all that is good and holy just tell me and I can help you. *sigh.* Maybe my expectations are too high. I'm also probably still being hypocritical, and I haven't fulfilled my duties for a large variety of tasks and people. I'm not sure, but I just know I am tired and mildly depressed.
In any case, tomorrow, more Science Bowl and robotics, and other hopefully productive things (read: case-writing). Oh boy. Hope I don't feel like this again.
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 really need to look over, but all-in-all shouldn't be too bad. We also played some pieces that our teacher considered too hard for us, but honestly I really wanted to do them. I'm kind of sad we're not, because then the repertoire won't be challenging enough, but oh well.
From there, I went to work on my debate case during lunch, then ate lunch, and then sent a reply to my Harvard interviewer with something that resembled a legitimate resume. (That interview is happening next Wednesday, probably.) Cardio went relatively smoothly as well, and from there more debate case-writing was done. (It's coming together okay, but only two hours of work have been put into it and it shows and that makes me want to die.)
That ended before Science Bowl, where we went relatively slowly on some harder packets (I made so many mistakes today it was unbearable). From there, I went to debate, which really pulled everything I had left out of me. I first helped some friends with their PF case, which was actually interesting, and then spent essentially the rest of practice making the decision between doing extemp and policy. I would have had a lot more fun doing extemp and judging, but I ended up choosing to do policy out of a sense of obligation to the team and my partner, which is honestly typical. (More on that later.) That instantly set me pacing, because this tournament will kill me. I'm debating with someone who has never really done policy, and this is especially bad because I am debating varsity, on a circuit where I have a decent reputation which will be absolutely ruined, along with my self-respect. Oh well. And so it goes. From there, I went to robotics, somewhat late and exceptionally non-functional.
Robotics was, subsequently, very limited in productivity. We installed some software on the robot, set up our chassis we will be testing with, and then hit a dead end with vision processing, not caused by our code, but rather by our setup of the libraries, which is honestly exceptionally frustrating. At least some progress is being made by other members of other subteams, which is slightly more important right now. In any case, that process lasted two hours or so before I finally went home, arriving almost at 9. I ate dinner, wrote today's very, very short response to the prompt, titled "Dream-catcher\False." And then, this.
Now for today's exceptionally depressing thoughts. First of all, in AP Psych we've been discussing different types of coping at a relatively high-level. There are two types of coping—problem-focused (actually solving the problem) and emotion-focused (not solving the problem but feeling better), and honestly I'm so out of energy to do problem-focused that only emotion-focused is possibly, and that is a depressingly unsustainable course of action. At some point it's all going to fall apart, and I'm not excited to find out when. At the very least however, I maintain some idea that I control in general my outcomes (even if it does result in a feeling of inadequacy and incompetence), so I have some internal locus of control, which is apparently a good thing.
The past two days have focused on my own inadequacies, but for once I would like to cast some external blame (even though it doesn't really do any good). I feel like I do my best to keep my ends of bargains and put in work (even if I don't like it) to fulfill obligations to others, possibly before even my obligations to myself, but it feels scarcely returned, even on the most trivial of tasks. (I asked a friend today to put our names on a signup sheet. He failed to even do that and I had to write us up after hours. Maybe I just failed to comprehend and need to check it again, but I feel like this was gross negligence on their part.) Inability doesn't bother me—it's perfectly natural, and it's how we grow. But when I need someone to come through for me, and I have expressed that to them, and they have agreed, I need for that action to happen. And in many cases, that doesn't happen. I can understand not being able to do something, but for the love of all that is good and holy just tell me and I can help you. *sigh.* Maybe my expectations are too high. I'm also probably still being hypocritical, and I haven't fulfilled my duties for a large variety of tasks and people. I'm not sure, but I just know I am tired and mildly depressed.
In any case, tomorrow, more Science Bowl and robotics, and other hopefully productive things (read: case-writing). Oh boy. Hope I don't feel like this again.
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