I have a policy when it comes to rating experiences: never rate experiences until they’re over, only in retrospect, because you’ll most certainly hate it at the time if you’re rating it in the first place. I remember the councilors saying that high school is going to be some of the best four years of my life. I was a freshman then. Now I’m done, out of high school, done with the wonderful land of free education. It’s been an interesting four years to say the least. There’ve been ups and downs, but overall it’s been an awesome ride.
I can’t say it will be the best years of my life since I have still a long life to live ahead of me, but they were right about one thing: you will change more than you know and so will your friends. When you first enter as a freshman, the counselors make you fill out a questionnaire with some random questions about yourself. Four years later, they show it to you again just to prove their point about how much you’ve changed.
As a freshman I was timid and shy around strangers and socially inept at times. Now… I think I’m just socially inept. Two out of three isn’t too bad. I’ve become a somewhat competent technologist too, but I’ll save that for another blog someday. My philosophy on life has changed significantly for reasons I don’t remember at the moment. It goes something like this: overcome one hurdle at a time; when you knock down, look back to see what you did wrong, but focus on getting over the next hurdle. More recently, I developed another when I had an introspective moment this year: don’t care so much about what people think.
Thinking back, I can remember the many different phases I went through, particularly this year, where I behaved and thought differently in each. Sometimes the transition between each phase was gradual and at other times it would be quite sudden.
The friends you have as a freshman may not be the same friends you have as a senior. The reality is that although you may hold onto a few close friends all the way through high school, many of them will change and you will make new ones along the way. I met most of the people I hang out with now in my junior year: Luke, Abbi, Melissa, Sadie, Brian, Julia. Interestingly enough I got to know most of you through IB Physics. Matt and Brett, my homies, my partners in crime, you guys are awesome. We’ve been making ruckus together for all four years. Rock on at OSU and try not to get into too much trouble.
I’ve learned to appreciate the immeasurable value of mentors in one’s life. At the time you don’t think much of it, but afterwards you appreciate how much time they’ve set aside to make sure you succeed. I’m not sure what motivates them, but it is a gift that exceeds all others. I have been fortunate enough to have two mentors during my time at Gresham. The first is Stephen Scannell who without him, there would be neither InvenTeams nor FIRST Robotics for me. The second is John Walker, who has imparted many words of wisdom and helped me realize, perhaps, the human side of technology. If I ever write a book about my life, both of you will most certainly get a shout-out. It’s been an honor.
I mercilessly teased some of the lower classmen about how many days of high school they have left (actually, I only talk to one so you know who you are), but part of me is envious of him. A small part of me doesn’t want to let go. There are a lot of people I don’t talk to much outside of school. Previous summers have always been fairly easy to cope with. I think part of the reason for that is that I knew that I would get to see everyone again in the fall. But this summer is different because we’re all headed off in different directions, or at least many of us will be. We were all traveling the same road for a while, but it is nearing the time where we all must choose our own path and follow our own destiny. Perhaps they will converge again at some point, or at least cross.
Posted on June 1, 2008 in Life, School, Uncategorized
My teacher suggested I watch Randy Pausch’s “Last Lecture” yesterday. I saw the story go by in my Google Reader a few weeks ago but didn’t think to look at it. I forgot about it again when I got home and didn’t remember to watch it until I saw a quote by him on a friend’s MySpace.
The brick walls are there for a reason. The brick walls are not there to keep us out. The brick walls are there to give us a chance to show how badly we want something.
Randy Pausch seems like one of those great guys who is passionate about what he does and infuses everyone around him with his enthusiasm. Just watch his last lecture and you’ll see what I mean. He’s a CS professor at Carnegie Mellon that was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. I hope I will have a chance to meet him when I go there this fall.
In his lecture, he talks about achieving his childhood dreams. As I sat in history today, I started pondering my own childhood dreams. Rather then write them down, I decided to doodle them.
There’s me as a kid dreaming. The cloud on the far left has a paintbrush in it because I wanted to be an artist. I took art for several years all through elementary and middle school.
I also wanted to be a roboticist. I liked to play with LEGO Minstorms as a kid. I used to build and program LEGO robots and upload pictures of them to the internet for the world to see. My profile on the Mindstorms community site is still online after all these years. The pictures of my robots are gone sadly.
The third cloud is obviously a rocket in space. Who didn’t want to be an astronaut at some point? My friend and I said in forth grade that we would go to space together someday. He changed his mind though and wanted to be a wolf biologist.
But before wanting to be an astronaut or a roboticist, I wanted to be a programmer which says something about me I think. The last cloud has some C++ code for the seminal “Hello World!” program that everyone starts out writing.
I think I’m on on my way to at least three of those dreams. I doodle a lot and design websites which can be considered art. I built a robot this year. I’m majoring in computer science in college this fall. I’m not so sure about my astronaut dream though.
Posted on April 23, 2008 in Life
I had been having a bit of trouble deciding where I want to go for college as some of you may know. I was torn between UCLA and Carnegie Mellon. I had been researching each school for sometime and trying to figure out what mattered to me the most. UCLA is on the west coast located in sunny Los Angeles while Carnegie Mellon is on the east coast in Pittsburgh. I would say that’s a bit of a contrast in location, but the differences don’t end there. I won’t discuss all the different factors that influenced my decision. I was undecided and that’s all you really need to know.
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I decided where to go in English class of all places. My teacher passed out note cards so that people could write what college they were going to and stick it on the door of the classroom for everyone to see. By that time I had already researched everything from recreational activities to how the computer science program is structured. I doubted there was much else I could find out about the schools without actually visiting, which I couldn’t do due to cost of travel and lack of time. So I’m sitting at my desk with a blank note card in front of me and I think to myself “Ah, what the hell. Now is a good time as any other.”
I wrote Carnegie Mellon on my note card and proudly stuck it on the door. 
Posted on April 18, 2008 in Life, School
I competed in the Oregon SkillsUSA web design competition again yesterday. The rules were the same as least year. We had four hours to build a website based on a fictitious website proposal. However, I went solo this time around and competed against six other teams of two. It was interesting to say the least.
After the competition I went to Red Robin with Sadie, her dad, and Emerald for lunch. I had the most amazing burger I’ve ever had in my life there. It was heavenly, epic even. I think it was called the Whiskey River BBQ Burger. The onion straws at the bottom are magical.
After lunch we went back to the competition for the awards ceremony. It was really long like last year’s. They awarded the winners in alphabetical order by competition name so web design was near the very end. Sadie and Emerald took third and I took first again. That makes me the two-time state web design champion monster.
Here’s a link to the website I made. That’s what four hours, a computer, a Kit Kat bar, a bottle of water, and an iPod full of good music can get you.
Posted on April 13, 2008 in Code, Life, Web
