March Madness

Remember how excited I was for February?  Well, it did not pan out exactly how I thought it would.  All I want now is for it to be March.  I know that it sounds like I am just wishing time away, but this time I mean it!  By the end of March, I will FINALLY know ALL my college decisions.  Even though I know in my heart that almost all my decisions will be rejections, the unknown is honestly more painful than the rejection letters.  I received one rejection letter in November, and it was such a relief.  I was not upset.  It felt so wonderful to finally know the result of my application and to be able to finally stop thinking about it.  I was physically shaking each day the week before the decision came out, and I was so glad when it was all over.  I finally was able to move on.

The end of March will bring fifteen separate decisions, which seems surreal since I have not heard any news regarding college decisions for months.  Even if all but one are rejections, I will finally be able to relax.  The stress of not knowing has been getting worse and worse, making it so hard to focus on anything else.  I am trying to distract myself with school and activities and projects that need to get done, but I find myself constantly checking college portals for no reason, secretly hoping I will be able to glean something out of the mundane information contained such as my name and the college within the university that I applied to.  

Thirteen years of schooling has led to this moment.  March, typically the most boring month of the year, will actually be the most interesting/exciting/terrifying month of possibly my entire life up until this point.  I know I sound dramatic and that one day I will look back at all of this and laugh, but this is how it feels right now.  Hopefully I will be able to buy myself a college sweatshirt soon.

Iowa Caucuses

The Iowa Caucuses are over and the presidential candidates are now moving on to campaigning near our homes in New Hampshire for the New Hampshire primary.  The Iowa Caucuses were full of suspense and surprises from both the Republicans and Democrats.

On the Republican side, Ted Cruz emerged the victor leaving Donald Trump in second.  And as tweeted by Trump once “No one remembers who came in second”.  Marco Rubio came in third.  I predicted months ago, long before the Caucus, that Marco Rubio would surge ahead.  I still think he will eventually become the Republican nominee as I thought months ago.  Cruz winning Iowa is unsurprising considering his following and relationship with evangelical Christians there.  I also think Trump’s second place is just the beginning of his decline.  While Marco Rubio did well coming in third, he still did not win.  If you just watched his speech after the Caucuses, however; you would have thought he had won.  

On the Democrat side, I sat on the edge of my seat as the results from precinct after precinct trickled in.  The race in Iowa could not have been closer.  As more and more results came in, the race became tighter and tighter.  It went from 51% for Hillary Clinton and 49% for Bernie Sanders to 50% for Hillary Clinton and 50% for Bernie Sanders.  The closest they became was Hillary Clinton ahead by approximately 3 delegate equivalents (different than actual delegates) with a 0.2% lead.  The race was too close to call, and the final results were not called until the next day, but Hillary Clinton’s campaign decided to declare themselves the winners the night of when the race was too close to call which surprised everyone.  And then in the middle of Ted Cruz’s speech, Hillary Clinton began her speech.  The networks were as bewildered as I was by these choices.  Twitter meanwhile was abuzz that some precincts were deciding the winner by a coin flip; it was that close!  In the end Hillary Clinton eked out a win in Iowa by the smallest of margins, but both candidates will receive about the same number of delegates.  It is not a winner takes all situation so it is not extremely important who won when the margins are so close.  In the end, Hillary Clinton will receive 23 delegates and Bernie Sanders will receive 21 delegates.  

I am excited to see what happens next in the New Hampshire primaries, and then in our own primary on Super Tuesday.

Impatience

In a previous blog post I talked about how I could not wait for it to be February because everything would be done.  It is the end of January now, midterms are over, and every aspect of my college applications including the interviews is done.  I honestly thought I would feel so relieved, but instead I am more anxious now than ever.  

I have put all of my blood, sweat, and tears into my college applications and now I have to wait until the end of March/beginning of April to find out anything.  While it technically is only a couple months away, it feels like forever.  The decisions I will receive will determine where I spend the next four years of my life; who I will meet, what I will do, what I will learn.  I am excited but mostly nervous.  I have never experienced receiving so many important decisions all at once.  I believe there is good and bad in receiving all the decisions around the same time.  On one hand, it will be hard to deal with so much rejection at once, but on the other hand it will be nice if after receiving a rejection I can also receive even one acceptance.

I am the most impatient person in the world, but I am trying to put it all out of my head.  It is easy to speculate and drive yourself crazy over-analyzing your application and trying to figure out what is going on in an admission person’s head.  I am trying to remember that I cannot change my application.  I did my best and I cannot control the decisions so I might as well enjoy the end of my Senior year before I go back to being at the bottom of the food chain as a freshman.

Preparing for Launch Day

Saturday is Launch Day for Project 351 and for months now I have been preparing to lead my Service Hero Team and my ALCer mentee through a day of service.

What is Project 351?  Project 351 is one of the most amazing organizations and one of the hardest to explain. Each year, an eighth grade ambassador from every community in Massachusetts is selected for their service and leadership potential. As a former ambassador and current member of the founding Alumni Leadership Council (ALC), I have had the incredible opportunity to help guide the direction of the organization and mentor new ambassadors each year with their Project 351 service projects. I enjoy providing advice to ambassadors such as how to advertise for clothing collections and connect with food pantries for food drives. The ALC gathers at leadership summits as well as teleconferences in order to brainstorm ways to engage ambassadors in service and to plan Launch Day and Reunion. During Launch Day and Reunion, we each lead our team of ambassadors through team-building exercises and guide them through a day of community service.

At Launch Day we gather at the State House or in Faneuil Hall in the morning.  Throughout the years I have heard from inspirational speakers like Governor Patrick, Governor Baker, Bill Richard, Senator Seth Moulton, Robert Kraft, and others.  Then we go out to service sites throughout the city painting murals, creating scarves, and packaging meals for the homeless.  We then come back together to celebrate our service.

This year all ALC members who are Seniors in high school are on a council within the council called the Senior Leadership Council.  I was partnered this year with a younger ALC member to help her lead our team of ambassadors during Launch Day.

I have been going to Launch Day since 8th grade.  I am so excited but also sad because this is my last Launch Day.  I'll save my tears though for our Reunion; the last Project 351 event I will ever attend.

Let January End, Let It End, Let It End!

I cannot overstate just how excited I am for it to be February.  Right now, there is so much to do as the semester comes to a close and by February all this stress and worrying will be over.

Semester 1 grades are so important because they are sent to colleges and are the most recent representation of your academic abilities.  As the semester winds down, there are more and more tests and assignments that need to be squeezed in before the end of quarter 2 in addition to the midterms.  I cannot believe that this is the last time I will have to take exams in high school.  Obviously these are not going to be the last exams I ever take since in college midterms and finals actually make up the largest portion on one’s grade, but I cannot believe it was 3 years ago that I was taking midterms for the first time.

Besides quarter 2 and semester 1 being over, by the time it is February all my college applications will be submitted.  My last application is due February 1st and the minute I hit send, I will sigh a huge breath of relief.  Every year of high school has been a delicate balancing act between extracurricular activities and schoolwork.  This year has been even harder because I have had to balance college applications, extracurricular activities, and school work.  I do not want my grades to slip because semester 1 grades are important to colleges, but at the same time I want to make sure I am putting careful thought into every single supplemental essay I write for colleges.  These supplemental essays seem endless and are extremely time consuming.  Some questions ask why you want to attend the college, some ask about your extracurricular activities, and some ask fun questions like “What’s your favorite word and why?”  

Finally, I am most excited for February because of all the fun that awaits me.  In February I will be going on vacation during February break which is in stark contrast to what I did over December break: college applications.  February also marks the return of my favorite show on television, Last Week Tonight with John Oliver.  Now that I am 18 I am old enough to enter the “lottery” to try and get tickets to see the show taped live in New York!

I cannot wait to get through January to the paradise that awaits me in February.

Thoughts on The GOP Debate

This week we talked a lot about politics.  Yet another GOP debate occurred this week and our class enjoyed arguing and discussing the candidates and their policy ideas.  For my blog post I am going to dare to post my thoughts on this week’s debate.  I want to clarify from the start that if you disagree with me, that is perfectly fine and I completely respect your opinions.

In our class we have students with opposing ideologies who vehemently disagree with one another, yet they manage to discuss and debate different issues with respect.  The amount of disrespect, and irony during the debate was almost as depressing as the proposed plans to carpet bomb citizens in order to take out Isis and to shoot down Russian planes if they enter a no-fly zone.

At the beginning of the debate, Governor Kasich said that his daughter was uninterested in politics because of all the fighting and yelling.  He called for unity between candidates and the two political parties.  Right after he called for people to start working together and stop yelling at each other, the camera cut to Governor Christie who began saying “America has been betrayed.  We’ve been betrayed by the leadership Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton have provided this country”.  This comment seemed so ironic after Governor Kasich had just finished pleading for unity between Democrats and Republicans.  

The main focus of this GOP debate of course was national security after the events in Paris and San Bernardino.  Each candidate had a slightly different plan for keeping Americans safe, but one point all the candidates seemed to agree on was that our military is weak and must be strengthened.  Perhaps I am young and naive, but I do not understand how our military can be so weak when in 2014 the total amount spent on national defense was $613.6 billion.  The projected amount that the government will spend on the military for 2015 is $598.5 billion dollars2.  While the government also spends billions of dollars on other programs, the government still spends the most on the military.  The projected amount spent on the military in 2015 would account for 54% of all federal discretionary spending, and I think this statistic is best illustrated by this pie chart2.

It should also be noted that the amount the United States spends on the military is far greater than many other major countries combined which is also best illustrated by a graph for the year 2014.

The candidates never mentioned statistics or data that backs up their claim that the military is “weak”.  Some candidates talked about military equipment being old and out of date.  If the government truly needs to update military equipment, perhaps the money allotted to military spending could be budgeted better.

While the candidates all attempted to make various points during the debate, most of them were based on this presumption that the military is underfunded, which based on the data, just seems to simply not be the case.

The most important thing, however, that I took away from the debate is that Governor Kasich really enjoys playing Fruit Ninja.  

1http://www.pogo.org/our-work/straus-military-reform-project/defense-budget/2014/total-us-national-security-spending.html?referrer=https://www.google.com/

2https://www.nationalpriorities.org/campaigns/military-spending-united-states/

My Wish List

Each week for the past few weeks we have had the luxury of being able to write about whatever we want in our blog posts.  Nevertheless, each week I try to relate my posts to something happening in class.  This week I have decided to take this freedom to write about something I want for Christmas.

In A Room of One’s Own by Virginia Woolf, all Mary (Woolf’s narrator) wants is money and a room of her own in order to write fiction.  Money is a tangible item that one can obtain, but if one is a woman like Mary in the early 20th century, it is hard to obtain money on one’s own without a husband or a father.  A room of one’s own could possibly be considered a tangible thing.  A physical room with walls is a tangible thing, but the idea of a room of one’s own is not a tangible item.  The desire for privacy is intangible.  It cannot be bought.

As we get closer and closer to Christmas, everyone in my family keeps asking for my Christmas Wish List.  They want to know what to buy me.  As a child my list would go on for pages and pages with items like Chat Nows, Tamagotchis, Webkinz, a digital camera, and a karaoke machine.  This year however I have no list.  There are many things I really want, but none of them are tangible items that can be bought.  It is aggravating when the things one desires no longer can be bought at Target.

The number one item on my Wish List this year is an acceptance letter to one of my top choice colleges.  Even just one acceptance letter to one of my dream colleges would vindicate years of balancing schoolwork, homework, and extracurricular activities.  I care deeply about academic achievement, and I am the type of person who stays up until two in the morning in order to complete all of my homework and study for tests in order to achieve the best possible grades.  For the past four years (and even in middle and elementary school) I have stressed and worried about grades.  I have worked as hard as I can forgoing friends, sleep, and fun just to do well in school.  I have heard over and over that “It doesn’t matter where you go to school.  It matters what you do wherever you go.”  I understand that this is mostly true, and I am sure that no matter where I go, as long as I work hard, I will be able to achieve whatever I want and have a great life.  However, while I have certainly learned a lot by working as hard as possible, getting into just one great school would feel like a reward and recognition of all my efforts.  Unfortunately, an acceptance letter to an amazing college will not be under the tree this year, no matter how badly my parents would like to fulfill my wishes and give it to me.