extraordinary

The word extraordinary has always confused me a little bit. I mean, if you're extraordinary then you're far from ordinary, and certainly not extra ordinary, yet to me it seems like extraordinary would mean just that: extra ordinary.

I want to be extraordinary. I don't necessarily want to be an extraordinary athlete or musician, but I want to be extraordinary as a friend, an engineering, a leader. So I'll set all these goals and kind of map out a game plan of where I want to be by the end of the weekend, end of the semester, in five years (I honestly don't think about anything past 5 years because I really don't know what's going to happen after that...). But yet somehow in my quest to become extraordinary I just feel extra ordinary. The hours are long, the pay is not good, and my boss is a grouch. Although not really. But this is about what my life has come to:

Ate breakfast on campus. On a Saturday morning.
After going to an 8 o'clock review session.
Story of my life right here.

I'm not saying this to be pessimistic, and school right now is pretty fulfilling and all, but sometimes it just feels like I'm a little disconnected from who and where I want to be. Malcolm Gladwell wrote in his book, Outliers, that success comes when there is a clear connection between effort and reward. I know there is. I know that everything will pay off eventually. But right now it doesn't always seem clear that spending painstaking hours on my chem labs or on my math homework will be worth it. I'll take it on faith, but man, it gets tiring sometimes.

But hey, long weekend! And in other news yesterday I was certified as an open water diver! It's funny how when I was younger there were all these things I wanted to do: backpack Europe, go paragliding (also wanted to build an ultra lite and then fly it...) and bunches of other things. I was just looking at the list of things I wanted to do when I was in 7th or 8th grade, and scuba diving wasn't on there although snorkeling was... scuba diving is pretty much snorkeling to the next level so I think I'll call it good.

Anyway, it's interesting how I came up with all these life experiences that I wanted to have, and getting into high school I honestly didn't think they would ever happen. How was I going to find the time, money, and people to make these goals happen? And somehow in the face of education my adventurous goals seemed unrealistic and impractical. Yet I've somehow managed to accomplish an appreciable number and will add quite a few this summer. I mentioned him before, but Randy Pauch is awesome and if you have some extra time you should watch his last lecture. In the post I linked to I mentioned that I didn't really think I could fulfill childhood dreams as I never thought I had any. But I think I already have. And am. Fulfilling childhood dreams that is.

If you're like me and think your life is extraordinarily dull and that what you're doing is entirely disconnected from where you want to be well... maybe you're right, I don't know. But remember the gap between extraordinary and extra ordinary is probably not as large as you think.

One ticket at a time, as case may be.

sing out loud

Before college, I didn't sing. Ever. Except for in church. But really, everyone in my family had their own specialty area of sorts, and we all stuck to those areas. Me, I played piano. And I certainly got told to stop playing just as much as my sisters got told to stop whistling or stop singing.

But here, I can't just play the piano for fun. What I mean by that is although playing the piano is still enjoyable, I can't play recreationally like I used to be able to do since I have go somewhere to practice. And even then sometimes I can't practice because all of the practice rooms are used up. I can't play while my cookies are in the oven; I can't play when Sunday dinner is being made. I miss it quite a bit really. My family is going to have to put up with me playing piano all the time when I come back over break.

I miss that piano. All the pianos here are slightly
out of tune and a little bit too stiff. And the soft
pedal does weird things to the keys.

Now instead of playing the piano I sing. (No one is supposed to know though, so keep it on the down-low, 'kay?) Sometimes it's just in my head. More often, it's out loud. Usually I'll try to avoid singing out loud when there are people around, but when I walk home at night generally there's not a lot of people around so I'll sing. I can't say that I'm any good. I can't even say that I know all the words to the songs I sing. Half the time I make them up. But that's okay. I don't know what it is about singing, but it makes me happy.

When I sing I don't have to worry about people judging me, because no one's around. When I sing I don't have to care about the tests I have to take soon, or the project I need to finish. When I'm singing I have courage to be myself, to be happy.

I'm a very precise person; I don't like doing things unless I know I can do them, and do them well. Or at least know that I can figure out how to do them well. I'm a person who will take forever in deciding to join a club or to take a particular class, because I want to know for sure that it's something I want to do, and am going to be able to do to the best of my ability. I haven't ever dropped a class or quit a club and I don't ever want to. It's not that I expect to be the best at everything I do--I certainly was no track hero--but I want to be committed at the very least.

With that in mind, for me singing is a little bit odd. I certainly don't plan on pursuing singing by taking vocal classes or joining a chorus. It's not like I'm a good singer now. So why sing?

It's because, I think, I've changed some. I don't think there's anything wrong with wanting to be committed; however, I think that mindset made me afraid to try things in high school that I might make me look silly. Like singing. But now, even if someone does hear me singing and I don't remember the words at all and I don't sound great... well, that's okay. Maybe that will give them the courage to sing out loud too. (Or maybe it'll just give them something to laugh about back at home...)

on happiness

So it's almost two in the morning on Thanksgiving day, and I'm sitting here at my kitchen table, completely alone, listening to Piano Guys (used to be listening to Christmas music but then everything started repeating...) on Pandora and working on my stats project. Wow, you say. Go to bed, and don't do homework anymore on Thanksgiving. Great advice, I appreciate it. Really.

But I'm not really that tired, and if I don't do some homework right now it's all going to pile up and the rest of my week is going to be miserable. Besides, I don't really consider it to be the next day until after I go to bed. Today (technically yesterday now) I slept in until two anyway, so it's not like I really need to go to bed right away. But look what I made! The cookies are chocolate with mint chips, and then Thanksgiving rolls, which are my favorite part of Thanksgiving dinner!

I am so culinary.

Even though I wish I could be home this Thanksgiving with my family and all my NJ friends, I have lot to be thankful for, as I'm sure you do as well. I've been thinking about being thankful, and being happy, for the past couple of days, and I've decided that the two are essentially the same. You can't be thankful for something while experiencing negative emotions like anger or envy. And if you're happy, then you ought to be thankful at least for the fact that you have a reason to be happy

Lately I've been watching a lot of Ted talks. I'm sure you've heard of them, and probably seen a couple too. They're better than the usual stuff that I watch on Netflix. Anyway, I got listening to a bunch of ones that talk about happiness, and here are some interesting points that were made:

1. The more choices you have, the more difficult it is to create your own happiness.
2. Happiness is an emotion of choice, not of circumstance. (Only 10% of your happiness can be determined from your external circumstances, the other 90% is determined by you.)
3. People are happier when they focus on the present (the task at hand) instead of letting their minds wander.
4. Happiness is more accurately is defined as a state of well-being; it is not just a fleeting emotion.

Ways to be happier:

1. Think of what you're grateful for.
2. Journal.
3. Exercise.
4. Meditate.
5. Perform random acts of kindness. (If you want to buy your happiness, here's how)

Notice that success isn't in that list; one of the people said the reason why success doesn't make us happy like we expect it to is because when we do achieve our goals, we redefine our definition of success, so we're continually striving to be better, never reaching "success"--or happiness. (For example, if you say you want good grades, all A's and B's, then once you get those grades you might readjust and say those aren't good enough. I want just A's. And so forth.) 

I hope that you finds lots of reasons to be thankful--and happy--this Thanksgiving.

why my life is great

I'm not going to lie, this week has been pretty fantastic, albeit not that great for the tests which I have next week...

My writing paper has been turned in! I think I worked more for that paper than for any other (except maybe a research paper), so I fully expect that my professor will post it as a sample paper with my sister's next semester. The bad news: this paper is being expanded. So, I will have to put up with this paper a bit longer. But alas.

This morning when I left to go to campus, I saw a hot air balloon! It was quite awesome. Unfortunately it wasn't close enough to take a good picture though.

When I was going back from campus this evening, I saw a car with a New Jersey license plate! I don't know who owns that car, but he or she is my best friend I tell you.

Best friends. Seriously.

In my organ class we have to pick a repertoire piece (i.e. not a hymn) to learn by ourselves, and I went crazy and chose Bach's Fugue in G. It has a pretty difficult pedal piece, and combined with the other left and right hand... well it's a mess right now. But it's upbeat and fairly repetitive so hopefully it won't be unmanageable. I'm really excited to learn it though.

That's right. Playing three parts at once. 

As part of the honors program they're starting something new: honors societies, each one focused on different great work experiences such as science, service, art, literature, etc. They had a meeting for it on Wednesday, and there weren't a lot of people there so I'm kinda like a leader person now! But I have many, many ideas for this club. Like, my group could potentially fire me for over zealousness. I couldn't understand that though, because how can you not be excited about science? Hopefully now I will have people to attend lectures with, or verify that the Fibonacci numbers are real with.

Speaking of lectures, I went to one yesterday that was really, really interesting. It was on origami, and because of it I can now fully appreciate that which I used to only enjoy. Origami is useful: you can solve up to quartic equations just with two folds, as incredible as that sounds. And, you can trisect an angle! While you may not find that so, I think that that's astounding. I took a class at governor's school the summer before last which focused on rulers and compasses. And by the end of the course I had accepted that it was impossible to trisect an angle--or create a 7-gon. Yet, you can do both of those without too much trouble with origami. The amount of math that goes into something like the piece below is simply incredible, and makes me appreciate origami that much more because I now understand how complex it is.

Made out of one piece of paper. For more see langorigami.com

fuzzy acorns!

     I have... not posted in forever. This week hasn't even been that crazy, I guess I just haven't really felt I have had anything worthwhile to post about. I won't bore you with the drab details of my week, but here are some highlights...

It got cooler! It's not anymore, but there were a good two or three days of sweatshirt weather, and some rain that will give you the chills. But whatever. I was super grateful for it because it seems like whenever everything points towards a good rainstorm, it doesn't happen. I still haven't used my umbrella yet though...

It was like this for at least a day before there was some actual rain.

Also, there are cool fuzzy acorns here! They're everywhere. Everywhere. I'll go to sit down in the grass and eat some food or whatever, and there'll be acorns, right where I want to sit!

That'd be them!

What else... I went to an instrumental concert! I was fed dinner three times this week, which you can really only fully appreciate as a college student. I sat up in a tree with other engineering/math/science-y people until past one last night. One of the library books I will swear I renewed was not, and now I have five dollars of fines because they charge a dollar a day and they don't e-mail you saying it's overdue until five days after. That's pretty sneaky of them. It also kinda sucks... But at least it was just one book I suppose, and not, say, five...

I have three tests this upcoming week! Don't let that sneaky exclamation mark fool you. I am only putting on a brave face, and really I am crying inside. Especially since one of them is for organic chemistry. I think so far I have been keeping up pretty well with problems in the books and so forth, but just because I think I'm ready doesn't really mean that I'm necessarily going to do well... AHHHHH. Let this week be over already, please.

Despite the moments when I feel overwhelmed by how much I have to do and don't know how everything will be accomplished, somehow I always find that somehow, everything does work out. I miss New Jersey, my family and everyone else I was close to back home quite a bit, but overall I'm happy here. I can't believe that this semester is already about a third of the way over. Crazy!