I Don't Know

My friend showed me this video today, and I feel as though it thoroughly represents my current state of mind (and my state of mind for the past few years really):

For many, many years of my life, I have prided myself on knowing.  Knowing why, how, what exactly in our world works, and if I don't know, to go and find some answers about it.  Really, that's how this blog started: having too much stuff to say and not enough opportunities to say it.  Reading science articles as a middle schooler and being able to write and make some weird sense of it- or figuring out when to look up more to learn.  But now, I'm just uncomfortable and unconfident because I always have this pervasive sense of I don't know.

In a month, I'm going to be living and learning at MIT, one of the world's greatest institute for scientific and technological discoveries.  A community full of people who, well if they don't know, no one else does either.  I've heard oodles of advice, like "stay focused", "get involved", "but not too involved", "make the most of your time at MIT", "don't become too cocky", "you need confidence to get through MIT, because everyone else is going to be so amazing you'll feel quite insignificant otherwise".   I'll have more opportunities than I could possibly dream of, as well as being able to interact with some of the most brilliant people on this planet.  So it scares me that after four years of high school, I've come back to this blog and read through some of my old thoughts just to find that I not just don't know, but I really have Absolutely No Idea as to what I'm doing.  Let me just list some things in my big list of I don't knows:

I don't know what I want to do.  My goal in high school was to take all the AP sciences to find what I liked the most.  Verdict? I don't know whether I like chem, bio, or physics better.

I don't know anything about computer science except for the slow progress I'm making on codeacademy. Which may prove to be a problem most immediately when I participate in HackMIT, but more importantly in the long run as to what kind of things I want to do in my life.  (What are things? I don't really know either)

I don't know where I stand on so many issues.  I've actually stopped following Upworthy on Facebook because I realized its very strongly liberal articles are heavily warping my vision of the world, and I need to balance it out.  As the video relates, there's no one "true" opinion, and there are so many out there, that I simply find myself throwing up my hands going "I don't know".  Feminist? Supportive of education reform? Income inequality? I don't know! Or rather, I know the facts, I don't know my stance.

I don't know how to write a resume, or talk to professors, or do any of those things people say you need to apply to MISTI and internships and all of those.  Seriously, how do I do the adult thing? Or at least the college student thing?

I don't know what I even want to do as extracurriculars in college. Focus on research? Wind Ensemble? Leadership? Service? What can I even handle? Hopefully the pass/fail system at MIT will help me figure that out, but as of right now, looking through the extracurricular offerings is just.... confusing.

Quite frankly, I don't even know why I was admitted to MIT, because I'm completely lost as to what I want to do.  It might be in part because I assumed I would do premed, or something towards a biological research position, but realized that I haven't even touched the whole "engineering/computer science" sector of society and I want to jump in and see if I like it.

I realize that all of these things are normal, and just a part of growing up.  But I still can't shake the feeling of fear for the future, of all the unknowns.  I should be excited: at MIT, all my dreams can quite possibly come true: from lifelong friendships with people like me, to studying, researching, developing, and creating the things that I'm truly passionate about. If I work for it. If I seize the moment.  If I can figure out what "things" is, who those friendships will be with, and how I want to live my life.

I don't know if those if's will happen: as they say, be careful what you wish for. But at least, I can hope they will.  After all, I'm at least allowed to have an opinion, even if it might not be true.

And to the MIT admissions crew who may be looking at this blog in the next few days or weeks: just a shout out to say thank you for admitting me. I have no idea what you saw in me, but I will try my hardest to figure out what all these "I don't know"'s are, and make my MIT dreams come true.

Dorm Shopping

In the last few weeks, I've been shopping around quite a bit for my dorm room, with heavy guidance from a friend of mind who, despite being of the opposite gender, appears to be a much better shopper than me.
I was originally going to buy this at the linens site associated with my school (and many others), but after I ordered it, I did a quick google search and found many complaints about its quality.  So, I canceled the order and decided to go searching for my own things, hopefully matching and/or beating the price of the full pack. Here are my picks:

First, a trip to Five and Below revealed these goodies.  Actually, the storage ottoman and the laundry bag were gifts from a birthday party.  They match each other nicely, and since the jewelry organizer and the bath set were both nicely priced compared to other places ($5 each), it was a good deal. 

Total so far: $10

If you'd excuse my foot in this picture, I got some nice towels from TJ Max for about $21 total.  There are 2 face washcloths, a hand towel (pink), and a bath towel.  The tags say DKNY, so I'm assuming they're of good quality (or at least hopefully better than generic brand towels).

Total thus far: $31

Upon a trip to Target, I realized that a) dorm stuff is actually pretty cheap at Target and b) it's pretty nice stuff.  So I bought an organizer lamp for $15 (I could have sworn it was 13 the other day I visited), a shower mesh caddy for another $8, and the comforter sheets (which I liked the design of, thus the higher price) for about $50.  However, since I used a $10 off coupon, the total came down to about $63 instead. 

Total thus far: $94

'

The PUR 5 Liter Water Pitcher

I didn't think of buying a water pitcher for college in all honesty, that was said friend's idea.  My family owns a Brita Water pitcher which works quite nicely at home, and upon searching for one of those on Amazon, I realized that they were upwards of at least twenty dollars, which was a little more than I wanted to pay for a single/double person pitcher.  So I found that this water pitcher, of the PUR brand, is thankfully only $9.97 and significantly cheaper than any Brita product, even at Costco or other places.

Total thus far: $104 (approx)

And among other uninteresting things such as power strips, a pillow, hangers, a gel infused memory foam topper (well actually, that's mildly interesting, but I still have yet to use it so more on it later), and a hamper, my spending total comes out to about $180, $20 shy of the $200 Campus Pack price with other items like the pitcher that aren't included in the Pack, but rather useful for dorm life.  All in all, not bad shopping.

The Laziest Summer Ever

This summer, I have embarked upon what will forever be referred to in my memories as the laziest summer ever.  With absolutely nothing to do pending going to college, I have to admit, although such a long period of idleness will most likely never grace my schedule again, I would be quite glad for it.  For once, I am finally understanding the true meanings of "bored", "idle", and "lazy" means, and although it's quite satisfying to be lazy, it's also extremely aggravating.

So in the extreme nothingness of this summer, I've decided to apply for a blogger position at MIT.  And in doing so, I have to of course, submit samples of blogging. Which caused me to come back to this blog and look through some old posts and whatnot, back at the heyday of my blogging.  I've come to realize that there are several annoying blogging habits that make my writing difficult to read.

First of all: gigantic chunks of text. In this texting/email era, who wants to start reading a paragraph with seemingly no end? Even my patience has begun to run short with some of the long ramblings on this blog.

Second of all, I need pictures.  Admittedly, as a science blogger I was a bit concerned about copyrights, thus the extreme dearth of pictures of my blog, but I guess if I blog about say my own life, then I should include pictures.  A lot more of them.

Lastly, I need to stop sounding like I'm trying to pitch sales to people.  There are way too many !! marks, which is probably either a consequence of being young or a consequence of being excited about whatever I'm writing about.  Either way, although they're not bad reasons, I really don't need to sound like those people at the mall telling you to look at this product!! It's so amazing!!!

So in my future blogging habits, I will attempt to try to correct these poor habits, as well as find some interesting things to blog about.  On the note of blogs, here is my tumblr where I enjoy reblogging interesting science posts that come my way: https://www.tumblr.com/blog/pippinpoppin. Check it out for cool happenings in the world of science (strongly resists urge for the exclamation point...)