Testing the Techniques

(Just as a PSA: The following makes as little sense to me right now as it probably does to you guys. This is more of an attempt at some personal workshopping than anything else, and I hope that such an act might help me better perform in life)     At the state Scioly tournament and, to put it bluntly, I am not doing well. I just did some test flights with Andrea, messed up some key stuff, and proceeded to both make her worry about her event and yell at me. Thinking on this, for it is my own fault, I shall proceed to write about something that I think bears notice to some of my more crazy ideas, and also the main part of myself that I need to utlise/control/push/discipline/understand in order to better mitigate a specific type of problem that I am having - one which I shall lovingly call “magical ignorance”.     This particular sort of occurence, where my partner(s) end up getting mad due to my own sheer incompetence, is unfortunately not ne...

1. Round 2 Paragraphs 2. Lit HW 3. Chemistry Revision 4. USNCO 1 5. USNCO 2 6. Physics Prep / Math Prep Thoughts:     While I have nothing in particular in mind for today's post, I do want to start a discussion on awards - in particular, awards that schools / people give. While I may not be the most qualified to talk about all types of awards, I want to put a special highlight on certain types of awards, namely those of the "popularity contest" variety. These types of awards, at least personally, seem like more of a cop-out and less "award-like" than others, as they rely on people knowing all that others do, a fact which is not always true.    Now, what do I mean by such awards? What are the characteristics of such awards? Well, to be specific, "popularity contest" awards specify a certain type of award which relies on some sort of voting process to elect someone getting an award. Now, the following is not meant to apply in all cases, for ce...

No objectives for the past few days - haven't had much time to do too much due to college search. However, here is a quick post with some of my thoughts on something that I found rather interesting (although it is rather speculative in nature):    Over the last few days, I have really not thought too much about this, but here it goes. This topic is something that I honestly have wanted to talk about for awhile but, due to college stuff and other assorted stuff coming in the way, I haven’t made too much progress in this respect.   The tired introduction aside, I wanted to write this as the start of a series on my experiences in high school - in particular some of the things that I have realized that are a bit more particular to my own but, hopefully, will provide some benefit to anyone else. The first one in this series, this article, is on the difference between giving 100% and giving 101%. Enjoy!   --- Pause for some sense of dramatic ef...

Objectives: 1. Order stuff for chodge project [ cloud chamber ] 2. Ch. 15 Notes [ Element STDY is important ] 3. USNCO part i (timed) 4. Blog Post 5. Get through 10 JS programming challenges 6. Read a book / Finish a book!    Today was very interesting with respect to literature class. As I do more and more preparation for the essay exams that I need to take for IB exams ( literature and history ), I am seeing that I want to write less and less knowledge in my essays, focusing on the skills and analysis that I have developed more than anything else. Besides the strange focus on original ideas, I was pleasantly surprised when I was actually happy when I finished the literature exam today. Given my conversations with Zach yesterday, there are a few possibilities of this phenomena. Obviously, it all stems from properly enjoying the material, but the question stems from why is this material good material to read, rather than the boring material that I have seen in earlier ...

Today's Objectives: 1. Study for Lit. Exam [ Memorize and Compile 20 Quotes ] 2. USNCO part i. exam 3. Physics Prep 4. Blog Post on some topic on mp 5. 20-30 minutes of programming 6. Atkins / AP rewrite of solubility rules Thoughts: - Organic chemistry is, in many ways, a sort of "trap" for students. What I mean by this is that, like the so-called "calculus trap" some math students fall into, where higher mathematics is seen to be solely based off of calculus, I wonder if something similar does not happen with organic chemistry as a focus. These sorts of "traps", personally, are a topic of interest for me, as they tend to deter students from entering the entire field due to some given miscommunication between what a field's frontiers are and what a field's actual existence might contain. For example, look at the degree in which we teach calculus to high schoolers. Instead of showing them fields like group theory, graph theory, linear a...

Today's Objectives: 1. Seven paragraphs for bracket 2. USSR Chart [B,G,K,S] [Key, How, +/-] 3. Stereoisomer NTS 4. Blog Creation 5. Read ch.15-16 and do Notes 6. USNCO part i. exam    Overall, today went well. I managed to finish objectives one and two after waking up at five and getting ready. This fact is pretty awesome, as now I can focus on chemistry for the USNCO. Speaking of USNCO, I am still struggling with the qualitative sections and probably should ask Phillipps tomorrow to see what I need to do. On top of that, I also have a new long-term goal: finish physics prep. I might need to look at the extra work I can do and also figure out what quotes I want to look at for the upcoming literature exam. Besides all of that, I should probably start looking at how to do more each day, as I really should start ramping up the degree of what I do to ensure that I am ready for all of what I need to do ( actually should do some programming as well for Source Code ...