Doodle 087 | The Pile of Memories

The pile of doodles that I am leaving behind.

Leaving my dad, my grandpa, my grandma, and my brother was as unceremonious as I had hoped. No sobbing or long hugs. Mostly handshakes and shoulder pats of affection. And sleepiness because I procrastinated packing up.

I didn’t look forward to this goodbye. After all, I am flying home in three months anyways. That’s what I tell myself. Repeatedly.

I hate being overtly sentimental. Let’s save it for the homesickness that will hit later. I’ll be bawling my eyes out in my dormroom and it won’t be pretty. Frankly, no one in the airport deserves to suffer through that.

Last night, I was forced to make a few decisions on what to leave behind. I am a bit eccentric with what matters to me. No shame whatsoever.

Packed:

• My fountain pens Merlin, Dumbledore, and Mordred (yes, I name my pens)
• My “Princeton” notebook (no, MIT, don’t give me that look, it’s a long story)
• Three aquarium glass pebbles that I found in my elementary school playground that have remained good luck charms
• Ophelia, my phone, also known affectionately as Ophey
• The same covers and pillow that I sleep with (super old)

While sitting in the airport, I suddenly realized a problem: my stuffed animals were still at home.

With this horrible realization in mind, I slowly thought about home. It reminded me of that theme of childhood from anime like Revolutionary Girl Utena and that illusion that there could be a catcher in the rye to prevent children from growing up. Peter Pan syndrome and the like. An eternity as a child.

This past summer was the closest to eternity, the idea that my family was still the same family and that my place in it never changed.

And you know, it sucks to leave. In elementary school, everyone else in class wished to grow up. For me, it was the last thing I wanted. But growing up happens and adulthood happens. Yet somehow, childhood seemed to be the present forever, and subconsciously I turned my eyes away from the changes. The room rearrangements, my brother’s recent growth spurt, and now, the bed where I will be sleeping.

I’m coming back home but someday, that forever might not be there anymore. It didn’t hit me, no matter how many times I thought I understood that things don’t last. It’s so cliched that it feels numb.

At least there remains a pile of memories, much like the piles of papers on my desk (and floor) and the pile of doodles (pictured above). It’s all just piles now. And at least there’s still time to cherish people.

My eyes are tearing up so thank God my mom is taking a nap right now. I’ll hold off on crying until I get to a bathroom. No shame, man, no shame.

Doodle 013 | “Don’t lose the magic.”

As I wrote my thank you letter to my literature teacher, the memories of her class reminded me of her earnestness. Then the earnestness of my favorite authors struck me as special. And like the inspiration for most of these blog posts, I was reminded of something wonderful. I had to scrap the first draft and rewrite her letter.

Tobias Wolff, one of my favorite writers, and Douglas Unger, who is now on my summer reading list, inspired one of my favorite human beings, George Saunders, who wrote this article in The New Yorker, with his all of his humanity, empathy, and kindness.

His narrative is strewn with advice not solely to writers but to people, discussing how his two writing teachers taught him to be both a better writer and a better person. Here are some of my favorite snippets:

“Now I am writing more seriously, more realistically, nothing made up, nothing silly, everything directly from life, no exaggeration or humor—you know: ‘real writing.’

Toby looks worried. But quickly recovers.

‘Well, good!’ he says. ‘Just don’t lose the magic.’

I have no idea what he’s talking about. Why would I do that? That would be dumb.”

but then–

“I go forward and lose all of the magic, for the rest of my time in grad school and for several years thereafter.”

Yet Saunders finds his way back–

“I finally break out of Nick Adams mode and write what I think might be a good story. When I finish it, as in a movie, I hear Toby’s voice in my head: “Don’t lose the magic.” Of course, of course, I finally get it! All these years I’ve been losing the magic! Toby’s comment at that party all those years ago suddenly presents as a sort of hidden teaching moment, a confirmation that this leap I have made is real.”

and he ends his narrative with–

“Why do we love our writing teachers so much? Why, years later, do we think of them with such gratitude? … [Our] teachers, if they are good, instead do something almost holy, which we never forget: they take us seriously.”

I encourage you to read it in its entirety, especially if you are a budding writer of any kind. I imagine I will read it again before I go off to college and again whenever I need a reminder of the good in the world. For more George Saunders, I point you to his short stories on The New Yorker as well as his 2013 commencement address at Syracuse University.

And to my literature teacher, thank you. We’re awful writers compared to writers like Saunders, but you took us seriously too.

We have elevated beyond stick figures with hats.

Doodle 012 | Happiness is Never Stagnant

Happiness Shrinks and Grows

Huffington Post’s David Sze describes in his article a psychological study of the different cultural perceptions of happiness between American Caucasian and Taiwanese students. In the study, psychologists Luo Lu and Robin Gilmour had interviewed a sample of these students and found similarities with some noted differences in perception, but the difference that stood out to me was–

“For Americans, autonomy is ideally complete personal freedom to fulfill your potential and become your authentic self. For the Chinese, personal actions and choices must be governed by morality, and a meaningful life is a virtuous life.”

-David Sze (website)

I was reminded of my own family, even though I was not Taiwanese. My parents were education-gurus half of the time, focusing on college admissions and the numbers. The other half was indirectly teaching me and my brother to be good people first, focusing on family and practicality (read as frugality).

Growing up, happiness was never spoken of alone–it came in conjunction with education and financial stability. Almost every conversation with my mother would end up in a discussion of education or self improvement. That is not necessarily a bad thing, until you realize that American households probably had more conversations about movies or passions. I wouldn’t know how true that statement is.

But unlike the stereotype, my parents encouraged my assimilation into American culture. My mother expected me to be bolder, to get invited to friends’ parties (irony), to make friends, to be “American.” And in the future, she hopes the life I live will be comfortable, and that my bank account will never risk being in the red. This American Dream of independent success matured me, yet part of my happiness remains tied to my family even after graduation. It is selfishness tied to selflessness, but to say I was selfless feels arrogant because taking care of family is expected, not above the call of duty.

Happiness is not stagnant. It may have been higher in my childhood years before the education craze, but being free from high school marks a new future. “A meaningful life,” as Sze wrote, is derived from virtue. Consequently, my happiness is derived from my past decisions and my future ones.

---

 

Speaking of graduation…these are the most

FAQ of a Post-High School Student–

1. How does it feel to have graduated high school?

Not much different, seeing as I was manhandled volunteered to paint a mural in the guidance department and I still have teachers to see before the school year officially ends this Thursday.

2. Where are you headed?

The nerdiest, coolest school in Cambridge, MA. And before you ask about my major, I’m going there to study…something. I tell everyone chemical engineering because it is an easy answer to a complicated question. Lately, I have been looking into being a physics major but there is no way to tell until I start meeting more people.

3. Can you help me get into Colleges X, Y, or Z? or What did you do to get accepted?

Do stuff that matters to you and makes your life meaningful. Read Cal Newport, who is fantastic. I like helping people, so if you are stuck, shoot me an email (ivyli099 [at] gmail [dot] com). I offered a few rising seniors at my school some help and to give feedback on their college essays (not editing them myself because that is ethically wrong).

4. What are your career plans?

See #2.

5. Why do all the stick figures have top hats/bowler hats?

Wix Games created the greatest game of all time (to the middle school me) known as DuckLife in which your farm was demolished by a random tornado and you raise ducks to win duck races. One of the final clothing options for said ducks are bowler hats.

I liked bowler hats.

So I drew them on my bird doodles and my stick figure doodles. Sometimes I screw up intentionally (or unintentionally) and they turn out to be top hats.

6. Did you lay on a patch of grass after graduating?

Yes, did you really need to ask?

Doodle 007 | Linked to Humanities

Irina Dumitrescu wrote an eloquent article on the importance of humanities despite our political emphasis in STEM. Dumitrescu explains the enrichment that literature and language bring to our cultural heritage and identities, noting the irony of historical governments that bother to imprison those studying and teaching the humanities while disparaging the subject for being worth less than STEM subjects. Evidently, the humanities must have some worth for governments to bother over.

The humanities vs. STEM debate has been ongoing ever since the educational focus switched from the classics to the physics, as written here, and here, and here. The stigma against the humanities is prevalent, yet the loudest of humanities supporters still ring out above the din. They’re feisty. I like them.

—

For the last “photo collection,” I really enjoyed looking through Unsplash so I think I’ll use this quatrain-plus-a-cat as an excuse for one more–

Even if the engineers, the doctors, and all scholars of science

Image by Jesse Orrico

feel smug as it was they who are next to be subsidized,

Image by Fabian Blank

the writers, historians, and artists shrug in apathetic defiance,

Image by Gaelle Marcel

“Why bother arguing? You’ll need us anyways,”  as they rolled their eyes…

Image by Dmitry Ratushny

…and put on their sunglasses.

Image by Octavio Fossatti

—

I have been mulling over this for a while. The reactions I receive when I tell someone “I want to major in chemical engineering” are full of adulation, coupled with a few expressions of “that sounds difficult.” By contrast, the reactions for “I want to become a novelist” or “I want to become a freelance artist” are met with variations of “That’s nice. So what are your hobbies?”

It can be discouraging. I have since given up on explaining my career thoughts in detail and just responding with “I want to major in engineering.” The conversation just was not worth it.

The STEM fields should not be dismissed (that is where I am planning to major, after all), but the place I am heading to seems to agree that the humanities play a huge role in STEM.

Is there a place for the same financial security of an engineer as there is for a freelance artist? Is there an effortless middle ground for happiness and practicality? I hope there is.

—

A huge thank you to the followers of my blog and the likes for my posts. I do not blog for the sake of popularity, but receiving likes and followers means that someone is taking the time to listen. I do not take that for granted and thank you sincerely, even to those of you who just visited and decided that this blog is not the one for you.

Doodle 001 | “Time’s tide will swallow you.”

 

Procrastination must be the bane of my existence. Forgetfulness must be its sister. I won’t let myself get away with one missing day where I had no excuse. Third time’s the charm, so welcome back to doodle number one–

If I choose a door, let it be the one that can beat this doodle-a-day challenge.

—

I had misheard that line from The Smiths’s “That Joke Isn’t Funny Anymore“–the original line uses “smother” instead of “swallow.” Kind of like remembering a certain Robert Burns poem wrong.

When you are 18, you feel like the door has just opened. Time’s tide has not smothered you yet. The world feels remarkable. Idealism has not been thrown out the window, and the doors that will one day close remain beckoning for us, but the moment we choose one, other doors will start to close.

And then time’s tide really will swallow you.

—

Wednesday night at our school’s band concert, the two main band directors introduced the seniors and the schools they were heading off to. Interestingly, there was a disproportionately large number of marine engineers and computer scientists compared to very few music majors.

Perhaps as they chose their doors, the other doors that lead to conducting or composing or performing start to close. Maybe they’re okay about it. If they are, then they are braver than I am.

—

“We may not have much time…but it’s enough!”

—

I Could Give All To Time 

by Robert Frost

To Time it never seems that he is brave
To set himself against the peaks of snow
To lay them level with the running wave,
Nor is he overjoyed when they lie low,
But only grave, contemplative and grave.

What now is inland shall be ocean isle,
Then eddies playing round a sunken reef
Like the curl at the corner of a smile;
And I could share Time’s lack of joy or grief
At such a planetary change of style.

I could give all to Time except – except
What I myself have held. But why declare
The things forbidden that while the Customs slept
I have crossed to Safety with? For I am There,
And what I would not part with I have kept.

—

“And as I sat there brooding on the old, unknown world, I thought of Gatsby’s wonder when he first picked out the green light at the end of Daisy’s dock. He had come a long way to this blue lawn, and his dream must have seemed so close that he could hardly fail to grasp it. He did not know that it was already behind him, somewhere back in that vast obscurity beyond the city, where the dark fields of the republic rolled on under the night.

“Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that’s no matter—tomorrow we will run faster, stretch our arms further . . . And one fine morning—

“So we beat on, boats against the current, borne ceaselessly into the past.”

-F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby

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Most of what I’ve been posting are high school curriculum literary references. I imagine my college curriculum will broaden my writing abilities and knowledge more.

Image Source

 

Rambling Thoughts about Graduation

*sigh*

The high school world is a bizarre place. Or maybe I’m the oddity (likely to be the case). Graduation has not hit me, prom-excitement eludes me, and the tearful farewell still seems far, far away. Maybe I trapped myself into the bubble of now, because now just feels like a still moment in the midst of change.

Or maybe its like the stream of consciousness of the entire school. As if the whole school was one breathing entity, and through it flowed a river of senior concerns (prom, graduation, and whatnot) that seem to avoid me. Or maybe I’m the one doing the avoiding.

“I may not have been sure about what really did interest me, but I was absolutely sure about what didn’t.”

-Albert Camus, The Stranger (1942)

Not that there is much to avoid, since proms and graduation ceremonies are experiences shared by the 3 million or so high school students across the nation each year. Really, the experience itself is not that special. It’s not the fact that I went to prom or that I graduated that makes it special.

It’s the people, and the friends I’m leaving behind. It is this illusion that these people would never go away that bothers me. I don’t like sad good byes, because I’d like to think that I will see them again.

While everyone around me wants to grow up, I could care less. While everyone wants to leave the horrors of high school, I want to stay here. Or the more nuanced answer–at times, I want to leave and experience more, yet I couldn’t help but look back and wonder at the value that I now saw as I was leaving:

“And Lot’s wife, of course, was told not to look back where all those people and their homes had been. But she did look back, and I love her for that, because it was so human. So she was turned into a pillar of salt. So it goes.”

― Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five (1969)

Other times, it was a more general feeling. I detested a stereotypical adulthood because it only meant more responsibility. I could not see myself in an office desk, yet I wonder whether I would pick the easy, boring job over the more hazardous, exciting job if I had grown that desperate. I really wonder.

---

A few updates–

My mom insisted that I buy a smartphone (unusual role switch) even though I liked my flip phone fine. Admittedly, my flip phone isn’t the greatest. It stores around 200 text messages at one time, which means I need to delete a lot of texts regularly.

This can be a good thing, forcing me to remember dates and go through my inbox (yes, it acts like an email for those of you who have never owned a flip phone) quickly. This can also be a bad thing, because I cannot open new messages until I have cleared the old ones out, which has been a problem for a while. I solved this by reading Groupme text messages on my laptop and deleting those on my phone.

Anyways, there go my plans of graduating without a smartphone.

Now, people will be texting me left and right and taking advantage of my new “freedom.” I should probably set a 24 hour policy with text messages.

Second, I have to make up one AP exam due to a testing date conflict. So while (almost) everyone else is partying, I will be partying with a book and a laptop. That’s okay, since I’m sure I could party harder in one year of college than in all four years of high school combined. But then again, I was never a party person, so I can wait (forever).

And of course, a doodle, taken by my new phone, sideways in all its courtesy:

—

I won’t be starting the doodle challenge again until Thursday night after my exam. So stoked for that day.

The Idler’s March or Why I Procrastinate

Disclaimer: I might be a habitual procrastinator and I might get more lucky close calls than I deserve, but 99% of my deadlines are met. I’m a professional, kids, don’t try this at home.

When thumbing through self-help guides in a bookstore, I like reading their titles and joking to myself of how pretentious some (not all) of these authors can be. But regardless of how unhelpful some of their books are, because these writers took the time to write a work of publishable quality, I am still probably the bigger joke.

Which is why I have always been hesitant to dole out advice. If you ever receive any advice from me, be it in this blog or in person, take it with a grain of salt and use your own judgment. It is under my belief that each person generally knows what he or she should be doing, but no one really wants to put in the effort to change (myself included). You already know what you should be doing. Advice should only be a nudge in the right direction, not an entire redefinition of your life.

I will not tell you to stop procrastinating, because I would be a hypocrite. Admittedly, my habits are nothing I’m proud of, but they work and I’ve learned to leave well enough alone. Thus, I also will not tell you that procrastinating is wrong, because if you are anything like me, you will know that there is almost nothing more powerfully motivating than last minute panic.

I usually do this with blog posts every night.

Image Source

Since the college decision period is slowly winding down to a close, I’d like to have offered some advice on applying and meeting deadlines. I’ll do a little of that at the end, but I am probably not the best person to offer that type of advice.

Instead, I will offer three observations about procrastination derived from basic mathematics which may help you to become better at this discipline:

1. The amount of time you need to spend on an assignment is directly proportional to the time remaining prior to the deadline…

…within reasonable limits. Have you ever tried to solve 30 integrals two minutes before class starts? Challenge accepted, anyone?

But seriously, you will work faster if your grade depended on you finishing those integrals in the thirty minutes before class starts. This direct relationship means that the more time available before the deadline, the greater your tendency to drag on the time to do the assignment.

For the very first time, One Doodle a Day Blog features a diagram/chart showing a positive correlation. Super dorky and extra fun!

The power of using time to pressure yourself takes great responsibility. Use it wisely.

2. Don’t rely on luck each time like an idiot. Base your decisions on historic patterns from teachers/professors and extrapolate from there.

You may pray for a close call or beg for a deadline extension or even more reliably, you can fake a fever to stay home from school. While the latter is usually only applicable to elementary and middle school (primary school) students, it is important to realize that close calls are not as random as you may think.

Among my teachers (occasionally professors too), some are more likely to extend deadlines than others. Pay attention to their personalities and patterns of how they assign their homework. Judge accordingly and make educated hypotheses.

Just remember, you gamble at your own risk.

3. Never procrastinate everything. Diversify what you procrastinate on to increase the probability of success.

I am a firm practitioner of procrastination because first, I’ve gotten decent at it, and second, I do not procrastinate everything. You increase your chances of success if you spread out your workload. Think of it like having a diverse financial portfolio — if one investment falls through, everything else is there to back you up.

For me, the prime example would be college applications, since I could re-purpose multiple essays and had an array of applications to submit.

Sub-point A: How to not diversify procrastination:

Sure, some (read that as: “all but one”) of my college applications were submitted the day they were due…and some thirty minutes before they were due…and two of them at 11:58 PM, a few seconds before they were due. But I could do so only because the majority of my essays were already written, and the only step remaining was the final hours of editing and fitting the prompts. Still, it was awful pressure waiting for the submission to occur. Don’t do it. TL;DR: It is a bad idea to clump four applications in one day.

Sub-point B: How to diversify procrastination:

The last application I submitted over winter break was a mixture of essays from all the applications I had finished before. I only had thirty minutes to fill out the application before 11:59 PM, with only one of the short essays done. I needed to act fast. Desperately file-searching through my documents and pulling up old essays, I began editing everything. Because of the number of essays that I’d amassed, it was easy to find something that could partially fit the prompts.

Nope, can’t draw laptops correctly.

Two minutes before the deadline, I submitted it.  That was my Caltech application.

And I was accepted.

…

I did not dramatically separate that Caltech line to show off like a mic drop. I did it to make the point that the “art” of procrastination is a derivation of the efforts that I built over time, even though I wish I had finished it earlier. The Caltech application I submitted pulled essays from more than five other essays that I had written for applications. While on the surface, it seemed like a hastily put together application (not denying it), the application was also the final product from all the essays I had written before.

I could never have pulled it off if one of my best friends and I had not spent day and night mass-producing essays for all of our regular action applications over the course of five days in winter break. It was the most intensive writing workshop that I had ever subjected myself to.

It sounds noble and all, but this writing endeavor only started because I procrastinated and the experience was not noble and was not great. My friend texted me that Tuesday, Dec. 29th, three days before the main Jan. 1st applications were due (paraphrased):

“Hey, did you start on your applications yet?”

…Oops. I texted back (also paraphrased):

“Nope. Will be doing that now.”

Hilarity ensued, followed by desperation. The cycle that follows repeats over and over for several days:

1. We brainstorm ideas of what we could write about.
2. Then, we write our own essays independently.
3. Finally, we would exchange our essays back and forth to offer suggested edits through Google Docs.
4. Lather, rinse, repeat, all day, every day until midnight for five consecutive days.

In retrospect, it sounds like a great story because of the happy ending. But again, it’s because of luck that I don’t necessarily deserve and luck that I never expect again. I was lucky that the site did not crash. I was lucky that my friend managed to call me when she did. I was lucky that all these factors managed to work. I am incredibly lucky and incredibly thankful each time.

Again, I am not endorsing procrastination, but I am suggesting that in my experience, procrastination works, if you selectively and rationally weigh out your options. Regardless, if I had to do it all over again, I would have preferred more time to think and would have liked to have slept more those several nights. And while procrastinating means play before work, the “play” aspect was always tainted with guilt for not doing what I should have been doing (okay, the movies I watched were kind of worth it).

In college, I’m guessing I will never get away with this level of procrastination again. But it boils down to the crux of my observations: proceed with caution, and you’ll generally be fine.

If caution in college is finishing assignments as soon as possible, so be it. I’ve gotten way too many close calls with deadlines already so I’m hoping that college will fix me.

But then again, I said the same thing before high school.

…Oops.

—

ADDENDUM: It’s 3AM in the morning, and CPW is tomorrow. Finished packing up, (finally) and somewhat pleased my mom, who still worries incessantly (I’m secretly glad sometimes, but don’t tell her). I won’t be updating the blog until Sunday night, when I get back from Boston, but I will keep up the daily doodling, as promised. I prefer scanning the index cards, which will have to wait until I get back.

Super big thank you to everyone who’s been following and reading my blog posts. You are awesome!

“You’ve Never Seen Snow Before?”

 

In the lovely state of Florida, snow is rarer than a…than a…(than a half-way decent metaphor from me)…

I give up, snow hasn’t shown up in Florida since January 19, 1977. Even with the abnormal winters that have been shifting later and later with each passing year, Florida snow has never fallen in my short lifetime. It is no lie that we Floridians joke often of a perpetual summer, and while I am glad that our winter has passed and shows no signs of returning, I cannot help but wish for snow. In anticipation for CPW, I checked the weather forecast and found out that tomorrow, a 33 degree Fahrenheit snow day will grace Boston, MA.

Or technically, 34 degree Fahrenheit snow day will grace Cambridge, MA.

If there is such a thing as fate, then it is playing a charming joke on me. About eleven years ago, my family went up to Canada to visit family, and somehow, we missed the time when snow was falling. Fast forward to 8th grade on our class Washington D.C. trip, we somehow missed seeing snow by one week. Fast forward to 10th grade on my class Europe trip in March, we also missed seeing snow while still walking through a cold, rainy London. Fast forward (again) to 11th grade, when I went up to New Jersey with our debate team for the Princeton tournament in December, and I missed seeing snow again.

And I guess since CPW starts on Thursday, I won’t be seeing too much snow, if any. By the time the weekend comes, the negligible snow would have melted away.

I presume people who live in snowy areas will tell me snow is overrated. And they are probably right. Snow is likely the worst thing to shovel out of a driveway (sorry, I wouldn’t know what that’s like) and creates a muddy mess after it melts. And even I will admit that when it gets cold, I feel less productive and more likely to huddle under the covers. But I cannot help but want to see snow in the future.

I still remember my elementary school friends talking about flying up to Boston, or Chicago, or some other large northern city.

“Are you traveling this break?”

My answer is usually, “No, just staying home. What about you?”

And if it was winter break, the conversation would turn to snow.

“You’ve never seen snow before?”

Most of my friends would put on incredulous faces and would go about inviting me with them. But we were 2nd graders, and my parents didn’t know their parents. It wouldn’t have worked, but I’m glad we were still innocent enough to earnestly believe in things like that. Fast forward (again) to today and I still have never seen snow except in pictures online.

Snow, I had thought as a kid, was reserved for people who could afford to fly north in winter break.

Snow, I had believed and still believe, was special.

Most people see snow in winter, but for my family, holiday break was never a good time for vacations. December was the time when restaurants were the busiest, the time when tips were highest, and the time when my father came home the latest (around 1AM usually).  It wasn’t just a bad time to take vacations; it was the worst time, money-wise. And I don’t like begging my parents to see something so silly like snow in comparison to family income, despite how badly I wanted to.

But it’s not just me. My parents, my grandparents, and my brother have never seen snow either. When they spent years on paperwork and immigrated from China to America, they began to work long hours in a restaurant and did everything for my brother and I to go to college. Vacationing, and naturally snow, were trivial in comparison.

—

 

 

After I go to college and probably live more comfortably than my parents have ever lived in their entire lifetimes, I want to show them snow, because seeing snow, even if it is a muddy mess, is the act of breathing, living, and feeling a new experience. Seeing snow is like a rite of passage, because it meant that somehow, we managed to do something we never could have done before. It meant that I managed to take care of myself and relieve my family of their worries over my future.

I was once convinced by my parents (Asian parents, gotta love ’em) that college is the key to success, but now that I am older, college has become a door that leads to another door, instead of a master key that opens all doors. In the coming years at college, I would be breathing, living, and feeling a new experience. And everything feels okay and well.

I’d like to believe that the choice to attend college was a decision of my own volition, a path that I forged because I wanted to go instead of being told to go. Going to CPW alone and flying alone for the first time means that my parents have grown to trust me enough to let me go. And thankfully, letting me go, be it to CPW or college, means they just as equally trust that I will return to them, hopefully wiser and kinder than before, having experienced more opportunities than they could ever imagine.

And naturally, such opportunities include seeing snow.

You know how in music, there are B-sides, and sometimes, the B-sides are better than the A-sides? This is one of those times where the B-side (without lines) of an index card is more suitable.