October Journal

I wrote this a long time ago and didn’t mean for it to be shared. I thought I might as well add this to the blog to make it seem more complete.

Oct 18, 2022

A lot of things have happened so far this school year.

Sep 7, 2022 Looking way back to September, the school year began pretty normally – nothing exciting really happened. I got to meet my new teachers (most of whom I already knew). The first few days went by slowly because it felt like a huge contrast to the freedom I felt in summer. Afterward, I began to take up my new responsibilities in the math league and the programming subteam in the robotics club. It took a while to understand what I was expected to do at my positions, but it turned out to be pretty easy. Sep 15, 2022 The Club fair went really well for math league and robotics. For math league, it was one of the most successful club fairs in recent history. Usually, the AIT Math League has less than 60 members, but this year we have nearly 90. Over 30% of new people joining robotics decided to join programming, which is way more than we need and we have ever gotten (I think)! The interest in math and robotics clubs has been great and hopefully, that translates into better participation in these activities this year. After club fair, we had a bunch of things planned in math league and robotics club. Sep 28, 2022 We had our first competition for math league in Metuchen and it went really well (we beat Magnet which never happens). Individually, the competition didn’t go as well as I expected it to. I made a few silly mistakes and lost easy points for the team.

Oct 1, 2022 A couple of days after the math competition I also had a robotics competition, the Raritan Valley Science & Technology Showcase. I had been going to robotics meetings every Monday and Thursday to figure out how to code and prepare the robot for the competition. For the most part from the programming side, we were successful at the competition. Early into the competition, our computer was having problems communicating with the robot, so sometimes the robot didn’t know what we wanted it to do during the autonomous period. We had no idea how to solve these issues even after consulting with the previous programming captain so we decided to talk to the adults running the competition because it was clear that there was nothing from our side that was going wrong. It turned out to be the right decision and our problem was fixed right then and there (apparently one of the teams had a bad radio which was interfering with our team’s ability to send data to our robot). Overall, the competition went pretty well: we didn’t place highly but we didn’t place lowly either which made it an average performance. After the competition, we started our first real math league and robotics club meetings. Competition math practices and general robotics meetings have been full of people and it’s been really great to have so many people! That’s how its been going for the last couple of weeks, running from one thing to another. I also took the PSAT (which went well I think), a couple more math competitions (had an NJML today), volunteered at an English as a second language place, and a bunch of other things I can’t remember!

I hope this hasn’t been too boring if you read it all. I tried to stay away from boring things like school or the SAT and stick to the things that I like doing in my journal. It’s definitely not everything I’ve done so far but I think it’s enough (probably more than enough) for one entry.

Oct 24, 2022

Today I had a CJML (which I got a 5 on), and all in all, a nice day.

Honestly, I have time right now to reconsider my priorities. These days I have a lot less free time (compared to last year) and I think I have to do too much in the limited time in junior year I have. So something has to give, either I sacrifice some sleep or I spend less time practicing things like competition math, Spanish skills, or the SAT English section (which are some of the things that I need to improve on) I’m starting to see why junior year is called the hardest year, but I think I’ll be able to push through it. I think I’m going to choose the first option, for now at least, just because currently I get a lot more sleep than my classmates. I think I’ll only have to do it for the next two months though.

School feels a lot more like a waste of time knowing that I have all these things to do. In some of my classes, it feels like we keep going over the same thing over and over again every day (not really learning anything). I understand that practice for things is important, but I don’t think it is necessary to be doing any of this at all if students already know what they are doing. I would much rather want to tackle something I need to practice like the aforementioned skills than waste time doing something I already know how to do. A solution to this problem would be not paying attention in class and instead working on other things, but I always want to pay attention in class. For these reasons, I’ve started to see those kinds of classes as decompression classes, where I get time to relax and have fun. Recently, I’ve realized that I’m not very good at Spanish reading or listening comprehension and I really try to pay attention in Spanish class but reading comprehension isn’t something you learn in class (its something you practice I think). I’ve also realized that a lot of the time people have trouble doing things that were briefly touched upon but expected to be learned in the future (especially in competition math). I wish the school system today were more adaptive to the needs of students. Actually, I wish I learned even more about that stuff than I did (which I think was probably impossible at the time). I wish school were better. I wish life was better …

I know what I’m saying might not be valid but it is what I feel like currently. I just dumped all my negative thoughts about school so hopefully, I won’t have too much trouble finishing my homework.

Oct 31, 2022

Yesterday, I woke up early to watch the Indian cricket team play against South Africa: it was disappointing, to say the least, and set the tone for the day. I spent the rest of the day doing my homework and spending time with some family members that came from Florida. It was a pretty boring and relaxing day in that sense.

Today, it’s Halloween, but I decided not to dress up this year. Halloween is only fun when you have a group of friends going trick or treating with you, and my friends decided not to go so I chose to not go alone as well. My sisters had a great time trick-or-treating and got a lot of candy. I have some free time today because some of the things I do outside of school got canceled because of the holiday. It’s given me some time to catch up on my sleep (I find myself sleeping for an hour after I get back from school these days) and do even more homework.

Honestly, I think I should get more efficient at doing homework. I think I spend too much time procrastinating on my work before actually starting. I could finish all my work in an hour, but distractions could stretch that into 2 or 3 hours. I think I’m writing about homework right now because I don’t really think there is anything else to write about.

Oh wait I had a Spanish listening activity. So today we had a listening exam in Spanish class about the lottery and a story of a man who lost his paycheck. The part of Spanish that I find hardest is comprehension because sometimes, either the reading or the listening, is delivered in a style that is hard to understand. Usually, whenever we practice comprehension in class, we practice much simpler readings and are expected to prepare for more complicated comprehension on test day. It’s not like we can’t comprehend Spanish, we can, but we don’t have practice with more complicated scenarios – like situations that use words outside of our vocabulary. Comprehension isn’t a skill that can be improved by spending an hour before an exam which is why I think Spanish teachers should spend more time on comprehension than they do on grammar. I know grammar is confusing for some kids in Spanish, but I think comprehension is more important to teach in class than grammar which can be self-studied. I think school often messes up on what they should do in class and what they can expect students to do by themselves.