During all my years of school my motto was, "Just one more day". You have a test tomorrow and fifteen assignments due the day after? Take it one day at a time. Theres just one more day, then you can relax. 

Now its here! With tomorrow being my last day at school, I'm not exactly sure how to feel. Should I be happy that its all finally over, or be sad that it's ending? Surely I couldn't have enjoyed all the stress of completing mostly meaningless assignments, or cramming before a test just to forget the topics a couple days later. Maybe it was the people, but I've also met my fair share of people outside of school that I would bet are either on par or better than those at school.

So I guess this boils down to the question of, "what would you miss about school?", yet I'm grasping at threads to exactly what I would miss. Almost any aspect of school I could isolate, there is a better counterfactual that would be a better way to achieve that goal. Going to parties or libraries to make friends, self learning concepts instead of long lectures, and even joining sporting events for the community. So why would I miss school if every part of it could be replaced? The people themselves I could meet outside of the context of school if I really wanted. So why?

In reality I'd like to think its some version of Stolkhome Syndrome. The fact that my internal habits will be changing so drastically, not having a 9am-3pm schedule of pure lectures, changing to completely new method of socialization and learning—it'll be better, but scarily different. With days passing by fast, I'll make sure to keep in contact with as many people as possible, making sure the past 12 years will at least  remembered.

With so many of my projects & ideas put off till "after school ends", it begs the question of if they'll ever happen. Motivation doesn't seem to be magically entering my fingers as the end approaches, and I think I'm fine with that. At least now I won't have the constant excuse of school lurking around the corner, but I honestly don't know if thats enough to spur me into action. Hopefully I'll wake up tomorrow, school will be over, and I'll magically have everything in my life fixed—but I know that won't happen.

So if I had to summarize it all, this would be my open note to school:

I was so invested into the small moments, I never even realized you had passed since it was too late. Though not great in teaching or even socialization, I've been with you for these past 12 years. I'll miss how you put me in situations good and bad, forcing me to make friends in the hallways. Even when it was 3am and I was praying for you to just end, your uncaring bells still rung the next day.

Most of all though, I want to at least remember you—the amalgamation of all the people I've met in the past years. With every person I forget and every person I don't meet, a small part of that memory will fade into oblivion. I don't want to act like nothing happened for 12 years of my life.

I'm glad that you're over. I want to remember you. I hope I change.

what do you do when it really is the last day?

YAY, The school year is over! Online school was quite interesting, especially with my first AP tests, as well as managing to organize myself efficiently. Mainly my qualms with online school is only the "non-socialness" of it all, but I love the freedom it provides with learning, and the ability to review anything you need, without having to search for it. It definitely blurs the line between school and homework a lot, in addition to almost constant screen time (night shift 24/7 ganggg). I don't really feel the stress of taking 3 AP classes, but they all made finals season a lot harder with almost constant studying (hopefully I did well).

Looking back I think there are quite a few ways I could improve this year, but most of all I think that my main problem was staying concentrated. In a world full of distractions, being forced to be online 24/7 is fun, but also takes a lot from your productivity. I've tried to combat this in multiple ways, from just decluttering my digital space, to chucking my phone away. Either way, hopefully next year with in person school this won't be a problem. Another thing I want to do better with is taking more opportunities. I sometimes reject some because I don't have enough time, but almost always regret it, so this year i hope to accept more of them.

Now in the summer I have quite a few things going on, from a large scale data science internship, to taking 61A at Berkeley. My goals for over the summer would be just to create cool programming projects, hopefully something related to AI and circuits! Also I want to try posting bi-weekly (2 times a week) in my notebook for fun!

I'll just list out my achievements this school year for fun, and so I don't forget:

1st place Conrad Challenge, and Diversity Award

Good of Humanity Award DV Research Paper Competition

All A's second semester, and both semesters for only AP's

Qualified to NSDA National Debate Tournament (record TBD)

TeachAids Internship, and created CoviDB for Kids (2.4k+ hits)

USACO Silver (just tried it out of the blue, may study for it next year)

Hosted our Hack Club online with 30+ members and had fun

Learned Rust (been on my bucket list for so long, it has to make it lol)

Contributed a significant change to a large github repo, the Github CLI

Helped with Summer of Making, and Scrapbook for HackClub!

What are some things I could do better, things I liked, and my plans for summer!

#school

one more day

End Of School Reflection

.css-4cffwv{box-sizing:border-box;margin:0;min-width:0;display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;}#school

one more day

End Of School Reflection

#school