2020 Hindsight, Part 3: The Digital Semester

     How wrong I was back in high school, when I thought I'd be done with online classes forever. At the time, online school was a necessary evil, the only way to make room in my schedule for the fun and cool classes I wanted to take. Knocking out a few boring courses over the summer gave me space for band, woodshop, drawing and digital media, which were a big part of how I stayed sane through all my AP classes. In 2016 I figured I was finished with internet-based education, but of course 2020 had to go and prove me wrong. This time, I wouldn't be doing one or two classes online--more like all of them.

     In the defense of online school, it's not without its perks. You don't have to get up and trek to the opposite side of campus; in fact, you technically don't have to get up at all. With your camera off and microphone muted, you could just as easily watch your lectures from the sweet embrace of your bed, and no one would be the wiser. This goes for eating, too. Remember those awkwardly scheduled classes making it difficult to squeeze in lunchtime in years past? Not a problem. Go ahead and eat those noodles in the middle of Thermodynamics. No one will know.

    Despite the apparent benefits, though, online school is definitely worse for me. I've found I don't retain information nearly as well when I'm not in the classroom, and it's much easier to become distracted. On top of that, all the extra screen time leads to headaches on long school days. The worst thing about online class, ironically enough, is also the best thing: you don't have to leave home. It seems great at first, but without any obligation to march across campus, it's dangerously easy to forget to go outside entirely. I sometimes went three whole days or longer without ever leaving my tiny apartment, and that's not good for anyone. 

    The level of isolation incurred by staying indoors so much has detrimental effects not only on the body, but also the mind and soul. Disrupted sleep patterns, lack of energy and a general unwell feeling became common, especially after my direct roommate ditched me and moved out in September (I give him a bad time because I've known him for years) thus leaving me alone in my room. On good stretches I would remember to spend time outside each day simply for the sake of being outside, but closing deadlines and the onslaught of midterms meant this wasn't always the case.

    But enough of the depressing stuff for now; let's mention some of the notable things that happened over the course of the semester:

• I'm done with math classes. Differential Equations was the last one. Despite everything, I even pulled off significantly better grades than my previous math class, the PTSD-inducing Multivariable Calculus (seriously, a C to a B is a huge jump). I did well in Thermodynamics too, which is another notoriously hard one.
• One of my roommates got Covid (but the rest of us didn't). Quarantine is important and all, but it's a real drag. We watched Star Wars. All of it.
• We pulled off a roommate road trip! Every dorm I've been in has discussed this, but we've never managed to actually do it before. Spending a couple of days around Zion National Park was a great change of pace.
• I filmed a horror movie trailer for an apartment Halloween competition. It was a fun way to kill a few hours, and hey, we each got $10 gift cards out of it. You can watch it here:

• I built a desktop PC. A lot of research went into learning how to do it, but the physical assembly wasn't nearly as hard as I thought. Making stuff is always satisfying, especially if it's something I know I'll get a lot of use out of.

    With that, I conclude my three-part recap of my 2020 experience! This year has been fraught with battles fought and lessons learned, but I like tho think we'll come out all the better for it. With the sequel on the horizon (AKA 2021), all I can say is who's up for round two?

Ad Meliora!

2020 Hindsight, Part 2: Vlad the Impala

 I always hated driving, which is a shame, because I've always liked cars. I played racing games, I was eight years old for the premiere of Pixar's Cars, and a few trips to local car shows in my early years instilled a deep love for classics (especially anything made in 1967).

However, by the time I was fifteen, I wasn't at all excited to drive. It was intimidating, and a few harrowing experiences in driver's ed didn't help. I was practically coerced by my parents into getting my license, because on my own I wasn't going to get it done anytime soon. I couldn't explain it--I loved cars from the outside, but for some reason getting behind the wheel only filled me with anxiety, not joy.

Fast-forward several years, and not much had changed; except, of course, that my love of 60s American muscle was now matched by a newfound love for 80s and 90s Japanese cars. I still drove the family car only as a last resort, and during the school year I'd rely on buses or rides from friends, lacking my own vehicle. I realized that having a car would be a tremendous functional benefit, but I didn't know how to deal with the crippling anxiety that came with the driver's seat.

Eventually, in about February of this year, I had an idea: I normally handle anxiety-inducing situations with excessive preparation beforehand, so why not apply that strategy? To be comfortable with a car, I'd have to understand the car on a deeper level. I needed to get my hands dirty and start fixing things; that way, I'd accumulate knowledge of most everything that could go wrong, and how to guard against it. And in order to spend that much effort on a car, I'd need to own it in order to make myself care more for it.

I looked at several options and was disappointed each time, ultimately deciding to formally buy the family car I had been taking to work. After all, we already knew what problems it had, and besides, I was beginning to get attached to it. Thus, the weird brownish-gold 2002 Impala I'd been making fun of for years formally became Vlad. Vlad the Impala. My chips were placed.

Just look at this nasty headlight. One of many things to fix.

While it's true that confidence can come from preparation, it also comes from experience, and I got more of that than I asked for this summer. For someone who faces severe anxiety about driving, you can bet I wasn't thrilled when the following things happened within the space of two months:

• My first tire blowout on the highway (a bad one at that--the tread separated from the sidewall all the way around the perimeter of the tire)
• Being completely blinded with spotty traction by a freak torrential rainstorm
• Witnessing two accidents right in front of me
• Emergency coolant warnings after a radiator hose started leaking like a sieve
• Getting road-raged at after misunderstanding the traffic flow of a very confusing parking lot
• My turn signals unexpectedly fritzing out, along with all the gauges on the instrument panel going completely haywire

By the end of that, I was starting to get more desensitized to the perils of driving, which was its own strange kind of comfort. Ordinary road hazards seemed like nothing by comparison, and I could turn my attention to learning the mechanical workings of the car. Fortunately, I had a highly experienced family friend to show me the ropes and help me start personally working on my vehicle. Here's the laundry list of stuff we fixed or upgraded along the way:

Old wheel on the right, new wheel on the left.

• New wheels and tires--dressing up the car a little bit worked wonders on its overall appearance. In addition to spiffy looks, wider wheels came with improved traction and handling, and I got comfortable with using jacks and impact wrenches to change wheels. I even learned how to measure the wheel well to determine what width wheels the car could accommodate. 
• Replaced leaky coolant hose--I didn't do this personally because I was at work, but it had to be done.
• Replaced hazard light switch--this is how I learned how to take off the dashboard, which came in handy for the stereo later.
• Replaced main ignition switch--this was actually the source of the turn signal/gauge cluster problems, because all the electrical systems run through it.
• Refinished headlights--the polycarbonate headlight casings were so yellowed they seriously impeded nighttime visibility, so I popped them out and sanded them down by hand during my quiet nights off. Imagine me in the backyard, crouching like Gollum over my headlight assembly with a spray bottle and sandpaper at 3:00 AM.
• Fixed bench seat hinge (the center console flips up as a sixth seat)--the hinge was busted, so I took it apart and discovered it was actually horribly designed. Doomed from the start. so we welded on an extra piece of metal, bored some new screw holes, patched up the old joints with epoxy and sank longer screws through the formerly stripped and broken holes. It's pretty indestructible now. Yay for engineering!
• Entirely new suspension--Vlad handled like a boat, with exaggerated swelling motions after every dip in the road and ridiculous body roll in every turn. We knew the old struts were shot, but little did we know that both sway bar end links had also failed (which explains the sideways roll). It was supposed to be a simple job, but stubborn bolts and unexpected surprises turned a two-hour job into five. Surprises like the next entry:
• Driver's side CV axle--nothing like lifting off your wheel to discover nasty blobs of grease all over from your ruptured CV joint. There goes another ninety bucks.
• New stereo head unit--the stock CD player was broken and had no aux port, so I figured I should upgrade the whole thing rather than driving around with my sad little bluetooth speaker on the dash. Turns out the stock speakers actually sound pretty good when you can use them; however, GM made a really stupid design choice by routing the emergency warning chimes through the stereo, so I had to scrounge up a special wiring harness with a pigtail to its own little speaker box in order to preserve the warning chimes. Not cool, Chevy. At least the new stereo sounds great, and it was a good opportunity to break out the old soldering iron.
• Backseat reading light switch--the clicky switch housings for the backseat lights are pretty weakly designed, and one popped apart. Once I found all the tiny components, it was easy enough to glue together. I was half worried I'd get the cops called on me as I sat in the car with a flashlight in my teeth at 4:00 AM dismantling stuff with a screwdriver, but fortunately that didn't happen. The other side has now broken the same way, but I haven't fixed it quite yet.

8 hours of sanding = clean happy headlights!

If half of that didn't make any sense, I don't blame you; a few months ago, I would've agreed. The point is, Vlad doesn't handle like a pirate ship anymore, and I learned more about repairs and maintenance than I ever could have hoped in such a short time.

So did the plan work? Yeah, sort of. Navigating to places I haven't driven to before is still a source of anxiety, but everything else isn't so bad anymore. On familiar roads, I just roll down the windows and listen to the engine. I found the solution that was right for me: in order to not hate driving, I had to start with loving my car.

Hic Manebimus Optime!

2020 Hindsight, Part 1: Adventures at Amazon

 With the year coming to an end, it's time to atone for seemingly dropping off the face of the earth for the last several months. This year has done a number on us all, as I'm sure you know too well, and most of us have felt as if we're trapped on our own little islands of isolation.

               

In a year like no other, it can be especially valuable to look back on our experiences to see what has changed and what we ought to learn--hindsight, after all, is 20/20, and even if all we've learned from 2020 is that there was no reason to complain back in 2019, we're still on to something.

With that, here's the beginning of my highlights reel for the year, and the lessons I've learned through the pandemic.

Back in April, I was searching for a summer job to cover the costs of the oncoming school year. The problem was that we were only a month into the pandemic and hadn't figured out how life was going to proceed, meaning most companies weren't taking on any new employees. The exception: Amazon, the one company doing better than ever with everybody staying at home.

If you've ever wondered how you're able to obtain your package within a day of ordering it, it's because there are people working around the clock to get it done--people like me. I was signed on for the weekend night shift, which paid better, but left me working 6:30 PM to 7:00 AM each week from Thursday night until Sunday morning. It was really like a 36-hour shift with two sleep breaks in the middle, since I had no time for anything but meals, showers and sleep between commutes.

Now, Amazon ain't a bad place to work. I met some very interesting characters, but everyone was nice, and the atmosphere was positive despite the stresses of fast-paced work. In the beginning, my body wasn't up to the strain of being on my feet for twelve hours a day, and the soreness hit me hard. At first I couldn't lift my arms above my head when I came home in the morning from the aching and weird muscle cramps I accumulated, but after a couple of months, things got better. I grew stronger and faster, and eventually I was pulling some of the best numbers on the entire floor.

Through this experience I learned all the ins and outs of the mysterious logistical machine that is Amazon, from the moment you click "place order" until your item arrives. Normally an employee would have to wait several months before getting trained in a second department, but due to a crazy mixture of circumstances I ended up learning seven different processes over the course of four months--almost every job an entry-level associate can do in that facility. The most entertaining part of the whole thing is seeing what strange combinations of products people are actually buying. Processing over seven hundred items per hour, I've seriously seen it all; here are some favorites:

• A box of fruit snacks, a teddy bear, and 300 razor blades
• four pounds of walnuts and 66 boxes of orange Jell-O
• nine high-quality water bottles and a matching nine copies of the PBS documentary College Behind Bars
• a dozen fantasy novels, a giant box of Airheads and a soap-making kit

Some of these combinations indicate people who really know how to throw a party, whereas others make you wonder just what kind of party they're putting on, or just raise general concern for all parties involved.

The four nights a week when I didn't work, I was still nocturnal--rather than flip back and forth every week, I determined it would be easier to stay on the same schedule, so I cut a piece of cardboard to black out my bedroom window and that became my life. I got up at about 4:00 PM and went to bed around 8:00 AM all week long, which meant I had plenty of time on my hands on those lonely nights off. Whether that meant painting, writing, refinishing car headlights or taking the deep dive into Korean dramas, I got very good at living stealthily, so as not to disturb everyone else's sleep.

Living the nocturnal life has its benefits, but it's hard to do long-term. Combined with strenuous, monotonous work, I could feel it wearing on me after two or three months. It's a difficult lifestyle to maintain, and I'm frankly impressed I did it as long as I did. In the end, it amounts to an interesting and valuable experience that I'd rather not repeat--but hey, all of 2020 fits that description, right?

Hic Manebimus Optime!