One Year Later

It's somewhat of a special time right now, because this month marks one year from my initial rejection from Harvard. March 31st 2016, I realized my dream was not coming true, and I started this blog. Back then its purpose was mostly to vent, not to entertain you folks. My, how things change.

A year can seem like an incredibly long time looking forward, but not long at all looking back. A year ago today (the 14th, that is--the day I finally got around to finishing this post) I wrote about my problems securing the housing contract I wanted, and right now I'm gearing up for final cleaning checks in that same dorm. Back then, all I knew about the people I'd spend the year with was that my direct roommate wanted me to transfer to another building to make room for his friend. Seriously, that was our first interaction. Not what I'd call getting off on the right foot, but such is life. I didn't know back then that these strangers would become some of my best friends or, even more surprisingly, that I would become one of theirs. All I knew was that I wasn't where I wanted to be, and the thought never crossed my mind that perhaps I was where I should be.

No, I'm not talking about where I deserved to be; that's an issue lost to time. I'm talking about the place that would help me grow as a human being. This isn't to say that I wouldn't have experienced similar growth at Harvard, because in fact I'm certain I would. I just wasn't prepared to handle the idea that multiple options could afford me the same opportunities. My heart was set, my target was in my sights, and I missed, and that was all I could think about.

Twelve months later, I can at least say that I can more fully appreciate the mundane. Despite the aftermath of a less-than-stellar midterm and the impending doom that is finals, I noticed today for the first time that the air itself smells sweet now, from everything in bloom. The sun is also out for the first time in months, which is equally refreshing.

Looks nice, doesn't it?

So have I changed in the past year? I don't think that's for me to say, really, since I doubt I'm an objective measure of my own progress, but perhaps I have, at least a little. I've loosened up a bit, learned to roll with disappointment a hair better and make time for fun things, but I'm still me. And for whatever reason, I feel that's important to say. While the college experience shapes who you become, I think that feeling more or less the same as I did a year ago means I've been able to make choices consistent with the version of myself I'd like to be. I don't notice the changes in my character because I had to take the incremental steps to get to where I am, changing a tiny bit with each step.

Since I know what was happening to me a year ago, I also know what just happened to 28,000 more people. The world just got a fresh batch of Rejects, and they'll have some important decisions up ahead. While no single case is identical to mine, I can at least act as proof that things work out fine in the end. Welcome to the club, my friends!

Hic Manebimus Optime!

First Day Of College

Ok, so today wasn't actually the first day of college, but I intended to write a post prior to now. In fact, I wanted to write one when I moved in last week, but it didn't happen. So here we are, on the second day of college. Apologies for that.

I'm in there somewhere!

So what's it like? Well, I'm not at Harvard. But if you didn't already know that, I'm not sure what to tell you. I am, however, at Brigham Young University, and I'm enjoying it, if I do say so myself. College is very different from high school, and the last few days have been a major adjustment. I think I'll take a little time to talk about some notable differences, for all those future generations of freshmen and anyone else who may be interested.

1. Living with other people. I have five roommates now instead of my family, and they behave very differently from my family. It will take time to get used to their individual quirks and behaviors.
2. Classes are much farther apart. On a large campus, the struggle is not only to find your classroom, but to find the building in which the class is held. I've been carrying a map lately.
3. Cooking my own food. My summer culinary crash course is serving me well thus far, but it is difficult to juggle cooking time with homework, sleep and the slim possibility of social interaction.
4. Unrealistic expectations. Most professors will claim that you need three hours outside of class for each hour in class, but if you do the math that often adds up to more than 24 hours each day, let alone the fact that I need to sleep sometime. In a world where it's literally impossible to satisfy everyone's demands, you need to learn to put your sanity ahead of school.
5. Rooming with people who stay up later than you. I sleep like a rock, so it isn't really an issue if I turn in early, but for most people this is a legitimate concern, so take note.
6. More than four classes per day. I have five on some days, which is more than I've had on a single day since junior high.
7. Fewer than four classes per day. I also have days with two. This makes it difficult to establish a routine.
8. Unprecedented levels of school spirit. It doesn't matter what sport you're watching or who the opponent is; if you're in the student section, you're fully invested. No excuses.
9. Love/hate relationships. I've developed a lot of these with various things (but not people, thankfully), school being chief among them. I like being here, but I despise homework.

I heard someone say not to let your education get in the way of college, and another not to let college get in the way of your education. Though it seems paradoxical, both of these are true. And in a way, they both say the same thing: much of our learning and growth is done outside of the classroom. It's those little things that happen each day that make us who we are, and ultimately they're the reason why I have to say I love it here.

Hic Manebimus Optime!

So This Is Summer

I feel I should warn you that I'm going to go light on the deep, philosophical statements this time around. With it being the season of fast-paced action and shallow beach reads, it only seems fitting to write something goofy. After all, life as a Reject isn't all hard-core motivational speaking. Sometimes it's building a sasquatch nest out in the woods somewhere. More on that later.

First of all, I've been working quite a bit this week. I'm a lifeguard, which means lots of sunscreen, brutal heat, politely yelling (yes, that is indeed possible) at small children, and more sunscreen. So with all that sun, shouldn't I be working up a pretty good tan soon?

The answer is no. Actually, for several years I've been convinced that I'm immune to tanning. I like to joke that I look like Michelangelo chiseled me from stone--not because of muscle, but because I'm that pale. I'm putting forth effort to change that this year, so by the end of the summer I'll be able to call it one way or the other, but for now all I've got is a single random sunburn patch on one leg.

Nevertheless, all this time in the sun has ushered in the summer spirit, so we decided to go up the canyon for a family cookout. Right now I'll point out that it's really awesome to have a good forest close to home. Not everyone has one. Oh, and also I believe myself to be pretty good at building campfires.

The strangest thing was that a short distance from our picnic table, we found a large bowl shape built out of rocks, easily big enough to fit two or even three people. It was rather shabby and uncomfortable, but nothing a few minutes, a lot of rocks and a wealth of Lego experience couldn't fix.

By the time I was done with it, our little sasquatch nest was amazingly comfortable. I'm not kidding. I put down flat stones like tiles in the bottom, and I honestly felt like I could take a nap right there. Who needs memory foam when you've got good old rocks?

Call us the Rock Ness Monsters.

Just one more thing. I practiced making a s'more variant that involves cooking biscuit dough on a specialized stick to make a cup shape and then filling it with chocolate and marshmallows. I'm still perfecting my technique (It's very tricky, in point of fact), but when I get it right I'll devote a post to it.

That's all I've got right now. No deeper message, no moral, just me and all of my strangeness. Man, I love summer.

Hic Manebimus Optime!

One Reason to be Glad I Got Rejected

Quite a bit of news has surfaced recently about the mumps outbreak at our dear Harvard. In truth, the outbreak began back in February, but had not been publicized previously because precautions were being taken to isolate patients and prevent spread. With over forty confirmed cases up to this point, the university seems to have been unable to contain the outbreak, which means bad things for Harvard students.

Mumps has become a fairly rare problem in the United States because it is easily preventable with a vaccine. Now you're thinking 'okay, so those students weren't vaccinated, so what?'
The problem is, they were. All of the students currently affected were immunized, as per university regulation, and yet they contracted the virus anyway. So how is that even possible?

Since Harvard students come from all over the country (and the world), these students received their vaccines from many different locations, eliminating the possibility of a bad batch of vaccines. Thus, in my estimation, the only remaining possibility is that the strain of virus in this outbreak is resistant to the vaccine.

We interrupt this post to ask a very important question: why does the biohazard symbol look so darn cool? It's literally my favorite symbol in all the world of symbols. But I digress.

Now, before we all start jumping to conclusions, we should establish what the danger level is for this virus. I'm a bit of a disease junkie myself; I love movies like Contagion, I play games like Pandemic and Plague, Inc. and I have done multiple school projects on everything from cholera to the bubonic plague, so I'm personally fascinated by the logistics of this type of outbreak.

The virus is basically non-lethal, seeing as the symptoms consist of inflammation, fever, aches and pains and headache, and nearly all patients make a full recovery. So essentially life and limb are not at stake here, but it can make for a very unpleasant few weeks.

In order to minimize the number of students enduring those unpleasant few weeks, Harvard has admonished their students to take the outbreak seriously and to 'stop infecting each other.' The virus is transmitted through saliva, mucus and respiratory fluids/vapors (so it isn't exactly an airborne pathogen, but I wouldn't let anyone breathe on me if I were them), so as a word of warning to anyone who is actually at Harvard, do try to minimize contact with any of those fluids.

Returning to the title of the post. I'm not actually glad I got rejected, and I never will be, but I may have secured a unique benefit: I wasn't at Harvard for Admitted Students Weekend (refer to previous post). Cases began in February, meaning that anyone who has stepped onto the Harvard campus since February has been at some degree of risk. Theoretically anyone visiting the school on that weekend, including me if I had been accepted, could have been infected. And seeing as the virus is not currently contained and seems to ignore immunization, undocumented cases are roaming the campus at this very moment, infecting more unlucky souls. The threat is real.

So I suppose I get to count my blessings this time, since I'm currently at home, at precisely zero risk of mumps. But that could change, if the virus is indeed unaffected by vaccines (cue dramatic music)

In all seriousness, my sympathies go out to anyone unfortunate enough to be enduring the illness, and I hope those uninfected Harvard students will take measures to keep themselves healthy. I have full faith in the university's resources and ability to handle the outbreak, and I wish them the best, but frankly I'm glad it's one thing I don't have to worry about. So I guess I sort of won? Yeah, let's go with that.

Hic Manebimus Optime.

Non-Admitted Students Weekend

This past weekend was the Admitted Students Weekend at Harvard, an event where admitted freshmen for the class of 2020 are encouraged to visit the school to learn more about what it's like to live there.
I obviously did not spend that weekend in Cambridge, as much as I would have liked it. Being inexhaustibly hopeful, I had tried to keep that weekend clear on my schedule, but my rejection left me with a conspicuous hole on the calendar. So how did I spend that time?

I went to PrepperCon. This is not a prep school convention, as one friend misinterpreted. This is a convention for doomsday preppers. And they had everything. Gigantic trucks, tents, generators, filtration systems, weapons, ammunition, shelters, firestarters and an abundance of preserved food (and therefore free samples). There was even a custom-built hurricane simulator that allowed guests to be exposed to 120-mile-per-hour winds.

While there, I attended a seminar on preparing for and survivng an EMP (electromagnetic pulse, for the layman). As an amateur sci-fi author with an interest in post-apocalypse stories, this was pure gold. I learned a whole bunch of stuff about Faraday cages, phases of disruption and arc lightning, but the most interesting parts were about reconstructing a society after an EMP. Since national infrastructure would collapse, self-sufficiency, sanitation and defense become the largest concerns.

As much as I'd love to keep talking about the EMP class, I know that if you're genuinely interested you can learn more from Wikipedia than from me. This is, after all, a chronicle of post-Ivy League rejection, not post-apocalypse survival, so I figure I should move on to the other displays.

This is a picture of frankly the scariest truck I've ever seen. I'm in there for scale; keep in mind, at 6'3" I'm not exactly short, and this thing is huge. It boasts six-wheel drive, the ability to ford six feet of water and EMP hardening, and it's even street legal. Though why you would worry about street legality in the apocalypse, I have no idea. It burns enough fuel you would never drive it while society is still functioning. Oh, and the zombies all over it are a nice touch.

This is a Vital Dome. It's a survival structure not meant so much for camping, but for replacing your house should it be destroyed. It's designed to last through three years of continuous living, and the transparent panels allow it to glean heat from the sun. It can also be retrofitted with woodburning stoves, solar panels and every kind of furniture to make it your home sweet home in the aftermath of a disaster.

These tents are designed to be mounted on top of your car. Being above ground, you aren't at risk from encounters with small wildlife, and a condensation pad and integrated floor padding ensure that you can sleep comfortably with no accumulation of mold. I actually want one of these, because it would work extremely well for camping. I saw another one on top of a jeep towing a Base Camp trailer, which had a sink, water heater, solar panels, shower, plenty of storage space, a Faraday cage for EMP-proof tech storage and a steel frame thick enough to resist lower-caliber bullets. I want one of those, too, but I'll have to wait until I have a grown-up job. And a car to pull it with.

Lastly, I couldn't leave without a particular machete that caught my eye. I'm going to enjoy having that on camping trips, as well.

I'm highly satisfied with my use of Non-Admitted Students Weekend myself, and I would encourage any Rejects out there to make the most of it. It's our time, and we should make it memorable.

Hic Manebimus Optime!


For more information regarding any of the things I mentioned, refer to these handy links:
PrepperCon
Vital Domes
Base Camp Trailers
Tuff Trucks
EMP Wikipedia Article

Housing Misadventures

I am happy to report that I did successfully finish my online classes, so my graduation from high school is no longer under direct threat (refer to previous post if that sentence made no sense to you). I imagine it will be liberating to no longer have to worry about such things, since I have been doing online classes for the last four years. What will I do with the extra time? Frankly, I have no idea. But I'll come up with something pretty quickly, I'm sure. Just you wait.
In the meantime, the gap left by online classes will be filled with studying for AP tests. There's always something else, isn't there? Another three weeks and things should let up; then we'll be into movie-watching season (last year in calculus we watched all of the extended editions of the Lord of the Rings trilogy after the AP test was over).

But enough of that; on to something that relates to the title of the post!
Now that I know I won't be moving off to Hogwarts--um, I mean, Harvard in the fall, I need to secure housing arrangements at my mid-range school. It all started with finding a room, a process described in several emails I had received from the university. I knew how this was going to work. I logged on to the housing portal at the time and on the day that I was instructed (this was with priority status, mind you) only to find that there were a whopping zero beds available in on-campus housing. None.

Well, that isn't entirely true. There were a few beds available in the sardine-can dormitories where students are required to purchase a meal plan, but zero in the apartments with kitchens (that's where I wanted to live). My reasoning for not wanting a meal plan is simple enough: it costs about twice as much as actual groceries cost, and I don't want to put my hard-earned scholarship money into cafeteria food. So essentially I had the makings of a very serious problem on my hands.
Fortunately for me, the university in question told me when cancellations in the desired facility would be posted so that I could switch into one.
The chase was on.
So there I sat, staring at the computer screen moments before the clocks struck four. As soon as the counter reached 3:59.59, I refreshed the page and saw that the number zero had changed to six. Not a lot of real estate for the hundreds of students who wanted a slot (and likely dozens who were sitting there hoping to catch one), but at least it wasn't zero. I frantically clicked through the first one I could find--only to receive an error that the bed was taken. That was within the first three seconds.
I backed up and clicked on another, and this time it worked. I had a room. The other four were gone within another ten seconds. I count myself lucky to have gotten one, but I want to make it known that I owe my victory entirely to my years of "sniping" classic Lego sets on eBay in the final five seconds of the auction. Fear my nerd powers.
This is far from the end of the road. I may have escaped the overly expensive meal plan, but my new room was on the first floor of the building, and I would much rather have a higher floor to reduce the amount of noise coming from above. I have a chance now, though, and before this I had none. Now that I have a space in the proper building, I can hopefully trade with someone on a higher floor, which should be a much less stressful process than the adrenaline-pumping escapade of getting a room in the first place. Until then, I have more high school to attend to. Those AP exams aren't getting any farther away.

Hic Manebimus Optime!

One Week Later

It has been seven days since I received my rejection letters. I seem to be holding up okay, or at least as well as I expected. The fact is, I haven't been able to worry too much about college-related things recently because I am faced with a serious threat to my graduation from high school, and in my mind closer deadline = more important.
So what is this threat to my graduation? It's not grades, citizenship, attendance, unpaid fees or anything else that would normally put someone in this position.

It's online classes.
I know, not very interesting. But unfortunately in order to take the electives I wanted (and which would bolster an application to, say, an Ivy League school, but you know how that turned out), I have had to take multiple classes online throughout high school. Most of them I finished with no problems, but those aforesaid applications consumed enough time that I neglected them this year, and now I must have them finished by April 15 in order to graduate. I at least feel that I have company in this because incidentally, millions of people fear this day, albeit for entirely different reasons.

So here I am, slogging through the last two quarters of Health and Fitness For Life, both of which seem to be unapologetic reruns of classes I had to take in junior high. For something so boring, they sure seem to be able to pack in a disproportionate amount of busywork. Honestly, an entire unit on fat? Really?

Next week I will be able to say whether or not I actually finished (I will finish, it just won't be fun), but to distract myself momentarily I prepared a list of the top ten most interesting things I did in the week following my rejection. This is what I did:

1. Started writing my second book (I'm taking a temporary break from editing the first)
2. Got the class high score on a test in AP Stats (I'm proud of this one because I'm in a class with That One Guy who wrecks the curve)
3. Visited my grandparents for my granddad's birthday (always nice)
4. Built an awesome blanket fort (no really, this entails lashing PVC frames together with rope. I'll do a post on it later to prove it.)
5. Got an extra hour of sleep on Saturday because I no longer have to get up early for swim practice
6. Lost that hour when I had to stay up late doing AP Government homework on Monday
7. Found myself tangled in a huge housing mess with my mid-range school (things are looking better, I'll probably also talk about this later)
8. Wore my Harvard t-shirt on April Fool's day (the day after admissions decisions--people fell for it, too)
9. Successfully got a 16-bit computer game from 1999 running in Windows 8.1 on the new computer (you do not understand how much work it took to save Lego Rock Raiders.)
10. Watched the Rogue One trailer at least eleven times within two hours of it coming out.

If this list doesn't prove how much of a nerd I am, nothing will. But it is my sincere hope that this will demonstrate that getting rejected isn't the end of the world, and maybe motivate a fellow Reject to find ways to see the bright side while I'm at it.

Hic Manebimus Optime!

Introduction: The Beginning, or the End?

On March 31st, 2016, my dreams were crushed by a simple sentence:

"The Committee on Admissions has completed its Regular Decision meetings, and I am very sorry to inform you that we cannot offer you admission to the Class of 2020."

I received three messages containing this sentence, with minor variations. So I could be calling this "My Life as a Harvard, Yale and Columbia Reject," but why rub it in more than I need to? The point is, I didn't quite make it. It's hard when there are upwards of 30,000 perfectly qualified applicants and 1,600 spots, so I knew the odds weren't great to begin with. In fact, I applied Early Action and was deferred, making the process an arduous six-month wait before finally getting the bad news.

If you were one of the 464 students who were flat-out rejected during the Early Action phase, you have my sympathies. That hurts. But, in a way, I envy you; the Band-Aid got torn off back in December, and you got to move on to other things, unlike the 4,673 of us who were deferred. Out of those, a lucky few got in during the Regular Decision phase. To those who didn't, I have something to say: Welcome to the Insult to Injury club. We are an elite 10% of the total applicants, and we each endured the longest possible wait before finally being put out of our misery--or into misery, I suppose, since we now need to find somewhere else to go to school.

Yale's letter even said "I hope the replies you receive from other colleges this spring will soon erase any disappointment regarding Yale's decision." Ouch. Normally that'd be a nice thing to hear, but not when the only other responses you got were also rejections.
I'm not bitter in any way toward the institutions that denied my admission. Statistically, the vast majority of applicants wind up like me. Was I sad? Definitely. Did I cry a little?

Maybe.
I'll never experience the 'round-the-clock availability of unlimited pancakes and Jamba Juice at Columbia, Yale's unlimited free 3D printing or, well... Harvard. But it's time to dust myself off and get on with it. The fact is, with all three of my reach schools out of the question, I'm down to my mid-range school and my safety school, and I still have some important choices to make.

I don't want these disappointments to define who I will become. Regardless of whether I believe it right now, (or if you do, dear reader), there is life after rejection from your dream school. I've got a whole lot of life ahead of me, and so do you. One of my rejection letters said "I hope you will go on to great success in your pursuits." And you know what?

Challenge Accepted.