Thursday, February 26, 2015

Where have the last 4 years gone, and where will I be in the next 4 years?

Grade 12 is definitely the most stressful of all grades.  Grade 9 was getting to know the people, grade 10 was all about having fun with friends, grade 11 was a reminder that we are still in school and need to start batting down the hatches, and grade 12…well it’s the most stressful of them all.  You have to start thinking about what you want to do with your life and with this on your mind stay focused on your classes.  With all this stress do we really make the best decision we can on choosing a post-secondary institution.  Why don’t more of us choose a school out west or down south?  The majority of us who do stray away that far from home are most likely on a scholarship anyways.  Maybe you’re not ready to venture too far away from your loving parents, or maybe the school of your dreams just happens to be right around the corner from your house.  There are lots of factors that will either attract or repel one from a school.  I can imagine a Toronto student applying would like to go to a university that is relatively large in size and a student who was on student government all throughout high school wouldn’t mind a school with lots of school spirit and a girl who liked having lots of boyfriends would like a school with lots of cute boys, who knows?  There are too many factors to count.  The reason for this is last year when I travelled to California and saw Stanford.  I have never seen a school so attractive.  I mean if you have the grades why not shoot for the moon and apply.  I think too many of us narrow our preferences to the point we just think of a school that is within 5 hours of our home.  I guess whichever one you choose, you better like it because the next four or so years this will be your home away home.  

It's much easier watching a movie than it is reading a book!

I’ll be honest I have watched a good amount of movies in my day.  And I’m not the one to stream it either.  1080p and nothing less is pretty much my moto.  So you could say that I know the difference between a good movie and a not so good movie.  There are heartwarming movies that make you feel good about yourself (The Secret Life of Walter Mitty).  There are movies that are hilarious and not one second passes where you don’t have a smile on your face (22 Jump Street).  Movies that have you on the edge of seat wondering, what the dickens just happened (Gone Girl).  The ones that take place in history with a cool plotline (The Imitation Game).  And then there are movies you have to bring up to your friends because they were just so good (Interstellar).  Every movie mentioned I enjoyed and would watch again but, would I react the same way.  With The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, I’m always going to feel good about myself and make we want to go do something.  22 Jump Street is a movie to watch with the boys and have a good time with, but if I were to watch it again, I probably wouldn’t laugh the same way I did when I first watched it.  Gone Girl was just a weird movie.  That’s really all I have to say about that one.  Its main purpose was just to make you think one thing and then by the end of the movie you’re thinking of all the other 100 things that they maybe want you to think.  Benedict Cumberbatch is at the moment, my favourite character.  I loved him in the Shylock series and he was brilliant in The Imitation Game.  And this movie made me want to become an astronaut.  I still do and it is only because of this movie I want to.  Space exploration would definitely be one of the coolest things to do.  And the fact of how small we are in comparison to everything is truly just mind-boggling.  My aspirations for when I retire to not to travel the world, but space just like Matthew McConaughey.  

The Leafs this year are entering an early Fall

My Leafs.  My Toronto Maple Leafs.  Who really knows what’s going on in the change room and on the ice for that matter?  Year after year, Leaf fans are disappointed again coming up short in the playoffs.  I for one haven’t watched the Leafs play since early January.  Right around when Carlisle got fired, I was off the bandwagon.  You have to wonder if all Leaf fans are like this, this just give up and wait patiently until the next season when some new management, coaching staff or players join the club.  Basically you pray the new guy the team hired can get the team to playoffs.  At this point, some people just might think the team purposely losses just so they’re that one spot closes to getting the number one pick.  I said to one of my fellow Leaf fans – my teacher – “did you see the game last night…what a heartbreaking win”.  That’s how I try to look at it because I want the Leafs to come in last place and get first round pick so we can have some hope to start off the season.  It’s especially hard to cheer for the home team when the team itself has thrown in their jersey for the season.  Maybe wearing a Leafs jersey backwards at a game of refusing to purchase Maple Leaf merchandise would be a better way of showing disappointment.  Buying a $200 jersey and throwing it onto the ice simply provides someone with a free jersey.  In the meantime, at least we have our Raptors to fall back on.  

What is Facebook?

What is Facebook?  It doesn't seem like a big thing anymore but, quite recently I'm giving them a big thumbs up.  I can remember when I first got Facebook, it must have been back in grade 4 or so.  See things were different back then, you would use MSN and not Facebook Messenger.  A good majority of my friends don't even have Facebook installed on their phones anymore.  Not sure why, we all spent hours on it back in elementary school.  I guess Snapchat, Twitter, Instagram all have somewhat taken over Facebook.  See, Snapchat is like Facebook's Stickered app, you can send a "selfie" to a friend or multiple ones.  Twitter is similar to Facebook in the sense it is niche to just posting statuses, and Instagram is parallel to just posting pictures.  So I guess you could say that all of these big social networking apps saw Facebook's individual purposes and decided to focus down on just one.  What happened to Facebook Messenger?  Hangouts and iMessage were born.  Bringing this to a point I have broken my phone and at the moment using my brothers locked U.S. phone.  This means I can't just transfer my SIM card to his.  In order to communicate I must use FB Messenger.  And this is when it starts to get good.  See I suppose the board has decided to ban Facebook which I believe should be reversed.  Banning Facebook has made such an inconvenience for me.  My family and friends have Facebook Messenger so I can only communicate with them through that, but not at school.  I thank FB Messenger because it is acting as the main conduit to communicate.  Unfortunately, I am left frustrated becasue I am still unable to use it wherever with complimentary WiFi.

Thursday, February 12, 2015

What's the difference?

I have recently filled out my subsequent application form for Waterloo and one of the questions was a) have you taken a course outside of regular day school and b) what was the purpose of taking it outside of day school.  In the last couple of weeks, it has become a habit of mine to read a blog written by a prof. at Waterloo who administers the subsequent application form process.  In it, he says they look down upon any student who takes a summer school course.  And I thought this would was completely unfair.  I know from my own experience, it was to lighten my load in my grade 12 year, so I could especially focus on the more math and science focused classes and to be able to take electives like the one currently in.  However, Waterloo believes that all of their applicants should be taking their classes during regular school hours because summer school is notoriously known for being easier.  This is very untrue.  My friends took summer school English in class.  Their teacher had a PhD in Literature and was an English prof. at Harvard for 10 years.  It is a very debatable topic one I find to be just as debatable as school uniforms vs. non school uniforms.  There are very good points for each side, but what I believe the university is judging unfairly is why they are down grading their applicants who take summer courses.  For students who receive a higher grade in summer school than what they would achieve from their own school offered course, should students who have tutors then not also be deducted who take school regular hours.  In both cases, the student is receiving a higher mark than they normally get in the regular school offered course.  This is what I find to be debatable so debatable I started a thread on reddit!  

D.R.E.A.M.S.

It’s my second week back from the Dominican Republic.  Me and group from school went down to the Mountains of the DR…well I guess up, depends on how you want to look at it to help build homes.  The program, D.R.E.A.M.S., (Dominican Republic Education and Medical Supplies) is in its 16th year and has built close to 50 homes.  Having four older siblings who have recently gone on the trip, I had a good idea of what to expect:  poverty just about everywhere, no electricity, no running water, etc…just about everything you would expect from a developing country.  And the school presentations, every year the students from the trip go around to feeder schools and tell about their experience.  I knew the program so well that I was even asked to go and present to one school, but tell the experience from a point of view of someone who is looking forward to going on DREAMS.  Now that I have gone on it for myself, I understand how eye-opening the trip truly is…sounds cliché, I know.  I mean everyone has that moment when you say “wow, this is really life changing for me”.  I was waiting for that moment all week, but it didn’t occur to me until I left the village I was in.  Usually when the group leaves, the girls are crying and the kids are chasing after the truck waving goodbye.  However, when I left something caught my eye.  There were three young boys, all around the age of 10.  They were your typical 10 year old boy.  They were 100% all boy.  They had been with us every day at the work site and so after the week, me and a couple of the guys gave our work glasses away to them.  These were tented glasses, so they looked like sunglasses more than anything and when we were leaving I saw one of the boys wiping away tears from his eyes, trying to hide the fact that he was crying.  That was my life changing moment.  After I had thought about it, it came to me, what these kids will do after we leave.  They would continue their regular schedule, which didn’t include too much since they didn’t have much to do.  And that’s when it hit me, that these kids will miss us more than we will miss them.  We offer so little of our little time and everyone there is so appreciative.  It will definitely be an experience to remember.

Hockey: A Game You Will Never Perfect

I have played hockey ever since I can remember.  I enjoy playing hockey.  What some may find questionable is that I find it to be a stress-reliever, most of the time.  My team has always done well, one year we even won provincials.  But I’m not sure what happened this year.  So far our record is as bad as the Leafs.  We have about 4 wins under our belt with the rest with losses hanging on.  Individually we have an alright team, nothing that will win the cup, but good enough for us to have more than 4 wins.  I bet my boot straps that it’s our team chemistry.  In past year, my uncles were the coaches and knew who to pick a team that could perform together as a team.  I think my coach this year, tried to pull a “Money Ball”.  No matter what kind of drill we do at practice or game plan we have, we just can’t execute.  In my mind that this would be my last year of hockey, I decided to step up to the plate and take on a leadership role.  Although knowing only 1 person on the team, I knew that it was necessary to do this for the team.  I have taken on the leadership role at my school so I have some level of knowledge on how to do this sort of thing.  It was really difficult for me to do, especially since some of my team mates I have never seen in the league before.  It was the first time I have ever had to do this, since when growing up I grew up with the knowing majority in the league, and in the past years switching leagues and having my uncles as coaches.  Am I happy and proud of myself doing this?  Absolutely, because now I know what I am capable of, how to tackle difficult situations, and we are now undefeated in the playoffs!

Who's Your Competition?

Computer Science is taking over society.  Literally.  If you can code, you can get a job.  And there are thousands of those jobs being filled every day.  But like most people, including myself, they ponder over how to get there – that is – how to snag a spot in Silicon Valley.  When my brother was applying for co-op positions a couple years back, he decided to shoot for the moon and apply for an internship down in Palo Alto, California, home of Facebook.  He was a mediocre student, nothing really to his name.  Surprisingly, he snagged that one spot from over 130 applicants that was narrowed from over 1000.  Did they make a mistake? Is this really happening?  Why would he get that position?  I blame it on Waterloo.  What is unique about Waterloo is that it is maybe the most unattractive university, yet it attracts thousands from around the globe.  Yes, they are known for their engineering, but what they now are being known for is there well-respected co-op program.  Truly, Waterloo blows other schools out of the water in terms of co-op.  UofT, a brother to Waterloo, has just as good as a program for engineering and better grad program, but can’t even kneel down to Waterloo in terms of co-op.  What tech companies want nowadays are people who can learn on the spot and be able to produce.  They don’t care if you studied at Harvard or Caltech, they care if you have had experience in the field and know that you can handle the pressure.  And that is exactly what Waterloo offers, opportunities in the field, so that when their students graduate they already have an advantage.  So this is where I am left sitting…typing… knowing what I have to do in order to reach Silicon Valley, but stuck in traffic waiting for that exit so I can reach my destination.