The whole admissions story

Ok, now that everything has sort of simmered down a bit, I figured you may be interested in how yesterday went (if not, don't read it. That simple.)

*Ahem*

Let's start with Friday. Friday was the day before spring break at Pearland, and thus time for the annual Senior Vs. Faculty Dodgeball game, which was epic. I thought seniors were pretty lazy folk come 2nd semester, but the truth is senior teachers are just as bad, so in my classes I did Orange Juice of work. (inside physics joke. Hint: Whats the common abbreviation for Orange Juice? What unit is work measured in?)

In government we had an impromptu talent contest showcasing my ability to dance [read:not] and play the guitar. My teacher surprised us all when he started playing and singing, and he's 60-somethin years old!

Directly after school I went to tutor math for this one girl. She's in 5th grade and, no joke, absolutely does not get math. At all. Actual conversation:

"So if 12 buses can each carry 12 students, how many students are there?"

pause

"ok, well what should we do to figure out how many students there are?"

pause

"...divide?"

*Chris bashes head into table*

The rest of the night is me just trying to do anything to keep my mind off decisions the next day. I finally end up falling asleep at 3.a.m. My mom and sister wake me up at 7 to tell me goodbye as they leave, and I can't fall back asleep. Great. So I spend the rest of the morning watching shows on the discovery channel, except I was constantly thinking about decisions so I have no idea what I watched, except at one point a crazy man with an Australian accent talked about snakes having two penises (penii? I'm not sure) because he said the word "Hemipenis" and I busted out laughing. (partially because in my head it made all those Chevy commercials incredibly akward. "Dude, does that have a hemi?" Finish the scene in your mind)

Anyway, about 10 o'clock I head to the bank to deposit my weeks earnings and such. While I'm waiting I'm again trapped by thoughts about admissions. I kicked myself for not applying to more schools. I think about the video I made and wonder who's seen it, and what they thought. The song that plays at the end, How Far We've Come by Matchbox 20, is one of my favorite songs, and in particular that line for me sums up the whole experience of my senior year to that point:

"I believe the world is burning to the ground/

oh well I guess we're gonna find out/

Let's see how far we've come/

Let's see how far we've come"

It means regardless of what happens, take a look and see what you've made of yourself, the journey you've gone on. I felt it was appropriate. I'm thinking about this as I get in the car, I turn on the radio and this is what I hear:

"I believe the world is burning to the ground/
oh well I guess we're gonna find out/
Let's see how far we've come/
Let's see how far we've come"

I think "Well wow, that's sort of a crazy coincidence." By the time I get home, it's 10:40. 20 minutes left (actually 15, I figured they'd post them a weee bit early). I sit down at my computer and open up three tabs in Firefox: the decision page, Pandora, and a page of encouraging quotes. I put on some Constance Demby on Pandora, (great band if you've never heard of them) and start reading the quotes to mentally prepare myself for the 88% chance (statistically anyway) of disappointment. The quotes I read are in another post. One in particular stuck out to me:

"When one door closes another door opens; but we so often look so long and so regretfully upon the closed door, that we do not see the ones which open for us." ~Alexander Graham Bell

That helps calm me a lot. It puts everything in perspective, and I truly feel ok with not getting in to MIT. Sure I'll be disappointed, but there will be other oppurtunities for me that I wouldn't have had if I went to MIT. I switch over to decisions, type in all my stuff, take a deep breath and

*click click*

I read:

Dear Chris,
On behalf of the Admissions Committee, it is my pleasure to offer you---

and flip out. I don't even finish the sentence, I let loose a very spartan battle cry and jumped up. I ran into the the living room to tell my dad, his reaction: "are you sure?"...."are you kidding?"

I can't stop saying "Oh ma gawd" over and over as I run my hands through my hair, he sits down and reads the letter. "congratulations kiddo, you did it". I stumble a bit and feel queasy, too much adrenaline I guess. It subsides and I print a copy and race out the door to tell my best friend.

I get to Misty's house and ring the door bell. No response. I ring it again. No response. I look at my watch. It's 11:08. I laugh (Misty, her mom, and I all share a rather...nocturnal... sleep pattern, they don't get up until noon on saturdays, literally). Finally I call her, and her mom comes to the door squinting at the light. I shove the paper to her punctuated by "look look look look look" She freaks out and gives me a hug, she tells me Misty is asleep, she'll go wake her up. 5 minutes later she comes out of the hall and says "Misty says just go back there". I walk into her room and it's pitch black (no windows). Misty is grumpy and half-asleep.

"Hey I want you to see something."

"mmm what?"

"Read this"

*turns on light and squints to see paper*

"OMG!"

*big hug*

*screams* (her, not me lol)

Her mom comes in to celebrate with us. We celebrate by getting Jack in the Box. I send text messages to every person in my address book, here are some of the best:

"cool."

"lol...Who is this?"

"congratufuckinglations" <--my foul mouthed theatre friend

"what's that?"

I head home and my dad has called all our family. I do all the obligatory blogging and stuff. That night I went out clubbing with some of my friends to celebrate, and tonight my dad and my older sister went out to dinner. All in all, an amazing experience.

Heres what my week looks like

So my dad and I are home alone for the week because my mom and my sister are out on a trip. No biggie right? Well I come home today after my dad went "grocery shopping" and this is what I see:

Our "groceries" consist of nothing but frozen food. My dad's defense "eh, I didn't feel like cooking"

It's going to be a long week lol.

Admission Decisions

I'm going to MIT! I am so excited. Out of respect for the very many friends I've made who weren't offered admission (Justin, Shruthi, Wendy) , that's all I'll say about it at this time. For you guys I want to share some quotes I read before I got my decision to prepare me for the worst. Reading these before-hand went a long way in making me feel better about the potentially disappointing outcome, and I hope that they offer you guys some measure of comfort now, this ones for you guys guys:

"Experience is not what happens to you; it is what you do with what happens to you."

~ Aldous Huxley

"It is said an Eastern monarch once charged his wise men to invent him a sentence to be ever in view, and which should be true and appropriate in all times and situations. They presented him the words: "And this, too, shall pass away.""

~ Abraham Lincoln

"When you feel like giving up, remember why you held on for so long in the first place."

~ Unknown

"Instead of giving myself reasons why I can't, I give myself reasons why I can."

~ Unknown

"When one door closes another door opens; but we so often look so long and so regretfully upon the closed door, that we do not see the ones which open for us."

~ Alexander Graham Bell

"When you come to the end of your rope, tie a knot and hang on. "

~ Franklin D. Roosevelt

"If you have made mistakes, there is always another chance for you. You may have a fresh start any moment you choose, for this thing we call 'failure' is not the falling down, but the staying down. "

~ Mary Pickford

"What the caterpillar calls the end of the world, the master calls a butterfly."

~ Richard Bach

"Fall seven times, stand up eight."
~Japanese Proverb

"If one dream should fall and break into a thousand pieces, never be afraid to pick one of those pieces up and begin again. "

~ Flavia Weedn

"The world is round and the place which may seem like the end may also be only the beginning. "

~ Ivy Baker Priest

"One has to remember that every failure can be a stepping stone to something better."

~ Col. Harland Sanders


I wish you all the best. Wake up tomorrow and chase your dreams.

Pi Day!

I forgot my camera, so until my friends send me more pictures, you'll have to make due with this one from my cell phone. It's an apple pie, for pi day! (see the pi symbol on top?) I was going to make it square so that I could say "my pi are squared" but we didn't have any square dishes. Happy Pi Day everyone!

Bad news for applicants named Caesar

Just realized that decisions come out March 15th, the ides of March....hmm...

My very first proof!

alright so I know none of you can read that, but it's an epic proof that tangent acceleration to any velocity vector incuces a circular path to it, and by lemma, that for a circular path, if r is constant, then velocity and acceleration must be equal in magnitude. Of course I found out that this is no major breakthrough, but it felt pretty cool to actually prove something on my own!

Here We Go Again *Edit* Nifty Eh?---------------->

Well it's that time of year again. MIT decisions come out next Saturday. (Missing Pi day by 24 hours, tsk tsk.) Now originally I thought I'd write up some long post wringing my hands about how nervous I am (I am), or how excited I am (I am), or how I can't believe it's here already (I can't). But what's really more interesting for me is the journey I've gone on to get where I am just right now. I've met some amazing people along the way, and had an amazing time this year, so since noone has asked, here's my senior year in review:

July- Thanks to reading my Popular Science article about jobs in science, I decided that was my career goal. Prior to this it was a struggle between art and science, two absolutes of my personality. Popular science sealed it for me though, and so I began looking at science and engineering colleges.

August- Registered for High School. Made a list of science colleges to look at, among them : Stanford, Yale, Princeton, Caltech, MIT, and Boston University. Yale and Princeton seem too "stagnant" for me, and Caltech seems boring based off of my friend Kasra who goes there. The Boston Area looks promising and I take a look at MIT. First thing I find out: THEY MADE MINDSTORMS, MY FAVORITE TOY EVER!. Major kudo's. Then I read the mission statement about making a difference in the world through science. MIT becomes top choice for me. I look at what admission requirements are. Heart sinks a little bit. This school is damn hard to get into, but I can do it! Immediately I register for SAT and SAT II (Math II and Physics).

September- SAT rolls around, first time taking it. Bought Princeton Review (I swear by them). Skipped school Friday before so I could study. Wake up Saturday and head to Kelly's Country Kitchen for a hearty breakfast. Sit through four hours of SAT. Scores come back, I did good. Chris is pleased. Mom and I go to MIT seminar in Houston. After essentially being slack-jawed for the entirety of the seminar we both leave really excited that such a place exists. I buy Princeton Review for Physics and Math (The physics one is a terrifying beast) and immediately start studying. Interview for MIT is set up, and I decide I'm applying early action.

October- I'm working almost everyday at American Eagle, and Friday and Saturday nights for Upstage (a construction company, MIT and heavy lifting?) . This continues basically every week for October. Interview with a guy named Alfonso. He works for NASA as a thermoshielding engineer. We talk a lot about MIT. I leave forgetting that I just went to an interview for that school. I thank my theatre experience for making speaking less nerve-wracking.

November- I take the subject tests, and have finished my application. I realize that if I'd known where I was going to apply earlier, I'd have been able to take and retake my SAT's if I was unhappy with the score. Oh well we'll see how we did. Thanksgiving rocks, I eat 10,000 calories in one day (thanks in no small part to eggnog). My friends and I go camping in Brazos Bend:

Beautiful. I make it my mission to catch an alligator. They don't like the cold though, so they are nowhere to be found. I burn my hand on a hot rock and exclaim: "&*%! Jeezy Creezy! How dense is that rock? It's been away from the fire for like 30 minutes!" My friends point out how ridiculously nerdy that is for me to exclaim.

December- My best friend wants to go to Emerson, and if we both went to school in Boston, our schools would be the same distance apart as our houses are now, Crazy! Did well on my subject tests too, the anxiety about it being my only shot fades. Decisions draw near. Decision morning I had completely forgot about them. I had been up since early in the morning working in a warehouse moving things around. I was sweaty and covered in dirt when I sat down for dinner and remembered. "Oh dang!" ran into the room and saw I was deferred, incredibly happy I wasn't rejected. Make a list of things to bolster my application with, among them is to make a video. My friend Sally (Wharton '12 GO SALLY!) tells me her friend Wendi from MIT (and Pearland Alumni) wants to talk to me about colleges. Wendi and I sit down and talk about everything, and she tells me she really hopes I get in, that I seem like a great fit, and that she's surprised I was deferred. This makes me feel good. Talking with her inspires me to push the envelope of what I'm interested in. I make a phone call to the US Department of Energy:

"Hello my name is Chris Mills, I'm an applicant to MIT and passionate about the field of Alternative Fuels. If you have the time I have a few questions I'd love for you to answer for me. Thanks, have a good day"

Can't hurt right?

Two days later I get a phone call:

"Hi may I speak to Chris Mills?"

"Speaking"

"How are you doing Chris? My name is Neil Kirschner, Director of the US Department of Energy, are there a few questions I can answer for you?"

Oh.My.God.

January- Finish my video. My birthday comes around! I get the flu. January is bittersweet.

February- AMC comes around. I finish bartending school and am a licensed bartender. (That's how I'm paying for college). I start reading the blogs of Snively. Find him pretty funny. Post on his blog, instantly meet a billion other cool people like Justin, Shruthi, Viva, and others. MIT applicants are pretty cool folk.

March- Decisions come out soon, senior year is wrapping up, I feel happy to be alive and to have been a part of this whole experience.