Waffles Part 3

Yesterday, we made breakfast again in AP Physics. We did it because we had physics in the morning due to MCAS and it was also our last day of class. This time was even better than the past two times we have made breakfast in school (as featured in Waffles Parts 1 and 2). This time we went all out. We had waffles again and we had chocolate chips and strawberries to put in them. We even had a Mickey Mouse-shaped waffle iron, so some waffles were Mickey Mouse. However, we forgot the syrup this time, so we had to make due without. We didn’t just stick to waffles this time, we also brought in an electric griddle and used it to make bacon (thick cut of course) and eggs. We also had munchkins to eat. Everything was very good and was a nice way to both start off the morning. It was also a nice way to end the year and to say goodbye. What higher note is there to end on than waffles and bacon?

One Week Left in High School

The time is finally almost here. We only have one week left in senior year and in all of high school. The past few weeks have been crazy with all of the AP tests, but now they are all over and I find myself doing almost nothing in most of my classes. It is very weird to think about how close we really are to the end. For 4 years, I have spent the majority of my waking hours at the school and pretty soon I will leave for good (or mostly for good at least).

I am actually sort of looking forwards to going to school next week for the first time in a long time. I am done with AP tests and doing anything in those classes, so most of my days will be spent just hanging out. There are also different things happening next week like theme days and, possibly, people are going to bring dogs in one day. Overall, I don’t know if I am happy or sad to have high school end; it just feels kind of odd. Either way, in 5 short days I will be done with classes and in three short weeks I will be getting my diploma at graduation, so I guess I better just make the most of the little time I have left.

Senior Assassin

This week the our class started the annual game of Senior Assassin. In Assassin, everyone is assigned a target and is a target. The goal is to assassinate your target, by spraying them with water, while not getting killed by your assassin. The assassins are assigned in a circle and as you kill your targets, you get their targets until there is only one assassin left standing.

Despite what other people might say, I was awesome at Assassin (not really). It is a very difficult game. The hardest part is just tracking down your target. When I tried to find my target, I went to his house and staked it out. It didn’t go very well and eventually I listened to some very bad advice and rang my targets doorbell. I then awkwardly walked away when his mom answered the door. Sadly, before I could try again to get my target, I was tricked and assassinated. While the game didn’t last very long for me, it was fun while it lasted.

Robotics World Championships

Last week, I was in St. Louis because the robotics team qualified for the world championships. It was an amazing experience and it was absolutely enormous. Over 600 teams and 40,000 people convened on St. Louis for 4 days. The event filled the St. Louis NFL stadium, the Edward Jones Dome and the giant convention center connected to it as well as some nearby hotels. It took 30 minutes to walk from one side of the event to the other. Teams were there from all over the country and the world, including many from China, Australia, and Israel. It was very cool to be able to walk around and see so many amazing robots and talk to so many interesting teams. It was especially cool to watch the final rounds of the playoffs and see the world champions crowned. The other thing that amazed me is that the competition was not just contained to the arena. For the four days it was going on it was the focus of most of St. Louis. Everyone in the city from taxi drivers to security guards at the arch knew it was going on and everywhere we went, we saw tons of other teams. Overall, it was an amazing experience.

Senior Year is Almost Over

Over the past few days, I have come to realize how close we are to the end of senior year. We only have 26 days of school left! Not only that, but we only have ONE, that’s right ONE, full, real week left. Next week is a short week because of Blue Ribbon and then it is already April Vacation. After that, it’s our last real week. Then, it is two weeks of AP tests and school starts to wind down as I take tests and we begin to officially do nothing in AP classes. It is also really fragmented those weeks because of the tests. After that, we have one week in which almost nothing will happen. I have four and a half blocks of AP classes and all of those will basically be studies after the tests are complete. Then, for some reason we have to go to school for like two hours the next Monday, but that’s it. School is over. I can’t believe how close we are to the end.

Google is a Cool Place

On Thursday, I got to miss half of a day of school because I went to a robotics conference at Google. Let me say, Google offices are exactly as cool as you would expect. The whole office is themed like the T with each building being a different line and different floors being different stops. One of the floors we walked by was themed like the New England Aquarium and had fish tanks everywhere. The elevator doors were also decorated to look like train doors and the building maps were made to look like T maps.

There were also all sorts of fancy amenities in the building. The conference we were at was right next to a full coffee bar and a giant lounge. The building also had not one, but two massage parlors according to the map, though I didn’t get to see that. It also had a game room and all sorts of other cool stuff. We were also next to a giant roof garden which was basically a full park on the roof. I also saw an employee just riding a scooter down the hall, which is like the exact stereotype of google employees. Overall, it was a very cool space.

Being Sick Sucks

The past two weeks I have been very sick. I have been out sick 3 days out of the past 2 weeks which is very rare for me because I am rarely sick for long. However, I have now been sick nearly constantly for about a week and a half. It is robotics competition season which has really taken a toll on my health. Two weeks ago we had a competition which was fun, but really wore me down because I spent over 40 hours at the school that weekend and had many late nights leading up to it. The week after the competition, my exhaustion finally caught up with me and I started to get a cold. However, I tried to fight through it and basically ignored it for 2 days which really backfired because I woke up at 2 am the next day and basically felt like I was dying. So, I then spent the next 4 days gradually recovering and by the middle of last week, I started to feel better. However, this only lasted about a day and a half because there was another robotics competition this weekend. Between the long hours and being surrounded by 2 thousand other people and their germs, my cold came back and, so, I have spent the last 2 days recovering from that. Hopefully, I am actually recovering this time. Through all of this, I remembered how much being sick really sucks. It has reached the point where, as a second semester senior, I am actually looking forward to being back in school. If that doesn’t show how bad I have felt, I don’t know what does.

Waffles Part 2

Yesterday, my first period class made waffles once again. However, things went much smoother this time. First of all, we made them in AP Physics because of the MCAS schedule and we had asked ahead of time, so we were actually allowed to make them and didn’t have to make them during lunch. This meant we had a lot more time because we had a double in physics, so we had 2 hours instead of 30 minutes. This allowed us not to rush the waffles and actually cook them fully.

The waffles were very good this time. They were much lighter because we used a different batter and they were nice and golden brown because we had a better waffle iron. People also brought in toppings like berries and whipped cream instead of just maple syrup which added a lot. We also made some chocolate chip waffles because everything's better with chocolate. Overall, the waffles turned out very well.

A Great Investment Opportunity

A few weeks ago, I wrote a blog post about my awesome athletic skills and how I ran only one PACER. I did so because two people seeking entertainment offered my 10 dollars to drop out after a single PACER. While I still think it was totally worth it, gym progress reports were recently posted and I got a 0 for the day because of “poor effort.” I personally disagree greatly with this grade. I showed up to class, on time nonetheless, I wore my gym clothes, and I did not verbally or physically assault anyone. Therefore, I think it is unfair that I got the same grade I would have gotten if I didn’t show up at all. I am even more angry that I didn’t know this ahead of time because I went to a gym class that I apparently could have just skipped.

So, for those of you looking to invest in another entertainment opportunity, I am willing to argue my grade for the low price of 10 dollars. Some of you may be wondering, why would I give you money to improve your grade? Well I am willing to argue that I deserve a 1 for the day because I did run one whole pacer after all. You know that would be a great sight to see. As a bonus, if you pledge 5 dollars or more, I will give you a signed copy of my gym progress report. So, think about this great opportunity and comment your pledges below.

Waffles

As some of you may know, yesterday was a very important holiday: National Pancake Day! Now while pancakes are great and all and free IHOP almost makes IHOP tolerable, waffles are where it is really at. On Monday, my AP Calculus class decided to make waffles to get an early start on this important holiday (we actually had no idea the next day was National Pancake Day, but I am going to say it was planned for the sake of the story). However, we were not allowed to make waffles in Calc, so we were forced to make them during lunch.

In hindsight, this may have been for the better because as we learned, the waffles were terrible.  We added milk and eggs to the batter when I am pretty sure it was a just a water mix and the waffle iron couldn’t shut all the way among many other things I am sure made the waffles terrible. They would not brown and were possibly partially raw in the middle and were dense as a brick. They also just didn’t taste that good. However bad the waffles were, it was still a fun time and is one of those moments that I will look back on after I graduate and remember the good times of high school.

Robotics

As some of you may know, I am on the school’s robotics team. This year’s game is called FIRST Stronghold. It is medieval themed and the basic premise is that there are two alliance each with a tower. The tower is behind a row of obstacles called the outer works. There are 5 obstacles called defenses that are chosen from 9 options and they range from a low bar you have to fit under to a drawbridge. You can earn points for crossing each of these defenses and after you cross 4 of them twice, you get what is called a breach. The other primary game element is the tower. There are a bunch of dodgeballs on the field and you can earn points by shooting them into the tower. You can shoot in a goal at the base of the tower for 2 points or at the top of the tower for 5 points. At the end of the game, there is the opportunity for robots to climb the tower for additional points.

Our robot is designed to cross most of the defenses. It is also capable of shooting into the high goal and uses vision software for aiming instead of being aimed manually. I really like our robot this year and think it will perform well (knock on wood). We compete for the first time this weekend at a competition that we are hosting at the high school, so we are down to the wire with putting the finishing touches on the robot. I am very excited to finally get to compete and to see how well we do.

A Great Achievement

In this blog, I am going to to tell you about a great achievement of mine from this past week. No, it was not getting into Tufts. I had to throw that in there for all of you who think I talk about Tufts too much and wear my sweatshirt too much even though it is just a very comfortable sweatshirt. However, this blog post is not about that achievement, it is about setting a personal, and probably school record on the PACER in gym class. I accomplished the very difficult task of completing exactly one PACER.

Now, some of you are probably wondering why I only did one PACER and the answer is simple. I was offered $10 to do it for others’ entertainment. This was probably the easiest decision of my life; I was offered money not to do something that I did not want to do in the first place.I still cannot believe how good of a deal I got. I did not run PACER, which is one of my least favorite things to do, and I got money which I could use to buy some Chipotle to compensate for all of the calories I burned during that one PACER. So, thank you Russ and Alex. You helped encourage me to set a record in PACER and you bought me a burrito.

Can’t Stop Playing Stop

This past week most of my friends and I have been playing a phone game called Stop. Stop is kind of like Scattergories, except it is only two players and it is a smartphone app instead of a card game. Five categories are randomly chosen and a letter is chosen as well. You then have 60 seconds to come up with words for each category that start with the selected letter. The other player then plays with the same categories and letter and then a winner for the round is decided based upon the who earns the most stars. You can earn one star for a correct answer and half a star for an answer that is spelled slightly wrong. The first to win three rounds is the winner of the game. The largest difference from Scattergories is that the first player of the round can stop the clock at anytime they choose and the second player only has that much time for their turn. This allows for the interesting strategy of getting one or two answers in the first few seconds and then stopping, so the second player doesn’t have time to think.

Stop is not the first game that my friends have gotten hooked on. We also all got into Trivia Crack, both this past December and the year before. Both times, we all lost interest after about two weeks. I predict the same thing will happen with Stop. Mobile games have extremely short lifetimes for the most part. People get obsessed and then burn themselves out. It is inevitable as with most things. Whether, Stop lasts or not, it was still fun while it lasted.

What Would You Actually Do with a Billion Dollars?

This week, the largest thing in the news was Powerball. The lottery was up to a record setting 1.6 BILLION dollar jackpot and everyone was talking about it. There is something about the prospect of becoming super rich that makes everyone want to buy a ticket, even despite the fact that you are 24 thousand times more likely to get struck by lightning than to win Powerball. But, while I could write a whole post about why gambling is a scam, I will make this post about what would happen to someone if they actually won the lottery.

This whole week people have been fantasizing about what they would do if they won. I have heard people say everything from buying private jets to quitting their job to buying a cruise ship and then throwing it out just because they could (that one was mine). However, at lunch a few days ago, we were talking about what we would actually do if we won, which is not nearly as glamourous. After the initial excitement and extravagance wears off, I do not know what I would do. Would I go to college even though I would not actually need a degree because I wouldn’t need a job? Would I drop out the second something didn’t go my way? Would I end up working? If not, what would I spend my days doing? Relaxing on the beach in the Caribbean is fun for a little while, but I could not imagine doing it for the rest of my life? If I had that much money, I would not really have any motivation to get up every day because I would not have to work or do anything else that I didn’t want to. Being super wealthy is an entirely good thing. If you don’t have to work for anything, nothing will have meaning to you. What would you actually do if you won the Powerball?

I’m Done! (Sort of)

Finally, after 4 months of college applications, and what felt like 4 years of worrying about college, I am done with the college application process. I must say I was expecting it to be more exciting. I  kept hearing about how good it feels when you are done, but I didn’t really feel anything when I sent in that last application. I was just like okay, I’m done and then watched Netflix. This was surprising to me. I expected that after all the time, effort, and stress I put into the process, I would feel some sort of relief.  How did you feel when you submitted your last application?

While I am done with applying to college, there is sadly still nearly 5 months of school left. It is kind of weird to get college acceptance letters and after all of that work be so close to college, yet still have what feels like an eternity left in high school. Even worse, there is still 1 whole week left that I still have to try! Just kidding. However, senioritis is starting to hit and it is getting worse every day. I know that I shouldn’t stop caring yet, especially since I am in a lot of AP classes, but part of me is saying that school doesn’t matter anymore. It’s going to be a long few months battling my urge to be lazy. Is anyone else starting to feel senioritis hit?