Because I should be working on one of my college essays and I’d rather not, I will write more about the upcoming schol year, which begins on Wednesday.

I got my schedule in the mail. After mistakes, my changing my mind, and three seperate trips to the guidance office, I’m taking Ceramics/Sculpture instead of Computer Graphics 2. I don’t know anyone else that’s taking the class, but it should be fun anyway. It’ll be a nice break from everything else I’m taking. I can’t understand it when people aren’t really excited about their schedules. I love choosing classes, talking about them, seeing who my teachers are . . . it’s so much fun!

School starts in five days. Because I’m busy, I have 1.5 days write my English essay, finish reading Lord of the Flies, do a physics lab, and finish as many of my college essays as possible. I doubt that more than the one I’m working on now will be completed. I think I can use this one for everywhere but the University of Chicago, though, so that’s not too bad. Speaking of college (which I always am), I think I’ve made my final final decision on which schools to apply to. Here they are, in no particular order:

• UMass Amherst
• Carnegie Mellon University
• Wesleyan University
• University of Chicago
• Worcester Polytech
• Rensselaer Polytech
• Harvey Mudd College

If I change my mind, I think it will be to add more liberal arts schools like Wesleyan. Some days I want to do my undergrad at a liberal arts school and then go to a more technical place for grad school.

My first choice changes all the time. I don’t want to go to UMass- that’s there just in case everywhere else rejects me. I know it’s not good to have a safety school you don’t want to go to, but I would be happy with any other place on the list, and I can’t see myself not being rejected from all of them. CMU seems like an all-around cool place and has one of the best computer science programs in the country, Wesleyan is intellectual and artsy and still has a good science program, the University of Chicago has excellent academics and a really smart, quirky, student body, WPI and RPI are both good tech schools likely to give me a scholarship, and Harvey Mudd is a tech school with a strong emphasis on the liberal arts that rivals Caltech in academics. If Harvey Mudd was around here instead of in Southern California, I think it would be my top choice. Unfortunately, it’s also a very high reach school.

Enough! I really should work on that essay. It’s about half done.