I swore I was going to start updating more often, but something got in my way: weschat.

It’s the (unsponsored by the University) chatroom for Wesleyan’s class of 09. All of us prefrosh have been hanging out in there for a little over a week, getting to know each other. It’s incredibly addicting. Almost all of my internet time since it started has been spent in there. It has consumed my life, but I love it.

All those terrifying fears about showing up on campus and not knowing anyone, never making any friends? 90% gone. Every single one of us has those fears, and is eager to make friends. No one wants to be snobby or judgemental or stupid, because we’re trying to make good impressions. That makes for a very warm, welcoming atmosphere. I can already name at least five people that I would feel comfortable sitting with uninvited at meals, and that’s a wonderful feeling - and a pretty big deal for me. I don’t usually feel like that about people. It’s wonderul. And it will be even better after we all meet up at Wesfest, Wesleyan’s weekend-long party for prefrosh. The next four years are looking pretty good.

So that’s my excuse for not updating very much lately. I think it’s an excellent one.

There is one bad thing about being accepted early to college. You go out of your mind with anticipation. And, unlike most other people, you have months and months of high school left.

I don’t really mind going to school, but I have no work ethic. Homework, studying… not so much. I don’t really care anymore. I can tell that I’m working short term. I’m just functioning on a day-to-day basis, not really learning anything. I don’t need to worry about finals, so there’s no point in taking notes or paying attention in biology if I can just read the book the night before a test and do really well. There’s no point in really learning the physics because all our tests are take-home and open book. I should do calculus homework, but he never checks it and barely mentions it in class. My grades aren’t really going down yet, though - and, let’s be honest, I would start doing more work if I dropped to a B+ in more than one or two subjects. I guess I like to pretend I’m a slacker, but I’m really not. I can get away with not studying very much and doing only required assignments, but I would never hand anything in late.

Then there’s The Laptop. I have been dying for my own laptop since I was about seven. It’s always been the understanding that my parents would buy me one for college as a high school graduation present. The day of acquisition is near. Near enough that I can start researching (and I have, more than you can imagine), but not near enough for it to be really soon. It’s far enough away that all the research is torture. I’ve decided on the Apple iBook, 14 inches, with the Combo Drive. I know the exact configuration I want, and which mouse and printer I’m going to buy. I know which iPod I’ll get if they have a $200-off-an-iPod-when-you-buy-a-PowerBook-or-iBook deal this summer like they did last summer. I’m not sure why this whole laptop thing matters to me as much as it does. I think about it as much as I think about actually going to college.

And I think about going to college a lot. Where I’m going to live, which courses I’m going to take, what my major will be, exactly what I’ll bring. I won’t bore you with the specifics, except for the fact that I’m planning to major in Neuroscience & Behavior. It’s going to drive me crazy because I have so long to wait. Can’t I just skip the next few months?

Oh, Wesleyan. You drive me crazy.

Let the people rejoice, for I am a member of Wesleyan University’s class of 2009.

I’ve written about the Great College Search in here before, so I guess I should report on what I finally decided.

I’m going to apply early decsion to Wesleyan University, a liberal arts school in Middletown, Connecticut. It’s strange that after all the thinking and research and discussions with my parents, I’ve come full circle. When I first started looking at colleges, years ago, I wanted to go to a small liberal arts school in New England. Then I changed my mind and started looking at more technical schools, mostly because I was afraid of essays and found the geek sterotype comforting. I wised up and realized that I wanted to graduate knowing how to do a lot more than math or comuter science - I want to take a lot of good courses in philosophy, English, psychology, things like that. I think that if you’re planning to go on to grad school, undergrad should be a time to kind of find yourself and figure out what you want to do. I know I only say that because I havent fully grasped how expensive it is.

I love Wesleyan because it’s the perfect distance away from home (two hours by car, too far to go home for dinner but close enough to spend a weekend there), very liberal, great academically, has awesome students, and is just a generally cool place. I love it! I’m not sure what I’m going to do if I don’t get in.

I’ll just hope I do.

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.

I think one of the reasons I’m having a hard time making up my mind about where I want to go to college is that I can’t decide exactly what I want to do. I know that, at seventeen, I don’t need to know precisely what’s going to happen for the rest of my life, but I haven’t even firmly decided on a college major. Again, I know that’s common, but I’d like to post about it anyway.

My problem is that I’m interested in too many things. Some of my interest, like English and psychology, are not likely to become college majors. Others, though, like math, computer science, and neuroscience, are. Whenever I try to pick one thing, I feel like I’m abandoning the others. With unlimited money and time, I’d like to spend more than four years on my undergraduate degree and double or triple major with lots and lots of electives. I just want to take too many courses. Lots of liberal arts classes are good because they teach you how to think and live, but I want to major in something very technical- and take as many courses in that as possible.

Actually, here’s what it comes down to. I want to do a major in computer science with some sort of concentration in artificial intelligence. Also, I want to minor/double major in math, and take enough math courses so that I can study topology and geometry, along with number theory. That can be managed. But here’s the problem- I also want to devote a fairly considerable amount of time to the liberal arts. Other science courses, like physics and biology, would be nice, too. As far as I can see, I can’t get a really good education in two fields without sacrificing somewhere else. Alas! Four years is too short.

Keep in mind, though, the above plan is only valid for the next little while. I could change my mind any time. For right now though, top two choices are Carnegie Mellon University and University of Chicago. The plan mentioned above is more tailored to CMU, though- I’m not sure what I’d do if I went to UChicago.

I’ll be glad when I’ve picked a college and sent in my deposit.

I’ve spent most of this summer alternately working and goofing off. I finished my calculus homework pretty early on, but didn’t do anything else about all my homework until recently. It’s even a little hard to write right now, because I’ve been doing so little of it. My penmanship is much worse than usual, and my hand keeps cramping up.

Over the past week, I’ve been working on my biology homework, since it’s due on Wednesday. It’s so easy to fall back into the homework rhythm. Doing worksheets, answering questions, writing paragraphs. It’s almost refreshing. Somtimes (usually during the spring) I think of how great it will be when I get out of college and don’t have to do any more of this. Deep down, though, I love it. Learning new things, answering questions about them, taking tests . . . it’s soothing. I’ve been doing it all my life, so I’m used to it. This is why I used to wish I was a man born centuries ago, so I could be a scholar. Now, I have to content myself with spending a lot of time in college. I love knowledge, and I want as much of it as possible.

On another note, I’m excited about the upcoming year. Even aside from the fact that I’ll be graduating, I’m going to be taking AP English, AP Calculus, AP Computer Science, AP Physics, AP Biology, and Computer Graphics II. Those are all courses that I actually want to take. No history, and no Spanish- at last! I’m especially excited about computer science because it’ll be completely new. CG will just be very fun, as will calculus (I think). Physics is going to be very small- it’ll probably end up with about ten people. I loved AP English last year, and I’m sure I’ll love it again; and biology will be very interesting. Plus, almost everyone I know is taking it, so I’ll have lots of people to talk to.

I always spend the entire month of August anticipatng the beginning of school. I love the start of the year- new classes, new teachers, new books . . . And I haven’t burned out on it yet, either. I spent the majority of last year with a very bad case of early-onset senioritis, though it didn’t affect my grades. I hope it’s different this year. And I hope I can get my college essays written before school starts.

I didn’t think I’d be saying it this soon, but I am very, very ready for school to start up again. It’s not that I have all my work done- no, I still have to do all my summer work (see below), except calculus. It’s the I’ve spent a month sitting around my house and doing nothing, and I’m sick of it.

I’m not very good at self-motivation. If left to my own devices, I don’t do anything unless I have to. I’m hoping to break myself of this habit before I start living on my own because I don’t want to be fat, stupid, uncultured waste of space. I want to go to school every day and do my homework every night. I want to see people. I want to start my new classes. I want to get my senior year over with.

I always have great plans for the summer- books to read, things to accomplish online(Forbidden Fruit needs exa-work), weight to lose… it never gets done, though. I’m very good at looking at my life and figuring out what to do in order to improve it. However, I’m terrible at getting off my ass and starting to improve it right then.
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This fall, I’ll start my senior year of high school. I always told myself that I would do everything I could with the college application process over the summer- write essays, print out and fill in applications, write up my resume, decide which teachers to get recommendations from… And now it’s the summer before me senior year! I actually have to do the stuff. First, though, I have to decide where to apply.
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The Bose guys are interested in me, so I called them today to schedule an interview. The man I talked to seemed pretty cool and laid back. It turns out that their office writes software for some sort of quality-assurance thing for the manufacturers, and they have some websites they want help with. It sounds like it’ll be good, but the problem is that the office is 45 minutes to an hour away from my house. My father and I are driving up tonight so that I’ll know the way when I go for my interview, so I’ll see what I think of the drive then.

So it looks like I’ll be working at Bose this summer, unless I hate the drive. I’ll wait until after my interview to call the EasyLobby people to set up an interview there- no use going to see them if I decide that I want to work at Bose.

Since my interview’s on Thursday at 4:00, and Joe-at-work just called to tell me not to come in today, I’ll only be working one day this week. No work yesterday because of the holiday, and no work Friday because I’m going to see Harry Potter.