I am a genius!

Let me preface this journal entry with this: check out pewdiepie on youtube. He does some funny let's plays. Also, check out Achievement Hunter. Those dudes are hysterical. 

The reason I mention pewdiepie is because I recently found out how to do what he does on his videos. I can record myself playing a game, then stick it in the corner of my gameplay screen. All on adobe premiere! My mind was blown! Blown, I tell you! Shortly afterwards, I found out I can do what the Achievement Hunter guys do and switch between viewpoints. This is huge for me because I can now show what Nate is doing while we do our group let's plays. It's way important for me, because it's allowing me to explore how to do more with video editing.

Update on Donald Duck Blanket

So my mom's birthday was yesterday, but I didn't finish her blanket in time. I'm still working on it, using surface crochet. It goes by kinda quickly but it ends up hurting my wrists after a while. However, it makes the blanket look really good.

Here's the other parents I made for my mom!

It comes from a Japanese amigurumi book with completely food. It's called Amiami Restaurant. It's definitely worth checking out. 

Innovations Roadmap #14

Goal [gohl]

Noun

1. the result or achievement toward which effort is directed; aim; end

2. the terminal point in a race

3. a pole, line, or other marker by which such a point is indicated

4. an area, basket, cage, or other object or structure toward or into which players of various games attempt to throw, carry, kick, hit, or drive a ball, puck, etc., to score a point or points

5. the act of throwing, carrying, kicking, driving, etc. a ball or puck into such an area or object

TOPIC: Personal goals and recommendations for yourself

One of my goals is simply to make it through college. I’m tired of college already and it’s only my first year. College does not seem like what everyone told me it would be. It’s only the first year, though, so I’ve got to give it time. Maybe I will. There’s a recommendation for myself. Try to make the best of my time in college. I’m not going to change how I am. I’m accepting that I’ve got problems meeting people. But I’m going to try to be more active with the friends I have. If people want to be my friend, they can do that.

One of my personal goals will be to relearn statistics because that’s the most useful kind of math I’m ever going to need. If I’m doing research, statistics will be something I’ve got to learn in order to make sense of the data I get. I’ve never been good at math, but this was honestly the first kind of math class I took in high school that made sense to me. Funnily enough, it was the last math class I took in high school. Four years and only one useful thing learned. But! Anyone can be good at something if they put their mind to. The brain can be rewired. I’m going to make sense of statistics and make it useful for me.

Aside from those school-related goals (it appears as though that’s a lot of my goals), I want to improve my photography skills. I’ll get used to carrying my camera everywhere. And when I see something I like, I’ll take the camera out and take a picture of the thing. I’m not going to give a damn about people giving me funny looks. I want to take pictures of things that appeal to me and are meaningful to me. I’m going to improve taking pictures of human subjects. I only ever take photos of nature because I don’t like photographing human subjects. I think my main problem with this one, though, is that I’m not comfortable asking people to be my subject and pose and things like that. I’ve always got ideas for interesting photos using people, but can’t do it because I can’t bring myself to ask someone to help.

I think the pictures of objects look better than the pictures with the human subjects. Except for the one on the left where my friend is jumped for the volleyball. That one looks awesome.

The next recommendation for myself is going to sound kind of strange. However, it is important for me and likely for others. That recommendation is: use the internet more. If I can’t take classes about graphic design or photograph or things like that, the internet is the next best thing. I’ll teach myself. I’m pretty good at teaching myself things. I’ve taught myself to knit, crochet, and sight read on the piano. I can’t tell you what notes they are right away just by looking at them, but tell me to point the notes out on a piano keyboard and I can do that quickly. The internet has so far only been used for my leisure. I’m going to teach myself to do the things I want to learn, because I can’t take those classes in college. I’m going to find a way to train my skills with the internet as a resource. Take everything on the internet with a grain of salt, I know. But when you can find the good stuff, it is good.

Two posters I made for my club. I wanted it to be cooler looking, but once again, no experience. That's a problem.

In a Rut

There are times when I feel like I'm stuck in a rut. It's probably been more prominent this semester, as it ends, then ever. I'm taking several classes that are forcing me to think about my perspective of life or life in general. I'm not huge on thinking of it all at the same time. I've already got a ton of stress in my life. Why do I need more?

One class- I believe my American Institutions class- mentioned how holding a college degree is becoming so common that it's expected. It used to be something that would get you ahead in life. Now... Now what? A lot of people hold a college degree; so what? What makes me special? Nothing. I'm not going to hold some amazing helpful degree that'll make me shine. I feel like I'm stuck. I feel like I'm not enjoying college as much as I should be. I want to do what I want, but everything else is demanding my attention. I can't do what I want. College is not what people are telling me it is.

There was something else we discussed in that class. My teacher wondered why we weren't willing to take risks or branch out. My thoughts about it is that I can't. My dad wants me to get through college in four years. I cannot tell you how often I've heard "make sure it's relevant. You can't waste time." In addition, it's also because I've had support my whole life. I'm afraid of losing everything and not finding a place for me again. I can't tell you how often I've had a day dream about dropping out of college and travelling. I want to take pictures. Enjoy the simplicity of nature and life without school. That's all my life's been based on. School. and I can't define myself outside of it. Everything's... school. I want a life outside of it. Now that I think about it, I'm wondering about what I want to do in life. Be a teacher. More school? Is that how prominent it is in my life? Is it because I truly enjoy teaching or is it because I can't separate myself from the school environment?

I wish I could make a living for myself off of artsy things. Crocheting, knitting, photography. But I can't. And I'm not sure if it's because I've been so trained to think I can't or because I used to think I could but reality hit me hard and all my optimism about anything has been taken away from me. I feel like it's both. 

In the love letters I write to strangers, I constantly say, "Don't let the world make you hard." And I realized I'm saying a lot of things to these strangers that I don't follow myself. I think, I'm too far gone. It's already happened to me. All these things have passed me by. I tell these people these things because I don't want it to happen to them. 

I'm young. I should not be this bitter, this angry, this hateful at myself and at other things. 

Lifeguarding

Yesterday, I got my lifeguard certification, and I'm super excited to have that. I might also have a lifeguard job sometime soon, because my instructor approached me and said that if I'm interested we can talk. This takes a load off of my shoulders, because I need a job. Desperately. For summer. I'd rather just focus on my studies and explore, but I need a job. A friend of mine who is a lifeguard at the facility I may work at said it's a pretty safe place. They had to perform one rescue in eight months, and that was because the woman couldn't handle it, despite the fact there were lane lines extremely close on either side of her. I guess that means I don't have to be too worried about performing a deep submerged rescue.

I'm not feeling quite my usual self right now, so this is a quick update. I can be a lifeguard and I may be a lifeguard. Yay, me!

Check out this organization!

I'm going to preface this with a story.

I really love my dad's sister. She's the best aunt ever. The last time I saw her was last summer, on my family's grand American road trip. It was only for a day, for a few hours. But I was so happy to see her. I knew she was sick. It was a kidney problem, I think. She was supposed to get a transplant, but was rejected because her oxygen levels were too low and putting her through the surgery would be risky. My dad told me the doctors gave her 90 days. This was at the beginning of the year, and I freaked out. Internally freaked out. I'm good at hiding my emotions until I'm alone. When I was alone, I cried and cried.

She had told me at the end of December she wanted a scarf to accompany the hat I had made her. I got that done in record time and sent it to her. And for a while, I heard nothing. Not from her, not from my dad. So I worried. But then I joined my school's Campus Cursive, a branch of the organization More Love Letters. Then I got the idea to send the letters to my aunt. I asked my dad for her address and was relieved when he told it to me. I submitted a request for my aunt to receive a love bundle. It would contain anywhere from 5-10 letters. The day after I submitted it, I wrote my own letter to my aunt. I wanted to tell her things I couldn't say anonymously. I asked her for a letter back, if she wanted to, because I loved mail.

A few days ago, my dad gave me my aunt's phone number. Told me to call her because she wanted to give me her secret ingredient for her lasagna (which is delicious, by the way).

Today, after a long day of sitting in a class to get a lifeguard certificate, I checked my mail and got a reply from my aunt. I read it and was overwhelmed. I didn't care it took me a while to decipher her handwriting. I got a letter from her. And in that letter I felt the love from her. I called her up a little while later. We ended up talking for a while. I loved it.

She had gotten my letter, she said, and it had made her day.

She told me she had received the letters from Campus Cursive, and she sat in her car and cried tears of joy. She couldn't even drive.

She showed it to a friend of hers, and that friend started crying.

She told her pastor about me and the writers of the bundles of letter she had gotten, and her pastor said, "There needs to be more people like her and her friends."

She was talking to my dad minutes before I called her and told him about the letters. He asked her how many she had gotten and she said eight. My dad joked with her and said, "I don't even have eight friends!" She replied, "Neither do I, and that's why I cried!"

And while she was telling me this, I had to keep myself from crying. I had made my aunt's day, and I got to talk to her and have this moment with her. This is the power of writing. This is the power of handwritten letters. To show people that in this digital world, they are still loved and that somewhere out there, someone is thinking of them.

Moral of the story is: check out More Love Letters. Join them in their campaign to write more letters. You want something that isn't a text or an email. There's something touching about receiving a letter in the mail. Write a letter for them. If you're a university (or high school student, although this is significantly rarer), check out their website to see if there's a chapter near you. Join it. Make someone else's day and have a story like mine. Write letters and spread love.

Innovation Roadmap #13

Recommendation

[rek-uh­-men-dey-shuh-n]

Noun

1. An act of recommending

2. A letter or the like recommending a person or thing

3. Representation in favor of a person or thing

4. Anything that serves to recommend a person or thing, or induce acceptance or favor

TOPIC: Recommendations for the class

One of the things I remember talking about with someone in the class was how difficult it was to get 10 different problem statements/opportunity statements down that related to something we were passionate about. Maybe we just weren’t passionate about a lot of things. Or maybe we are passionate about something, and we just haven’t found that something yet. In another class that may have a few upperclassmen, this may not be a problem (or maybe it is. Peoples’ interest changes all the time, after all). But in a class of freshmen, who may or may not know what they’re doing? It’s very hard. I remember sitting down to that assignment and thinking, “Aw, crap, what am I going to write?” I’m only just getting into linguistics as a field and I’m not fully aware of all the problems in Japanese. I think a few of those problems were ones I came up with that I didn’t really feel passionate about. I’d recommend moving it from 10 problems (what it says on the syllabus) to 7 or 8 (what was said in class the week before the assignment was due).

The blogs are actually super helpful, so I’d recommend continuing them. It makes students think about topics they may not necessarily think too deeply on. I really enjoyed writing my thoughts down for this class. I don’t do it enough in a personal diary, so writing it in a blog very much helped with that.

More guest speakers would be nice, especially guest speakers from previous classes. In my mind, when it’s guest speakers from businesses, they are inspirational, but it’s sometimes hard to connect their failures with the current success because we only see the success. It’s the same way with many of the prominent figures today. A lot of the time, the success is only focused on, not the past and the failures, to the point where it’s possible to have the person seen as always successful. I believe that by having people who are currently living through their own roadmap and making it happen, the students in the class will see how this class impacted previous students. I really enjoyed the two visiting that one class. It may also be helpful having alumni from that class (I don’t think there are any yet but when it happens) visit and talk about it. It makes the speaker much more believable when there’s a common ground between the speaker and audience. They can claim having taken the class and struggled. Give tips on finding passions and connecting to mentors. Give tips on picking classes and engagements. And finally, give tips on how to proceed with their roadmap. Quite possibly, explain how it’s helped them! If a concrete example can be given, I may have been more inclined to believe earlier in the year that this would look good on a resume.

One last thing I have to add is it may be helpful dividing people into their own sections. The medicine people go together, physical exercise people go together, and so on. This was inspired by the one time we did this in class and the idea of being split into general groups for the April 24^th even so that we can meet others who are pursuing the same thing we are. The only thing I can see wrong with this is what was a little wrong with the one time it happened in class. No one knows how to help each other with their problem statements. It may have been because we’re not aware of what’s happening on campus, as freshmen. I have no doubt that if people knew about ways to get involved, it would really help others.

Check out my youtube channel!

Hey, all! I have a youtube channel where I (along with the amazing Nate) do Let's Plays. At this point, I may only do Let's Plays with him because he's way more interesting than me, but let's see. Maybe my commentary and humor will get better and I can play single player games. Don't know which ones to do, but hey, I've got a ton of single player games. I'll figure it out.

So yeah! Check out my channel.

Innovations Roadmap #12

Reflection [ri-flek-shuh n]

Noun

1. The act of reflecting or the state of being reflected

2. An image; representation; counterpart

3. A fixing of the thoughts on something; careful consideration

4. A thought occurring in consideration or meditation

5. An unfavorable remark or observation

TOPIC: Reflection on the Innovation Scholar roadmap course.

I’ve had many ups and downs with this class.

I wasn’t particularly pleased with how early this class was. Getting up really at 7:30, then having to think about how I want to make an impact in a field at 8:30 when all I’d rather think about is taking a nap is really hard. If the Honors college wants to keep going with having this as a part of the CORE experience (or part of the Honors curriculum in general), I’d definitely recommend moving it back. Yes, it’s in our dorms. That does not mean we’re okay with waking up at 7 or 7:30 to go to a class.

That aside, I think taking the Innovation Scholars course was really beneficial for me. I found out I like psychology a lot more than I thought. Being in this class helped me connect my desire to help people with a passion of mine, and to use that passion in a way I hadn’t thought possible. Knitting is no longer just your grandmother’s hobby. It can be used for so many things. Without this class, I would not have started looking for how this hobby I started as a bored 12-year-old could help me as a stressed-out college student and help others from all walks of life.

At the same time, pursing this put me in situation I did not like much. I found myself comparing my problem statement with others. The examples brought up in class were science or something mechanical, and that made me think, “My problem is not good enough because it’s not trying to solve some big problem that’ll actually do something really cool.” I’ve had this problem outside of this class, where the Honors college focuses really heavily on the sciences. This just helped increase my insecurity about what I want to do. I feel like I should be doing something that’s really going to make an impact, but all I want to do is help people without having to rely on all the fancy gadgets. I think if I had heard a wider variety of problem statements, I would not have become insecure and struggled so much with coming up with a problem or finding a mentor.

I did appreciate a lot of the advice given. There was something very true about it, yet the way it was pushed made me cringe away from it. I’d love to try all these things. I’d drop out of college if I knew I could afford it because it stresses me out more than it should and keeps me from doing what I’d much rather be doing. But I can’t. The root to all these problems? Money. Don’t have the money to do anything. I have written a lot of the advice down, though. The reason I did this is to make my college experience the best it can be, despite how miserable school makes me. I think something to watch out for is saying “you have to do something, you have to make an impact” over and over in classes because I’m just a freshman. I’m still trying to adjust to living away from home, making friends outside of my dorm, dealing with the insane amount of homework my teachers give (do they give a lot because they think their class is the only one?), and on top of homework, making sure I’m getting enough sleep and taking care of myself.  The concept of trying to make a change in four years or advance something can be terrifying.

I really enjoyed the back and forth conversations in the class. I think if it weren’t so early, I would have participated more. I liked the brainstorming. The best part of this class is identifying a passion that you may want to pursue later. I liked finding out more about myself and about the people around me. It’s nice to see people who are passionate about something. I was talking to Kris the other day, and for the first time, I heard someone else say they were really looking forward to pursuing their problem statement. For those who actually care, they can get a lot out of this course. They can do collaborations, too, if they can find it. Not everyone’s going to follow through, I’m sure of it. Very few people might. However, finding something I’m passionate about, finding others who are passionate about something, and finding people who are willing to support you is something I’ve gotten out of this class. It was really a great and interesting class, and in the end, I’ll say I’m not unhappy about taking the Innovations Scholars class. I’m not thrilled, but I’m not unhappy. This is a great class.

Beach Volleyball

Sorry for not posting in a while (aside from school assignments!). School's been kicking my butt, and I've been trying to catch up on all my school work so I don't feel stressed. Kind of successful, I'd say. But I'm sure you don't want to hear me talk about school. Oh, no. I have something better to talk about.

Namely, Easter weekend.

I went over to my friend Maia's house because she and her family dye eggs and hide it for the little kids who are family friends. That was super fun. The two-year-old was especially cute. For dinner, we had a seriously Japanese dinner of tonkatsu and shredded cabbage, but there was also macaroni salad (super delicious) and deviled eggs. Maia and I ate a ton of eggs, then ate some candy. We really love our deviled eggs. I got to help make them! I also learned something: I suck at peeling eggs. I don't know how everyone does it, but it's hard.

On Sunday, Maia really wanted to play volleyball and asked a friend of hers to check if Outdoor Rec had their nets up. They were, and so Maia and I drove to the University to play. We got some friends to come play. I suck at serving with my right hand, but I'm decent with my left. Funny, because I'm not left-handed. I'm a right-handed person. I got some cool action shots of Maia and Narumi playing against two Chinese guys who asked if they could join in. Those two are like a super duo or something. They played really well. They're both good at volleyball. We decided to make this a weekly thing, where Maia comes to the campus to play volleyball. I've decided to join her. Volleyball is the first sport I actually like where running is involved. Some running, anyway. I'm a swimmer, and that doesn't require running at all.

My body is so sore, but it's gratifying. Isn't that odd? I think once you find something you like, the pain-in-the-butt soreness becomes something better. So I think I'll keep playing volleyball and keep swimming. Both of those are sports I enjoy rather immensely. ...Wait until I tell my mom I'm getting into volleyball. She really loves volleyball and would really love that I'm playing it.