Last night Layla and I went to Mio Babbo’s for dinner, because we had no more food in the apartment. And then on the way back, we dropped by Whole Foods to get some Vitamin E oil (good for your skin for evening out pigments!). And they well selling daffodils for 2$/10 so of course I had to get some! And also some dehydrated organic mangoes which I haven’t tried yet. Beautiful It totally made my night, even though I knew I had some impending doom (read: EE lab) ahead of me. I named them Affodil, Baffodil, Caffodil, etc. all the way to Jaffodil, because I’m not creative enough to think of ten names at once. Especially since they will expire in like a week and a half.

After we got home, I decided that I wanted to go back tomorrow (today) and buy as many as I had containers for, because 10 daffodils is not enough, especially for so cheap! So this morning Layla and I went out to get groceries and sun mian get more daffodils. We went to Trader Joe’s first, to get veggies and stuff, and then LO AND BEHOLD. More daffodils! For 1.29$/10!!! So call me crazy, but I bought a few more

Meet the newest members of my apartment, daffodils 1-100 and A-J. That’s right, I have 110 daffodils in my apartment.

My sister called me crazy but you know what? 15 dollars can buy my happiness. So easy! I would have bought more but I don’t have any vases and I knew I didn’t have that many tall cups either. When they all bloom it’s going to be epic. And so freaking fantastic.

So I distributed them around my room for maximum exposure. When I wake up in the morning and put on my contacts, BAM! Good morning, beautiful!

And then when I’m deciding what to wear… more! I will then have to sadly leave my pretties to go to class.

But it’s okay because when I come back home I will be greeted not by homework but by more daffodils! Yay!!!

Okay. I just thought I should share my compulsiveness. I think I’m addicted to daffodils. When do they become out of season and no longer easily accessible and inexpensive? When the time comes I will just have to SAVE UP FOR NEXT SEASON. There’s no stopping me!

I play both sides of the court. I tell people not to worry about their grades, because the numbers and letters don’t define your future. I’m also a firm believer that if you go to class and understand the subject material, it’s not as important to stay up late finishing every homework problem or cramming for a test. If you truly understand, good grades will come naturally.

I think I’ve decided that both opinions are greatly flawed. Grades do matter, and it’s possible to totally understand everything a professor says and still fail a written test of that knowledge.

This quarter has been a bad one for me so far. as much as I try (which I’ll admit could be a bit more), I can’t seem to foster any interest in the subject material of three of my classes. It’s as expected, then, I guess, that I didn’t do so hot on both my midterms. (The third class I wish I could quit is a lab.)

I used to have the hopeful mindset that all it took to be successful in life was good morals and a strong conviction. A handful of standardized tests and bad test scores later, alongside my waning future on the line, it’s hard to stay retain that naivete.

I guess having aspirations make it that much harder to be content. I know I’ll at the very least graduate with a bachelor’s in engineering. Even so, having that confidence only calms me for a few minutes. Because I want to be guaranteed my future, and not knowing my options shatter the bit of comfort I’ve found during undergrad in the last three years.

According to a random sample survey (read: asking people I knew in my classes yesterday) my GPA is pathetically low. I know I’m supposed to be content knowing that I’m able to maintain a B average at a prestigious and difficut university like UCLA, especially while studying mechanical engineering, but it’s hard not to care about letter grades and grade point averages when that’s all that defines a student. My resume may have slightly more than the average student, having held a formidable leadership position with BruinLife yearbook for two years. But held against someone else’s resume with a fantastic GPA, which is the very definition if smart (even according to my book) I can’t help but feel insecure. Someone might even see my focus on extracurriculars as a fault of not being dedicated to my higher education.

I have never been and am still not good at prioritizing. There’s much more than a fine line between a good person and a successful one. I know I’m a strong individual. I tend to be relatively cognizant of the situations that surround me. But it’s hard for me to find motivation and dedication to the important things that will decidedly define my comfortable (or not) future. School leads to more school leads to work and it might just be too late for a significant improvement in the one year I have left of my undergraduate career. I’ve got to step it up now to uncloud my very obscure later. I’ll just do the best I can from here on out, right?

A Considerable Speck
Robert Frost

A speck that would have been beneath my sight
On any but a paper sheet so white
Set off across what I had written there.
And I had idly poised my pen in air
To stop it with a period of ink
When something strange about it made me think.
This was no dust speck by my breathing blown,
But unmistakably a living mite
With inclinations it could call its own.
It paused as with suspicion of my pen,
And then came racing wildly on again
To where my manuscript was not yet dry;
Then paused again and either drank or smelt –
With loathing, for again it turned to fly.
Plainly with an intelligence I dealt.
It seemed too tiny to have room for feet,
Yet must have had a set of them complete
To express how much it didn’t want to die.
It ran with terror and with cunning crept.
It faltered; I could see it hesitate;
Then in the middle of the open sheet
Cower down in desperation to accept
Whatever I accorded it of fate.

I have none of the tenderer-than-thou
Collectivistic regimenting love
With which the modern world is being swept.
But this poor microscopic item now!
Since it was nothing I knew evil of
I let it lie there till I hope it slept.

I have a mind myself and recognize
Mind when I meet with it in any guise.
No one can know how glad I am to find
On any sheet the least display of mind.

So today I was in EE110L, and as I was calibrating my Lissajous plot with the function generator off (so all there was on the oscilloscope was a tiny dot that I needed to center) and then I make a reference to Frost’s A Considerable Speck and then I came home roughly four hours later and took a shower and then realized something!

I truly appreciate my teachers form ISB a lot more than those who taught me back at Lynbrook. I guess in a class size of about 600, it just didn’t seem necessary to get close to a teacher who I would never impress in room of 35 students. At ISB, there were never more than 20 students in a classroom, when a maximum of 50 students were taking each subject. I got to know my teachers, and they got to know me. It definitely was a different environment to go back and visit ISB after I graduated. When I visit Lynbrook, the only teacher I chat with is Mr. Kitchen, my Japanese teacher form sophomore year. And he probably doesn’t remember what I was like in his class. Likely, he knows me only from the things we talk about when I visit. At ISB, I definitely know that my chemistry and English teachers will remember me as the student I was, to which they’ll add on my post-high school self.

Maybe it was a product of the IB system where each IB class lasted two years. Having Mrs. Carlson and Mr. Beckstead really defined my view on English and chemistry now. If I hadn’t been exposed to their enthusiasm for their subjects for two years each, I wouldn’t have as much interest in the subjects today. And I definitely wouldn’t make the intelligent literary references I do now nor would I want to continue studying chemistry if it weren’t for those teachers.

I guess what I’m saying is that we’re all a product of our experiences and exposures. Maybe my private school experience gave me major advantages I just didn’t think about until today. Teacher-student relationships are such a big deal - I’m thankful to have experienced a glimpse of what all education should be like.