From Jodi Picoult’s “Dear Me” letter:
Find the thing that makes you leap out of bed in the morning, that’s how badly you want to get to work. So few people in this world can say they love what they do. Isn’t that a richness all its own?
You’ll learn to pick your battles. You’ll also learn to let go of the ones you think you will carry like a scar, forever. Over the years you’ll have confidantes come and go, but your mom will always be your best friend.
That you secretly think your brother is a total dork. He is four years younger than you and plays Dungeons & Dragons. But one day when you come home from college you will realize you missed the moment this ugly duckling got all swanned out—becoming funny and smart and entertaining. And what you will remember about your childhood is not how embarrassed you were by a kid who liked to wear Star Trek clothing, but the fact that when you ate Dixie ice cream cups, he always swapped you his chocolate for your vanilla.
Being in a hurry. You want it all—college, love, success. The moment you realize you wish you hadn’t grown up so fast is the moment it will be too late. So ditch your Type A personality and skip school one day. Go on vacation but don’t make any hotel reservations in advance. The scenery you see when you’re driving in a car is completely different from the scenery you’d see if you walked the same stretch of road. In the car, you might see splashes of color; by foot, you’d realize they are butterflies.
I love skiing. Even though I’ve only taken 3 lessons in my life and haven’t even left the bunny hills, I get so excited when people use phrases like “shredding powder” or “carving turns”. And even though I live too far from snowy areas to be able to practice often, I want to actually ski well someday - i.e. at least the beginner or intermediate slopes. This past winter was the first time I’d gone skiing after Vail, which was 2 years ago, so I had to start from the basics. Next time, hopefully I’ll remember some of what I learned at Snoqualmie and Crystal Mountain:
- The basics: apparently ski boots aren’t supposed to contain anything but your socks and your legs! That means no pants legs tucked in. This makes sense because the skier’s shins should feel the boot cuff, assuming it’s tight enough. To put on the skis (the first thing I had to re-learn), you orient them perpendicular to the fall line and then just jam them on to the boots, toe first. The poles are pretty much useless (most of the time they just made my wrists hurt), except for getting onto chair lifts and helping advanced skiers “time” their turns, whatever that means. Elbows are at 90° if the poles are the right height.
- Holding skis the stylish way according to our instructor: over the shoulder with the toes facing forward and one arm over the long end (“and now we’re cruisin”)
- Stance, stance, stance: this is so important because I would often hunch over in fear and start picking up way more speed than I wanted to. Standing as straight and tall as possible with knees slightly bent, boot cuffs pressing against the shins, allows weight to be distributed along the length of the skis so that you can control turns better. Sliding backward while holding a V shape improves stance!
- The 3 ways to slow/stop: 1) the wedge. 2) turning - making more turns, sharper rather than wider turns (9/3 o’clock vs. 10/2 o’clock), or even turns that go uphill a bit before the next one. 3) squatting and falling to the side (this sucks). Following through and finishing a turn by returning to the parallel skis/relaxed position and running tangent to the curve of the turn are crucial. Who knew skiing involved so much geometry?!
- Steering is about “headlights” as well as “pressure” - you have to visualize the path of the turn and where it will end before even entering it. Digging the downhill leg into the inner edge of the ski, placing more weight on this leg, also helps to control and sharpen the turn.
So hopefully I’ll remember all this one day when I attempt skiing again…and even if not, there’s still so much to love about ski resort towns that’s not ski-related: views, shops, hot chocolate, etc.
Website has great ideas for future adventures, like “Daily Bike”!
Last day of classes, fall 2011: I actually didn’t even attend the one class I have on Fridays, ECM, because I had to attend one more Baker Institute event for Public Policy class. After 9 hours of sleep, I woke up to make myself look all fancy for this conference called The Rise of China and Its Energy Implications. When I got there I realized I should have dressed even fancier. I only stayed for the first 2 lectures but even those managed to stimulate my mind ever so slightly, which triggered an oversleep/caffeine withdrawal-induced headache that lasted the rest of the day. Worked at the DMC, where I felt utterly incompetent, subbed there again after lunch, and then went to the Shepherd Symphony Orchestra’s end of the year concert - an excellent concert, followed by an excellent night’s sleep. This whole day made me feel old (I can’t do all-nighters anymore! what’s going to happen to me in med school?!). Anyway, I was looking forward to that day the whole semester so it was still great. Nostalgia related to being a senior hasn’t really kicked in yet, so maybe it will next semester.
December 2011 is already here! To celebrate that, I wasted time on Yahoo News yesterday:
http://yearinreview.yahoo.com/2011/blog/1263/inspiring-video
http://yearinreview.yahoo.com/2011/us_end_of_an_era#4harry-potter
I really will miss the Harry Potter series so much, since I never really liked to read as a child and HP books were the only exception. I wish I had gone to one of those midnight book release parties at Borders though. However, midnight premiere of HP7.2 in Grenoble was great.
Whoever did this must have had too much free time but it’s pretty nonetheless:
The Whole Earth Catalog - Stay hungry, stay foolish by tonybo on Flickr.
On the back cover of their final issue was a photograph of an early morning country road, the kind you might find yourself hitchhiking on if you were so adventurous. Beneath it were the words: “Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.” It was their farewell message as they signed off. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.
![Fact: I am extremely easily distracted these days. Senioritis? I guess so. I can’t focus on anything and put off replying to emails, so they pile up in my inbox menacingly. Lack of focus, combined with perfectionism, (a terrible combination) is why I take forever to finish writing papers and secondaries. How to change that…?
The dry cleaners burned my interview suit, I freaked out, and then it was fixed. All within a span of 4 days. Losing my keys for 2 days also scared me [a bit too much]. These rapid fluctuations in emotional state probably damage psychological health in the long run, which I guess is why some religions (Buddhism? Hinduism?) encourage detaching oneself from one’s heated emotions? Maybe I should try that. However, the good thing about losing my keys was that it reminded me of how wonderful my friends are as they shared my worries and helped me look for them. They make me want to be a better friend myself.
Recently, I realized how many people I know personally whose brothers have passed away: my cousin, the 2 Matt’s, Hilary, and maybe others I’m forgetting. I feel like I should appreciate my brother even more and avoid losing my temper with him. Baps is already 17! Time flies when you play video games and watch spongebob after coming home from school every afternoon.
I keep thinking about physical beauty and how it plays a part in so much of what we do and the decisions we make - in some cases, to a greater extent than we’d like to admit. When I look up med schools, one of the main factors I’m often thinking of is how pretty the campus is - greenery, architecture, everything. It seems stupid of course, because I should be taking other factors into greater consideration, but the physical characteristics of an environment can after all affect how you think and act in it. An aesthetically pleasing environment leads to happiness, which helps us perform better, so I’ll use that as my reasoning for paying so much attention to the physical appearance of a campus or a city.
Interesting article about how we perceive beauty - apparently the same region in the brain that is responsible for feelings of repulsion and disgust is also responsible for appreciation, pleasure, etc.](http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_ls7r0jTStp1qh9yujo1_1280.jpg)
Fact: I am extremely easily distracted these days. Senioritis? I guess so. I can’t focus on anything and put off replying to emails, so they pile up in my inbox menacingly. Lack of focus, combined with perfectionism, (a terrible combination) is why I take forever to finish writing papers and secondaries. How to change that…?
The dry cleaners burned my interview suit, I freaked out, and then it was fixed. All within a span of 4 days. Losing my keys for 2 days also scared me [a bit too much]. These rapid fluctuations in emotional state probably damage psychological health in the long run, which I guess is why some religions (Buddhism? Hinduism?) encourage detaching oneself from one’s heated emotions? Maybe I should try that. However, the good thing about losing my keys was that it reminded me of how wonderful my friends are as they shared my worries and helped me look for them. They make me want to be a better friend myself.
Recently, I realized how many people I know personally whose brothers have passed away: my cousin, the 2 Matt’s, Hilary, and maybe others I’m forgetting. I feel like I should appreciate my brother even more and avoid losing my temper with him. Baps is already 17! Time flies when you play video games and watch spongebob after coming home from school every afternoon.
I keep thinking about physical beauty and how it plays a part in so much of what we do and the decisions we make - in some cases, to a greater extent than we’d like to admit. When I look up med schools, one of the main factors I’m often thinking of is how pretty the campus is - greenery, architecture, everything. It seems stupid of course, because I should be taking other factors into greater consideration, but the physical characteristics of an environment can after all affect how you think and act in it. An aesthetically pleasing environment leads to happiness, which helps us perform better, so I’ll use that as my reasoning for paying so much attention to the physical appearance of a campus or a city.
Interesting article about how we perceive beauty - apparently the same region in the brain that is responsible for feelings of repulsion and disgust is also responsible for appreciation, pleasure, etc.
Rue du Petit-Champlain in Vieux Quebec
If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:
If you can dream — and not make dreams your master;
If you can think — and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two imposters just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build ‘em up with worn-out tools;
If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: “Hold on!”
If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings — nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run —
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And — which is more — you’ll be a Man, my son!
Chamonix, France: a garden, street view from outside our hotel La Croix Blanche, and the cutest tea cup I have ever seen. The cup was from an interior deco store called Rêves d’Hiver, a fitting name for all the cozy-alpine-chalet-inspired porcelain, rugs, napkins, candle holders, etc. in the store. I hope I get a chance to visit this town again in the winter when it’s all couvert de neige, because I’ve already fallen in love with it and it’s only summer. In the meantime, I will need to practice skiing so I can hit the slopes like every other badass montagnard in southeastern France.
