On grades

This week has not been my best. The long and short of it is that my academics is in, if not dire, at least mediocre straits, and I have no one to blame but myself, as usual. The damage I've done is not horrible, and with hard work over the next few weeks, I can mostly erase it, but it falls inconveniently across a progress report, so I will likely catch some flack from my parents. More than that though, I've realized that I've been, up to now, motivated out of fear of my parents.

My academic goals are not really my own, and that needs to change. It isn't the first time I've realized this, but nevertheless, I truly want to change this. A first step, I figure, is putting my thoughts into words on a page, so I can comeback and revisit my conviction when I feel unmotivated in the future.

Right now, I'm a small fish in a small pond. Sure, I can do some math, run a few miles, or program when I want to, but ultimately, all this adds up to very little. Right now, I'm a kid sitting around in a backwater of I-5, playing with my calculator and doing little else. I want to change that. I can assure you that this is my own conviction, and one I hold very deeply. I want to be someone, and do something meaningful, even if I am never recognized for it, because I truly believe that the hard work of an individual can make a positive difference on the world, large as it is, and a significant one at that. Since I was in middle school, it's always been very clear to me that I can make the best use of my talents in math and science.

I am no longer as naive as I once was, however, and I cannot pretend that latent talent and potential will ensure a good future. More than that, I understand that all the talent in the world is useless without proper perspective and diligence. In these two areas, I find myself badly lacking. Perhaps through deep thought, I can come to have better perspective, but diligence is more of a conundrum for me.

So right now, I'll state my goals, in the hopes that I can keep them in view when the rat race gets boring. I want to go to MIT, find a subject that I love, and devote the rest of my life to prying out it's secrets and examine it's crannies. I want to push some field forward, find applications to save and improve lives, however distant a possibility that might seem in the process. If I can, I'd like to live a life so that neither joy nor regret are felt when I am extinguished. I feel strongly about all of this.

My GPA as it stands may ruin my chances at MIT. I can no longer naively expect to demonstrate to them that they should take me by merit of high test scores alone. MIT doesn't want students who can't stay focused when they are not interested in a subject. Without diligence, I cannot expect to have a shot at acceptance there. It is only my arrogant nature that perceives classes as below me, not any fact. If I cannot excel in subjects I find uninteresting, I will never succeed at my admittedly lofty goals. So yes, I do want to do well in all my academics. For myself, not for others. I want to achieve something, something I think is truly important, and to do that I need to stop motivating myself with fear, with whims and fancies. I need to gain focus, and diligence. I need to find organization, and order. Talent is far less than half the battle, an as I've learned this week, it's a battle I'm slowly but surely losing, just as the fighting within me has begun.