Honestly? An Oreo.

This past week has been a walking nightmare, dread lacing every moment, fatigue weighing down every day as it passed by. Although nothing was of such dramatic descriptions, it was tiring nonetheless, so much that I wished the week would pass by as quickly as it could. As is with Murphy’s law - this did not happen. In fact, the week traveled so slowly that I could not believe my luck...or lack thereof.

What made the week exhausting was the excitement and jitters involved with crafting a speech, preparing a presentation, weaving an Original Work Proposal, doing what I am worst at - simplification, and this list was only reserved for all tangible tasks relevant to ISM (excluding emails and cold calls, etc.). Yet, none of this seemed as exhausting as I had originally imagined...at least these were my thoughts after the fact.

This week, we had the opportunity of presenting our ISM experiences, not only to build professional communication skills and confidence in presentational speaking, but also to gather and organize our thoughts, introspect on our journey thus far, and be completely honest with ourselves. So, I decided to spin my speech around this exact theme - honesty. I realized that this year, more than any other, I have been discovering myself, or meeting me for the first time. Being me, I never was consciously self-aware, constantly scrutinizing my own actions, attitudes and approaches. However, college applications and taking AP Psychology made me hyper-aware of myself, while this blog served as the weekly tally of what I learned and how it changed my perception of myself.

As much as the Oreo-eating Personality test wants to dub me as curious, inquisitive and cunning, (I eat my Oreos by twisting them open first, then eating the inside then the outside), I realized everyone had as much of a choice as Scrooge did, and that little is set in stone by dispositions. What we do today, this moment - what we decide to prioritize or impulsively choose leads us forward, presenting even more options, decisions, choices - branches. Today, I choose to spend time with my family, and learn about Natural Language Processing, or utterly confuse myself with infinite to-do lists. This was the reason behind how I found myself in a Neural Networks workshop, why I kept using my ‘see-if-it-works-now’ method each time I faced another exception or lower-than-chance model accuracies or when I felt like reading a book written in a foreign language, powering through machine learning. Then, I realized that it was never impulse or compulsion either. It was simply fear.

I was afraid of messing-up and running into another obstacle, yes. However, I was even more terrified of having to always wonder...what if? This is a question I hope never haunts me, because as former President Theodore Roosevelt once said, “it is hard to fail, but it is worse never to have tried to succeed”. So I will never quit, and will never leave any door unopened.

Sometimes, I have separate lists running in my mind. One that is friends and family related, another school-related, one for extracurriculars, and so on. I also have lists for must-do-but-are-not-enjoyable and want-to-do-but-don’t-have-time, or must-do-and-will-gladly-do-so. Much of the work last week fell into the last category, thankfully, giving me ample breaks to productively work, such as planning out and breaking down the several tasks I have in front of me for my Original Work, a project I believe will help serve as a learning opportunity. I love writing, and as much as I feel nervous at giving speeches and simply talking, I truly enjoy crafting ideas together and wrapping them in layers of irony and paradoxical thematic interpretations. Presenting my speech was certainly on the first list, but criticizing myself and making notes about where to work on next was most definitely in the third basket. My 2nd list, I realize with great sadness, is always brimming with ideas, and I tell myself that I will make time for them...one day... I hope I cross off items on that list soon, because that is being honest with myself.