YSP Week 4: Overdose

I'm in Albany Andover now, on the Monday Tuesday after, so I'm writing some of this in retrospect. I'm sorry, but I had one too many corndogs the other day. I haven't had corndogs for a childhood.

If I keep living like I did this week, I'm going to crash. I'm going to be button-eyed rag doll, wasted in my own skin, with the highest highs and lowest lows, slamming myself back and forth between what I want and what I need. I feel like I'm acting on drunken impulses, hand picking my pleasures, only to have the gluttonous weight of my indulgence seize my body again.

And no, not PMS.

It started with food. It always starts with food. It was in no sane person's mind any sort of binge or purge or disorderly consumption of noodles, but it blew me into a swamp, so sticky and sickly, so guilt-ridden in spite of the beautiful, clean weather we finally received. It was cool outside, but I felt hot on skin. I felt like the food was burning into my arms and legs. I wanted to be a Wintergirl. The tall and short, thin and wide, dark and bright - they're all sick with disease. They have their own battles with demons. But at least the thin looked good.

I won't write too much about what I put through my body, but I spent my expected happy hours on Thursday clenching my backpack to my body, waiting for cold sweat to pass, sleeping away a fiery pain that arose in the bottom of my gut. Nothing explosive or wormy happened, if that's what you're afraid I'll describe. But I collapsed in bed, shuddering next to my heat pack, barely stopping myself from drooling, exhausted by wrenching pain inside.

Still. Managed 36 miles this week without running that day, which brings me to mention only briefly that I woke at 10 PM to eat a bowl of fried cabbage and seaweed while working on a hopeless Candy Crush design until 2 in the morning. I slept briefly and woke up to finish it. I refrained from donuts on the last day of YSP. I felt too horrible about sleeping in class to say thank you to Eldin. I ran 8 miles (it wasn't on purpose) on nothing but a couple slices of smoked ham and 4 dried plums. My dad asked me if I was celebrating, but every crying fiber inside of me screamed for a crueler punishment.

There were nights in which I slept wrapped in woolen devastation, feeling supremely alone, knowing God was sad, but being too weak to lift my eyes up (Worn by Tenth Avenue North. Don't tell me you can't feel the tragedy inside). There were the subsequent mornings, spent half-comatose, in which I stared at my drawings bitterly, still wishing for time and less impediment. I stayed red-eyed and ugly until I ran and ran and ate and ate. I didn't sleep enough. And I ran again, on Saturday, for 8 miles.

It was a gripping cold outside, but my previous confident stride was reduced to a meek shuffling. Nothing I had done made sense to me. Professor Sally told us that YSP was supposed to light our fire, but there was only a candle inside of me, and was certainly not for analytic math and not particularly invested in anything. I showed my sister the technicalities of Candy Crush (she's on Level 29 now, bless her) and drove glumly to Sunny's party, where there was an abundance of good chicken and multiple frenzies of hand washing. I fed my dehydrated lips and sat on the top of the corner of the couch, completely comfortable even in unnecessary solitude.

I had to write privately about everything else that happened inside my discomforted heart, especially because I don't have the strength to write it in code now, but I don't think I'm doing any readers any injustice. It was a very secretive sadness, probably more irrational than not when scribbled on the floors of the hotel room at 12 in the morning.

Art's Sake

We have to write essays soon. Last year, coming up with ideas for the graduated seniors was so easy, yet when it comes to myself, I trip over every other word. For the common application, I want to talk about running in 87 degrees that feels like 95 degrees in 70% humidity. I want to talk about how I can feel rays of cancer searing into my slippery skin. Its so easy to describe the literal ruggedness of Pioneer's broken forest, where the remains of the bull-dozed trees are crumpled in ugly juxtaposition with the ever-running river. There isn't a day when I don't remember the times when I run so fast that my face hits the gnats before than gnats can fly into me, and there isn't a moment when I won't forget they day's I'd have to walk, forcing my legs to throw themselves forward, exhausted, fatiqued, waiting for me to go pee.

But my mom wants me to write about drawing. Man, I love drawing. This whole week, I've felt like crap, full of turds, spouting nonsense, but in the midst of my dad's conservative air conditioning, I could find the last remains of my patience to draw. I mean, if you count that city scape as drawing. Its really more like using my ID card as a ruler and wedging my pen against it a hundred times over. I loved drawing those eggs and figuring out which expressions worked best to what scale. 

I don't know how to talk about it though. In this modern era of art for art's sake, art seems so existentially fraught (yeah, Augustus Waters and basketball hoops used this phrase first, forgive me please). I don't throw away too many drawings anymore, but I also don't archive much of anything. AGhh I already ran out of things to say. Here's what I wrote in my scholarship essay. The question was "What career goals do you have? Why do you want to pursue this career? Have you been involved in activities or certain academic classes that have guided you in this field?"

I want to create for other people, and the most realistic and personal application for this goal is to pursue graphic, architectural, or industrial design. When I first complied to the rules and regulations of the AP Studio Art drawing portfolio, I was young and overenthusiastic, eager to crank twenty four stunning pieces of artwork in 30 weeks. It took me but a fraction of those weeks to realize that I did not possess the detailing and adventurous passion to sculpt deep and lifelike motifs into the heart of the canvas, especially not 24 times in a row. I had no reason to do so, because my love for aesthetic qualities of space and time stems not from a desire to score a 5 on the final College Board portfolio or to feel a sense of capability and self-worth. I never wanted to work for my own benefit, to create a piece just to prove to myself that I held mastery over oils and graphite alike.

I need to create for other people. I felt the artist's equivalent of a rush of adrenaline when I drew a portrait for my badminton coach and painted thank you landscapes for my teachers. I was content to spend my entire spring break designing my badminton club team's tshirts and posters, to be full immersed in every pixel I could alter on Photoshop. While I would love to win a Threadless or shirt.woot contest and bring home thousands of dollars and shining new barbeque grills, I participate in these contests because I love to collaborate with my friend who had shown me these projects in the first place. It was the necessity inherent to the nature of these contests (and my own failing creativity) that brought two friends very close together in the least romantic way possible. I would love to continue to create for other people, to make  something that is not only beautiful but also useful to them.

YSP Day 8: Calvin and Hobbes

I don't think journalling about YSP is necessarily the route to my trumpetting success as a writer. Not only is it uninteresting to talk about math, but I also make a lot of typos transcribing notes from my phone and chicken-scratch Staples pad. I will, however, continue to write as frequently as possible. I read the first parts of Eveline's blog recently, and I feel insufficient. She does write fiction though, which is hard for me to accomodate in my pea brain that latches onto only very personal writing. But then again, isn't the art that encompasses fiction a purer truth than any string of words man can speak?

...No. That's something stupid Aristotle or an old-timey philospher thought up while he (let's face it, it was probably a "he") was breaking bread across his toga'd lap. I know I made a terribly stereotypical generalization. The point was that nothing is that simple. I should try to read fiction that is not already transcribed in books.

So as I try to forget all of the math that I pretended to learn at YSP (we did Laurent polynomials on Thursday. I missed Friday for my consumer ed final, 81% final 95% semester grade WADDUP), I always become really sad. This is not to say that I'm not sad in other situations; I spend most of my time being sad, but math - this "real" math - seems to emphasize it. Everyone at YSP tries to hard to keep up. Everyone at YSP who isn't stupid already knows that the integers are an integral domain in which the positive elements are well ordered. I liked being proficient at finding roots of unity and proving that e^pi is greater than pi^e (diagnostic test material), but I guess there was always something in the back of my head that told me that this was step 0 of the introduction to mathematics. It could be the 6 hours of sleep in moody weather, but I've lost it. I would rather look at tshirt design platforms than prove that the lowest upper bound is the intersection of all ordered fields. That probably wasn't even right.

*I think I say the same thing on this blog a lot. You guys are allowed to comment and tell me things I'm doing wrong. You should also tell me what to write about, because I don't have any structure or reason.

Anyway, all of this sadness (not just the math induced kind) carries me to nowhere land. My runs have been spectacular bursts of stretching and walking. I didn't eat much. Like, I'm back to last year's weight, not just because of dehydration and certainly not because I run 10 miles a day like I used to, but because I just stopped eating when I could. One part of my life corrected itself, even when its ratification is a problematic creation in itself. Sometimes I'm so tired that the rush of blood blackens my vision when I stand. I had to bike instead of run twice. But my stomach's normal. My legs are... normalling. For the first time in a long time, I'd rather be skinny than muscly. At least, not that muscly. And yes, I know, I look normal, with a healthy BMI of 20 and am still sprouting with flowers and sweat. I feel better in one way. Worse in many more.

Most of the time, the fatigue travels through my fingers, and I start ignoring people on chat. It started this school year, and I dropped friend by friend. I used to care what they'd think about what I would say, and I would still help anyone without hesitation. Its just so easy not to care anymore. I want to watch Master Chef. I want to watch vlogbrothers. I want to read Mental Floss and Calvin and Hobbes and Zits and Foxtrot, snuggled in bed or slouching over a table, a pack of gum, a watermelon, and slice of lemon dangling in my water. I want want want want want want want. While I'm at it, I want to draw and listen to the Miracle of Swindon Town and Swoodilypoopers Strike Back. I want a break, and some Portillo's. It's 11:33 PM right now, so of all of those things, I just want to read myself into a comical and serious world of painted characters, so deep and complex, yet so resolute and truer than any person who's tried to hold a conversation with me.

I wish I could cartoon. All I can do is write about how great cartoonists are. They are all, in fact, great. Sparky to the Bills to Jim and Jerry. Artists are a friendly bunch, just not syndicates and merchandising businesses.

Well, at badminton today, we did forehand drop-overhead smash for an hour and a half straight. It was like plyo on steroids. Our butts melted. I lost my air. We were a happy bunch. I've missed being happy here. I've missed feeling invigorated by the possibilities, because now I don't have possibilities (and no, for anyone who judges me for my grades in junior year, they were not the worst, and you're terrible for assigning my academic value to B+s. I am obviously a stable academic. haha.). I don't love anything outside of the humanities. Where has my reason gone.

To the people I don't reply to (that is, all but three people. I've left monoloques hanging.):
Sorry, but I don't think I'm that sorry quite yet. Here is my pity card: I wake up wondering if I should eat breakfast in the stale and clogging air, or if I should run, and forget that breakfast is truly that important. I spend half of my days wishing I could try intermittent fasting, and the other half wishing I could run faster. I draw, but I know I'm not that good. I'm okay, better than you probably, unless you're Eveline or Elizabeth (I'm assuming no other artists read this blog), but I would still rather read Will Grayson Will Grayson. I would rather read about suicidal love that is not overly sexualized than draw a city scape. I romanticize everything, and everything falls short. I'll romanticize a great conversation with you, and it will fall short. I'll feel the need to run or draw in the middle, and I'd find something cool on Youtube or Pop Chart Lab. Let's go to Starbucks or Einstein's instead. I promise we'll catch up, no phones allowed.

YSP Day 7: Least Upper Bound

I keep titling my posts with what we learned, but I don't remember much of anything today. Today was special for reasons unspecified, but even without the cooling sun and thai pad noodles and even with my failing calves and softening quads, it was comfortable. Sleepy, tired, and very comfortable.

Here are some portraits I drew today.
(Left) This quiet white kid never moves. He's one of the few people who has already taken an analysis class, so he's pretty great at everything.
(Middle) Professor Sally. Apparently he's also the administrator of the program. And yes, he really does look like that when he talks. Its a side effect of getting old.
(Right) The back of Matilda's head.

YSP Day 6: Kauffman's Theorem

I never feel bad about falling asleep in Professor Sally's class because in all of my ignorance, I can hardly bear to pay him any due respect. I do feel bad falling asleep in small group though, even with gum wedged against my cheek and every interest aligned in learning more. I did contribue today though. I gave the forumula for a base case of a knot with two over crossings. Meanwhile, I did nothing for the rest of he day besides read Finding Calvin and Hobbes: the Unconventional Story of Bill Watterson and His Revolutionary Comic Strip and create several drawings for myself. Today's lesson was all presentations... unwittingly disinteresting. I'll share the drawings here to make up for a lack of better writing. The poo-dog was the camel's idea. :) 

A dead potted shrubbery:
our twisted society.

A sketchy camel and birdie

My favorite

Leprechaun dreamworld. My last attempt to regain sanity.

YSP Day 5: Completing the Rationals

Actually, we constructed the rationals out of the integers on Friday. Today, we proved that every finite integral domain is a field, aka every element has a multiplicative inverse. A and B are isomorphic as sets if there exists a function f: A-> B if f is bijective. The best part of today's lesson was the tangent one of the counselors showed us - determining pi using the Archimedes method. This philospher math physics dude was very often wrong, including his hypothesis concerning the five senses and elements or something, bu his estimation of pi using 96-gons averaged out to 3.1485. Too bad he was killed before he could do better. What we really did today was prove the existence and uniqueness of the Kauffman Bracket. I'll tell you about the presentation tomorrow if it isn't too boring.

I woke to the buzzof 93.4 FM singing across my room. I rolled out of my unused blankets towards my mirror. It turns out that I always look better on rainy mornings when the sunlight doesn't reach my reflection and when I'm half hidden in the gloom of travelling downtown for another day of finding ways not to fall asleep in class (chewing through peppermint Orbit gum today. Unsuccessful from 11:30-11:55.). I thought about what I'd be eating today and spent more time than I should have wondering what combination of clothes best suited our strange and fickle weather. I checked Facebook and stuffed calcium gummies down my throat. Christine ran in the morning... I'm so proud of her. Lol.

The food stand called Harry's at the train station sold apple fritters and banana nut muffins for $1.75. I wondered when I would have the courage to buy one for myself. I know its a bad deal, but I've always had a secret attraction to sparkly sugar and soft sweet breads. As for the people, well they must not be as noteworthy as the food. Everyone mostly ignored each other in hopes that they would be left alone as well. It was raining, but even the slap and smack of the raindrops was subdued by the hum of silent, waiting passengers. Such a weary silence was well-appreciated although quickly broken by the squeaking and clattering ruckus of the express train. I sat quietly next to a dude blasting crazy hard rock into his ears, wondering if my fat thumbs would ever be sufficient to take notes of the morning on my smart phone's memo pad. Apparently, they have succeeded.

The trains and buses are almost never packed, but they're always full. The lines are about thirty people long per car, 50 to 100 long for the bus. The city that is the four blocks around Union Station bustles like a city should. Policemen yell when buses approach. Escalators are jammed and stairs are less occupied by the leaner and more energetic few. A guy my age was reading Slaughterhouse Five, which looked suspiciously familiar to the one I recently purchased (Day 2). Mothers chatted (in Chinese. ha.). People slept. We were all bus passengers to the University of Chicago - how wild could our travelling habits be?

I do miss my usual summer days of wallowing in bowls of watermelon and scrolling through years of vlogbrothers, painting on whims and falafelling selectively, but writing helps. It helps me forget what I'm missing, and it helps me remember that amidst a lot of sadness and hurt, there is the complicated organism of love and its expression to keep me upright, still happy to wake up and reluctant to fall asleep.

YSP Day 4: Fields

I woke up still bitterly terrified of my parent, but I had an 800 page Chronicles of Narnia in my backpack with a 16 pack of Trident Strawverry Kiwi gu, so I was prepared to face my trials. I did so by falling asleep, a few chapters into Creating Narnia.

I stepped into the barn, previously drawn in Day 2, only to find that there was homework assigned yesterday, not that I could have proved that the set generated by the ordered integral domain of well ordered positive elements was also isomorphic.

I learned more from this morning's summary than I did from the entire lecture yesterday. Apparently, we've been learning structures. We started with a commutative ring with 1. "Atta baby," Professor Sally would crow. After C-ring with 1, we went into integral domains, the difference being that ID's have multiplicative cancellation, whatever that means. Ordered integral domains are.. ordered. I chewed through another three pieces of gum.

Now fields, fields are integral domains, c-rings with 1 with multiplicative inverses. They are transitive, symmetric, and reflexive, just like congruent triangles. I checked my phone for the 5th time. What a lonely class this was after all.

YSP Day 3: The Ordered Integral Domain and C-rings with 1

Alright. Its a holiday tomorrow, so I don't have an excuse to write poorly. Sorry for journalling the past two days. I still think its important for there to be a mechanical account of YSP because should another poor soul that doesn't like math that much like me want to take a course on analysis in a prestigious university, he or she should have a resource. My friends probably wouldn't care about whatever I'm learning. I don't even care about what I'm learning. Needless to say, I will provide everything I can for the world to read.

I took the train and the bus by myself today.  I don't remember if I drooled on the train. I was lucky to stumble upon a friend on the way, or I might have easily missed my stop. It turns out that I'm the only friend among many who is participating in uninteresting math this summer. I take comfort in that when I go into Multivariable Calculus and Linear Algebra next year, I'll know that nothing can be as bad as proving that x^2 is continuous.

That happened to be the first thing I learned. A function f: R->R is continuous at x(e)R if for all epsilon>0 there exists some delta>0 such that |x-y|<delta -> |f(y)-f(x)|<epsilon. This almost made sense, but our counselors got really excited ("You're gonna have to pull deltas out of your butt!") and started talking about monoids, defined by (delta, #, e) where e is a neutral element such tha a#e=e#a=a. Monoids, are of course associative, just like any other respectable operation except the cross product. Do I really know what I'm talking about? Not a clue. The point was that in the process of completing rationals (Q) to reals (R), analysis comes into play big time. Besides, naturals and integers are just equations (as if the other two sets weren't) and not that topographically interesting. Obviously.

Professor Sally blindly hoisted his prothetic-legged body onto the table. He assigned each of us a coordinate in the lecure room and cut off introduction.
"I have no legs, no eyes, no hair." The class tittered. "But I intend to run. you. to. the. ground."
"Jason!" he shouted. "Write. I will speak."
"ORDERED INTEGRAL DOMAIN." The class jumped to attention. I blinked, hoping that he really was blind so that he couldn't see my careless slouch. "(R,+,*) is a computative ring with 1 if and only if (+,-) are Internal Laws of Composition."
"Give me an example of a c-ring with 1," he demanded of 2-2, the coordinate next to me. The boy failed, as expected. The Professor turned to me.
"Do you know any c-rings?"
"Uh, like 3 times 5 plus 2?" The smart kids who knew real math turned to me.
"Integers," the smart girl hissed.
"Do you know any c-rings with 1?" the Professor demanded again. I decided that I was bad at thinking and caring.
"Do you want an expression?" The smart kids thought about how incredibly stupid I was.
"Integers," the smart girl hissed.
"No," I said firmly. "I don't. Integers?"
"SURE YOU DO," the Professor shouted. "Have you heard of the integers?"
"What? Yeah."
"Do you know the integers?"
"..."
"..."
"Yes." And I promptly fell asleep, ashamed, hoping against all hopes that we would solve some easier modular arithmetic and stop talking about multiplicative cancellation.

I had hot apple cider for lunch. I made $2.50. There is only multiplicative cancellation in n mod m if and only if m is prime. Be sophisticated, baby. An OIDR satisfies WOP if and only if for all S <- R+ and S is non-empty, then S has a smallest element.
Yeah, right.
I ran and turned in the rest of my Consumer Ed homework. UC is very beautiful. Perhap its loveliness will cancel out my nightmarish classroom experiences.

YSP Day 2: Intro to Knot Theory and Kauffman's Polynomial

I promised myself that I would write more because I decided that the math and sciences really suck, and that if I ever want to stand a chance mixing with the humanities flowers, I'm going to need to write frequently, so I can write better. Basically I want to be like John Green and other authors whom I have yet to read, but I'll never to go to a small liberal arts college. Instead, I'm going to review YSP, because no one writes reviews about YSP.

Young Scholars Program, University of Chicago
Advanced Geometry, Knot Theory, and Proof-Based Calculus or Something, Grades 11 and 12

I took the train with my father to the Union Station today. When I stepped into the city, I felt the rush of windy freedom, but mostly, I stumbled across a couple streets and fell promptly back alseep on the bus with Narnia grasped between my palms and my backpack. We talked briefly to a CS Major at UC and I pretended not to be interested in anyone so I could be totally ignored, left in peace to draw the classroom.

We were split into groups, and I was tested into the highest levelled one. It turns out calculus is good for something, or at least Mrs. Moore has done her students well again, even if I haven't done well for her. I ate too much, so I was uncomfortable and fell into my routine AP Chem 1:00 PM food coma, but no before catching several things about our Singaporean transfer counselor, Eldin.

"Who cares about knot theory?" he said, referring to the subject on which we will be spending two of the next four weeks. "Its not deep, not wonderful. Its just a testing base. If you want to impress people, tell them you're studying topological quantum field theories." He proceed to explain that we were studying projections, embeddings, but of course for all intensive purposes, we are studying real knots.
So heres the thing. Circle O is equivalent to the knot diagram of figure 8 (8. duh.)
"What the hell?" Eldin rhetorically posed. On the sliding chalkboards, he wrote in proficient and chicken scratch like letters: Kauffman thing. He paused.
Kauffman thing/polynomial, he added. That's what he meant. Of course the only term I was mildly familiar with, he forgot.
He explained the Kauffman polynomial ("What the hell, we mess the variables?"), and I pretended to care about staying conscious. I fell asleep after another high achieving mathlete applied the Bromian rings (it was denoted on the chalkboard: This is a good one. This is a thing. It should be easier.) to Kauffman. The answer, by the way, is a^2c^2+2abc+b^2c^2. I can't even type in LaTex.

Eldin ended with one last note on his opinion of math.
"You know the stuff they do in the other levels, with probability like that, blue ball, red ball, pick two blue balls? That's bullshit. PDE is where the money is at." Meaning we should all be partial differenial equation theorists one day.

I visited the bookstore and the medical campus later. Mostly the bookstore. I bought Slaughterhouse-Five for $7.99 and Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close for $4.95. The day, in all of these senses, wasn't the worst. Spirit wear is still too expensive.

YSP Day 1: A (P)Review

I thought that students who went to the University of Chicago did not go to kill fun. Fun did not die, because learning was fun. People would sacrifice fun to learn, but they never would have to do so. UChicago was beautiful, but only in its bubble. UChicago was a private liberal arts school. UChicago was basically the best, with foreign exchange students flocking everywhere, brilliant minds floating in the city's veins of wisdom and history and culture.

Then I went to the school. Actually, my dad drove me there as I slept with a fat Designer's Convention book caught between my legs. If I knew anything about architecture, I would say that the buildings were beautiful and majestic, draped in climbing ivy with thick irony, because UC is technically not an Ivy League. But I know jack about architecture, so all I can say is that UC is nice. On the outside, it looks a heck of a lot better than UIUC. The great majority of students don't look like smokers. Intellect oozes between the heavy set doors of inquiry based learning. The school colors aren't orange and red. It disappointed me that Eckhart Hall was equally as depressing as Noyes Lab, brown doors and tiny desks alike. I was sad that Huffington Hall was analagous, if not worse, than the Illini Union.

The diagnostic test was okay, since I remembered to use L'Hopitals on part d of a question concerning series. I met a lot of dorky people who love math a lot more than I do, and I met a lot of people who wouldn't stand a chance of making it to UC for real. The boys needed to wear deodorant, and I needed to get away. One professor wore an eyepatch and was wheeled in a chair because he had two prosthetic legs. He demanded respect in a whisper, although after he rolled away, I wished we'd have a real Professor Moody. Mr. Eby was great, and if Mr. Pearson didn't teach English, he would be amazing too. Our other professor was equally sharp and complicated. He knew everything about over and under 3-foils, but he spoke too slowly about Russian history and didn't bother to teach anything that was more than trivial. Then again, how can I determine what is or isn't trivial? It's just that I don't see how the renaming of Leningrad makes anyone a better person.

One thing worth noting though. Robert Lee Moore established three rules of IBL (inquiry based learning). The second step, called Step 1 (preceded by Step 0) is to send students out with scripts into the desert to work. Since we don't have deserts (the theory was developed in Austin, TX) in Chicago, we're going to have lectures in the barn, which is actually the 3rd floor of another math hall or something. The professor said this as if it were funny. The only humorous encounter I've had was gaining a profit from buying a $3.85 sandwich with my $5 coupon.