Origin XT Blog

As I was deleting old documents from highschool (and prior to that), I stumbled upon what you see below–a self-addressed letter I wrote as an eighth-grader. It’s really funny how close to reality it is, in some ways, and how off it is, in other ways. No mocking–just enjoy, if you want:

Yan, Jinghao
Period 1, 6/04/03
Letter to Future Self

Dear Jinghao,

This is you 4 years ago. I’m writing this letter for my 8th grade Language Arts final project. In this project, I am supposed to write a letter to my future self as a senior in High School, about to graduate. This means to you!

Currently, I am a “nice to some, mean to others” kind of person. I hope I can be a “nice to all” kind of person in the future. I am good at math and science, but am hoping to improve in languages. Right now, I am not very good at swimming and some other sports, but I hope to improve in those areas.

I hope to finish calculus before my senior year and take at least 10 AP classes. I hope to have many more friends during my High School years, at least more than I do now. I also hope to be healthier because I get sick very easily, although I do heal fast. Mainly, I hope to be a better person.

After High School, I plan on going to an UC, hopefully Berkeley, or maybe even Stanford. If I am really successful in High School, I might go to Caltech! I hope that all my hopes will become reality, but I won’t know until I finish High School!

Sincerely,
Jinghao Yan
Yourself!

Sniff, sniff.

I’ve been having tons of fun with the superzoom option on my 200 dollar camera (12x optical and 8x digital), and here are some examples:

1. The notes of some UCB administrator during the speech in the (very) big auditorium. My 12×8 zoom got me this far, but that’s pretty much it. No way my hands could be still enough to get that much detail:

   

2. Random house way up on some distant hill, taken from a shady spot at Leland. I get some good details, surprisingly, since I was able to hold the cam steady:

   

3. Mount Umunhum (thanks, Joey), taken from Leland. If my hands were steadier and if there existed no atmosphere for light to be distorted in, this picture would’ve come out better.

   

4. Random parking permit on a random car:

   

5. Balls sticking out of the sculpture garden:

   

6. Circular rainbows, taken while outside “working on physics”:

   

   and

   

7. Two very bad images of Venus, taken two hours after sunset. As you can tell, my hands weren’t as stable as they should be:

   

8. And the finale! A power structure:

   

Superzooms are particularly fun to play with I love optics.

Pasted on Mr. Nguyen’s door for STAR testing days. Notice the names:

I must suck at them. With the exception of Stanford, all the colleges and scholarships for which I had to interview, I did not get admitted to, while all that which I did not interview for, I did get. Weird, huh?

Colleges I interviewed for, and got rejected from: MIT (waitlist=delayed rejection), Harvard, Princeton (didn’t expect entry, though)
Colleges I didn’t interview for, and got accepted to: Caltech, UCs (EECS @ Berkeley, LA, SD)

I also finaled for the Regents/Chancellor’s scholarship (and a couple alumni scholarships) at Cal, but after the interview, they decided against my receiving any of them. This is quite a coincidence, if it is one.

What does this mean? Does it mean that I’m just not a very personable interviewee? Someone the interviewer(s) cannot relate to? Someone who cannot clearly and fluently articulate (verbally) in his third language, English? (no public speaking skills, obviously!) … or cynical yet, Asian–Chinese–and male?

Or some combination of them all? <– probably that. So, anyone else suffer from interview-related problems?

Why am I taking EE anyway? I know I am a CS person, but the only time I love electronics is when I get to break it apart or when I get to program it. It doesn’t quite make sense, but I figure I’ll learn to like it later. EE/CS is supposedly the hardest, most competitive and work intensive double-major available at Cal, yet I want to add Business to that in my Junior and Senior year. And since Business is the university’s second most competitive department, that’ll be tough.

There goes free time, easy curves, and self-esteem inflation

CIT wasn’t as great as I had expected. The classrooms I visited were much more crowded than I had expected from a college that proudly advertises a 3:1 student to faculty ratio, and the students sure didn’t seem as enthusiastic or passionate as I thought they’d be–I was the only one who answered the professor’s questions in Math 1C (Multivar. calc, etc).

To add to that, they were quite insistant that I won’t be getting any money, despite the huge (600 million dollar) allotment from Intel Co-founder Gordon Moore, among other sources of money. My lunch buddy said the donors earmarked all those funds to research, meaning I won’t be able to fully take advantage of my share in undergraduate studies. See, CIT has less than 1000 UG students, so if those 600 million were distributed equally among us UG students, each of us would have enough to purchase a decent Almaden house :P. Is the extra 25k/year, 100k total, over UC Berkeley worth it? I’m starting to doubt it.

The admission officers were especially cordial, though, after they realized I’m an admittant. They did basically tell me to f-off when I asked for a tour, but when I retorted that I got a package from them that INVITED me to take a tour (CIT in a day), the front-desk lady called over the counselor who promptly invited me into his room and gave me a lecture on CIT. And then he suggested I observe the Math 1C and Bio classes, and after that, he gave me 20 bucks to eat lunch with a Junior at CIT. The lunch was nice, and I found out a bit more about Caltech from the Junior CS major, like how the CS major emerged only a few years ago.

I’m departing in a few hours for Southern California, primarily Caltech. Bye, everyone.

Look at how Princeton’s printer desecrated my rejection letter! Some parts of the print are noticeably shifted; it looked like the printer’s motor wasn’t in sync with the printer itself; and the printer spewed some random residual text on the bottom! Gosh, Princeton, I was going to hang this on Mr. Miller’s Wall of Shame, but now you’ve tarnished it beyond relief! At least let me be rejected with dignity! — Give me the opportunity to paste this on Mr. Miller’s wall. Actually, pasting this Princeton blunder might not be a bad idea.

Just for a comparison and to prove the quality is not derived from my shaky hands (My cam comes with image stabilization!) look at how much cleaner Caltech’s letter is: