For stocks, anyway, and only historically. At least that was what CNBC said. Their explanation was because numerous U.S. government officials take extended leaves during August, which is apparently good for investors in general. I am not quite sure why that is, and so far this month's data does not support that theory, although there is definitely not enough data to make any substantial conclusion.
[Don't even get me started on that commentary about Paul the Octopus and the atrocious claim that an 80% success rate meant if you succeeded four times, you have to fail your fifth time. It makes me shudder every time I think about it.
Also, on a related note, I talked with Argon after he came back from his trip to Spain, and he mention—or more like hinted at—the craziness when Spain won the World Cup.]
For me, August doesn't mean stocks. It means: a) I am endangering numerous people/properties/roads because I now have my permit and am testing the waters, if you will (it would be cool to drive through water someday); and b) the Common Application is out. I know I have been asked by Tea to not remind her about this, so, Tea, if you're reading this, just skip pretty much the rest of the post. Sorry.
So far I have added the list of colleges I'm applying to ("definitely Penn, and MIT, and Princeton, and, uh, do I want Duke?"), filled out all the little details about myself, my parents ("wait, the schools my parents went to don't have CEEB codes"), my academia-related adventures ("how do I fill out my course load for next year when I don't even know it for sure yet?"), and my possible career future ("undecided, or more commonly known as anything-that-involves-statistical-math-and-neurobiology-and-chemistry-and-maybe-psychology-and-philosophy-and-I-would-like-some-economics-as-well-and-what-do-you-mean-that's-impossible"). I haven't filled out my extracurriculars yet ("next to none, ouch"), nor have I explained how I spent my past two summers catching up on classwork and otherwise not doing stuff like finding the cure to cancer or ending world hunger (but of course, I can't do that yet, because curing cancer is Penn's ticket to becoming as "famed" as Wharton, who apparently, but don't quote me on it, loathes to associate with Penn).
All in all, it's good. Now to churn out around twenty essays and short answers, and I will be all peachy. Thank the College Admissions God (henceforth known as the CAG) that the Canadian schools don't require any essays (nor do they look for any intellectual exploration outside of school). Washington University (the St. Louis one) doesn't either, but their scholarships do.
I guess there truly is no such thing as a free-of-supplementary-essays application.
Basically this is me wasting brain cells writing something admissions people will never see instead of writing my essay. I think I should really make an alternate copy of my common application and add my blog address into the "additional information" section, and submit it to some impossible school (I'm thinking Harvard, it doesn't require a supplement essay). I mean, this blog is probably more indicative of my personality and life than any over-250-and-under-1000-words essay I can ever write.
Alas, life doesn't work that way. (Also, Harvard would probably not appreciate the fact that I'm considering Penn over it.)
So I should probably end this now and get back to staring at my application essay instead.
Showing posts with label stat. Show all posts
Showing posts with label stat. Show all posts
Wednesday, August 4, 2010
Friday, May 28, 2010
Wherefore Art Thou, Japan?
I am on a school computer right now, and the screen is flickering. I don't know why, but it has happened before, and when I told the librarian and she came over, it stopped. Then, when she left, it started again. It is most annoying.
Anyway, I had this wonderful post yesterday about how Japan might as well be in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, because we're not getting anywhere, when I realized, no, we're in the Pacific Ocean right now, and technically Japan is in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, if not directly in the middle, so it's not as... argumentative. I didn't get to finish that post though, so here I am today, barely finishing my English essay (because of a lot of due date delays, I had plenty of time to work and read GWTW), beginning the first part of the voyage (which is us on the plane) because I can't bear the trip on hiatus anymore.
Besides, I will be gone tomorrow and over the weekend to visit colleges, namely Williams and McGill (and really just McGill, but Williams is along the way), and I won't have access to the Internet, so I might as well write something now.
Several hours later, on my home computer, with no flashing screen.
First of all, I need to ask Julie (and any other reader here): do you want to come on the trip as well? I still need to draw pictures as well (especially of Bruney, I'll get around to that one day).
Secondly, this will be a pictureless post because I have lots of random work to do.
So, to recap, Gretchen and Tea and I are on a plane headed for Japan, our next destination. We had just recently left Chile, and if you wish to read about our adventures there, you can click the "Round The World Trip" log, featured as a link above. There, I've archived all the links to the relevant posts we have written on the subject. Right now, however, we're aboard the plane, and despite what you may have heard about no viable source of communication on planes, there's some strange source of WiFi on here, and so we're not questioning it as all of us relax and check our random sites that we always check online.
Bruney is coming straight from home and meeting us at Japan, where we will have a great time. I'm sure of it. I mean, just the food itself sounds great, and if the food is good, nothing else can go wrong, right? But since we will be on the plane for a whilesince just as it's got WiFi, it's also got the ability to indefinitely suspend in midair until we declare it not to do so, we decided to catch up on some news.
Here's what I found out (not sure about Gretch or Tea):
1) Matt and I are interviewing/surveying our people next week during period 7. Here's some of the classes we may be dropping by (we will be, but I'm not sure which dates)—AP English, Latin 2, three western humanities classes, and numerous others. Yes, these are ournot so randomly chosen classes. There are a lot of freshmen and sophomores. Hmm. I wonder why?
2) Reese can be quite adamant when he wants something. Or annoying. I suppose it depends on how you look at the situation. Also, he's quite savvy with Naviance (not sure if it's a good thing), and Argon has never heard of it before. Never? I guess people surprise you all the time. Or maybe he'll just fall into its evil clutches by the time junior year runs along.
3) This. Today. During physics. It looks painful.
MID—
Rhett: 2
Scarlett: 2.5
Anyway, I had this wonderful post yesterday about how Japan might as well be in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, because we're not getting anywhere, when I realized, no, we're in the Pacific Ocean right now, and technically Japan is in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, if not directly in the middle, so it's not as... argumentative. I didn't get to finish that post though, so here I am today, barely finishing my English essay (because of a lot of due date delays, I had plenty of time to work and read GWTW), beginning the first part of the voyage (which is us on the plane) because I can't bear the trip on hiatus anymore.
Besides, I will be gone tomorrow and over the weekend to visit colleges, namely Williams and McGill (and really just McGill, but Williams is along the way), and I won't have access to the Internet, so I might as well write something now.
Several hours later, on my home computer, with no flashing screen.
First of all, I need to ask Julie (and any other reader here): do you want to come on the trip as well? I still need to draw pictures as well (especially of Bruney, I'll get around to that one day).
Secondly, this will be a pictureless post because I have lots of random work to do.
So, to recap, Gretchen and Tea and I are on a plane headed for Japan, our next destination. We had just recently left Chile, and if you wish to read about our adventures there, you can click the "Round The World Trip" log, featured as a link above. There, I've archived all the links to the relevant posts we have written on the subject. Right now, however, we're aboard the plane, and despite what you may have heard about no viable source of communication on planes, there's some strange source of WiFi on here, and so we're not questioning it as all of us relax and check our random sites that we always check online.
Bruney is coming straight from home and meeting us at Japan, where we will have a great time. I'm sure of it. I mean, just the food itself sounds great, and if the food is good, nothing else can go wrong, right? But since we will be on the plane for a while
Here's what I found out (not sure about Gretch or Tea):
1) Matt and I are interviewing/surveying our people next week during period 7. Here's some of the classes we may be dropping by (we will be, but I'm not sure which dates)—AP English, Latin 2, three western humanities classes, and numerous others. Yes, these are our
2) Reese can be quite adamant when he wants something. Or annoying. I suppose it depends on how you look at the situation. Also, he's quite savvy with Naviance (not sure if it's a good thing), and Argon has never heard of it before. Never? I guess people surprise you all the time. Or maybe he'll just fall into its evil clutches by the time junior year runs along.
3) This. Today. During physics. It looks painful.
MID—
Rhett: 2
Scarlett: 2.5
Wednesday, May 26, 2010
UBS Is Uber-Huge (and assorted other adventures)
To sum up the UBS building I visited yesterday as part of my job shadowing program into two words, I would have to pick huge and fancy. If I could have a third, I would probably pick high-tech. In fact, it's been so huge and fancy and high-tech that I don't even know where to start, but I'll try.
The building was tall (and huge, although not more so than an ordinary big concrete building can be), concrete and glass, and by the main entrance, there were two fountain-esque features. They weren't exactly fountains, because they were more like several inches of flat water, but they were calming in a strange way. Then inside, they've got this long, long hallway, which leads to an elevator set, and then, going up the elevator, we (the "supervisor" that I was supposed to shadow and I, but most everyone else as well) walk into this huge, huge, huge room that's around three stories tall and with suspended glass offices at the edges (or so I think, anyway), lots of screens with stock indexes and international times posted everywhere. It was a dizzying experience, trying to take all of it in.
My supervisor, whom I shall call Bob for now for ease of referring to him, took me to his desk, and, as he needed to make several business calls (which were all in a foreign language, so I understood nothing), he gave me a huge booklet on the history of the American stock market ever since the pre-(Teddy) Roosevelt era. I tried to follow some of the business-y news, but instead, I found myself attracted to tidbits such as "Johnson stunned Democrats by declaring not to run for office" and that despite what CNN had told me during the 2008 elections (forgive me if I've remembered this wrong), the Bush administration actually oversaw quite a length of economic expansion (granted, the book ended at 2004, so it did not take into account the catastrophe of the later years).
Then Bob showed me to an ETF trader (and if the terminology sounds bizarre, it's because I only remember some of what he does, since he showed me so much stuff). I was there before the markets opened, so he had plenty of time to explain a lot of the things behind what he did. It was all Excel-heavy and he himself said that he had been a computer engineer major, and, during an internship at UBS in IT, fell in love with the excitement on the trading floor. I bet the multiple monitors each person had was a huge plus as well. They've got about three monitors per person, and sometimes even more, and all those screens were filled with charts and tables and other cool things.
After that, I met with several people involved in futures (whatever that means, I still have not found out). All I managed to figure out was that whenever something happened, there was this really cool sound effect that sounded like cars zooming past, and then sometimes a cash register sound, and sometimes a glass object breaking sound. I tried staring at the monitors, figuring out what was causing the sounds, but everything was flashing, and there were so many of them, and so many bright, ever-changing colors. It was exciting, extremely exciting.
Bob led me to the equity traders next, where I learned a short crash-course on inflation and more importantly, that the international equity traders often woke up at ungodly hours (going to work at 5:30am, or, if you were in Hong Kong, apparently going to work at 7am and still working at 11pm) and that they were assigned specific regions, but they were experts in their region, and knew all the news and such.
Then came the analysts, and one of the head analysts had a son who went to Paperclip. He asked me about my math classes and math team, and relayed the rumor/myth/maybe-true tale of how for several years, MIT only accepted one student per year from Paperclip. Well, I hope the spell's been broken, because there are so many people applying to MIT next year, and it would be awful if they only accepted one. Anyway, then we talked about analyses that contained t-tests and regression lines and r-values. It was statistics in real life, and it was amazing.
I went to an options trader later, but she was busy, so then I went to the economists' back row (the entire room's rather organized, and maybe if I feel like it I'll draw a picture later). I got a ten-minute crash-course of the US economy in the past, oh, 100 years or so (crash-courses seem very popular here, or maybe it's just me). The guy who was explaining everything to me then joked that he would be offering a crash-course in physics next.
I had to leave after that, but it was still quite an experience. Sorta left me speechless (except the always present "thank you") for a while. Yeah. Perhaps an analysis of this experience will come later. Maybe.
In GWTW (my abbreviation for the book I'm reading now) news, I'm extremely saddened. And frustrated. Rhett Bulter is, as Scarlett says, "no gentleman at all," but I had not expected him to be so irritating. I never found Catcher in the Rye frustrating, but I am now finding GWTW the most annoying thing I have ever read, and one of the saddest one as well, all at the same time. I can't believe it's not on some English curriculum at our school. It definitely should be—except that it's over 1000 pages long and most people in my English class right now would probably only Sparknote half of it, if that.
As it is, Othello will have to tide me over for now.
MID—
Rhett: 1.5
Scarlett: 2.5
The building was tall (and huge, although not more so than an ordinary big concrete building can be), concrete and glass, and by the main entrance, there were two fountain-esque features. They weren't exactly fountains, because they were more like several inches of flat water, but they were calming in a strange way. Then inside, they've got this long, long hallway, which leads to an elevator set, and then, going up the elevator, we (the "supervisor" that I was supposed to shadow and I, but most everyone else as well) walk into this huge, huge, huge room that's around three stories tall and with suspended glass offices at the edges (or so I think, anyway), lots of screens with stock indexes and international times posted everywhere. It was a dizzying experience, trying to take all of it in.
My supervisor, whom I shall call Bob for now for ease of referring to him, took me to his desk, and, as he needed to make several business calls (which were all in a foreign language, so I understood nothing), he gave me a huge booklet on the history of the American stock market ever since the pre-(Teddy) Roosevelt era. I tried to follow some of the business-y news, but instead, I found myself attracted to tidbits such as "Johnson stunned Democrats by declaring not to run for office" and that despite what CNN had told me during the 2008 elections (forgive me if I've remembered this wrong), the Bush administration actually oversaw quite a length of economic expansion (granted, the book ended at 2004, so it did not take into account the catastrophe of the later years).
Then Bob showed me to an ETF trader (and if the terminology sounds bizarre, it's because I only remember some of what he does, since he showed me so much stuff). I was there before the markets opened, so he had plenty of time to explain a lot of the things behind what he did. It was all Excel-heavy and he himself said that he had been a computer engineer major, and, during an internship at UBS in IT, fell in love with the excitement on the trading floor. I bet the multiple monitors each person had was a huge plus as well. They've got about three monitors per person, and sometimes even more, and all those screens were filled with charts and tables and other cool things.
After that, I met with several people involved in futures (whatever that means, I still have not found out). All I managed to figure out was that whenever something happened, there was this really cool sound effect that sounded like cars zooming past, and then sometimes a cash register sound, and sometimes a glass object breaking sound. I tried staring at the monitors, figuring out what was causing the sounds, but everything was flashing, and there were so many of them, and so many bright, ever-changing colors. It was exciting, extremely exciting.
Bob led me to the equity traders next, where I learned a short crash-course on inflation and more importantly, that the international equity traders often woke up at ungodly hours (going to work at 5:30am, or, if you were in Hong Kong, apparently going to work at 7am and still working at 11pm) and that they were assigned specific regions, but they were experts in their region, and knew all the news and such.
Then came the analysts, and one of the head analysts had a son who went to Paperclip. He asked me about my math classes and math team, and relayed the rumor/myth/maybe-true tale of how for several years, MIT only accepted one student per year from Paperclip. Well, I hope the spell's been broken, because there are so many people applying to MIT next year, and it would be awful if they only accepted one. Anyway, then we talked about analyses that contained t-tests and regression lines and r-values. It was statistics in real life, and it was amazing.
I went to an options trader later, but she was busy, so then I went to the economists' back row (the entire room's rather organized, and maybe if I feel like it I'll draw a picture later). I got a ten-minute crash-course of the US economy in the past, oh, 100 years or so (crash-courses seem very popular here, or maybe it's just me). The guy who was explaining everything to me then joked that he would be offering a crash-course in physics next.
I had to leave after that, but it was still quite an experience. Sorta left me speechless (except the always present "thank you") for a while. Yeah. Perhaps an analysis of this experience will come later. Maybe.
In GWTW (my abbreviation for the book I'm reading now) news, I'm extremely saddened. And frustrated. Rhett Bulter is, as Scarlett says, "no gentleman at all," but I had not expected him to be so irritating. I never found Catcher in the Rye frustrating, but I am now finding GWTW the most annoying thing I have ever read, and one of the saddest one as well, all at the same time. I can't believe it's not on some English curriculum at our school. It definitely should be—except that it's over 1000 pages long and most people in my English class right now would probably only Sparknote half of it, if that.
As it is, Othello will have to tide me over for now.
MID—
Rhett: 1.5
Scarlett: 2.5
Tuesday, May 18, 2010
Now Or Never
I don't believe in fairy tales, too cynical . . . I'm not gonna live forever, said I'm not gonna live forever—gotta make it now or never.—Forever or Never, Cinema Bizarre
Matt and I decided upon a project where we would interview various period 7 classes (because that was when we had stat, and when we could be around the school interviewing people in other classes) and ask them about their opinions on the increase of various department budgets. So we tried to follow a statistical approach, and randomly chose five classes out of every group (we had separated them by AP/honors, A-, and B-levels). This process was much flawed by the senior interns, whom I have not talked about extensively yet but I may get to in the future.
Anyway, for our AP/honors classes, we had chosen notoriously senior-infested classes such as AP environmental and AP Spanish. This posed a problem, because we needed at least six people from each class, so Matt said we could just, uh, choose another class that fitted our needs. It was not random, but, hey, it was the best we could do without physically tracking down the seniors in their intern positions.
(Later on, I asked Reese how many people were in his AP Spanish class, and he said two, including him. So Spanish was definitely out.)
Also, speaking of internships, the Paperclip Job Shadow "event" is coming up soon, and apparently my name was called on Friday, but I did not hear because I was in the hallway at the time (trying to navigate from one end of the school to the other in under five minutes). So I was informed this morning that there would be a workshop for job shadow participants during lunch, which I promptly forgot (until lunch was almost over, and I was in the library with Argon, who informed me that he wrote his elemental symbol on his tests for his chem class now). Luckily, I was able to schedule another appointment during the first half of period 7 to make it up. And, hopefully, I won't forget the second workshop (résumé writing, what fun) tomorrow.
(Clara and Ariadne and I looked over some of those mock-résumés, and they were ridiculous. Varsity basketball captain, founder of the Ultimate Frisbee club, various trips around the world to volunteer—with everything funded by scholarship money, high honors, 3.8/4.0 GPAs, NHS, various other academic clubs and activities, various other community service clubs and activities. Ridiculous, I say. I thought mock-résumés were supposed to be average content-wise so we could feel good about ourselves and be confident with the résumés we came up with.)
Today was also my English class' designated reading period (for the week). I brought in Gone with the Wind, as I mentioned yesterday, and this book has well over 1000 pages. We had around 45 minutes to read, and after those 45 minutes, I accomplished 26 pages. Only 1000 or so pages more to go. Yippee. (Can you believe "yippee" is a word, but "yay" is not, according to spellcheck?)
Non sequitur (a word I learned from Reese earlier today, as we were discussing his Spanish class, Spanish in general, how little I know of the Spanish language, and typing Spanish using a Spanish keyboard), I was bored yesterday, so I typed "forever" in my Google search bar. Then I decided to add "or never" to it, and searched the result, and came up with Cinema Bizarre's song, Forever or Never, which I found fascinating. So I searched the band up, and discovered the Eurovision contest, and last year's winner, who is absolutely the most adorable violinist I have ever seen (the most adorable human being I reserve for someone else who happens to not be a violinist).
I spent over two hours on various Eurovision finalist songs, including this Ukraine one, which is bizarre (the refrain is apparently "I want to see Russia goodbye"?), to put it mildly, and this Russian one, which features a girl popping out of a piano.
I feel it everyday, it's all the same. It brings me down all the time but I'm the one to blame.—Over and Over, Three Days Grace
MID—
Scarlett: 0
Rhett: 0.5
Matt and I decided upon a project where we would interview various period 7 classes (because that was when we had stat, and when we could be around the school interviewing people in other classes) and ask them about their opinions on the increase of various department budgets. So we tried to follow a statistical approach, and randomly chose five classes out of every group (we had separated them by AP/honors, A-, and B-levels). This process was much flawed by the senior interns, whom I have not talked about extensively yet but I may get to in the future.
Anyway, for our AP/honors classes, we had chosen notoriously senior-infested classes such as AP environmental and AP Spanish. This posed a problem, because we needed at least six people from each class, so Matt said we could just, uh, choose another class that fitted our needs. It was not random, but, hey, it was the best we could do without physically tracking down the seniors in their intern positions.
(Later on, I asked Reese how many people were in his AP Spanish class, and he said two, including him. So Spanish was definitely out.)
Also, speaking of internships, the Paperclip Job Shadow "event" is coming up soon, and apparently my name was called on Friday, but I did not hear because I was in the hallway at the time (trying to navigate from one end of the school to the other in under five minutes). So I was informed this morning that there would be a workshop for job shadow participants during lunch, which I promptly forgot (until lunch was almost over, and I was in the library with Argon, who informed me that he wrote his elemental symbol on his tests for his chem class now). Luckily, I was able to schedule another appointment during the first half of period 7 to make it up. And, hopefully, I won't forget the second workshop (résumé writing, what fun) tomorrow.
(Clara and Ariadne and I looked over some of those mock-résumés, and they were ridiculous. Varsity basketball captain, founder of the Ultimate Frisbee club, various trips around the world to volunteer—with everything funded by scholarship money, high honors, 3.8/4.0 GPAs, NHS, various other academic clubs and activities, various other community service clubs and activities. Ridiculous, I say. I thought mock-résumés were supposed to be average content-wise so we could feel good about ourselves and be confident with the résumés we came up with.)
Today was also my English class' designated reading period (for the week). I brought in Gone with the Wind, as I mentioned yesterday, and this book has well over 1000 pages. We had around 45 minutes to read, and after those 45 minutes, I accomplished 26 pages. Only 1000 or so pages more to go. Yippee. (Can you believe "yippee" is a word, but "yay" is not, according to spellcheck?)
Non sequitur (a word I learned from Reese earlier today, as we were discussing his Spanish class, Spanish in general, how little I know of the Spanish language, and typing Spanish using a Spanish keyboard), I was bored yesterday, so I typed "forever" in my Google search bar. Then I decided to add "or never" to it, and searched the result, and came up with Cinema Bizarre's song, Forever or Never, which I found fascinating. So I searched the band up, and discovered the Eurovision contest, and last year's winner, who is absolutely the most adorable violinist I have ever seen (the most adorable human being I reserve for someone else who happens to not be a violinist).
I spent over two hours on various Eurovision finalist songs, including this Ukraine one, which is bizarre (the refrain is apparently "I want to see Russia goodbye"?), to put it mildly, and this Russian one, which features a girl popping out of a piano.
I feel it everyday, it's all the same. It brings me down all the time but I'm the one to blame.—Over and Over, Three Days Grace
MID—
Scarlett: 0
Rhett: 0.5
Friday, May 7, 2010
Highlights of the 2010 UK Elections
Blame 538.com for my addiction to this year's UK elections. I hadn't really cared (aside from interest in some of the lesser-known parties) until the Nerdfights between Nate Silver and PoliticsHome. But now that I am fully interested (purely numbers-wise, as a fellow amateur statistician, if I can call myself that), I have been following the polls as they come in, one by one, ever since 10:00PM, BST (when the polls closed).
Although this isn't nearly a timely, updated post, it is my experience of the elections, and should serve as something, if only to inform those who utterly have not cared about the elections up until they read this. You can only be an expert (ha, expert, yeah right) to a certain extent.
CONCLUSION:
Britain may very well be headed towards a minority government or a Tory-Lib coalition (with numerous experts prediction a re-election within a year, but hey, these are probably the same—I can't voucher for sure because all of their names blended into one for me, the usually non-political girl—experts who doubted that the Liberal Democrats would do so pathetically, so I would take their words with an idiomatic grain of salt).
On the front of statistics (why I'm doing this in the first place), all polls before the exit poll were off. Mostly because of overly optimistic LibDem projections, but also many thought a Conservative majority might be possible. Telephone polls were generally more accurate than Internet polls. And the most pressing issue? There's no clear winner in the Nerdfight, sadly. We're better off with BBC and its exit poll predicting the UK's future for those who wish not to stay up late (like David Dimbleby) and watch the events unfold. But really, it was so much more fun to see the election map being filled out one by one, and to watch the comments as they rolled in after each astounding (or not so astounding, in the safe seats) win.
Let's hope everything works out just fine for Britain. Of course, I can't wait for the 2012 presidential elections (hopefully by then I will fully understand the swing projection mechanism). I'd say I'm interested in it from a purely statistical standpoint, but that would be untruthful. With the US elections, I can also apply everything I've learned in US history. Imagine, math and social studies!
Sources where I got my information is as follows (and some interesting links to check out):
FiveThirtyEight: Election Night Liveblog Part 1 Part 2 Poll Analysis
The Telegraph: General Election 2010 Liveblog Election Map What's a Hung Parliament
(The General Election link above is updated daily—until they choose not to update it anymore—and archives are at the bottom of the post, but before the comments. I predominately used the May 6th/7th post, which is no longer the one displayed on the first page.)
BBC: Election 2010 Live Coverage Results Swingometer
(Try the Swing-o-meter. It's so amazingly fun I am kind of sad the US elections aren't quite the same as the UK elections. Swings don't really work as well here. Pity.)
UPDATE(s):
"2054 Among the thousands of disappointed candidates few could claim to have been dealt a harsher hand by fate than Bob Peck, a Conservative councillor in Great Yarmouth. When he and Labour rival Charlie Marsden were tied on 1,034 votes each in his Yarmouth North ward, a returning officer settled the stalemate asking each to draw cards from a pack. Mr Peck lost his seat."—Telegraph
Some other UK newspaper headlines (and sources)—
The Independent: Big two woo kingmaker Clegg, "Britain was today plunged into uncertainty over its future government, as both Labour and the Conservatives competed for the support of the Liberal Democrats to form an administration."
The Sun: Cam to Clegg: Let's do a deal/Shameless PM's still clinging on, "Mr Clegg had suffered one of the worst nights of his political life yesterday - but STILL woke holding Britain's future in the palm of his hand."
The Daily Mail (which Tea does not completely trust): Now for the shabby deals: As the Election descends into shambles, Cameron and Brown battle for crushed Clegg's support, "The most tumultuous election anyone could remember ended in a weekend of 1970s-style horse-trading between the parties and a dangerous period of uncertainty. David Cameron made an astonishing power-sharing offer to the Liberal Democrats, while Mr Brown shamelessly refused to budge as PM after leading Labour to its worst drubbing since 1983."
Washington Post (all-American, and so no headlines, but a small, almost hidden Opinions page): An electoral earthquake, "Dionne: In Great Britain, economic change crushed old political strategies on the left and right."
Yeah, I'll stop now. Much more interesting things (such as our trip outdoors in calc) are at stake here, now that Clegg (of all people) is now the one to decide Britain's future. It's a lose-lose situation for him (namely, Clegg goes Tory, he gets sidelined; Clegg goes Labour, chance of re-election with more people voting for the two main parties), and quite the lose-lose situation for the country (namely, despite voting for "change," it all depends on one man and his party's politics).
Besides, you've got to follow it as it unrolls to really experience the fun.
Although this isn't nearly a timely, updated post, it is my experience of the elections, and should serve as something, if only to inform those who utterly have not cared about the elections up until they read this. You can only be an expert (ha, expert, yeah right) to a certain extent.
- The Sunderlands apparently have a tradition of being the first to reveal their numbers (like that NH county whose name I can't remember), and this year, they've kept with tradition, both in speed and results. All three Sunderlands (the first three out and thus most analyzed) voted Labour, despite a huge increase in Conservative votes.
- BBC exit polls have Conservative barely out of majority, and Liberal Democrats losing seats—even though the LibDem's were predicted to gain seats this election. Well, LibDems remind me of the NDPs in Canada (very similar political party environment, especially regional parties, such as the Bloc Québecois, resemble the Scottish and Northern Ireland parties), so I'm not too surprised they've been losing seats, especially with a possible Conservative majority. But my opinion's probably naive.
- Who's the guy behind Gordon Brown during his speech? I don't have a link right now, because I'm following rolling blogs that keep updating, but if you Google Gordon Brown, I'll bet he'll show up. You know, the guy in the sunglasses, who's making that fist-motion, and supposedly belongs to the "Land is Power" party? He got 57 votes, so maybe (if those votes aren't just his family and friends) he's celebrating.
- With the polls and numbers in so far, Nate's model is leading the predictions against the uniform swing model. I haven't delved deep enough to figure out why Nate's model works (uniform swing is much easier to understand, apparently, and I haven't entirely gotten that). Although Nate's model is significantly worse when minority parties (e.g. SNP, DUP, and such) are contenders, which may be a result of his being used to American elections, which are focused primarily on a few (more like, two) parties, rather than a whole range of them, each with their areas of strength.
- Students forced to line up in longer lines while "local residents" vote first? One of a few scandals of the night (including keeping polls open after the deadline), and definitely going to be a problem. Check out the Facebook group. Some are calling for a re-election, which is very unlikely, but if the results are close, things may get ugly. Fast.
- And of course, exit polls once again prove to be rather informative (the last one, the 2005 UK election exit poll conducted by BBC as well, predicted the Labour majority accurately), as LibDems are faring horridly compared to expectations. Not my expectations, I'll say. But I just really care about whether the Nate-model or the uniform-swing-model will prevail, so I never really had expectations to begin with.
- "3:04 AM. Cameron's body language suggested a touch of disappointment."—538.com
- "0254 A clearly shocked Lembit Opik tries to explain his defeat, but the symbolism of the backdrop - a deserted hall - says so much more about tonight's Lib Dem collapse."—Telegraph
- BBC has been having technical difficulties earlier in the evening, with strange graphics, malfunctioning equipment ("Can I just kick this thing?" I'll have to find the specific quote later), and a boat party filled with celebrities and political pundits that plunged into a blackout halfway through.
- Conservative minority (exit poll predictions) may be disastrous for the stock market, as it will definitely drop due to the Greece bankruptcy and the DOW's near 1000 point drop (before rebounding a bit), and a hung government most likely won't get anything done anytime soon. Nate's predicting Conservative majority (by 10+ seats) based on the exit poll and a minority (by 10+ seats as well) based on no exit poll data. Someone tell me how this makes any sense.
- I've been spending way too much time on this, including looking at the funny pictures (Lembit Opik especially, and maybe the wood-chopping PM, but nothing—and I mean nothing in this election so far—tops the Man In Sunglasses behind Gordon Brown). Telegraph election maps either don't update as often as BBC's, or BBC is making false/early projections, as the Telegraph pointed out earlier. Who knows. I just know I should go to sleep now.
- Latest at 10:20PM—BBC: Con. 92, Lab. 92, Lib. 14 (a tie); and Telegraph: Con. 70, Lab. 74, Lib. 9, Others 26 (includes Sinn Fein, which I had thought was the name of an MP before learning that was a party—just goes to show my amateurishness in all of this, doesn't it?). This may end up like a Canadian government: nobody wants a Conservative majority, but they don't want the Liberals to win, so they vote for a Conservative minority with NDP getting some city (working class) votes and Bloc Québecois, well, you know where they win. They have the strangest ties too, all color-coordinated to show party support.
- SLEEP. Will check results later (in the morning, maybe). Tea said I should befriend Andy, who is also very interested in these elections. I hope he's in it for the math, because then he can explain the swing theories to me.
- THE NEXT DAY. (Yeah, that deserves a bullet point all to itself.)
- 538 report: out of 15 districts (at the time, no later data are provided), Nate's method won 7, and uniform swing won 8. Conducting a confidence interval on proportions (conditions are not quite met so we'll have to use a Wilson's adjustment, but I'm using my calculator so I'll assume it does that automatically), Nate's method was right about 47% of the time, with a (gasp) 21% error (this is why you should always have a large sample size when possible). But the same goes for uniform swing as well, so neither one really wins. That's disappointing.
- "4.19am Douglas Murray writes: 'Labour losses, Lib Dems failing to live up to any hype and the Conservatives failing to make gains they should have walked through. It looks like we the people have turned out in record numbers to punish the major parties equally. And, judging from Scotland, the minority parties too. Fun for the time being but this is going to spell mayhem over the coming days.'"—Telegraph
- Imagine losing by 176 votes (as Evan Harris, who got over 23,000 votes but still 176 less than the oppsition, experienced). That would really, really suck.
- "12.12pm (WH) A reader emails me the full Boris Johnson Paxman exchange (11.41am), saying it has been the highlight so far today.
Paxman: “But you started it!”"—TelegraphBoris: “I think if our new government is to be a Wall’s sausage, the meat of that sausage should be Conservatism. Of course there will be plenty of other bits and pieces in there like bread and what have you, but the meat should be the Conservatives.”Paxman: “Will it be a chipolata or Cumberland sausage?”Boris: “Enough of this gastronomic metaphor, I have tired of it.” - "Deal or No Deal" is chosen over Nick Clegg (LibDem leader). Adding insult to injury. (Here's the link.)
- Hung government made official, because apparently the UK can't deal with a minority government for some reason. Or maybe they just don't like to deal with one (lots of political bickering, that's for sure, and if Clegg doesn't form an agreement with the Tories, and David Cameron decides on a Tory minority, then any major decision in Westminster could become a nightmare—like Obama's healthcare bill debate, except possibly worse, since Obama at least had a Democrat majority). Business big-shots not liking this one bit—but this doesn't affect me directly in any way, except perhaps the possible spike in gold and silver prices after a loss of confidence in stocks and currency, which would be harsh on our jewelry club budget.
- A 14-year-old boy voted in Wyre and Preston North. What? How? You'd think a national election would be better regulated than that. Even convenience stores do a better job of monitoring who comes in through the doors.
- Here's the kicker: BBC's exit polls predicted a Tory minority of 307 seats, Labour with 255, and LibDems with 59. Real results? Conservative 305, Labour 258, and LibDem 57. Nate predicted 312/204/103, and PoliticsHome (since I haven't followed them consistently, I have two dates up for comparison) has 291/230/97 on May 4th and 307/229/82 on May 6th (although perhaps after the exit poll was released, because British law forbids any information regarding polls released during voting time from 7am to 10pm to prevent bias—I'll have to check later). Looks like that sample size of 18,000 worked out really well for the BBC for yet another year (much to the dismay of the Telegraph, which had been taunting the BBC's stubbornness in clinging onto its exit poll).
CONCLUSION:
Britain may very well be headed towards a minority government or a Tory-Lib coalition (with numerous experts prediction a re-election within a year, but hey, these are probably the same—I can't voucher for sure because all of their names blended into one for me, the usually non-political girl—experts who doubted that the Liberal Democrats would do so pathetically, so I would take their words with an idiomatic grain of salt).
On the front of statistics (why I'm doing this in the first place), all polls before the exit poll were off. Mostly because of overly optimistic LibDem projections, but also many thought a Conservative majority might be possible. Telephone polls were generally more accurate than Internet polls. And the most pressing issue? There's no clear winner in the Nerdfight, sadly. We're better off with BBC and its exit poll predicting the UK's future for those who wish not to stay up late (like David Dimbleby) and watch the events unfold. But really, it was so much more fun to see the election map being filled out one by one, and to watch the comments as they rolled in after each astounding (or not so astounding, in the safe seats) win.
Let's hope everything works out just fine for Britain. Of course, I can't wait for the 2012 presidential elections (hopefully by then I will fully understand the swing projection mechanism). I'd say I'm interested in it from a purely statistical standpoint, but that would be untruthful. With the US elections, I can also apply everything I've learned in US history. Imagine, math and social studies!
Sources where I got my information is as follows (and some interesting links to check out):
FiveThirtyEight: Election Night Liveblog Part 1 Part 2 Poll Analysis
The Telegraph: General Election 2010 Liveblog Election Map What's a Hung Parliament
(The General Election link above is updated daily—until they choose not to update it anymore—and archives are at the bottom of the post, but before the comments. I predominately used the May 6th/7th post, which is no longer the one displayed on the first page.)
BBC: Election 2010 Live Coverage Results Swingometer
(Try the Swing-o-meter. It's so amazingly fun I am kind of sad the US elections aren't quite the same as the UK elections. Swings don't really work as well here. Pity.)
UPDATE(s):
"2054 Among the thousands of disappointed candidates few could claim to have been dealt a harsher hand by fate than Bob Peck, a Conservative councillor in Great Yarmouth. When he and Labour rival Charlie Marsden were tied on 1,034 votes each in his Yarmouth North ward, a returning officer settled the stalemate asking each to draw cards from a pack. Mr Peck lost his seat."—Telegraph
Some other UK newspaper headlines (and sources)—
The Independent: Big two woo kingmaker Clegg, "Britain was today plunged into uncertainty over its future government, as both Labour and the Conservatives competed for the support of the Liberal Democrats to form an administration."
The Sun: Cam to Clegg: Let's do a deal/Shameless PM's still clinging on, "Mr Clegg had suffered one of the worst nights of his political life yesterday - but STILL woke holding Britain's future in the palm of his hand."
The Daily Mail (which Tea does not completely trust): Now for the shabby deals: As the Election descends into shambles, Cameron and Brown battle for crushed Clegg's support, "The most tumultuous election anyone could remember ended in a weekend of 1970s-style horse-trading between the parties and a dangerous period of uncertainty. David Cameron made an astonishing power-sharing offer to the Liberal Democrats, while Mr Brown shamelessly refused to budge as PM after leading Labour to its worst drubbing since 1983."
Washington Post (all-American, and so no headlines, but a small, almost hidden Opinions page): An electoral earthquake, "Dionne: In Great Britain, economic change crushed old political strategies on the left and right."
Yeah, I'll stop now. Much more interesting things (such as our trip outdoors in calc) are at stake here, now that Clegg (of all people) is now the one to decide Britain's future. It's a lose-lose situation for him (namely, Clegg goes Tory, he gets sidelined; Clegg goes Labour, chance of re-election with more people voting for the two main parties), and quite the lose-lose situation for the country (namely, despite voting for "change," it all depends on one man and his party's politics).
Besides, you've got to follow it as it unrolls to really experience the fun.
Thursday, May 6, 2010
So This Is What It's Like After APs
I had calc first period this morning, and when I walked in, Sonny and Dino were already there (I don't remember seeing Sonny at the library this morning, so either I somehow missed him, or he went straight to class). Since I was on my MID*, I sat down and took out my physics lab, the one that was due today that I was going to do at 2AM, but decided against it after reading three chapters of BDSMN. Interesting how physics labs always have titles with puns and such. I still remember one of our earliest labs, on kinematics and using fans attached onto plastic cars, was called "I'm a Fan of This," and my lab today, on standing waves, was called "Do The Wave."
Anyway, I had already started by drawing the x- and y-axis, and labeled them with Tea's help. That was only question one. I had around five questions in total, and question five had five parts. So I started plotting points and writing down definitions. Mrs. James (along with most of the class who were not away) came in within the next five minutes, and then we promptly started class.
Which was mostly Mrs. James trying to guess what our—oh, wait, I can't say, it's not been 48 hours yet, but it's the last question on the free response, if you know what I'm talking about (and if you don't, it's not a huge loss). Then Scott talked about the AP econ finals scandal, and how one of Mr. Wollen's class will not be getting a curve on their test because of the suspicion of cheating. Mrs. James said we could watch movies for the next week, and then we had to get down to work (the long-awaited project), but it would be nothing too hard. Half-way through the class, Mrs. Pastel came in and talked about how the two period 5 calc classes should compete against each other in outdoorsy activities the week after the seniors are gone.
By the time the bell rang, I had finished four questions, and was on my fifth, and I think that had been one of the most unproductive calc classes I have ever had (except on those days when Mrs. James was out and we played computer games instead of the problem sets she gave us).
I managed to finish my lab by period 4, my physics class, and handed it in (although I would not bet on its accuracy). Then, after a brief review of sound waves (and the promise of another lab tomorrow), Mr. Stencil went on Youtube to find a video of a wine glass breaking when the sound waves from an amplifier is in resonance with the natural waves (at least that's what I think they are) of the crystal/glass. We watched that, which was really cool, because the glass wobbled so much before it actually broke. Then we watched the video where a girl sang to break the wine glass (after many, many tries and many, many deep breaths). After that, we watched this video, which is by far the most amazing one of all of them.
During this time, I read two more chapters of Huck Finn (I needed to read ten by period 6), which was a rather huge accomplishment for me, because I had been watching all of the videos as well. I think my multi-tasking skill is improving. I'm not sure if that's a good thing.
After physics, I had my other post-AP math class, stat. We were watching a movie, 21 (the one where the MIT students count cards in casinos). It was an interesting movie, despite the few bits I managed pull out, because I read six more chapters of Huck Finn during that time as well. Their memorization skills are amazing. But I suppose they're MIT students (the leading guy was supposed to go to Harvard med school, but he didn't have enough money to afford it), so it's not that surprising.
I went to English having two chapter not finished, and the guy who sits next to me told me that I had missed a pop quiz on the reading yesterday. Angry guy and Mogley had also missed it (I never knew angry guy was in calc—I just knew he was in my stat class), so our teacher gave us the quiz, which was supposed to take only five minutes. Despite having skimmed most of the pages, read more than half of them while watching movies and videos, and not reading the last two chapters, I managed to answer with certainty all but two questions (they were multiple choice questions, which made it much easier). I guessed the last two, one of which was that (major spoilers, perhaps) Buck died. I remembered something along the lines of Buck dying back from the first time I read the story (three years ago, I think), and afterwards, I learned that it was right. Yay for super long-term memory!
So what did I learn today? In US I learned (somewhat) that our judicial system is still pretty flawed (why can't the prosecution appeal? That makes no sense at all, at least not to me), but it's been much better than before (when all the jury were white and male). And in health, we learned birth control methods. Did you know that you leave something like NuvaRing in your vagina for 21 days, take it out for 7, then put it back in for another 21?
Yeah. I've learned a lot today.
(Also, after school, as I was walking over to my bus, I saw Owen standing there, looking back at who knows what. Then he went back towards the front entrance, and I got on my bus. Later on, as I sat in the front row, I saw him and Dino getting on the bus next to mine together. So much for Owen driving.)
*Mission: Ignore Dino.
Anyway, I had already started by drawing the x- and y-axis, and labeled them with Tea's help. That was only question one. I had around five questions in total, and question five had five parts. So I started plotting points and writing down definitions. Mrs. James (along with most of the class who were not away) came in within the next five minutes, and then we promptly started class.
Which was mostly Mrs. James trying to guess what our—oh, wait, I can't say, it's not been 48 hours yet, but it's the last question on the free response, if you know what I'm talking about (and if you don't, it's not a huge loss). Then Scott talked about the AP econ finals scandal, and how one of Mr. Wollen's class will not be getting a curve on their test because of the suspicion of cheating. Mrs. James said we could watch movies for the next week, and then we had to get down to work (the long-awaited project), but it would be nothing too hard. Half-way through the class, Mrs. Pastel came in and talked about how the two period 5 calc classes should compete against each other in outdoorsy activities the week after the seniors are gone.
By the time the bell rang, I had finished four questions, and was on my fifth, and I think that had been one of the most unproductive calc classes I have ever had (except on those days when Mrs. James was out and we played computer games instead of the problem sets she gave us).
I managed to finish my lab by period 4, my physics class, and handed it in (although I would not bet on its accuracy). Then, after a brief review of sound waves (and the promise of another lab tomorrow), Mr. Stencil went on Youtube to find a video of a wine glass breaking when the sound waves from an amplifier is in resonance with the natural waves (at least that's what I think they are) of the crystal/glass. We watched that, which was really cool, because the glass wobbled so much before it actually broke. Then we watched the video where a girl sang to break the wine glass (after many, many tries and many, many deep breaths). After that, we watched this video, which is by far the most amazing one of all of them.
During this time, I read two more chapters of Huck Finn (I needed to read ten by period 6), which was a rather huge accomplishment for me, because I had been watching all of the videos as well. I think my multi-tasking skill is improving. I'm not sure if that's a good thing.
After physics, I had my other post-AP math class, stat. We were watching a movie, 21 (the one where the MIT students count cards in casinos). It was an interesting movie, despite the few bits I managed pull out, because I read six more chapters of Huck Finn during that time as well. Their memorization skills are amazing. But I suppose they're MIT students (the leading guy was supposed to go to Harvard med school, but he didn't have enough money to afford it), so it's not that surprising.
I went to English having two chapter not finished, and the guy who sits next to me told me that I had missed a pop quiz on the reading yesterday. Angry guy and Mogley had also missed it (I never knew angry guy was in calc—I just knew he was in my stat class), so our teacher gave us the quiz, which was supposed to take only five minutes. Despite having skimmed most of the pages, read more than half of them while watching movies and videos, and not reading the last two chapters, I managed to answer with certainty all but two questions (they were multiple choice questions, which made it much easier). I guessed the last two, one of which was that (major spoilers, perhaps) Buck died. I remembered something along the lines of Buck dying back from the first time I read the story (three years ago, I think), and afterwards, I learned that it was right. Yay for super long-term memory!
So what did I learn today? In US I learned (somewhat) that our judicial system is still pretty flawed (why can't the prosecution appeal? That makes no sense at all, at least not to me), but it's been much better than before (when all the jury were white and male). And in health, we learned birth control methods. Did you know that you leave something like NuvaRing in your vagina for 21 days, take it out for 7, then put it back in for another 21?
Yeah. I've learned a lot today.
(Also, after school, as I was walking over to my bus, I saw Owen standing there, looking back at who knows what. Then he went back towards the front entrance, and I got on my bus. Later on, as I sat in the front row, I saw him and Dino getting on the bus next to mine together. So much for Owen driving.)
*Mission: Ignore Dino.
Tuesday, May 4, 2010
AP Stat—
Is rather boring (just like the SATs). Well, more specifically, statistics, as a subject, is really fascinating, but AP statistics, as a test, is not. Matt and I have been "studying" since early this morning, and so far we've concluded that: a) the equation for the t-distribution is very complicated; b) Schrödinger's cat does not make any sense; and c) we're going to fail the free response section.
The very fact that, at 9:17AM, I am sitting in the library typing up this post, instead of something more productive, such as studying, is testament to the absolute non-attractiveness of the test. Instead, I think I will use the rest of the time to study for calculus, which, albeit also not as fascinating as the subject itself, is much, much harder and thus deserves more attention, especially on my part, as I've been rather miserably failing the series/parametric/polar sections.
Another reason why I'm typing here: I spent so much time making the background to my blog (a.k.a. borrowing it from another blog-making website) that now I'm rather obsessed with it and cannot live for a day without staring at it (granted, I have not yet lived a day since when I first got it, but that's besides the point).
So I've got two hours and a half left, before I see what this year's exam is really like. Then another half-day before the calc exam, then less than a week for my chem exam. Chem is decidedly easy, except maybe acid/base and equations but the rest is so easy that it doesn't matter. Calc, on the other hand—
Perhaps I should study now.
The very fact that, at 9:17AM, I am sitting in the library typing up this post, instead of something more productive, such as studying, is testament to the absolute non-attractiveness of the test. Instead, I think I will use the rest of the time to study for calculus, which, albeit also not as fascinating as the subject itself, is much, much harder and thus deserves more attention, especially on my part, as I've been rather miserably failing the series/parametric/polar sections.
Another reason why I'm typing here: I spent so much time making the background to my blog (a.k.a. borrowing it from another blog-making website) that now I'm rather obsessed with it and cannot live for a day without staring at it (granted, I have not yet lived a day since when I first got it, but that's besides the point).
So I've got two hours and a half left, before I see what this year's exam is really like. Then another half-day before the calc exam, then less than a week for my chem exam. Chem is decidedly easy, except maybe acid/base and equations but the rest is so easy that it doesn't matter. Calc, on the other hand—
Perhaps I should study now.
Wednesday, January 13, 2010
What If?
"I don't read people's messages," Mrs. MacDonald said. "I don't want to read anything that I have to act on."
"Like what?" Trevor asked. "Tell us something you've read."
"Like abuse," Mrs. MacDonald said. "But I haven't read anything yet. I don't go checking other people's phones."
"What if--What if the phone was just sitting there? And there's a message from someone that says 'DEALER' on it?"
"Right. And a real dealer would choose to do that because?"
"You never know," Trevor said. "It could happen."
"And why don't you categorize all of your 'dealer' contacts then? Put them under subheadings: drug dealer--"
"Or, what if," Kyle interrupted. "You saw a text message that said, 'Hey, let's meet up somewhere and dump the body into the ravine?' I bet Micky would do that."
"Yeah," Micky said. "I would."
"What's the probability that Micky will kill someone today?"
"Or better yet," Mrs. MacDonald said. "What's the probability that Micky will kill at least one person today?"
"I don't know," Micky said. "But I think I'm definitely going to kill someone today. Got to keep up my reputation, you know?"
Oh, how lovely stat class is.
I obviously spent most of that class doodling in my notebook, as Trevor and Kyle tag-teamed to ask lots and lots of questions about the upcoming midterms so we wouldn't have to learn anything new. I know it's the day before midterms, but I haven't started studying at all.
Well, okay. That was an exaggeration.
I studied equations for chem, because... we were tested on that today.
I studied... well, more like copied the super long weird planetary circular orbital motion equation for physics, which is my second exam tomorrow (I have gym first, which promises to be an hour long of losing in the pickleball tournament), and so far I still haven't figured out what it is yet. I tried asking Bryant, but he stored it in his fancy TI-89 and it was all weird, so I was left even more confused. His equation just helped me figure out that the one I copied from Tamir was totally wrong.
I tried to describe my source of stress in French, but all I came up with was, "Je suis fatiguée parce que j'ai des éxamens. Pour éliminer le stress, je fais le yoga." (Translation: I am tired because I have exams. To eliminate stress, I do yoga.)
I don't, but yoga's a vocab word. And apparently "ranting in super long posts on meebo" is not.
In fact, I should be studying right now. I should. But the whole exam schedule, with two days of exams and then three days off, is throwing me off quite a bit. I just can't seem to envision that midterms are starting, like, tomorrow.
That means my gym midterms (okay, this makes it sound rather undramatic) start in less than 12 hours from now.
Oh my god.
That means I get all this extra time to do those around-the-school errands I've been putting off every day.
Wow.
I think I'm in a state of denial right now. My brain isn't registering the eminent doom of, say, all of those huge tests that I had just vaguely thought about for the past few days. This is so unreal. This is so... I don't even know how to describe it anymore.
Maybe I should do those math packets on circles to clear my mind.
