The sixth of June marked my last day of grade-level school.
Programming Scholarship Rant
What continues to frustrate me is this: On the Friday before Graduation, the Senior Farewell, a couple of students in the programming class received pretty substantial scholarships for doing well in class. One of which being my friend and only other member of the robotics team. There are three issues I have with this. First of all, I’m fairly certain I’m a better programmer than both of them, and I would’ve been even better had I taken that class. I know this because I spent about three of the past five years being extremely invested in creating my own Sonic The Hedgehog hack, Sonic Next Genesis. The project is far from finished and very difficult to get the motivation to work on, no matter how much I want to be able to finish it, but I digress. Working on that hack meant that I had to learn Assembly and familiarize myself with the entire game inside and out in order to figure out how I can make significant changes. I also did a lot of research and read a couple related blogs. I ended up becoming really competent programmer and could tackle almost anything. Higher level languages were not difficult to migrate to as some work with Game Maker has shown. I feel like I proved this in my robotics club in which I took up most of the programming. There, I made use of some less obvious tactics such as measuring a claw’s resistance by keeping track of previous values and finding the differences between them. The point is that I am pretty experienced. My second issue is that I requested this class for this year, but its time slot was already competing with French and Band, so I couldn’t take it. Third is that I remember a kid receiving a similar scholarship at my Freshman awards night and it has stuck with me ever since. I remember the student got it for asking about efficiency and making a program that identifies if a work is by Shakespeare. The fact that I clearly saw those scholarships coming but let them slip by bothers me a little, though I guess I couldn’t have done anything to take the class and get it. In general, it seems so weird that they’d favor such a specific class to find kids to give scholarships to despite how not everyone who could qualify being able to take the class. I guess that is the only way they can tell who could be a good programmer, but they don’t need to limit themselves to just programming. Anyway, I got a couple great scholarships, so I don’t mind it so much. The kids who got it still deserve them.
First Work Week
I work at a place called So Po Wine Co. It is a warehouse that stores and delivers boxes of wine, and my job is to place the company stickers on every wine bottle. The job is the repetitive task of opening boxes, placing stickers, then restacking those boxes, and I couldn’t be any happier with it. The lack of a push to get things done means I can come in and leave at whenever is convenient for me. The boss and my coworkers are very friendly. Most importantly, I can just zone out and focus my attention on listening to music, podcasts, and videos while working. It’s a minimum wage job, but I never feel that I need any more money than the job provides and I think the higher paying jobs are better suited for those will be living off of them. My first week off from school I went back to working ~6 hours a day from Monday-Thursday. Not much of note happened, other than that my father replaced the inner tube of the bike he gave me, allowing my to transport my bike accessories to the new bike. Thursday morning I rode my bike to work, despite the forecast of rain, because it was my only way to get there. The rain started getting really bad, so I had to leave my bike at work and get a ride home. During that time I realized I had the problem of sometimes not inspecting things before I buy them, which has led to me buying the same incompatible bike net twice, a two piece watch strap for a one piece watch, and two different incompatible laptop charging cables. I am currently stuck with all of them. That Saturday we visited York’s Wild Kingdom to celebrate Father’s Day. On the same day both one of my Switch Joycon and my phone refused to work, requiring a replacement of both. Whole the Joycon was spontaneous, my phone’s destruction presumably came from the pressure of my full pocket while on the amusement park rides. The LEDs leaked, leaving blank spaces and purple splotches on the screen. By the next day, the entire screen went black. Sunday I switched to using an old tablet. I found a $150 phone online that is better than my old phone in every way. I had a second phone which was used just for music inserted into the SD card slot, but I lost it two weeks before. The new phone had its own SD card slot, making the that one useless to me. I appreciate how much good can come from those disastrous events. My Grandmother joined us for lunch at an Indian restaurant where I almost left the tablet, and we visited an animal shelter. My father has wanted to get another dog to fill my absence once I go to college. The dog area was so loud with barking that my six year old brother Oliver refused to enter. Overall, it was fun.
Second Work Week
My new phone wouldn’t come until Tuesday afternoon. My work’s wifi doesn’t reach the side of the warehouse I usually work, so I had to download podcasts onto my tablet until then. Monday afternoon on the bike ride home I found that the touch screen would become unresponsive, then it would freeze on the booting screen when restarted. I initially ignored the problem as it seemed to solve itself. The next day around lunch time I ran into the same issue, and realized that I had no entertainment for work until I could fix it. I spent all lunch time attempting to fix it, though the lack of another internet-compatible device meant I was on my own. Thankfully, I discovered the bios screen and miraculously was able to get it to boot in time for work to continue. I was thankful to be able to put my tablet back in storage that afternoon. That week, I learned I had gotten a $2,500/year scholarship from KeyBank which was my biggest one yet. Sunday my father drove me up to Acadia for a small vacation before my visit to my college’s Summer Orientation
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