Good afternoon,
Hope everyone had a Happy Halloween, and stayed safe! It was definitely eventful, and much needed for me considering how hard the past couple of weeks have been for me. I was exhausted and even more exhausted after Halloweekend. Fortunately today, we gained an hour of sleep and is a rest (study) day, so I can hopefully recover. Let's get started!
Whelp, I guess 300+ people know I suffer from depression now. Nah, it was actually more like 19 people who actually clicked the link. No telling how many people actually read these logs besides the few that reached out. If Week 4 was not so brutal, and I did not pull an all-nighter writing that, I would have deleted that story right away because of my insecurities and out of fear of what people would think of me. I am glad I left it for the whole 24-hours because I know understand what a low-pass filter is 😂. People really do not care, and I now see it in a liberating connotation rather than a negative one. Having over 1,500 followers, my ego was expecting a much larger response, but then again all my recent posts have not been getting any motion. I am free to do almost anything now, I might as well go Kanye crazy 🤣.
In all honesty, I am pretty saddened about the lack of people who reached out to me after that. I thought I had a lot more people who love and actually care about me. I am sounding like an emo Middle School student right now, eh? As one could probably tell Week 5 was not good too, but by far better than Week 4 though.
I got my midterm score back: 61/100
Not great, but not failing, so I am just going to head into Office Hours, close the gaps, and keep on trucking!
I had to drop some clubs and manage/maximize my schedule better; Solar Car and Quantitative Trading. Dropping Solar Car was just the inevitable because I have not even showed up to a workday this quarter. It sucks because we are so close to finishing the car, but then again I am too technically handicap, and it's probably for the better that I do not attach myself to the project where I contributed barely anything. Dropping Quantitative Trading was a stinger because the team is so much fun. With how smart and knowledgeable they are, they are not condescending at all, which is great. Our project is not due until January so hopefully by the team break comes around, I can come back and help. I just do not have the capacity for it right now, and I can not juggle everything. There's only 24 hours in a day, and I cannot do everything I want as well as I want. These are mature decision nonetheless, I guess I am adulting now!
I checked back into counseling on Tuesday, I thought I could get a walk-in appointment, but unfortunately could not, so my appointment is tomorrow. I felt ashamed walking through those doors again and admitting that "I need help" when so many other people are struggling worse than me, but that does not make my mental health problems more or less real. It just funny how quick the trajectory of my personality and mood switched in such a short of time. Like I went from uploading this video:
To this video:
😂 in a span of a month. Mental health is not linear nor exponential, it's a process. Embrace the process, eh!
Cognitive dissonance is the term I learned in my summer psychology course about the internal clash we have within ourselves. Having two things that are supposed to be mutually exclusive existing at the same time. For example, I like to believe that I am a smart, highly capable person with a lot of friends, but my GPA and lack of DMs say otherwise 😅. The dissonance is the gap, and when the gap is wide it leads to shame/self-beating, denial, performing for others, or targeted action to close the gap. I am going through all stages, and I think I finally arrived at targeted-action now. Taking it upon myself to swallow my pride and ego, admitting that I need help, and having someone help tighten the loose screws in my life.
The forms they make you fill out for a counseling appointment is pretty wild. I had a little anxiety of the information I was putting down was accurate or not. There's only yes or no questions, and depending on which ones you check off, the staff can totally overexaggerate your situation. There is a strong reason for the yes-or-no questions because you do, or you do not, and I think that's the only approach to it. The more options and variables we add to questions or anything else for that matter, creates anxiety, having only two-choices removes the noise, and we just react according to it. Essentially what Ye said:
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"It just is, and we just are!"
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This week was not all bad though. I did things that made me happy like running, cooking (I love my AirFryer), and reading too. Here are some photos:
I got to live a little like this clip from a terrible space movie:
Also, I got a haircut, a very expensive one too . The cut itself was worth it, $35, plus $7 tip because I felt bad for how much hair she had to cut, and she was a very sweet Korean-Japanese-Chinese lady (I got ethnically mogged 💀). I definitely received the most "You's a very smart boy," "You're parents are very proud," and "Very handsome boy" compliments in 40 minutes than I ever did in my life. $42 total for the cut not the best, but not the worst. The worst was the extra cost; getting to the chair. The public transit from campus takes 2 hours for a 15-minute drive, Uber cost $30 roundtrip, so I was left having to rent a car for $20. I could not believe that was the cheapest option. $68 to get a cut is absurd nonetheless, but it could have been $72+.
First time driving a Hyundai, and it was not bad. Definitely not the car for me though. I can not even afford a car 🤣.
The weather is pretty nice now thanks to El Nino. It's still pretty humid, but reminds me a lot of San Francisco on a foggy day, or essentially home. I am going home next weekend, so I am pretty stoked and not stoked at the same time because I have yet to get cleared to play from the head injury. I was not even diagnosed with a concussion, but they are treating it like I did, and they are much slower with the process than last time. Concussions or any head injuries should be taken seriously, but there needs to be better transparency on the process between the trainers and the players. I just want to get cleared for next weekend because those are my last 3 games I'll play.
9-1 L to USC so brutal, score probably would not have changed if I was there or not, but I was happy to visit this rink again, after so many years. Way too many times we had to travel down to Anaheim for the annual Memorial Day Tourney. Never won one, but it was always a good time. Roll Summerhawks, eh!
Some other cool things this week!
I just do it to keep the streak alive at this point. It's definitely something I am proud of.
I also made a speaker in my engineering lab too:
Funny story about it is that my lab partner and I were bugging the Lab Assistants to ensure our circuit and connections were good and safe. We had ours checked like 5+ times I think, and when we were finally trying to test the speaker, it would not make a noise, so we flagged the Lab Assistants down again. Right when they came, I discovered the reason it was not working was because our ON and OFF switch was switched to OFF. I switched to ON right away, the speaker made sound, and the Lab Assistant just looked at us like we were absolute bricks. We had to be the most embarrassing engineering students in that lab, but we did end up figuring it out, so that's a win, eh.
I never felt more of a brick in my life than yesterday when I had to lead my first meeting for Triton Neurotech. Thankfully my co-lead picked up the slack, and ran an Arduino Workshop or more so a Claude-vibe-coded session. We split the team in two, and one created pong with a motion sensor, the other created the snake game with a joystick. Here are some photos:
Meeting ended up alright, and the members are definitely troopers for coming on Halloween especially on a Saturday. If I was not a lead, I would not be there.
For Halloween, I went as the classic *Cody Maverick* from *Surf's Up*. My buddy has the photo of the costume, so when I get that I will probably upload to the gram. It was definitely a last minute one, but it came out great. Shout out the Amazon Delivery driver, and the guy I stole the 3D printed "Big Z Pendant" design from.
I was pretty scared of the color of the filament on the 3D Printer, but I think I scored a nice color. Not movie accurate, but then again it's animation. I want to 3D print more, it's pretty fun, but tedious too.
I think it's pretty obvious why I chose *Cody* as my costume:
*"Cody's me bro, let me be me!"*
I still need to find my *Chicken Joe* and group overall here at UCSD. It gets way too lonely, and I am longing too hard for connection, right now. That's why I am going back to the shrink though 😅.
I think I am going to end the log here. Short one, but it's already noon, I have work to do, meals to prep, and I need some time for myself too. Also this is video of the week:
As always, stay safe, and Godspeed!
See you next week!