Category: Summer 2020

adrift

Hello! I promise I’m working on the summaries of notable events from Nov of last year to the end of the school year in June, but for some reason I’m facing a bit of resistance…

So I thought I would give an update on life right now. All in all, there’s not much to complain about, but I guess I’m not as happy about finally not being so busy I desperately await each weekend only for it to quickly and quietly slip away as I thought I would be… (and I wish I was happier because I know I’ll be hoping for this kind of a life all too soon once school begins)

I think I feel a bit like I did on those long, winding weekday afternoons in the summers of elementary school when my parents still hadn’t come home from work and there was nothing to do, but I’m definitely more concerned about it than I was then. There are many things I could be doing (learning so much knowledge for IB and for fun! practicing old skills or developing new ones – I really need to learn a bit of coding!) , and many things I should be doing (my Extended Essay, my Biology Internal Assessment draft, writing drafts of my Common App personal essay, exercising regularly), but they all seem a bit distant. I know I can muster the activation energy to begin something, but sometimes I’m just not interested… or I’m tired of looking at my laptop for hours and hours. It’s nice not to have to bring textbooks across the ocean, but I think having my education, assignments, extracurricular activities, personal learning, and a lot of leisure activities like finding recipes, chatting with friends or reading online books all on a screen has really blurred the lines between trying to motivate myself to begin getting something done, getting something done, and intentionally relaxing.

(I cannot wait to be able to borrow books from the public library again – I read so much during quarantine at school and basically not at all after coming home!)

Sometimes it seems like everyone else in this neighbourhood, this city, and maybe all my friends in my hometown and around the world, is occupied with something interesting and productive, or at least taking some time off and actually feeling relaxed. I wouldn’t say I’m stressed right now (although I was stressed on the day of my Chemistry Internal Assessment draft deadline), but I definitely don’t feel washed over by a wave of rejuvenation and energy for the gruelling months of college applications, numerous school and official IB assessments, and general hustle and bustle of the school year ahead. Maybe I never really learned how to let go of my obligations and do nothing for a few hours or maybe a few days, so I’m always in this weird limbo between “it’s summer and I definitely don’t need to work from 8 am – 10 pm everyday” and “I should be making the most of my time because I won’t get an uninterrupted, self-directed stretch like this in a long time”.

But, the sun keeps coming up every day (and out of the clouds most days :)). There have been some highlights to the past few weeks that I’m very grateful to have experienced!

  • Baking vegan banana bread
  • Helping my grandpa and mom make various delicious Chinese dishes
  • Cleaning my room and donating clothes and books
  • Learning a tiny bit of guitar
  • Biking up both sides of a ravine on a ~18 km loop with my dad every few days
  • Joining my former dance class on Zoom
  • Having a picnic with my best friend
from a walk with my mom and sister on Canada Day

I guess at the end of the day I’ll finish my assignments one way or another, and many of the people out there are probably occasionally experiencing some version of this…

I’ll leave you with a piano piece I’m learning, Jeux d’eau by Ravel (played by Martha Argerich).

Bis nächstes Mal! Until next time (which hopefully isn’t too far away!)

(My Duolingo game – unlike my motivation to write my personal essay – is strong but I still had to search that up haha)

happy to be home (I’m alive!)

Hello again! In my last post I mentioned I intended to write 8 more blog posts to fill in the gap after mid-November, but seeing as I haven’t written since then, I think I’ll revise my goal into 2 more posts: one on Nov to March and one on March to June.

In the end, my trip home actually went almost as planned when we bought the tickets in December. I left school as intended on Tuesday, June 9 and arrived at home in the night on the same day. I’m really grateful I was able to make it home, and I hope the students remaining on campus are also able to go home for some part of the summer if possible.

UWC Robert Bosch College was the only UWC of 18 colleges that was open for the last few months, and the only UWC that returned to classes. We reopened on May 4, welcoming back staff who live off campus and implementing new rules to maintain social distancing during the school day. We proceeded with end of year exams for first years a week later as well as IA data gathering and TOK presentations in the last two weeks of classes.

We finished classes on Tues, June 2 and TOK presentations on Thurs, June 4, then had our “disorientation” from Friday to Sunday and a thorough house and room cleaning on Monday.

I was a bit nervous to travel, but everything went quite smoothly and the airports and planes were definitely less busy than usual. For the summer, I plan to finish as much schoolwork as I reasonably can, including a draft of my Extended Essay and my Chemistry and Biology internal assessments. I can see myself losing motivation if I don’t also do other things, so I hope I’ll be able to vary my days with hobbies like baking, playing piano, and biking and playing badminton outdoors as well as spending time with my family. Another two of my major interests this summer are studying neuroscience and volunteering with research on the treatment of aphasia (difficulty with language caused by brain damage (e.g., stroke, head trauma, Alzheimer’s)). I am currently taking Medical Neuroscience on Coursera from Duke University, and I am enjoying it, but the workload is quite intense. I am not sure I will be able to finish on time because I want to make sure my notes are thorough…

Hopefully those two posts come through and I’ll provide an update on my summer plans!

Bis bald (see you soon)!