So in the past 72 hours there has been such a plethora of greatness. I can not even begin to describe it in words. That is why I will use pictures too. Although if pictures = 1000 words then in actuality I'm still describing everything in words, but let's not worry about the silly details.

Friday Morning 4:30 am: I stumble out of bed to the annoying beep of my alarm clock and rush to the park-and-ride to meet w/ my carpool.

5:15 am - We leave for Saginaw where the Michigan State Computer Programming Competition is held. I stare out at farm land for an hour before nodding off.

7:40 am - We arrive early and watch the people set up the breakfast table and registration area. I am hungry.

8:00 am - We get shirts that look like this (if you get the joke, you rock!):


10:15 am - My three person team (well just me) gets yelled out for typing code early. I get pissed off. See, it's good strategy too write out code you might need before hand to save time. In previous years, this has been allowed and it has come in handy. This year I did it and got yelled at. Go figure :-p

10:30 am - The gun goes off (the guy mutters GO to everyone)...

11:30 am - I complain of a headache. My team this year decided to go with a new plan this year. Since I am an awesome, uber fast typer, we decided I would type the entire time while other two would write code/pseudocode. We weren't sure how well it would work, but it did! I even fixed two programs and ended up writing one and a half as well as typing out everyone else's programs.

12:30 pm - The guy yells stop (doesn't really matter. The submission software stops allowing submissions anyway). We got six programs out of 12 in 2 hrs. Now before you go like 50% how awful. Consider this. We wrote 6 not so easy programs in 2 hrs! yes, six is pretty good usually. We were'nt sure this year though because Midland high school is very good this year. We shrugged it off and walked away to lunch.

1:00 pm - I for all intensive purposes pig out at the cafeteria. This cafeteria is absolutely amazing. In fact, my friends believe that SVSU is putting on a show for everyone to entice them to come next year. No university can have all you can eat amazing food like this. They have every single type of food you can think of from soup bowls to hamburgers to interesting asian meals to awesome Italian meals. Then there is even a whole section devoted to deserts with Chefs constantly making deserts and other confections. A lot of people at my school want to come to this competition for the food. It has quite a reputation :-p.

2:00 pm - Time to present the awards. 3rd Place - Midland 3 with six programs. My team realizes that we did better than them since we had better time and less mistakes and so we all get giddy and excited. 2nd place - KAMSC (us). We flip out and rush the stage. People take pictures of us and hand us 1 gig usb sticks. We also receive a plaque and medals will be sent. 1st place- Midland 1 with 9 programs. Go figure again. But w/e...we got 2nd place in the state!

3:45 pm - On our way home, I start coming off the high from winning and realize it is less than 24 hrs till decisions come out.

6:00 pm - MIT stress begins to trump my winning-high. I start to worry, but then remember I have an all night Sci-fi Film Fest to attend. No sleep for me (like I would get some anyway with decisions on the horizon).

7:05 pm - I arrive at the film fest and chat with friends. We discuss how ridiculous the Movie selection is this year:

7:30 PM - Enemy Mine
9:30 PM - Planet of the Apes
11:30 PM - Timeline
1:30 AM - Santa Claus Conquers the Martians
3:30 AM - Capricorn One
5:30 AM - Ultraviolet
7:30 AM - Sunshine
9:30 AM - Explorers
11:30 AM - Deja Vu
1:30 PM - Serenity

The only good movies on here are Deja Vu and Serenity. The point of this entire thing anyway is to loudly criticize the movies and discuss how bad the physics and production quality is. In fact the only rule is to be loud enough so everyone can here your comment and laugh.

8:10 - Enemy Mine is so easy to make fun of. Going into it, everyone thought it would be like Alien vs Predator. The story is about a war between humans and these lizard creatures. One humand and one lizard creature crash land on a bad planet and then the human is captured by the lizard. The conditions are tough though and so they become friends and learn each other's languages within a week. Then this movie goes Brokeback Mountain and they start living in this house and the lizard becomes pregnant! The human begins following the lizard's religion and then has to raise the lizard child since the lizard dies. At the end, this human-lizard child relationship brings both races together and ends the war. YES ABSOLUTELY RIDICULOUS! But everyone had a good laugh!

9:25 - I go outside the presentation center and play cards. Then pizza arrives and I eat.

Saturday
12:35 am - I am starting to become very tired. Remember I only got 6 hours of sleep the night before. I begin to doze off and then finally fall asleep. Thirty minutes later I wake up and am rejuvenated like the energizer bunny. The night goes slowly and pretty much we all keep making fun of the movies.

5:00 am - The stress of the impending doom that is MIT decisions begins to consume me. I can't think, i can't eat, i cant slee- well i can sleep and I did.

6:30 am - I wake up and decide to leave when the movie (now Ultraviolet) ends.

7:05 am - Yay I get to go home...and worry more! Oh well.

8:30 am - I get home and try to sleep. Hmm...I'm unsuccessful...I wonder why..OH I KNOW decisions have taken over my mind. Stress exponentially begins to increase.

11:30 am - I stop talking in the chatroom MIT12 where everyone (even the EA people) are awaiting the RA decisions. I head over to my parents and begin rapidly refreshing the decisions page.

11:45 am - The page finally comes up and I quickly type in my username/password. I read "On behalf of the Admissions committee...pleasure...offer admission..." and I quickly begin screaming "IM IN IM IN!" The chat room becomes frantic and I cannot concentrate on anything. I sit in disbelief and feel the stress dissipating, leaving me tired and ecstatic. The entire three months of disappointment and hope are now over and I'm in at my dream school. Everything seems to finally click into place.

1:00 pm - My parents and I leave to Coldstone where I eat my favorite Birthday Remix ice cream and think about how awesome CPW is going to be and how I really am in at MIT.

2:30 pm - I decide to return to the film fest to catch Serenity, a favorite of mine. Let me tell you, this is the first time I felt relieved in months. I was able to just relax and actually enjoy a movie. What a great feeling! After the movie finished, people were all proud of themselves for staying the entire time, an incredible feat. I was a poser as I had left, but I had too. It was for MIT people...come on. Anyway here is who was left at the end (yes i know. I wasn't looking grrr):




6:00 pm - We all go out to this Japanese restaurant I was saving just in case I was accepted to MIT. I still could not believe it.

12:00 am - One great day ends.

Here is a graph of the stress I felt during the the hours leading up to decisions and the aftermath. Yes stress is coming back. I have basically done nothing all weekend because of my "celebrating" and so I'm sort of behind. >.> Oh well, MIT >>> tests. I think I exaggerated the stress of Sunday night in the graph. It is no where close to the stress I felt for decisions, but w/e :-).



So there you have it. Three amazing things just happened to me: 2nd place in the state, Scifi film fest, and MIT MIT MIT! I still don't feel like an official MIT '12. Maybe it is too early or maybe it is just too surreal. One thing is for sure though. I do, absolutely do, want to go there. CPW will only confirm that. What a dream come true! Thank you to everyone who supported me and to MIT admissions for taking the time to consider everyone and thinking that I have something special that I'll be able to contribute to the class and university for the next four years. To everyone who was denied, follow your dreams no matter what! Go make your college experience be the one you want. Don't let the college make the experience for you. Because you applied to MIT, you have the ability to do ANYTHING! You WILL change the world. Godspeed.