Tarnish

By Jonathan Lam on 03/04/16

Tagged: the-homework-life the-homework-life-thought

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If you've ever been an overextended, perfectionist high-school teenager, you'd understand. The homework life that I live is beginning to feel unattainable. In the end, you have to reach a compromise between quality and quantity. It's becoming a fact for me. I've also mentioned earlier how the high school life is not what it seemed at first; this is part of it.

What do you do if you're split between schoolwork and instrumentals and sports and culture and health? Between expanding your horizons in math or catching up in English? Between excelling on one area in exchange for the fall of another? And how many part of your life are you willing to give up in order to succeed in those that you enjoy the most?

The fact is, I have an essay due tonight and I had two tests today: one in American Government and the other in Honors Chemistry. Should I have focused on the 100% for the science or more on the founding of the U.S. government and the Constitution, a shakier topic? Or should I have spent more time on the essay, because I really need to push my writing skills? I had a math meet a few days prior. Should I have studied for that extracurricular in order to do well, or should I have focused more on academics? Or maybe I should have focused more on bowling, which is just about to end? Or perhaps piano, because I have an important performance on Sunday? Or trumpet, because I need to maintain my skills for next year's band class? Or should I practice more Spanish, because it is a long-term skill that I should learn? Or Chinese, because it is my heritage? Or should I skip all of these priorities and go out with friends and take the time to sleep to "get a life" and live healthier and more blissfully ignorant?

I'm so young, and there's so much to do. I really don't understand the people who turn to drugs simply out of "boredom" or an excess of money. There's a wealth of unexplored knowledge to learn and wisdom to gain, and it kills me when we hear the news of another massacre by some crazy guy with a gun or another student turned bad by drugs. What if I could use that time? Time is ever more important, and you'll never get it back. So use it best you can.

I believe that education is the best practical exploitation of time. I believe that it is something to always wow you, no matter how difficult. I believe that education is something that can solve the world's problems. But I believe that many of the educated people who take it for granted lose that value they do not know they have. But I try to treasure my time.

But time is pulling me apart. I do feel sometimes that I am falling apart, drowning in a sea of responsibilities. I feel responsibilities without the power to control them, a terribly hopeless feeling. I am just making do this year, but what about next year? The year after? College? Post-grad? Getting a job? And if I do ever have children, the responsibilities will just explode exponentially.

So it comes back to the ultimate question: how far can you push yourself? But not how far in the forwards direction— how much can you wrap yourself around? How many skills can you handle at once? What is the ultimate compromise to allow you to become the best all-around and skillful guy?

For now, time management is not the biggest problem I have. This is the biggest problem. And I better get cracking to make decisions, because I can't do everything and learn everything at the rate I am now. It's time to consolidate. Or else I will fall apart. I will tarnish1.

1: If you didn't understand the reference in the title, remember this post? I'm not gold, I'm silver. And silvertarnishes.

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What I cannot create, I do not understand. Know how to solve every problem that has been solved.

Richard Feynman, on his blackboard at the time of his death at Caltech