Merry Christmas!

I kind of wish I was Christian right about now. Oh, except my family has a Christmas tree anyway. And I think I'm going to try to convince my parents that we should open the presents tonight too. Win!


A hilarious comic from the good people at A Softer World.

I just ate a whole bar of Toblerone. Yess.

Happy Holidays!

Since college apps have gotten me bogged down all winter (boo) I haven't really done much crafting/drawing/anything worthwhile. I did whip these up last night for a couple of friends though, and they turned out to be quite a success. They're just little sketches and inside jokes.





I love the holidays! And more importantly, IT'S WINTER BREAK!
Mwah.

Convergence

Since you know of my deep love for lists, then you'll probably understand how excited I am at the end of the year, when my two favorite things converge: the holidays, and lists! I was looking at the Vanity Fair site recently (I admit it was because they had Tina Fey on the cover) and they had a "Vanity Fair's Year in Pictures Part One" feature that I loved. Here are some highlights:

January 2008: Patrick Wolf, surrounded by the cygnets of the Ballet West in Braemar, Scotland. Photograph by Tim Walker; styled by Sarajane Hoare.

Seriously, "Bluebells" is amazing.

March 2008: Young socialites Lily Mortimer, Maria Teresa Frering, Lady Tatiana Mountbatten, and Marie-Solène d’Harcourt at Le Bal Crillon des Débutantes, in Paris. Photograph by Jonathan Becker.

I just love the irony of bored socialites.

May 2008: Barack Obama on the campaign trail. Photograph by Larry Fink.

What up, Mr.President? This is a great B&W photo.


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By the way, congratulations for all the people who got into their top choice schools early decision. You rock, and I am supremely jealous of you. I promise you, 2009 will be epic.

Artsy Fartsy

Colours from Charlie McCarthy on Vimeo.

Une superbe vidéo HD autour de la couleur et de la peinture à l'eau, réalisée par l'artiste Charlie McCarthy. Le tout sur une musique de The Cinematic Orchestra à découvrir dans la suite.

-from Fubiz

Gosh I love highly abstruse artsy fartsy videos. But in all seriousness, this is a lot cooler than it looks like and it reminds me of how much I like paint for its pigment as well as its texture. It's almost like a little kid's fascination and exploration with mud. Art imitates life! I also think some of the stills would make excellent photographs, although the video captures the movement and viscosity of paint very well.

Under Pressure

Stressed? Yea. Tell me about it.

For everyone waiting anxiously for EA/ED/Rolling decisions to come out, good luck! Same to everyone who is applying regular decision but hasn't finished their applications yet (i.e. ME).

I also have a ton of projects due this week. Woe is me.

But perk up, friends. I have something that will cheer you up (or at least distract you for about five minutes). A friend recently sent me a link of this great essay that was posted at College Confidential by PTonGrad2000 (a.k.a. an alumni from Princeton University). It's inspiring, well written, and it'll leave you with that warm feeling inside. All around win.

Of all the things I learned at Princeton, these are the most important.

For many of you, the next few days will be a time of tremendous emotional turmoil.

For those who applied early to one of Princeton's peers there will be scenes of joy and others of soul-wrenching devastation. Even with the higher acceptance rates in EA/ED rounds, over two-thirds of you will find yourselves holding the dreaded thin envelope or slumped over your computer keyboard wondering what more you could have done. You will second-guess every comma and wonder if your essay was too long or if you should have retaken the SATs one more time. You'll hide from the pained smiles and words of comfort coming from parents and friends who just don't get it, who just don't understand how you hurt. On the one hand you'll rage at the school that made you feel this way and on the other, wonder if classmates who snickered at your application to school X, Y or Z really did have it right and that you are, just as they guessed, a poseur who reached too high and got what you deserved.

To anyone in this situation, I say this.

Know that your value as a person cannot be determined by a group of overworked admissions officers. You have something to offer the world and whether or not it was revealed in those maddeningly constricted spaces on those pages of impersonal forms...it is real. You are more than a "fill-in-the-blank". Remind yourself of that.

To those who were accepted early at Brown, Columbia, Cornell, Dartmouth, MIT, Stanford, UPenn, Yale or any one of many other wonderful and competitive schools--congratulations! To those who were deferred or rejected, take heart. The admissions season is far from over. In the next two weeks there will still be plenty of time to fill out applications to other schools.

One of them, I hope, will be Princeton, and this is why.

When I first saw Princeton it was easy to fall in love. Under brilliant skies the gothic spires and quiet courtyards spoke to me. I had some familiarity with the UK and saw an American version of Cambridge before me. Still, I was cautious. I had visited the campus unsure of what to expect. Competitive classmates had urged me to ignore a school they derisively characterized as a haven for the wealthy and a playground for the privileged. The eating clubs, they said, were places no civilized liberal high school student like me would be able to stomach. The town would be dull, the student body "preppy" and I would be marginalized without a name followed by a roman numeral.

They could not have been more wrong.

My most vivid memory was of my first night in my host student's room. There were no subtly probing questions about my family or my SATs or anxious and defensive questions about other schools to which I was applying (all of which I'd heard at schools I'd just visited). My host was uninterested in whether my high school was public or private or where I had 'vacationed' last summer. Instead, he leaned toward me and asked a single question. "Are you doing okay?"

"I'm asking," he said, "because I remember what a totally [explicative] time applying to schools was for me."

I breathed out slowly and then drew in the aroma of stale pizza and patient piles of dirty laundry that permeate all college students' rooms. "Yeah," I said, "and thanks for asking."

There would be many other questions in those two days. I asked about the Princeton Honor Code, if it worked and if it were true that, because of it, exams were unsupervised. I asked about the eating clubs and was taken to Charter for some fun meals with my host's decidedly unpretentious friends. I met my host's Mexican-American family and his little sister who, at the age of six or so, told me confidently that someday she was going to go to Princeton too. I found a quiet classroom with a single student hidden behind stacks of books who stopped and took the time to tell me about the workload and the opportunities, about her senior thesis and her plans for the future. I sat in on a lecture by a philosophy professor, whose name I can't remember, but whose riffs on Locke's Second Treatise on Government left me simultaneously laughing and in awe. I met a football player who also happened to sing in an a cappella group and an engineer who wrote short stories. I was introduced to a young professor who spent at least half an hour over coffee answering my questions and encouraging me to consider Princeton seriously.

Everywhere I went those two days, I found an institution serious in its purpose and determined to expect and demand the best from the members of its community. There was no arrogance, little talk of comparisons with other schools and no more popped collars than I had seen anywhere else. I heard plenty of laughing, strolled the busy town, overhead conversations in languages from across the globe and worked out in a sweaty gym with dozens of friendly students. Two days may not be enough time to see deeply into the soul of an institution, but it is long enough to realize that it has one.

In the end, I applied to all of Princeton's peers and was lucky enough to be offered a place at each of them. Now, a number of years out of Princeton, I look back and know that I never really had a choice. In passing under those vaulted arches, while sitting quietly in Princeton's magnificent chapel as stained glass rainbows bathed me in their soft light, in finding friends everywhere I turned during those magical autumn days...I had asked the right question. I had found the "me" that had been looking for an academic home.

Of all the things I learned at Princeton, these are the most important--

Life is not always easy but it is rich beyond any eighteen year old's imagination and it is all ahead of you. Be humble and work hard. Give thanks for the gifts you've received and remember that some will be earned while others will be handed to you as a result of glorious good fortune. Be strong when things go badly and forgive yourself for your failures. Avoid both false modesty and crippling pride. Be real, and finally, care about those around you in the same way Princeton cared about me. And, oh yes--every once in awhile, ask them how they're doing.

Dear Santa

A hilarious holiday card from Damien Weighill, a fanciful illustrator from across the pond.

Besides money, this is what I'll be wishing for this year:

My own copy of Gardner's Art Through the Ages
Shrinky Dinks
A pack of colored permanent markers
A 200 degree wide angle door viewer (with the largest possible "eye hole")
The Fisheye 2.0 Lomography camera
A Mini Robo Vacuum from Fred Flare

What about you?

Benches

Bench arms are surprisingly pretty.

Koledge

My college essay editing process

1. Read it
2. "Hmm, yea. That's pretty good. Totally makes sense" Self-evaluation? Check.
3. Wait, this essay is still unsatisfactory. I want it to spew wisdom and epitomize perfection! And that's only a minimum requirement! Is that too much to ask? I think not!
4. You need to fix it.
5. You better start fixing it.
6. Go on facebook.
7. DAH!

And the vicious cycle continues...

P.S. Oh yea, and I forgot to mention that I'm listening to Live your Life by T.I. ft. Rihanna on repeat during the entire process. Why? For multitudinous reasons including, but not limited to:
-It is really catchy.
-It samples Dragostea din Tei. Point!
-In the video T.I. totally philosophizes and it is the best. I.e. "Life is an interesting journey, you never know where it'll take you"
-It contains the lyrics "Your values is a disarray, prioritizing horribly.
Unhappy with the riches cause you piss poor morally," which is probably the most amazing line I have ever heard. Seriously, even T.I. thinks you should get your act together.
-Alright, so I guess I've run out of reasons. I'll leave you with this:

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