Comments (1)

By Brandon Carl, April 30, 2009 11:48 pm

It’s official.  The deed is done.  I am officially going to be attending college next year.

A lot of people have been awaiting my decision, giving their opinions about which school I “have to go to” or which school “is the best opportunity for me,” and I appreciate that, I really do.  The only thing I fear is that in making my decision, I may hurt some people’s feelings because I did not (or did, hah) choose their school.  And then there’s the whole issue with the girlfriend, “you’re just going there because she is,” or “you’re not going there because she isn’t.”  Hah, I’ve gotten plenty of that from everybody, and let me just flat out say that… are you ready for this? … I am capable of making important decisions that will affect the rest of my life without being swayed by any one person (girlfriend or not).  I know! It’s shocking, isn’t it?!  A teenager able to make important decisions!? GASP!  Haha, well, in any case, Naomi I love you dearly, but you don’t play a part in which college I am choosing.  Sorry.  =]

And so, I know if you’re reading this, you’re wondering which school I’ve actually decided to go to.  Well, let me try and draw it out as much as I can… You know by now that I will be attending a UC school (sorry Amy), which means no Cal Poly SLO, and haha, I didn’t get accepted to any of my five private schools, so those are out automatically, haha.  I guess that’s all that the title really tells you.  No SLO.  Hmm…

This past spring break was a great experience for me.  I got to visit college campuses, and I got a great sense of what I should expect from each college.  The trips were really eye-opening and told me pretty much exactly what I wanted.  By the end of my spring break week, I had visited UCSD and Berkeley, and I had pretty much made up my mind that Berkeley was not for me (sorry Cameron and Jonathan).  And that left only UCSD, waiting for me to submit my SIR.  But then…

Curveball?  I’d say so…  And so, I was sitting in a movie theater in Mountain View, CA (by Google!), waiting to watch State of Play (great movie, btw) with my Dad, and I popped out ye ol’ iPhone and fired up Mail to find this email in my inbox.  At first I was like: “psh, haha, yeah right” because, get this: I never finished sending in my appeal information!  So I kinda dismissed it, and sent an e-mail back to Gordon (Band director at UCLA) saying pretty much: “what’s this?”  Then, after several hours of trading e-mails deep into the night  (he was in Italy at the time), I finally found out what had happened:

1. Upon receiving my admissions decision from UCLA, I sent an e-mail to Gordon requesting information about appealing through the marching band.
2. He received my e-mail, and sent me back forms to fill out and send back to him.
3. He also submitted my name to the admissions office as an “Incomplete Appeal,” meaning he was waiting for more info from me (the forms)
4. I slacked off, gave up on UCLA, and decided not to submit the materials, and just accepted my rejection like a man.
5. The admissions office decided to do something they never do and they reviewed my appeal anyway.
6. They accepted me.

And so, after investing time and money into visiting UCSD and Berkeley, and being set on UCSD, I now had a third player in the game: UCLA.

This truly stumped me.  I didn’t know what to do.  I had crossed out Berkeley, and now I had to make another choice between two great schools, and that just sucks, haha.

UCSD or UCLA?

Who knows… Maybe I haven’t made my choice yet?  Oh crap, no, I have, considering it’s already May 1st, haha.  Well, I will enlighten you readers more at a later time.

See yuh.

Comments (2)

By Brandon Carl, April 19, 2009 9:20 pm

Ah yes, it’s been a while since I’ve sent out a new story.  I’ve been up to many things lately, from upgrading my computer to visiting colleges.  I have many new things to share, but alas I haven’t the time to explain them all right now.

My spring break is officially over now. =[  It’s a very sad evening.  Tomorrow I must crawl out of bed in the wee hours of the morning and make my trek to school, only to waste another day of my life on a pointless day at school.  School has become nothing more than a huge waste of time for me, and for everyone.  Every day I go in, sit down, learn nothing, and then walk out.  Six periods a day, learn nothing, do nothing, care about NOTHING.  Sure, AP Tests are coming up, but who cares? I sure don’t.  Government and economics are the four easiest tests in the world.  Physics I’ll probably do fine on, and Literature, I don’t care a single bit.  I’ll probably end up with a 2 or a 1, I don’t care.  That class is pointless, it’s a waste of space, and no offense to Mrs. Owens, that information is just plain useless for me, or for anyone for that matter.  Who cares if Shakespeare meant this, or John Dunne meant that, I DON’T CARE.  When will I ever use that in life?  Maybe if I become a journalist… but I doubt that will every happen.

The best I can suffice is a poorly put together blog about myself, which is kind of funny when I think about it, because I used to have huge dreams of creating my own software, developing the next myspace or facebook, or phpbb or vbulletin.  I was going to create a masterpiece that I could sell for huge profits, but then reality kicked in, and I realized that it just wasn’t worth the effort.  I once created a script that would parse myspace’s musician and comedian pages and output the performer’s upcoming showtimes and dates.  I had it working very well, and I even had a prospective buyer, but that huge project fell through, and the client never got back to me regarding it, and it ended up being a waste of time.  That’s all, just a huge waste of time.

It seems like everything is just a waste of time these days.  School, band, work, web design;  Pointless, mildly exciting, necessary for an income, and fun yet sometimes frustrating.  That is all my life is made up of these days.  School I absolutely hate, I already have over the allowed number of absences in the majority of my classes.  Band is fine, jazz is fun, but Wind Ensemble sucks, and now that our new director is waving his iron fist, it’s no longer interesting for me.  It’s such a shame that Garcia had to leave, but it wasn’t under anyone’s control, I understand that.

And then there’s work.  The good ol’ UPS Store.  Old Faithful.  It’s kind of sad though, I haven’t been working all week because of college visits, and next week I will only be able to work one day because of jazz rehearsals and then our trip to Reno. Oh yeah, Reno is going to be fun. :)  I’ll tell you about that later.  But yeah, my next paycheck is gonna total a whopping $20…

Well, I think I’m going to have to leave the rest for a later time.  Funny enough, there was just a small earthquake that I felt.  Either that, or a truck just hit the side of my house, (maybe I should go check, hah).

Further elaboration is on its way, specifically about: Berkeley, UCSD, UCLA, Reno, Life, Web Design, Work, Consulting, Computers, Shiny Things, and a whole lot more…

-B :)