How I cope with stress lately

My diary has gone out the window.  I wrote my first diary in first grade, when my mom told me it might be nice to record my daily thoughts.  I remember going to Staples and getting a Mead cardboard back notebook with painted peonies on the cover.  It was an extremely satisfying and fulfilling moment when I finished writing that diary of mine, almost as if I’d closed another period of my life. However, in middle school, I noticed my diary entries begin to decrease with the accretion of extracurriculars and school work.  I began to write less regularly, and whenever I managed to scrape some time together to write an entry, it would always be an outline of everything I did that particular day and rarely included my thoughts, emotions, and feelings.  

Since coming to Andover though, I’ve found another way to write meaningful “diary” entries.  This is through my community engagement.  I do Adopt-a-Platoon, where each week, I write a letter to a soldier.  Our school sends letters to a platoon in Poland, and although I never get responses back, in these entries we’re supposed to write about positive things that happen in our lives (in general, writing about happiness).  This is my third term doing Adopt-a-Platoon, and it’s honestly one of the more relaxing minutes during my Monday night.  It’s fairly relaxing being able to decorate a colorful letter, and write about positive things that happened in the week, and is almost like a mindfulness exercise.  In English, my teacher also requires us to keep a journal.  We can write about anything, but this term especially, I’ve found myself writing more about my emotions and feelings.  

This may seem like a somewhat random post, but I’ve been thinking about how I cope with stress lately.  My tactics have varied from year to year, but throughout middle school and for at least the first two terms of high school, exercise was my go-to.  It was fast paced, it got my adrenaline pumping, and I could simultaneously blast my favorite playlists and exercise continues to be my go-to stress reliever. However, I’m finding that writing is also helping me understand my feelings.  More so, why I feel the way I feel, rather than exercising and banishing all the stress go away, only to find it return sometime later.  I’ve been writing in my English notebook about my feelings and things that have been stressing me out.  I’ve noticed how it’s always similar things that stress me out: social life and major assessments. It’s a repeated pattern, and I think I’ve been finding that through my writing down my feelings.  Writing slows down time, and it reminds me to notice what’s happening in my life, rather than scurry through life, tackling one task after another. 

Spring

I think I’m finally feeling signs of Spring here in New England.  It’s been a long winter and it even snowed in April.  Due to climate change, the New England weather fluctuates a lot.  I remember how in March, I thought it was going to be spring!  The snow was melting, and some days, it would reach highs of 70 degrees…only to be met by a snowstorm the following day.  I suppose this correlated with my fluctuating moods last term as well.  

Sam Phil

In the past, I wrote about how campus is different every time I come back from break.  It’s been a little while since break (a month!), but campus is finally starting to feel a little bit different.  The days are longer, for one.  The sun doesn’t set until it’s nearly study hours and I feel campus is more lively because of these longer hours of light.  When I’m walking to dinner for example, I’ll see people chilling on the lawn, or playing a game of spikeball.  The Great Lawn is dotted with students, some doing work, some hanging out, others working on their tans.  When I’m walking around campus from class to class, people are wearing shorts!  And t-shirts!  And fewer kids are buried beneath layers of down.  When I walk to our gym, I no longer see endlessly empty fields just waiting to be used; they’re now covered with athletes, playing baseball, lacrosse, tennis, and softball.  Simply seeing people outside makes me happy.  I don’t know why, but people and nature go together in my head.  There’s an evident sense of merriment in the air and the classroom vibes are lighter; there are more smiles and there are more laughs.  While a New England winter is a truly unique experience, perhaps Spring is here for the better. 

The Serenity In Motion

One part of my life that I miss a lot is riding in cars, essentially being able to travel at high speeds.  I didn’t realize how calming riding in a car was when that daily hype was taken out of my life coming to boarding school.  I rediscovered this when I returned home (rode on the highway), and today, when I went to Boston for a non Sibi project.  

In middle school, I used to take the school bus home with my friends.  However, when I was on the bus, my friends perpetually commented on how I was always looking out the window and not engaging in the conversation.  I would be very talkative while we were waiting for the bus to arrive, or when we were hanging out, yet as soon as I sat down on a seat, I’d become really quiet, just staring out the window.  The scenes are fairly consistent; on a highway, it’s tree after tree, and in the suburbs, it’s house after house.  I take an odd pleasure in observing them though.  I don’t even know exactly what’s going through my head while I’m staring out the window…I just enjoy it.  I also grew up riding in cars.  My mom tells me when I was younger, if I couldn’t fall asleep at night, she and my dad would drive to lull me to sleep.  Perhaps the motion of being in a car is coming to me in that sense, and it’s connections to my childhood.

In addition, when I’m in a moving vehicle, going at high speeds, everything is a blur.  It feels like I am moving fast in life.  It feels like I’m getting somewhere.  I suppose that idea in itself also calms me down. 

My inspiration from Mr. Hurley

My math teacher, Mr. Hurley, is one of the most inspiring teachers I’ve had in my education career.  Part of what makes this man so interesting is his past experiences, and while all people have individual and equally unique and meaningful pasts, Mr. Hurley takes what he learned from his past and brings it to class.  He does not exclusively teach math, he also emphasizes character building.  Coming from his fun, collaborative classes four times per week, I think I’ve grown as a character.  This is perhaps an even more important accomplishment than learning precalculus.    

Two of my favorite Mr. Hurley ideas:

“I don’t want to pity to for your failures, I want to praise you for your success.”  He said this to my class after our first math test where the none of us performed exceedingly well.  He said he wasn’t going to make the tests easier…in fact, they were only going to become increasingly difficult.

“I’m not your teacher, I’m your consultant.  If you come to class just a day ahead of where you need to be, you’ll know what you don’t know.  My job, as your consultant, is to fill in those gaps for you.”  Mr. Hurley talked a lot about this during our first couple of classes.  He shares how he got through college being just a day ahead in his work, because then, one really knows what they don’t know.

And most recently, Mr. Hurley shared his experiences at the Naval Academy.  He related this to PA, and how similar the experiences are.  I’m a broken record.  I think I’ve said this too often, but I truly believe the beautiful thing about PA is that we take students from all over the world.  Many are from the US, many are even from Massachusetts, and a solid portion are international students.  Hurley told us how he went through high school: not trying would result in a B+, and trying would give an easy A.  At one point, he thought he was some kind of genius.  

However, after getting into the Naval Academy, he found his grades at the lowest point ever.  He says the Naval Academy made an overt effort to take him and all his peers down peg by peg.  Downsizing.  Some of us (myself included), come out of middle school having played a high school varsity sport, been a straight A student, played in music groups, while managing several extracurriculars.  In fact, for a while, I honestly did believe I was a pretty darn outstanding student.  

Coming to PA changed this.  I was thrown into a community where everyone was as outstanding as I was in some way or another.  It’s harder to pull off A’s, sport teams are infamously competitive, music groups are harder to get into, and it’s much harder to organize a club/event.  When Mr. Hurley told me this, I was shocked at how true his statement was, “And it happens here at Andover as well as the Naval Academy, you come here from the top of your class and then peg by peg you’re taken down. That’s when you learn that you have to fight for everything you want”.  

While Mr. Hurley is right in saying one will have to fight harder for what they want due to the increased competition, I also believe it provides insight for extremely well rounded students about what they truly excel in.  Being at the top of the class is good for a bit, however, for me, it was difficult to sense what I was truly good at.  At Andover, I’m figuring out I really have to fight for whatever I want.  It will make the time between each of my major accomplishments longer, but it’ll be well worth the fight.  I go back to the quote I mentioned in an earlier post: Nothing worth having comes without struggle.

What I learned about investing this week

This past Thursday, I brought in a speaker for Andover Business Club.  Mr. Charland is the CEO of Wilkins Investment Counsel in Boston, and he came talked to Andover Business Club about personal finance and money management.  This club meeting was a little different from what we usually do.  ABC is a 100% discussion based club, but this one time, our meeting involved more listening than speaking.  I thought the topic was also a little bit different than what we usually talk about, which is business, marketing, timing, and how to launch products etc.  This time, we learned a little about investing.  

According to Charland, the biggest mistake people in our era are making, is selling as soon as the markets begin to go down because of panic.  I think panic is both my friend and my enemy.  I despise panicking on major assessments, but in this scenario, it is actually a good thing to buy when everyone else to selling (or panicking).  I learned that in a bull market, the last 25% will account for 40.2% of the gain on average, and the last 25% of a bear market will account for 46% of the drop.  A bear market will also, on average, occur every 7.3 years.  

There were many interesting stats that I learned, and another interesting one was about long term investment.  My dad always told me to think long term and leave the stocks for long term.  Now, I have data and history to prove this. Charland printed out a slide showing how longer holding periods reduce risk.  It’s quite a dramatic chart.  For an S&P 500 portfolio, holding for one year could at a minimum value, make an investor lose 43%.  This again, has to do with emotions and panic.  If an investor sees a stock go down, they panic and start to sell everything which ultimately leads to losing more money than he/she started with.  However, on the other end of the spectrum, holding an S&P 500 portfolio for any given 20 year period, according to history, shows that one cannot possibly lose money.  I find that stat very interesting.   In addition, there is a chart that shows the power in starting early.  I think this is especially important in our era, where managing our finances is becoming increasingly important.  Charland showed us a chart depicting how investing early really makes a huge difference.  Giving more time to invest before retirement is a no brainer.  

Charland believes that many more people could have a million dollars right now than people who actually do, simply because of this one thing: emotions.  When an investor sees that suddenly, one day, half their capital is gone, is can be very startling and can cause panic.  However, Charland reiterated many times to push past those days, because there are stats that show the power in longer holding periods. I liked how Charland printed out copies of the slideshow for all the participants at our meeting.  When I first looked at these charts, I was very confused and I didn’t understand what any of it meant.  Now, I look at this 14 page slide show and I think can explain almost every chart.  It amazes me how much one can learn in 40 minutes.  

A Quote from my English Reading

In English class, we're reading Behold the Dreamers, by Imbolo Mbue.  There are two sides in this story, one, a family of immigrants from Cameroon who come to the US in search for a better life, and two, a wealthy white family who seems to have no problems.  The Jonga's from Cameroon serve the Edwards in NYC.  Neni Jonga is Cindy Edward's housekeeper, and prior to working for Cindy, she had viewed Cindy as a person who has never worried about money and work.  She finds out how wrong her perception was when she learns how Cindy worked her way to where she is.  Cindy tells Neni something that I found inspiring.  Part of this quote has to do with personal integrity, and another part has to do with identity.  

"'I know who I am, and no one can ever take away the things I've achieved for myself'" ~Cindy (Behold the Dreamers)

Here's what my friendships look like

For the longest time, I was very confused about where I stood in my community at Andover.  I know a lot of people, and a lot of people know me.  I talk to a lot of different people and I greet a lot of different people on campus.  However, for some reason, every time I walked into Commons for dinner, or sat down to do homework, I always ended up by myself.  Recently, through some rumination and thought process, I figured out why.

When I walked into Commons for dinner to Upper Right, I always looked at those big friend groups that had enough people to fill up half of one of the long tables in commons.  I, on the other hand, usually sat by myself on one of the side tables.  When I walked through campus, I often saw large groups of girls or large groups of boys walking in a cluster.  I kept asking myself, who’s in my group?  Who do I travel with?  I wasn’t sure where I fit in in my grade.  

When I gave it some good thought, I realized that my friends and I don’t do everything together, yet we still remain friends.  I don’t have a giant group of people I hang out with all the time.  I usually hang out with one or two of my friends (which is not enough to fill up even a side table in Commons).  The thing about my friendships is that we are each independent, yet we understand this mutual relationship we have with one another.  I eat lunch with two of my friends.  The interesting thing about these two friends is that none of us have mutual classes together, none of us live in the same dorm, and none of us participate in the same extracurriculars: we met through simply sitting and talking with each other over time during lunch periods.  

I confide in these types of friends.  I have friends I met through clubs and sports, but we also don’t travel in a gang.  We each have our own individual style and agenda, but the mutual thing between us is that we made our friendships through sitting at meals or doing mutual activities.  Of course, when I walk into Commons, I try to find a group of friends to sit with.  However, I realize now that when I walk into Commons for dinner and end up sitting at a table by myself or with one other person, it’s okay.  I don’t have to be in a large group of kids and crowd around a giant table at Commons.  I also understand now that although I don’t travel in a large group with any particular combination of people, I still have friends.  

Elizabeth Foley said, “The most beautiful discovery true friends make is that they can grow separately without growing apart”.  I think this illustrates my friendships.

The thing about fatigue

Here’s the thing about fatigue: often one doesn’t feel it until they get a moment where they have nothing to do.  

I most certainly felt that this weekend.  On Saturday, my day started at 6:45 AM.  I woke up this early to get some homework done before 2 hours of tennis practice.  After, I spent an hour doing English homework, talked with my parents, showered, went to dinner, walked downtown, played piano, returned back to my dorm to finish music homework, then went to bed at 11:05 PM.  

You’d think Sunday would be better.  I’m sitting here and it’s currently 3:20 PM.  My day started at 6:20, when I woke up to get ahead on math homework.  Then I went out for a run at 7:35, and returned at 8:30, in which I got ready to attend the greenlight4girls event on campus, which I’m writing a News article about.  Then I ate brunch with my friend at 11, did some more math homework, interviewed some people at the end of the greenlight4girls event, and returned back to my dorm.  It was 2:30.  I started doing laundry and vacuuming my room.  

While I was waiting for my laundry to be finished, I suddenly felt like I could take a break.  As soon as that break began, I felt an instant fatigue.  I was both physically exhausted and mentally exhausted, which I had not felt minutes ago as I was scrambling to do my laundry and clean my room.  As soon as I let myself relax, I felt the fatigue.  

I guess one of the things about stress and work is that it keeps me from feeling tired, even when I really am.  Even on the weekends, I just get into this habit of waking up before 7 AM.  My body simply doesn't let its guard down.  This afternoon, I let myself take a 20 minute nap and when I woke up, I was much more refreshed.  In the future, I plan on practicing this more often.  When I have the chance, I’m going to stop working, and ask myself how I’m feeling.  If the instant response is “tired”, I know I need to stop and take a break.  Even a 10 minute nap will go a long way.  When I wake up, I will (hopefully) feel more refreshed and be able to complete my work faster.  But yes, here’s the thing about fatigue: stress and work can hide it. 

Campus is different every term

I just began my third term at Andover.  It seems that every time I return back to campus from break, it’s different.  

What struck me most this term was how much longer the days are.  Before I left for spring break, it used to get dark at 5:30.  Upon returning, the days don’t get dark until almost 7 PM.  

When I left for break, there was no snow on the ground.  However, when I returned, there was a snow on the ground even though it was the first day of spring.  While snow makes me a little bit gloomy sometimes, the longer days are making helping me get past the snow.  

People have new haircuts/styles!  That’s the beauty of going to boarding school: there is virtually no time (or convenient location) to get a haircut.  Over a two week break, people find the time to get their hair cut.  Sometimes people will change their hairstyle dramatically, and others choose to get just a cut.  Regardless, people come back a little different.

I have a different energy at the beginning of each term.  I come back with a different energy every term.  In the winter term, I was excited about my new art class and I came back with eagerness.  This term, I came back with a hardcore motivational energy.   I don’t know what’s motivating me.  In my head, I may have constructed some sort of idea/mental reward. I can’t identify what’s motivating me, but something is keeping me up doing my work to close perfection.  

Every term is very different from the last.  I have four new teachers (yes, 4/6 teachers are new this term), and I have met some new people through these new classes.  I guess that’s what makes Andover such an interesting journey: it’s always changing. 

The joy in hitting a round yellow thing over the net

This break I was able to play tennis twice.  At the club I go to, there are many kids who are at all different skill levels.  There are some advanced players and there are some novice players.  Perhaps my favorite type of player to watch is a young player who is just beginning to learn the sport.  These youngsters have one aim when they come onto the court with their coach: to hit the ball over the net.  They don’t care how they do it, how long or short the ball goes, the height of the ball, whether it’s in or out, or using any technique whatsoever.  The goal of these young players is to get the ball over the net.  It’s not until later, if they choose to focus in more on the sport that they learn the techniques and qualities of a “good” shot versus a “bad” shot.  The game evolves into something complex.  When I observe these young players, I see myself when I was eight years old holding the racquet, happy just to be able to hit a round yellow thing over the net.  It’s not so simple anymore.  Depth, spin, and position matter, as do height, footwork, and power.  It’s interesting to me to see how the game evolves.  No matter who is playing or what age they begin, the game always develops in a similar pattern and it starts with joy from hitting a round yellow thing over the net.