JacobBlog!

Something I randomly wrote while in the midst of AP English last year…trying to turn it into one of those “challenges you have faced” or “explain any significant drop in your academic performance” college essays. It’s supposed to leave the reader with a powerful positive impression.

A new year had come, AP Chemistry x2, AP World History AP Spanish, AP Calc BC and Honors English 10, were gladly left behind. My resilience is among my greatest virtues, I always bounce back, but it was as if my mind were lacking some key process; it was in need of a reboot.

It was October 15, 2008, and I lay in bed, resting after surviving yet another day of brutal reading quizzes and a harrowing standardized test (the PSAT it was this time). I thought then of my cube. If I were really to write a process analysis paper on solving the Rubik’s cube, it would behoove me to first test my memory in that area. There were few subjects about which I could write with such creativity, passion, humor, and drama, and in fact, an emotional descriptive essay on that topic had singlehandedly rescued my English grade the year before; why could it not do the same at this time in another form?

Should I explain Leyan Lo’s beginner’s technique? Too formulaic. The Fridrich method? Too abstract. The Petrus Method? Too abstruse. Choices, choices, choices…

I was on the verge of drifting off – maybe the esoteric quality of my thoughts  could be attributed to this. But suddenly, my tiredness was gone. I had not slept, but a spark that I had presumed extinguished was rekindled. My dilapidated 3x3x3 was suddenly in hand, drawn from a Jimbo’s bag of miscellaneous belongings in desperate need of sorting. Grains of sand from Hawaii were stuck in the grimy lube, stickers were discolored, tattered, and missing, but it was in my hand again. I almost hesitantly twisted a face, fearing the worst had come, that I would need to disassemble and clean it again, that I would miss a rare opportunity to reflect and remember and wonder and dream, and I would be unable to take advantage to a now all-too-ephemeral state of mind that inspired me to my most memorable undertakings: my Fourier Transform Sound Analyzer (Calc Project), My Rubik’s cubing descriptive essay, my Name Vignette, my Rock and Tree poem, my #1 Video Game Bot, my Grabber Arm V. The only thing that hadn’t faded overmuch was my persistent punning.

Elusive thoughts darted through my flickering mind. Maybe my problem was that I had refused to acknowledge that there were more fundamental concepts I hadn’t learned. Once upon a time I had imagined that the process of studying and learning built up new “centers” in my brain and I could almost feel them filing information and growing as I assimilated knowledge. It was with that attitude of diligence and humility with which I had proceeded through Spanish 1, and as a result been able to skip directly to Spanish 3 with little additional study. It was that wonderment that drove me to program and design websites and build robots and write essays and win contests and that landed me at or near the top of every class through my freshman year and in middle school. If I were to tell my 8^th grade history teacher (who presented me with the History Award) or 9^th grade English teacher that I received a B in AP World History second semester, I would gave been greeted with a look of incredulity. Or my 9^th grade science teacher would have been flabbergasted were he to learn that I received a B second semester in AP Chemistry. For that matter, my teachers at the beginning of the year would have likely said the same. What had I lost? Where had that radiant internal beacon of intelligence gone? I never had been “normal,” though I had occasionally pondered the notion of how that would feel. But my experiences through that difficult year, I realized just how scary it would to be that; empty, devoid of motivation, lacking that extra drive and intuition that would push me over the edge. That realization that there was no such thing as frictionless coasting, no perpetual motion, that one’s prior heroic effort does not excuse his apathy today was both new and old; I had simply forgotten it. My physics teacher, Mr. Harvie, constantly tells us to “sprint across the finish line,” that it is not the end but the beginning, that laurels make a fragile perch on which to stand (maybe move this idea to end?).

Advanced classes (and this is the reason that they appeal to me) are by nature designed to change one’s view of the world. If you presume be able to instantly integrate all knowledge that you gain, you are not learning properly, not augmenting your ability to think in the way you are intended to. That is why I welcome their rigor. Adversity forces adaptation, and my mind is up to the challenge of solving new problems and creating new thoughts and structures. It is only when I assume that something will be easy and that I have nothing to fundamentally expand or change that I learn nothing from a class. Because AP Chemistry is largely based on mathematics that I could have done in 7^th grade does not mean it is conceptually simple. Fermat’s last theorem is comprehensible by a 5^th grader, but its proof widely regarded as one of the most difficult problems in math in history (this paragraph could be moved).

It was in that same state of mind I had learned how to yo-yo and cube, the former inspired by videos I had seen as a child, the latter by friends (juniors like Ernest Lee and David Chen) who were in my AP Computer Science Class I had skipped into as a freshman. I focused, I saw, I tried, I learned, I slept, I dreamed, I memorized, and created in massive quantities. I once could remember all that I tried without difficulty – I could memorize and recite massive essays and poems (like in Santiesteban’s Spanish III, and the Rock and the Tree in 6^th grade) because I did not know that it was not possible, I once could act and perform without the slightest fear—until I learned, from society, from others, to doubt myself.

My stiff fingers became more supple as they lost themselves in patterns of antiquity, remembering algorithms they had not carried out in months, regurgitating what they knew, efficiently flicking and twisting the faces of the cube to and fro, creating order from chaos. The cube definitely needed new lube.

Of its own accord, my mind began to make associations. “This would be a great topic to write and essay on; it might boost my flagging English grade” I mused.

Another voice inside my head retorted, “Maybe that’s why you can’t remember how to learn.”

“This internal dialog would be a great topic to write an essay on; it might boost my flagging English grade.”

Like a strange loop, like a camera pointed at the television screen onto which it displays, I perpetuated the cycle a few times.

“There you go again,” my oft-quieted voice of rationality sighed. I snapped out of it.

What I had learned in the past year was how to use things; I had learned how to use open-source Java and JavaScript libraries, I had lost my drive to write all my classes from scratch, the way I wanted them, I learned to hire people to do pieces of my web work, I was now motivated by outcome, not process; I learned for the utilitarian benefit of learning, not the unadulterated exultation that accompanies erudition in its purest form.

I pulled out my 4x4x4. This was my new one, it had never been lubed as I had neglected to buy any though I had long ago fully broken it in. I still had to make out a list of the replacement parts necessary for my broken 5x5x5 and Square1. I solved the centers, and clumsily paired the edges, unable to remember one of my algorithms. Twist, flick, twist, the rough rectangular prism of plastic was strenuous on the tendons in my wrists.

Almost solved, last layer. Wait, corners, don’t go like that. How can it be? Oh, PLL Parity. Then I botched my OLL parity algorithm and was doomed to begin again, but my wrists were too painful. 3x3x3 instead. What was that algorithm again? My favorite to do? Darn, messed it up. Fiddle, twist, focus. Why was it so comforting delving into those recesses of the mind that I had so carefully sculpted in my youth? It was as if they were better structured, more wholesome, effulgent, joy-filled, good, right; they were a place of safety, a place I had taken care to build right not most “efficiently”.

Ah, here we are, that’s it, I was missing the R’F step. Wait, why isn’t it working? Ah, simply an illusion of the scrambled cube on which I was practicing, it operates sideways, now I remember. The old algorithm now glided smoothly from my hands.

The cube; once a source of bafflement and wonder, then nearly an object of affection; was now an old friend, pointing out the error of my ways, revealing that what I had so long sought was already inside me, suppressed by the narrowness that accompanied my overly ambitious mind. In remembering it, I remembered what drove me to it, what made me who I was.

I now reached into that same bag of chattels and pulled out my best yo-yo, my Hybrid Hitman; a rubber o-ring breakpad on one side, a starburst on another – an experimental, high-performance design once cutting edge and esoteric,  now standard issue. I remembered its touch in my hand.

Double-or-nothing, Eli-hop, flying trapeze, sideway brain-twister. Double-mondial, boingy-boing, false drop, bind catch. Side mount, magic drop, single flop. I hadn’t forgotten a bit. I noticed an enticing loop of string as I suspended my yo-yo sideways I hadn’t seen before and began to innovate. Something had awakened from a long but troubled slumber. An inexorable process had begun, a process that was slowly scouring the slate of my mind, of my successes, my disappointments, scouring it of everything but the lessons it had learned. In my reverie, I had sunk back into the stacked comforters of my bed, but I suddenly leapt up and dressed. There were new frameworks to comprehend, broad visions to glimpse, new details to resolve, and new challenges to face that could only be effectively overcome with a “beginner’s mind,” with the innocence and awe that fill the mind of a prodigious child, that could only be confounded by assumption and arrogance and preconceived ideas of the nature of reality. I opened my door and stepped not into the familiar hallway but into a luminescent analogue of the world from which I had emerged.