Nothing in This World - Tim Hughes

Nothing in this world,
No treasure man could buy,
Could take the place of drawing near to You.

There’s nothing I want more,
Than to spend my days with You,
Dwelling in your secret place of praise.

And oh, how I need you.
Jesus, I need you.
You are the one who satisfies.
You are the one who satisfies.

So place within my heart,
A fire that burns for you,
That waters cannot quench nor wash away.

And let that fire blaze,
Through all eternity,
Where one day I shall see you face to face.

And oh, how I need you.
Jesus, I need you.
You are the one who satisfies.
You are the one who satisfies.

Such an old but good song.

Reminiscing

I’ve been looking through my old posts, and it’s so awesome just to “re-live” and remember all the awesome stuff that happened in the past, all the stuff I’ve gone through and survived. I’m glad I wrote these things down somewhere… I was reminded of many things and details that I had previously forgotten. It’s only been about 1.5 years, but so much has happened. I regret that I did a poor job of documenting my first year here at Cornell, but too late now, I guess. I’ll recap it sometime somewhere; it was quite an eventful year.

I’ve also done quite a bit of looking at old photos and videos on fb… I miss home quite a bit, to be honest. I also re-listened to that salutatorian speech that I gave… man, it all seems so far away, like a dream. It’s me, but it almost doesn’t seem like me… I’m really glad that people enjoyed it so much. It’s one of the few things in my life I was actually proud of completing (I hope I’m not being prideful here). And I was sooo young in my older photos. Geez, I used to think that was the normal me? I’ve changed so much that I don’t really recognize the old me.

This happens every year, at around this time. I’m going to miss the seniors. A lot. Of all the classes, I feel like I got to know them the best. I’m always that one freshman that hangs around Eddygate “all the time.” They were the first friends that I made here. I met them at the fellowship fair, and then I inadvertently met up with them again at the Big Red Blowout, and ended up playing the inflatable carnival games with them. It has really been a great to get to know all of you. I just wish it could have been longer than a year. Well, you guys deserve a longer post than this; this is just the prelude to something longer. But then again, I don’t think any of you will see this post, so that’s okay. I’ll put the actual one somewhere where you guys can all see it =).

I wish I didn’t have two finals to go. One on Thursday and one on Friday. I just want to be done and to relax and to enjoy the last moments we’ll have together. Well, I guess that’s what Camping Trip is for. xD

Well then…

Cornell pplz are starting to find my tumblr! Not sure what to think. It’ll be interesting cause now it’ll be like I’m writing at two different audiences. Well, it’ll mostly just be more explanation of things, I guess. Meh.

Yay for more expansions? Expos are always good. Yea.

Although, it’s fairly sketchy how they’re finding my tumblr… I’m not too sure. Though once one finds it, it’ll just start to grow exponentially. Wheeeeeeeee….

Jon, James, and Michael

I miss you guys too much right now. ASDJOKMXNGIOAWEJTLKASDFN.

I CAN’T WAIT UNTIL I CAN SEE YOU GUYS AGAIN. I spent so much time stalking all of you on facebook today. And I don’t stalk people on facebook. (No really, I don’t).

THREE MORE WEEKS. T____T. TOO LONG.

ASDJFOIWEJFLSKDJFKLSDFJEWKFSLAVM.

Cryface.

To The Top

The top can be a lonely place. At least, in the realm of math and physics. The farther up you climb, the fewer people will be able to understand you. You work day in and day out in research, but it becomes such a large part of your life that you aren’t able to really share with anyone. I’ve realized this is the path I’m currently walking. You know, maybe that’s why math/physics people give so many talks all the time. They want to share their ideas and not be cooped up by themselves…

Recently, in my Complex Analysis class, I had to give a presentation on something called the Uniformization Theorem. I’m not going to try to explain it, go look it up if you want. Anyways, I was freaking out the night before. It was a 50 MINUTE PRESENTATION. ALSO KNOWN AS A FULL LECTURE. T_T. How the heck am I going to speak for that long!? I was trying to make my presentation in powerpoint, then I gave up cause the math functionality is terribad. It was wise of me to do it on the blackboard, in the end. I only ended up taking 45 minutes of the 50, and that was WITH me writing everything on the board. At least I didn’t completely bore everyone to death. My program I had written for this project woke everyone up, and people actually made comments and asked questions and the prof was all excited (as he was when I showed him the working program) and stuff! So yay!

Here’s the important part of the story though. And disclaimer, it’s not what it seems at first glance.

Afterwards, when everybody else had already left, the professor came up to me and congratulated me on a good presentation. “That was an excellent presentation! And to think, you’re only a freshman!” he said. I never told him I was a freshman… I was like, what the heck, how did he find that out!? Later, I found out that one of my friends who knew the prof personally had told him at the beginning of the semester, when the prof and the TA were checking the list of undergrads to make sure everybody was ready to take the class. I guess that was a good thing… Otherwise, I might’ve been kicked out xD.

Just today, I found out from a friend that apparently he said to some other people that I was the “most brilliant student of this generation,” or something to that effect (the relayer of the message had a foggy memory). Even after accounting for the telephone effect, that’s still not a trivial compliment…

Sounds great, right? Now I have a professor who has this ridiculously high opinion of me. AWESOME LETTER OF REC FTW! (jk about the letter of rec).

Here’s the problem. Pride. Ego. Whatever you want to call it. Sure, I felt happy. But at the same time I had this sinking feeling heart, because I knew that know I would have to deal with this ridiculous ego-boosting. Or more like, my pride shot up, and now I had to quench the fire. Such high praise from a professor, no less, is not something you hear every day T_T….

My dilemma is just like my friend Jon’s; I have no idea how I’m supposed to deal with compliments. I have this “smart” label that’s stuck onto my forehead. The first thing people tend to say after they introduce me is “He’s smart. He’s really smart.” or some variant. I don’t know what to do with that. I can’t just say, “No, I’m not smart.” At best, it would lead to rejection of my comment. At worst, it would hurt somebody through comparison. “If he’s not smart, then what does that make me?” It’s hard. I don’t know how to be humble about it, to focus it back to God in the eyes of others.

The more I learn, the dumber I get. It’s kind of amazing how much raw knowledge is out there. I’ve finally made it to the 1800s and early 1900s in math… And that stuff is not trivial. And just imagine what they’ve done within the last 200 years. There are plenty of people more intelligent and more wise than me. I don’t think I’m good at math. My physics is definitely worse. There’s simply too much out there that I don’t know. I still have a long way to go. Few would take my perspective though. My sights are set much farther than most care to know about.

It’s kinda come to the point where I’m averse to telling classmates that I’m a freshman. I avoid telling people the number of credits/classes I’m taking (ESPECIALLY ENGINEERING ADVISING PPLZ). It’s just a lot of unnecessary attention (and a lot of trouble to explain/paperwork for advising T_T). That’s just me, it’s what I do. It’s not really anything special…

Here’s the bottom line. Praise and compliments are nice. They are definitely encouraging. But only in moderation. Also, what is the end goal for all of this? What exactly are my sights set on, and how much does the praise of others help me reach that goal?

Am I seeking the approval of man, or am I seeking the approval of God? Am I ready to walk down this path that has been set before me?

On Being Too Busy

Dude, how can you say you don’t have time? How can you say you’re too busy? You’re the one who chose to do all these things, so you can’t complain when you become “busy.”

-From Counselor Ricky (paraphrase).

Flight Craziness

This post talks about the few days before my Spring Break, which started Saturday, March 17th.

Man, oh man. It was one crazy rush leading up to Friday. This Spring Break I went back to Hong Kong in order to visit my grandmother in the hospital. My plane ticket was booked for Friday night/Saturday morning at 1 am, flying out of JFK International Airport in New York City.

To make a long story short, and due to the fact that I no longer remember, that experience was possibly the longest time I had ever stayed up in a row. Ever. Which probably explains why I don’t remember it too well. Sleep deprivation kinda kills your memory; I was feeling the effects for weeks afterwards, though other reasons compounded it.

If I remember correctly, that week was one of the killer weeks, since I had a Complex Analysis problem set. That alone ate up half my work time that week. LTSpice, which is a circuits program that we basically had to self-teach ourselves, was a pain to learn, and caused me to lose an exorbitant amount of time which I really shouldn’t have lost… I mean, I understood the physics, just not the program T_T. There were a bunch of other things that made it one ridiculous week… I don’t remember it anymore. My brain was so fried.

I essentially pulled 1.9 allnighters in a row that week. Wednesday I didn’t sleep, because I was already up at 4, and I didn’t want to miss my Partial Differential Equations prelim, which started at 8:00 am. The next day, I nearly had to stay up all night to finish all my work, though I did get around 3 hours of sleep. Thankfully not quite 2 consecutive all-nighters.

However, I was still operating on a tight schedule. I didn’t have time to pack yet due to all the work that had piled up. Sadly, I couldn’t skip classes because I had to go and turn things in. I got out of class at 1:10, and had a bus to catch in exactly one hour after that. Walking back to my dorm alone took about 7 minutes. Not to mention I had to go to library and print out some things to turn in my homework… Thankfully it was on the way back home.

Packing my stuff prevent me from getting lunch. It was a 7 hour bus ride all the way to NYC… and I had been running on little sleep. At least sleeping cuts down your metabolism, and the hunger pangs were somewhat mitigated because of it.

I had hoped that the 24 hour trip to Hong Kong would allow me to get some rest… Apparently 2 consecutive all-nighters has longer repercussions than that, and you also probably don’t get as rested when you sleep while traveling.

Running on fumes and exhaust, I made it to Hong Kong somehow. Somehow.

P.S: It’s pretty interesting how both times I went to Hong Kong, I met people who were related to Cornell in some way. The first time, back during Thanksgiving, I met two Cornell alums who were also going to Hong Kong to celebrate a wedding. This time, I met a guy who had recently presented an energy idea to Cornell for heating/cooling or something like that.

Small world, small world.