Insanity

While in college, students often don't get too much sleep. In order to take advantage of this, Sam took up a challenge with his friends: take the 60 day insanity workout. We planned to begin everyday from 11:00pm. This began on Monday and the past 3 days have been... Insane. I can't match the levels of my friends in fitness, so I figured I would just join for fun. I signed the contract that we made and am slowly beginning to regret my decision. These extreme cardio sessions have been causing much soreness every morning and I have been getting less sleep, but I'm not going to whine about it here.

College life, or at least my own college life, has been very interesting. I've spent a few days being the guy who is always studying and I'm slowly transitioning to the guy who is often tired. Although I've gotten used to the time zone, insanity has prevented me from going to bed before midnight this week. The only day we get a break from this workout is Sunday... Which means I have to take advantage of that and do work early and sleep early.

Some of the guys in my suite had a chemistry midterm today, and one of them had a biology midterm on monday as well. This causes a little bit of worry because my midterms are also coming up soon. Not only that, but the work has slowly been increasing from all my classes, so I'm trying to get my time schedule straight so that I can always have time to do work. Not only that, but I've been trying to check out more of LA because... Well, because I'm here so I should be able to tell people what places are here and all the sights. In addition, I've also been trying to learn more about opportunities for the future for jobs or internships. I guess that's just normal life, but this is all so new to me, so I've been adjusting and it's been an interesting experience.

-Sam Rho

#blessed

Wow... I'm amazed that I managed to make it into USC. The levels of intelligence here are incredible. Of course, I'm no premed or predental student, so it's possible that I'm just hanging out with smart people, but I'm pretty sure I'm just incredibly lucky to get into here. It's also possible that this is just because I'm now in California, where the education seems to be slightly better than Funchester. Whatever it is, the people I'm meeting are definitely in another class from me, with regards to intelligence.

I'm just becoming more and more humble every day. This process began with an offhand discussion with a few suite mates about SAT scores and financial aid now that we were all at USC. A couple of my suite mates had managed to pull off SAT scores that rival Tomy's only by taking a few practice SAT tests. In fact, one had managed to pull off good enough scores as well as a combination of other factors to get a full ride to this very expensive school (normally ~$60,000 a year). After that, I attended a couple of christian organizations and met a few people. I started chatting with those people and then, once again, learned that one was here on a full ride and the pastor of the church that the organization had on campus had also attended USC on a full ride and had even managed to make money as he was attending. Fast forward a couple of weeks to today where I learned that another one of my suite mates was planning to go to either Duke or Brown for predental. Not only that, but most of the top 20 had actually gone to ivy league schools! He had been near the top of the ranks at his school, like 4th or something, and had decided to go to USC at the last minute... I'm just not worthy. I'm sure it doesn't really matter, but I feel so incredibly humbled by the fact that all these people have come here after being around such incredible people and being good enough to get into schools way better than here.

I didn't really understand how incredible this school was when I was applying here. That being said, I'm sure I would have met just as amazing people if I had gone to any other school. Speaking of other schools... I'm slowly wondering if USC is the right school for me. I mean, I love it here, but I'm wondering if this school is worth the monetary problems I could potentially be putting my parents into. Perhaps I should just try and get a scholarship for UVA and go back to Virginia... This thought will develop more as the year continues. I may or may not still consider this in the next few months.

-Sam Rho

College vs. Sam

I'm arrogant. I have quite a bit of pride. In fact, I'm a guy that people would probably not want to hang out with. Of course, I usually hide this arrogant side and try to act as humble as possible. This doesn't always work out, of course, so I end up having to create new personalities to try and fit multiple different norms. Anyway, that's not what I was trying to go for. I'm trying to say that I was definitely underestimating the challenges of Calculus III.

After experiencing two years of Calculus without really learning too much, I was definitely overconfident going into Calc 3. I mean, I had cool teachers: Mr. Hess was a very "chill" teacher and I did enjoy how cool he was, but I never managed to learn much in that class; Mr. Whitney was... also very interesting, but I never really felt like I was truly learning in that class either. In fact, the only two times I felt I was learning math in the past few years has been in Linear Algebra and AP Statistics. Those were taught by very good teachers and I really enjoyed them. In fact, some of that wisdom from Linear Algebra, namely eigenvalues and matrix math, has come into use in my Engineering Computational Methods class, where we basically work with MatLab and C++. Anyway, I never really liked 3D math, even when I was learning in Algebra 2, it just didn't work well with my brain. Now that everything is the R^3, I'm just a mess. I'm definitely going to have to make use of office hours, teaching assistants, tutors, and everything possible.

Another humbling experience has been seeing how incredible all these people are at USC. I knew that I was kinda lucky to get it and to get a scholarship for 1/4 of the tuition, but much of my suite and a few people I've met through clubs have actually gotten here on much greater scholarships! I've met 2 people who are here on full rides! It's just a really humbling experience seeing how amazing people who come here are. I'm looking forward to learning more and getting to know all these smart people better, though. Geez! So awesome!

-Sam Rho

Football Game

When I applied to USC and even when I decided to go to USC for college, I completely ignored the fact that this was a college known well for its football team. I just assumed that, even if it was important and all, I would be able to avoid it and continue studying or hanging out with friends. USC is incredible, not only for its education, but also for the athletic talent! The problem is that I lack the appreciation for that skill.

One would think that when applying for schools, I would have noticed how impressive USC's football record was, but I never even thought about sports when I was applying. In fact, my thoughts were mostly focused on prestige of the school. Now, I'm inside, occasionally looking at the football score, studying my European history while many others are off at the game. It just feels strange,I guess. It didn't bother me in high school, but now that I live at school, it's becoming more challenging to ignore things like this. Not only that, but I went with a friend to the science museum next to school because I didn't feel like doing work and all along the way I saw a whole bunch of tents set up with USC plastered on them. I'm sure I'll eventually get used to not caring much about football, but for now, it still feels strange.

-Sam Rho

Week 2

I've been looking at all my syllabi and have found it quite overwhelming, to be honest. All the work that I'm going to have to do before the end of the semester is incredible! At least I have people to help me if I'm stuck. I'm still looking for friends to make a study group with in some of my classes and I hope that won't take too long.

Today I decided to have some fun and try out for an a capella group. After listening to them at a gathering of all the groups yesterday, I thought it would be really exciting to join one. Then I realized that I needed to have a song prepared. At that point, I thought I was going to have to back out. I wasn't sure if I knew any songs well enough to try out for any of these groups, especially the all women's a capella group, the USC Sirens. Being a guy and all, it's hard to get into one of those. Instead, I decided that my lack of skill would be perfect for a group with about mid-level skill called Overflow. They seemed pretty friendly and they sounded great. The catch is that they're a Christian group and that they don't compete. So, I figured it would work well for me as I'm doing all my work for EE to have a break and sing with a Christian group. Of course, this all depends on if I make it or not. There is another really pro group called SoCal VoCals that sounded incredible yesterday, but I didn't think I was good enough for them, so I intentionally skipped that one and went to Overflow.

Classes are... not too bad yet. The most annoying class is my general education class: The Emergence of Modern Europe. There's a great deal of reading involved and it's all about European history from 1350-ish to the French Revolution. It sounded interesting when I signed up for it because I had never had the chance to take AP European History, but it's seeming like it's going to be a lot of work. Other than that, most of my classes have an average load of work to do and the teachers professors seem to teach pretty well.

My roommate is planning to switch into Computer Science for his major, which is cool because I kind of want to learn that stuff. Although, I don't really feel like that's my calling for a major, knowing that stuff would be nice. I hope that I can learn from him if he does decide to switch majors. Also, I'm slowing finding people who speak Korean to hang out with, which is great because that helps to increase my Korean skills... or lack thereof.

I hope week 2 is as great as week 1 was.

-Sam Rho