(some rambles)

Resilience, honesty, humility, and humbleness got him so far. My favorite thing about him was pure honesty (and the fact that he never cursed, the worst would be "crap"). We usually think of honesty as just actions matching words, but his honesty was so much more than that. His intentions were purely honest, and there was no secret hidden beneath the layers of his consciousness to betray his true feelings or motives. He was a terrible, absolutely terrible sweet-talker, but his purity was enough to attract people to him- he never said things just because he knew someone wanted to hear it. 

Some found it surprising and false, but it was a reality only because his heart was clean. He possessed no betraying thoughts.

But what was the best, the most alluring about him was not just his honesty or his aversion to cursing/swearing, his kindness and soft/unconditional love, it was his humility. He honestly would never take credit for achievement or thrive in his charity work, or say "I feel so proud." What he would say would be "I thank God for this opportunity," "Want to go eat now?" "I hope that that kid finds more food tonight..." or nothing at all. With him, there was no need for words. His expression revealed all, his timidity and natural smile was enough.

Recently I've been meeting more and more people like this, (including my brother during our car rides on our breaks!), people who have very little pride. It's so refreshing, so incredibly renewing, especially in the current state I'm in which for some reason makes me curse so much more. 

I guess I'll speak of my brother, since if I talk of someone else then I'll have to talk about everyone haha (but I think I will one day anyways). In his first year of college he joined the corp cadets...rather ambivalently. After much deliberation, fighting with my parents, he decided to join. Throughout the semester (which isn't even over yet) he'd text me saying he wanted to drop, how it was so stressful, how he didn't fit in, but he'd also text me "don't listen to me when I complain. I'm not dropping."

I think the way that my siblings and I were raised gave us this resilience, especially for my siblings. The amount of daily/hourly abuse and irrational anger sustained created an optimistic view for us, I guess as a result of needing to survive. And for my brother, this proved true throughout his childhood, throughout his fatty stage when everyone teased him and taunted him, and now through one of the most physically trying times of his life. He had a gigantic smile on his face when he was young and now its imprinted in his heart. 

Usually, the response I'll get from people who involve themselves in an organization similar to the Corp Cadets, and even on the website itself, many testimonials speak of how proud they are of themselves, or how proud they want to be of themselves. I was worried for a bit that this would be my brother's main goal, but I should have never doubted him. 

He told me one day that he disliked the people who were out to gain a sense of pride, or to be honored, to do something simply just for themselves and then to be able to say that they served and helped. His purity trends in my family, beginning with my parents, where charity is not something to brag about or even to gloat about, nor is it something to boost self esteem or pride. He told me this is why he sometimes felt as if he did not fit in- he did not understand this focus of the self. 

And I could not have been happier with him. He never stands with an immense amount of pride speaking of his weekly volunteering at the homeless shelter when people ask him what he does on the weekends, nor does he stand with so much pride while speaking of the corp cadets, nor does he expect to/want to stand at graduation feeling the same type of self pride. To me, he exemplifies the image of humbleness, much like the aforementioned man I spoke of at the top, and thus the image of success. He has never considered his work to be for just himself, but rather for the world and most importantly his family. Even though he went through and is still sort of going through the stage a bit, underneath was still honest and unselfish heart. It's from his unselfish ways that he achieved so much of what he has, from his lack of pride stemming from his lack of selfishness that he succeeded and has been so well loved. He's like an onion..peel away the layers.. HHAA  

I constantly hear people saying 'I'm so proud of myself" (not in the joking way when it is 6 AM and we FINALLY figure out our matlab/jquery code...) or say to me "you should feel so proud of yourself, YOU did this" and I grimace a little bit inside.  

Recently on facebook a lot of my newsfeed has been dominated by  this picture

While most of the comments left on the picture's page  are very sympathetic, understanding, pointing out that the picture is only of boys and that there are not girls, even proactive, some have been ones that call "bullshit" on education, demean the value of education, and talk about how academic education is irrelevant to life. 

"the value of education differs from one country to another.. over there education is a new life, over here education is bullshit, u study shit u don't like just to make money you don't deserve to buy things u don't want"

"I think the point people are trying to make is that while education in itself is beautiful, most of the current curriculum is totally irrelevent to life. We learn about some fictional character from history yet we never learn how to cope with the ups and downs of life. We have highly intelligent kids killing thenselves over exam results. This is the folly of our system, so the content of the lessons are whats important. Without any knowledge of the lesson plan how can anyone comment on this particular photo? They could be learning anything..."

Those are some examples that were left in response, and reflect many of my peers' opinions. Now, they do have some merit. The first one is pretty right about how our society functions, but it is poorly thought out. The value of education is completely demeaned and diminished. The fictional characters we learn about are exactly manifestations of real life people and real life situations that are plopped in to the author's work of art in order for us to learn. (One of the subjects I'm studying is English/literature, this is one of those things that we have to constantly argue). Yes, we might worry way too much about GPA and be judged by some unmbers, but those numbers are proof of SOMETHING. I mean, ther e is a huge difference between a 4.0 and a 3.5. 

You know those memes that circulate around with teens (I'm assuming teens since they're still talking about algebra) hold up a sign asking how factorization will help them in life/if they will ever need to know factorization to buy groceries or something related to that?

I hope you never took those comments seriously.

Not only should the obvious be discussed, how we have comfortably temperature adjusted buildings and chairs and technology to facilitate the process of becoming educated, whereas the students in some other countries sit on the ground, the fact that the idea that education and "current curriculum" is irrelevant to life is absurd.

Perhaps you will not have to stand in the grocery line and factorize your bill or how many carrots you should buy to offset the amount of onions you will buy for your recipe that requires x amount of onions in y amount of time. And maybe you won't really need to calculate the amount of gas you'll need to travel x miles when gas is y$, but you will need an environment that trains your mind. Regardless of what information you apply directly to life and how much of academia you are able to realize is based on memorization, being immersed in an intellectual environment where your brain is appreciated over whatever other part of your body (in most cases...of course there are those cases of perverted female and male teachers). Isn't that what people keep asking for? to be known for their intellect rather than their boob size, their muscles, their hair color? 

The idea that route memorization is irrelevant and useless is incredibly harmful to the individual who holds this idea. How else would you have learned to play violin? to walk the streets of NYC? To know what 12*12 is? Did you actually just sit there and add up 12 12s? No. You know from memorization of the basic fundamentals that 12*12=144. Regardless of your profession, this activity, especially at a young age, will help your brain and its development. Its practical application is used more in academia for those who choose to pursue a higher degree (bachelors, phd, masters etc) and apply these themes and memorized facts to creating your iPad, programming your phone, curing your disease, coming up with a new way to eliminate harmful elements in the air, traveling to space. 

Imagine yourself at a school that did not challenge you and instituted fun all day long. Where would your challenge and conquest come in? Do you actually want to be limited to subjects that you are familiar and comfortable with? If you have the chance to go to school in such a comfortable environment, then go. If social issues occur, like sexism, racism, any other bigotry, address them. Don't start saying things like education is unimportant. If you had the oportunity to go to school, or will have the opportunity, appreciate it. If you didn't, that's ok too, you weren't placed in the same position as people who did have the opportunity...As long as you aren't saying things like education is useless, you'll still be incredibly valuable. 

Sure, not all people who pursue higher education are well rounded people or even nice, but you can focus on those people all you want, and disregard those who have pursued education and done great things for the entire world. Even though Bill Gates dropped out of college, he got in to HARVARD of all schools. How else would he have had the means and connections, support to pursue his entire kingdom of technology? How would he have gotten there without the academic challenges that shaped his mind as he was growing up?

The idea that it is different form country to country is true to some extent, and more obvious. But it is the same in every country. Education, for the very huge part of our lives, is a way to freedom and a new life. The path that education and academia will take you on is going to open up doors. If you went to class then decided all the things you learned were useless, you either didn't understand or were unable to appreciate the phase of life you were in. 

Think of the people in poverty. If you just do a google search, you will see articles about how African Americans/black people are as a whole closer to the poorer end of the economic hierarchy. This is such an unfair statistic as it provides NO explanation. Why would they be on the lower side? Is it really because they are naturally born stupid? Perhaps with lower economic means you can try to argue that their foods are not as healthy and are all processed, cheaper foods. But then why is it that the same families who buy these crappy foods and are, say perhaps Asians and caucasians/white people, many of you reading this, are not on the lower end of the spectrum economically? For people who speak of this country to country idea, it really is not. One HUGE reason why they are still on the lower end is because of the culture of slavery that stripped their means of money among the other things such as their own humanity. You know those fictional characters that you may have had the treat to read about? The ones who boarded slave ships or dealt with racial struggles in America? Those were to show you how education is a path to a sort of freedom and hence money. Of course, there was still the ethnic aesthetic barring them from attaining the same level of achievement, but it helped (not that the racial prejudice is eradicated at all today ) Education in America, then, is still a pathway to a new life as it is in other countries. (this is another thing that proves education to be important...to tear down these racial divides and horrendous stereotypes. there is much more that i didn't even touch about the histories of racialism and the standings of each ethnic group)

 And parents, don't blame the school system so much. Blame your kid for not trying, blame yourself for not pushing them. As much as they may hate you for taking their "fun" away (toys ipad tv whatever), push them (just don't hit them or abuse them because then you WILL have to take their hate and you'll deserve it). If there's no discipline to start with their lives will be miserable and their minds will be narrow.

You only get so many brain cells and are put on a slow decline in your ability to acquire new information and skills as you grow older, as your brain changes. Use it well in your youth, whatever age you may be in now. Dont squander it and say things like education is useless, its' not important to my life, as some sort of excuse. Become interdisciplinary in an environment where scholars, whether they are completely right or completely wrong, can challenge you and guide you. It's not always the books in front of you that will teach you, it's the people in school whatever school you may be in. 

This isn't to say that youwill never be bored or feel bored, since we're all pretty human and get distracted. But if your entire philosophy stems from the idea that education is useless and irrelevant, the institution of school is useless, or if it stems from a fear of accepting the fact that you were just not good enough to understand the content instead of admitting or trying again, then that's where the issue starts

 If you were given the opportunity, take it. If not, then you are given an opportunity in another way. 

So a friend of mine recently got a temporary awesome camera that I cannot describe to you because I have no idea how to describe cameras (like lens and all that).

UPDATE FROM JUSTIN: He says it's a Canon 5d Mark III with the Canon 24-70mm f2.8 mark II

But we did a short shoot most of the time (actually like 75% of the 2 hours) was used to find a location. After wandering we finally settled on a location that was closer to home rather than an outdoor park, also because it was cold as heck.

Justin Chen's pre edited pictures... actually, just 8 out of the over 100 snaps we got. Burst rounds ftw

final products will be revealed at a later date as more come out. This was easy to do since I didn't thave to jump or twist my lower half of my body

Since I screwed up my left foot, which hasn't healed for like a month for some reason (probably because I hurt it a few more times minorly afterwards), I've been unfortunately turning down shoots because I can't really move too well. 

And for convenience sake, my friend Justin, who is also in my math class, lives so close that we can afford to just take quick pictures every now and then.

SO HERE:

(also I wanted to show off my tiger swim suit from black milk  and my freaking awesome rings that go on the top of my finger instead of at the knuckles)

theme for this was RAWRRR teehee

and then the whole entire outfit