#glutenfree #sugarfree #superfood #antioxidant #dessert #weightloss Chia seeds !! The long-raved about super-food. Chia seeds are a great low-calorie way to load your diet with protein and fiber. Especially when you're having a sugar craving, it's easy to turn chia seeds into a sugar-free, healthy, and low-calorie snack. With 137 calories per ounce, the possibilities are endless. For these four recipes, each start with a base of chia seeds and almond milk. I ALWAYS use almond milk because it's environmentally friendly, way less calories than any type of milk, and still includes a healthy dose of calcium.
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Recently, Hannah and I filmed a video about our tips on college essays. Admittedly, we didn't plan the video very well and looking back, I feel like it would only be just to post the video if I accompanied it with a more thorough, more thought out, and more original blog post. Some of this will be a repeat of what's in the video, and some will be new.
First, I would definitely recommend starting as soon as possible but not too early. In my opinion, when you start too early, you're not going to have great content and you may not have reached the writing skill level you'll have closer to your senior year. Personally, I wrote a lot of my essays about things that happened in the year before senior year. I started my essays in July before my senior year, and I think that was best for me. I was still busy working on college apps during my senior year, but it wasn't overwhelming. Some deadlines were a bit stressful but only because I didn't balance my time well. I started early but ended up spending WAY too much time on my first few schools instead of spreading my time out wisely. To pick colleges, I created pro/con charts for each school I put on my list. The most important thing about picking colleges is making sure that:
When I was picking schools, some things that I considered were class size, how it fit into my major of choice, opportunities (internships, undergraduate research, etc.) and the overall community (is it collaborative?). In terms of how to tackle the essays themselves, I spent the first few weeks to a month just brainstorming. I didn't rush into essays at all because half the time, you've set yourself up for failure just by choosing a bad topic. For me, I wrote down all of my values, most important experiences, and the top 10 or so things about myself on notecards, then grouped them together based on overlap. For example, leadership and Science Olympiad fell in the same category because I was a captain of our Science Olympiad team. By doing this, I was figuring out how I would cover as much about myself as possible, in the limited word counts and essays colleges gave. But also, doing the notecards gave me something to focus on in my essays. For example, if I wrote about Science Olympiad, I could know to highlight the leadership aspect. The best essays are written about things unique to you. Even if you choose a very average/ generic topic like volunteering, or being class president, you have to add "personality plus." Ways to add "personality plus":
The most important thing someone told me was this: It's easy to reject a paper. It's hard to reject a person. Throughout it all, try to insert yourself in your application as much as possible. Come across as a friend or an eager student. Come across as human. The last week has been riddled with more thinking than I could possibly imagine and it’s been exhausting. I feel lost and confused and worried I’m living my life wrong. It’s gotten better, but the amount of thinking hasn’t. Part of me wants to retreat and ignore all of the problems and worries and the other part of me wants to reach out. That’s why I’m writing here, to you. Even after everything we’ve been through and all of the times you’ve let me down, you’ll always be someone special to my life. You’ve been a metaphor that’s run its course on my life but part of me wishes you would stay. So maybe you’re here to listen, probably not. It doesn’t really matter.
It feels more meaningful to write to someone than to be trapped in the mental confines of spiraling thoughts. The truth is, I live life so busy even these past few days that I feel like I haven’t gotten a chance to breathe — even though in reality I’m constantly breathing and constantly thinking. It’s exhausting even when I sleep in, and my life feels insatiable. I don’t know where happiness lies and I don’t know where to find it. That all makes me sound like a very unhappy person, I know. That’s not exactly true. I don’t deny I feel like my part is nearly perfect..but I just feel disconnected from that perfect life. Does that make sense? I love the people around me, a lot. I feel closer to a lot of people than I have in a while. Of course, some friendships have grown distant and I’m more or less okay with that. I guess what I’m trying to say, which I’ve made no attempt to say this far, is that I feel in free fall. Everyday I wake up thinking today is the day I get my life on track and everyday is another day laziness overcomes any desires to deviate from my “stuck” lifestyle. Stuck in the sense of preventing deviation, not stuck in the sense of staying in one place. In just as confused as you are at this point. Imagine you live a normal life and one day you decide to sleepover at your friends house. But then, you keep sleeping over, you keep eating their food not your food, and it’s been a while since you’ve gone home. That’s how I feel. I’m stuck in a sleepover, which is a life that is very much mine, but I want to go home. Badly. There’s not enough hours in the day for sleepovers and home, and now I just want to be home. I am home. A lot more than I have been in a while but it doesn’t feel like home, still. It doesn’t feel like I’m breathing and maybe I need to spend 24 hours chained to this house and my family or maybe it’s a matter of disconnecting or maybe I need to communicate with the people I’ve been ghosting. Maybe I need to create another list because those always seem to work or maybe I should be talking to my best friend instead of you. So, I guess I’m reaching out and asking for some advice. Maybe a visit. Maybe a walk over the river. Thanks for messing with my head John Green. It really is Turtles All The Way Down. The first day of work! It’s so strange to think I’ve finally graduated to driving myself to work -- emphasis on driving, emphasis on work. My report time this morning was 10:00 am, which I thought was a bit late but boy oh boy, I’m in love with working here.
A bit of background, but I actually found this place because my MIT College Application Interviewer, Mark, works here. Since then, I’ve come here a second time where he gave me a tour of the place and introduced me to the various projects. In many ways, he’s been a very helpful guide and friend as I explore uncharted waters. Walking in at the wonderful time of 9:52, Mark gave me the run-down of the place, a brief tour, set me up on my very own personal Dell laptop, and gave me a folder of readings and the project proposal for what I would be working on. The project I’ll be working on deals with using fluorescence lysosome dyes to detect water toxicity. In terms of how my day looked, the morning was spent reading, and for lunch Mike (CEO(?)) took me, and the rest of the interns who began earlier than me to lunch at Juan in a Million. Most of us ordered the famous Don Juan taco - a single taco that I could only finish 1/3 of. It was SO GOOD and I would definitely recommend the place to anyone, unless you’re a hater of tex mex. In the afternoon, I spent several hours reviewing and discussing the project with the principal investigator, John, and spent the rest of my day reading some background and playing around with an arduino. Overall, I’m so grateful to be working here -- I feel like I’m being paid to learn. There’s a wonderful encouragement to work on projects even if you don’t think you’ll succeed and produce a workable end product -- working instead in the name of learning, trying new things, and gaining a productive experience. The atmosphere is great, my desk-mate intern, Austin, is great, and the people here are close-knit, friendly, and joke around. After work, I went to Shake Shack / Domain the SciFair squad (Bryce, Ananya, and Adi) and it’s just so nice to be able to have a meaningful day filled with productivity and be able to end it having fun. On to day 2 (and eating at home, because I definitely haven’t done that in a while)! |
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June 2020
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