About Austin

Introduction This essay is about me. Everything is based on my beliefs and how I interpret certain experiences. Throughout this essay, I want to synthesize my interpretations from my experiences and answer the question: “How do different aspects of my knowledge shape my understanding of the meaning of life?” To do this, I want to put each piece of knowledge on a spectrum between the universe being absurd, or the universe having meaning. In my experience, there are no better books to reference this with than The Stranger, by Albert Camus, and The Alchemist, by Paulo Coelho. The Stranger For nothing, I want to base my views off The Stranger. The Stranger stars Meursault, a completely apathetic narrator. I want to focus on the ending scene, because this is where the philosophy of the book truly comes to life. In this scene, Meursault is sitting with the Chaplain. Although the Chaplain is rambling on about religion, Meursault still keeps his original viewpoint. He rejects the idea of highe...

 I guess this blog post is based on the thirteen ways to look at a blackbird. I’m part of a club at Troy High, and there’s a person, let's call George. George is an interesting person. I really enjoy his presence. He’s always laughing and smiling and he never seems to be down. But maybe also because he reminds me of childhood joy. After going through high school, I think I've lost that joy. But other people in the club have a different perspective. Before I move on, I just want to clarify something. I don’t want to hate anybody mentioned in this blog post, that’s not my intent. I just want to make that clear.   At the first competition of this season, one of my friends was talking to me about the freshman. Throughout the conversation they started making fun of the newly joined freshman in the team. George is a big fella and he does childish things. It’s easy to think of him as a strange guy. And I’ll admit, I used to see him in the hallways and before I got to know him, I reme...

I think for me, I always laugh at one thing in particular. I always, always laugh at something funny. Ok? So what’s funny to me? I think I love stupidity. I remember last year, during comp sci, I was trying to find jokes to tell to my friend and I ended up on the reddit page for antijokes. Antijokes are jokes without a punchline. You expect them to be a joke, but they just end up being a statement that’s obvious. For example, What’s the governments best kept secret? I don’t know. I remember just reading through it and dying. To my friend, they seemed stupid, and he probably cringed at me reading them out loud to him, but I couldn’t help but laugh. And not just with stupid jokes, it also ties into what I find funny on the internet. I remember finding this video, It’s something that any "normal" person should be able to watch with a straightface, but to me it was hilarious. One may say that I’m too “brainrotted” but I disagree. My thoughts aren’t consumed by “brainrot”. I don’t...

After reading Memento Mori, I thought about what my life would be like if I lived in 10 minute cycles. It was pretty scary. I thought living in these cycles would not allow me to experience life. But then I continued thinking and I realized something. Living in these cycles might bring me bliss. Life is horrible. We live to live then we die. When we live, there's so much stress and pain and so many problems with the world. However, if I live in these cycles, I'll never feel stress or pain or "experience" these problems because I will never remember them. This idea seemed beautiful. I just need to stab a hole into my brain and I'll be set free! But that's not how life works. This life sucks. Will I be confined in a mental institution like Earl? If I'm not, I won't live a good life. I'll live a meaningless life. I can't learn or get things done efficiently. I'll have to be taken care of constantly and waste someone else's time. All the po...

A bird chirped, but in my mind I had just leveled up in Minecraft. I got confused. I was currently building a base in Minecraft, and you don’t gain XP by building. I didn’t think much of it, so I kept playing. Hours passed and morning came, so I went to bed. As I lay, I reflected on Minecraft and I thought back to the level up sound that played while I was building. I couldn’t figure out why it played, so I concluded it was a glitch. I guess I never thought of the world outside Minecraft. Level up sound effect in Minecraft

During the how to write your college essay video, the person kept emphasizing the importance of showing growth. That got me thinking about my own growth. Trying to pinpoint a specific moment in my life where I felt like I grew was difficult. Sometimes I look back on my past self and cringe at my actions, so I do know I've grown. But pinpointing a single, truly pivotal moment was difficult. I know for a fact that I grew from 9th to 10th grade because of the difficult classes I took. I know for a fact that I grew over the pandemic because I started actually doing my homework. But these were all periods of my life, not exact moments. So I continued thinking... During my sophomore year, I took AP Chemistry. Near the beginning of the year, we covered thermodynamics. By that point, we had already gone through three unit tests, and most of these tests were manageable. If I memorized how everything was solved, then I would get a decent grade on the tests. Going into this test I thought the...