Smitha Milli

When people find out that I have a website, they always ask, “Why do you have a website?”  Prior to recently, my answers may have simply consisted of a shrug or a “‘Cuz I do.”  In fact, my about page used to say, “Normally people put the purpose of their blogs here, but I honestly have no idea why I have this blog.  Maybe I’m just bored with my life?  Let’s just see how it goes? ”  I have an answer to that now.  But it’ll require a bit of history.

I’ve gone through several websites/blogs throughout my life.  In third grade I became obsessed with Neopets.  In 4th grade, I discovered the guilds on neopets.  Guilds are basically just clubs of neopets users, with focuses ranging from neopets to Harry Potter to anime to cooking.  Most guilds were member-crazy, awarding ‘points’ to members that recruited the most and giving prizes out to people with the most points.  The most important part to gaining members was having a sleek layout for your guild.  Yes, everyone judges guilds by their cover (prizes are usually advertised on the cover).

That's just orange juice, don't worry.

So I learned HTML and CSS.  At first I used ‘pre-made’ layouts, ones you could find and download off websites.  But those were hardly good enough for any respectable guild, so I started doing all the graphics and code by myself.  I went through several guilds and found that I liked being leader of a guild more than a member.  I had gone through several guilds, getting quite bored after creating the layout and the initial boost of activity.  One time that stands out in my mind was when I made a guild and gained 75 members in a week or so, and then of course shut it down after getting bored.  Still, not too shabby for an elementary school kid.

After my guild spree, I remembered the websites that had pre-made layouts up for download.  I decided to make my own site that offered pre-made layouts for guilds.  Thus started my life with graphic design.  By 6th grade I had offered a customizable neopet layouts service, had been a guest designer on a relatively popular graphic design site, had offered photoshop inking/coloring for artists on Gaia, had hosted at least 25 websites of my own, and so on. But I always ended up deleting every one of my websites and starting over again.  For two reasons:

1) I would get bored and decide my ambition didn’t actually lie in layouts but in transparent pngs or in photoshop brushes or in PHP tutorials.  I aimed big everytime.  In fact I recently found an extremely old site I made that focused solely on transparent pngs.  On the front page advertised, “We strive to become your #1 resource for transparent pngs, making design easier for all web masters!”  Oh my god.

Facepalm moment.

My ambitions were frivolous and lacked real determination.  But I mean, no big deal I was only in like what 5th, 6th grade?  I guess I’ll forgive myself for that one.

2) I would always realize how much of an amateur I was, with what I considered ‘amateur’ slowly increasing in skill.  Every time I reviewed my past work, I would always immediately see several things I could have done better.  It was so embarrassing, my first instinct was to completely delete it and start over with a new, perfect slate.  Of course even the items I created on the ‘new slate’ I would eventually see as ‘amateur’.

I have two problems with my old way of thinking.  First, I kept getting bored with everything because my ambition was always to be the best, it wasn’t actually about what I was doing.  But I’ve already addressed my views on that in an earlier post.  What really undermined the longevity of my websites the most was my perfectionist mentality.  My standard for acceptability continuously increased with the experience I gained, which made everything before that point obsolete.  I was in a perpetual cycle of deleting and creating.  One that would never have ended.

Goethe caught red-handed with WORDS.

When I made this blog, I made it on impulse.  I saw one of my acquaintance’s websites and I realized I was no one without a website.  Websites have always been my medium of thought.  And if you look back upon the great people we remember today, they practically all wrote in some medium or another.  From Martin Luther King Jr. to Goethe to Aristotle to van Eyck.  Being humans, we are all fated to die.  The only way we can leave some of our existence behind is through our creations.  No doubt, I will look back upon my earlier blog posts and think, “Why did I ever write this?  This is awful!”.  But I will resist the urge to erase the post.  I recently started reading Brave New World by Aldous Huxley and in the foreword to the second edition Huxley writes:

“Remorse, for example, is as undesirable in relation to our bad art as it is in relation to our bad behaviour. The badness should be hunted out, acknowledged and, if possible, avoided in the future. To pore over the literary shortcomings of twenty years ago, to attempt to patch a faulty work into the perfection it missed at its first execution, to spend one’s middle age in trying to mend the artistic sins committed and bequeathed by that different person who was oneself in youth — all this is surely vain and futile.”

There is no point at which perfection will be reached, so it is best to begin now and start to leave an imprint.  And being individuals strapped to the movement of time, we cannot help but change over time.  When we lose elements of our character, there is no way to regain them.  These ideas may still be primitive and juvenile, but at least I will always remember my juvenile ideas.  This blog isn’t an ambitious one, I only share it with my whopping 36 twitter followers.  It doesn’t strive to solve any of society’s greatest problems.  It doesn’t provide speedy news to world events.  It doesn’t contain reviews on new products for consumers.  It might not do anything useful.  This blog is the simply consolidation of my opinions, and this is the only purpose of smithamilli.com.  So in response to the people that ask why I have a website, instead I must ask them, “Why don’t you have a website?”

Yeah I know, it’s been two weeks since my last post.  I already failed at my once a week blog post goal.  But I’m going to tell you all about why in this post.

On Saturday I participated in the St.Louis Area Brain Bee (SLABB).  The brain bee is a neuroscience contest with multiple levels of competition, the winner of each regional bee gets to go to nationals, and the winner of nationals represents their country in the International Brain Bee.  Last year, I participated in the North South Foundation’s Brain Bee and placed 3rd after a gruesome tie breaker that I lost.  This year I was confident that I could win and make nationals.  But, of course I would need to review all the material in Brain Facts, the main resource for the regional brain bee questions.  And that’s why I pushed my blog date back a week, I was busy prepping for brain bee!

"...be a part of something extraordinary" Those words are so enticing.

The actual competition consisted of a preliminary written round, followed by an oral round with the top ten competitors.  I was pretty confident about the written round.  There were 55 multiple choice questions and it was either you knew it or you didn’t know it.  So out of the 45 minutes they allotted us for the test, I don’t think anyone used more than twenty.  Before the oral round we found out our scores on the written exam; I missed five.  Pretty good, I was pleased by it.

The oral round went by like lightning.  I drew slot #2, which I was happy about because I wanted to go early each round, but at the same time I didn’t want to be the very first one to go.  The oral round was elimination format, three questions wrong and you’re out.  

After several rounds it was down to just me and one other person.  I got my question wrong.  We were now tied 2-2.  And then I got my next question wrong.  That was the third one!  No!  I could only hope for him to not get the next question right.  Don’t get this right, don’t get this right, don’t get this right.  “5 seconds,” said the proctor.  5, 4, 3, 2, 1.  Yes!  I was saved, he got it wrong.  Tied again.  The next round we both got our questions wrong again.  My opponent’s question was so similar to a previous question he had I thought for sure he would get it.  But he didn’t, phew.  The round afterwards I got a question I immediately knew the answer to.  ”What drug is now given along with levadopa to Parkinson’s patients in order to reduce peripheral metabolism of levadopa?”  ”Carbidopa.”  Yes, yes, yes.  Please, please, please get the next question wrong.

Strabismus.. also known as "cross-eye"

Nope.  And it continued.  The next round, I got an obscure question about nerves from the olfactory bulbs that I missed.  My opponent’s question was, “During what age of life is strabismus corrected for?”  The WashU undergrad/grad students watching had practically gotten more into the contest than us and one of them lifted their hands in the air and said, “Oh my god!” in exasperation at the difference in difficulty.   “Infancy,” my opponent responded.

And that was how I became runner up to the St. Louis Area Brain Bee.

Was I disappointed?  Oh heck, yeah.  Did I think it was unfair?  At first, yes I’ll admit I did.  But then I sucked it up and thought about what I could have done better.  I kept thinking to myself, if only I had gotten that question about MPTP, I should have known that!  During the night, as I held the plush brain cell they had given to the top three, those thoughts and feelings of regret refused to leave my mind.  When I woke up the next day, I started writing a blog post about my experience.  (See I am diligent!)   It was one of those typical stories about how although I was disappointed, I would channel it a positive way or whatever.  But then something more important happened.  I logged onto facebook.

Through facebook, I found out that my middle school classmate passed away in a car crash on Friday night.  It was shocking.  When I saw statuses saying, “RIP ____”, I thought it was some kind of sick joke at first.  I knew him.  We weren’t the best of friends, but I talked to him once in a while and I still remember his wacky sense of humor.  And his confidence.  Even when people made fun of him for being “weird”, he was still always himself and that was a quality I always admired in him and wished that I had.  How could he be gone?

Middle school, the good old days.

I went to middle school in Champaign, IL and obviously, now I live in St. Louis.  Ever since I’ve moved Champaign has seemed like an alternate universe still suspended in eighth grade, so even after confirming that he was really gone the image of him left in my head was still of him smiling and laughing in middle school.  I couldn’t actually fathom what had happened. For hours I just stared off into space and drifted in and out of sleep trying to grapple with the enigmatic concept of death. It left me sullen, I couldn’t believe it, but I knew it happened. Today, the whole thing was still on my mind. And really, only after writing this have I finally come to accept it. Those jovial images of him remain alive in my head, but the knowledge of his death has melted through them and left only the most bittersweet, tragic taste.

Lives are so fragile.  There was no reason for this to happen. It shouldn’t have. But things happen.

I was pretty out of it today.  I accidentally closed my car door on my hand.  I got hit by a volleyball in gym.  And completely tripped and fell over a desk in german (how do you even do that?).  After the desk incident I realized that if I didn’t snap out of it, something bad was going to happen.  That was also when I realized,  I had completely forgotten about the brain bee incident.  Because to be honest, it didn’t really matter.  I learned a lot about neuroscience not because I wanted to win, but because I find it fascinating.  I definitely learned a lot and in the big scheme of things does one or two awards even matter?  Not at all.  This reminded of a cheesy quote on my sophomore english teacher’s wall

“Dream as if you’ll live forever, live as if you’ll die today.”-James Dean

Somehow everything seems silly now. One day it won’t matter to me that I didn’t win this brain bee, what’ll matter is the time I spent learning about neuroscience. And of course, I’ll never forget how I felt when I looked on facebook on Sunday, and I’ll never forget him either.

In the future, I hope to not care about winning as much anymore. I’ll pursue my interests because I’m interested in them. After all, sometimes I take my life for granted and from now on I don’t want to waste time obsessing over something as meaningless as a rank or medal or award. After this rather turbulent weekend, I’m just curious to know everyone else’s opinions about–well, life really. Comment below and let me know!

Also I hold absolutely no grudge towards the 1st place winner. Nathan was very nice and I wish him good luck at nationals!