Month: July 2022

For most people, to get into well reputed and highly ranked colleges requires not only good grades but also impressive extracurricular achievement. This because you need to make yourself special or different to stand out. Which can’t be done through good grades and good college essays.

There are hundreds possibly even thousands of extracurricular’s that people pursue from sports to cooking. However some of these aren’t as unique unless they are being done at the highest level. So let’s go over some of the most unique extracurricular’s out there!

1. Boy Scouts
   Now this might not sound like a very unique extracurricular because there are thousands of people out there doing it. However very few ever reach the level of eagle scout. This is because of the sheer amount of time and dedication it takes to reach that level. Also boy scouts goes hand in hand with community service as to become an eagle scout you need at least 100 hours of community service. Which gives you a great distinction from the rest of your competition.

2. School Clubs/Teams
School Clubs/Teams are a great extra curricular to have on your college application as they show how you can communicate and work well with other people from all different walks of life. This is also a very accessible extracurricular as anyone can do it however, not everyone can do it well.

3. Part Time Jobs
Part time jobs are a great way to prove that you have a great work ethic as well as practical work experience. An especially good part time job could be an internship at a company like Apple or Amazon or even a small local business. I currently am doing an internship at a small robotics business close to where I live. I essentially help mentor kids in robotics and help them build all sorts of different variations of robots to see which one accomplishes a task the best.

4. Leadership positions
Colleges prefer having students with leadership positions in a variety of activities as it shows commitment and of course leadership. Which are 2 very important characteristics for a person to have. A good example of a leadership position is being the leader of a sports team or the editor of a school newspaper. In my case I am currently the Jr. Head of Business on my robotics team and next year I will be the Sr. Head but at the moment I am too young/inexperienced.

I hope you guys enjoyed this blog post see you next time!

I’m sure at least some of the people reading this post, like me, will be preparing for the SAT. So I figured that I should make a post explaining what I am doing to study/prepare for these standardized tests.

If you are just beginning your SAT prep I think that Khan Academy’s resources are extremely versatile and useful for a free program. It’s essentially a good way to “dip your toes in” so that you understand what you are getting into before you spend any money.

Once you start feeling more comfortable then I think that the best course you can buy would have to be from the Princeton Review. They have a variety of courses but they are by far one of the best and most reputable companies out there that offer SAT prep courses. Seeing as they are backed by the Ivy League school. Their cheapest course is 800$ and it is a set of essential skills and ideas that you will need to understand for the SAT.

This is of course quite pricey, however, it is not that surprising if you think about it. The score you get on your SAT does help determine which college you go to which is a decision that could impact your entire life as well as the opportunities you receive. So for most people that price is considerably cheaper than their entire future.

Nonetheless, 800$ can be an exorbitant price for people and as such, I’ll share some other highly rated options for SAT prep. One of these courses is offered by Eprep whose cheapest course is 129$ and it includes practice for the PSAT as well as the SAT. All of E-preps courses are highly rated and they are much more affordable than the Princeton Review. E-preps courses also come with a minimum of a 100-point improvement on the test.

On a quick side note I 10000% recommend that you buy Princeton review books for AP tests. Their books are about 20-30$ and cover EVERYTHING that you will need. They also come with practice tests and I believe the premium books come with digital resources as well. That’s all back to the regular post

The final program I will be recommending is Kaplan. Kaplan has a variety of price ranges starting at their most basic 199$ course all the way up to their 1,999$ course. Of course, their most expensive course comes with all the bells and whistles including prep books for a wide range of AP classes. The most basic course comes with videos, practice questions, and quizzes. I am not sure if they guarantee any score as I didn’t see it specifically mentioned on their website so keep that in mind.

I hope you all enjoyed and be sure to check out my youtube channel for some more brawl stars gameplay.

Link:https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCrlNUqQVBxLIbdltHQBdcYg

Hey, everyone, this is also kind of a different blog post but I’ve recently gotten back into brawl stars and there was a recent new update so I figured I’d go over it.

This is the 13th season of the brawl stars pass, called deep-sea brawl, it comes packed with tons of rewards including the new character Otis. Otis is classified as a damage dealer. He shoots 3 paintballs that do 420 damage each at level 1. His super, called silent seabed prevents his opponents from shooting, using their gadgets, and using their super for 3 seconds.

I think Otis is going to be an amazing brawler that has very unique mechanics with a lot of potential. He also has a decent range and a good amount of hp so he is not too squishy. If you can get him to power 10 or 11 I would recommend shield gear for power 10 and shield and damage or shield and speed for power 11. As this makes up for Otis’s lower hp and helps increase his damage even more.

There were also some new skins added to the game that is a part of the deep sea brawl skin collection. There was a skin for belle, colt, and fang added. There were also some reworks/balance changes but you can find those online or in the app.

There were also a couple of new modes and maps added to the game. I will go over the new mode mainly because there were a lot of maps added that you can find if you create a custom game.

The new game mode is quite unique. Essentially it is a showdown but you can respawn and the first person to 6 kills wins the match. You still gain trophies if you place anywhere from first to fourth. The best way to win is by stealing others’ kills as damage is not a factor it is whoever actually lands the killing blow on the opponent. This is why I like playing characters like piper who can do ridiculous DPS and unexpectedly steal kills quite easily.

Thats it for this blog post but make sure to check out my youtube channel where I uploaded a video about Otis and Pipers lunar skin

Link: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCrlNUqQVBxLIbdltHQBdcYg

I’m sure a lot of the people reading this are likely doing a lot of things this summer like jobs or summer school. If that is the case then I figured that this would be a good time to share how I am managing my time during the summer to be efficient while still having some fun along the way.

I start my days very early and I would recommend sleeping until at least 8 Am however due to summer school I am waking up at 5:30 Am. Once I wake up I get ready and then make myself an egg white protein wrap (recipe on my youtube channel link at the bottom of this post) and walk to my bus stop at around 6:30. Then I take the bus to school and get there around 7:15. I am then in class for about 6 hours. After which I come home.

I am currently only taking one class over the summer and when I get home I complete all my homework and eat my lunch. After lunch, I generally take a one-hour break and just watch some TV or play games on my phone. Next, I go swimming in my pool and running for about 1 hour.

Once I’ve done that I go take a shower and start working on other things like this blog post and other extracurricular work like studying for the AP I’m taking next year which is AP European History.

I then eat dinner and then generally relax a bit more before I go to bed at around 9:30. There are a couple of main ways that I am able to hold myself accountable and am able to accomplish these tasks daily. The first is making a plan/schedule which helps you stay on task and track your goals.

The next thing I do is set 5 weekly goals that I have to accomplish and if I don’t then I don’t play until I finish them. Which brings me to my next point which is that I dont play videogames on the weekdays because I have more important work to be completing during that time. However I splurge a little on the weekends and play for about 2.5 hours Friday-Sunday. This may seem difficult but is definetely a good idea.

However when I do feel like I really want to play I game I simply play a mobile game and set a 15 minute timer and then I get back to work or I have an AFK game running that I check in on once in a while. This way it doesn’t feel like a punishment because it’s not.

Finally I like to listen to music and take 10 minute breaks to make myself efficient een for hours at a time which can definetely be hard at times.

Thats it for today’s post tomorrow I’ll be going over how I plan to study for AP euro before I begin that class and overall how I plan to study for the AP test.

As the title suggests this is going to be part one of a multi-part series detailing how you can build your very own PC. I will also include a bunch of other resources that may be of use throughout these posts. With that said lets get into it.

Our first set of steps will need the following pieces of your pc: GPU, CPU, Case, Motherboard, RAM, and powersupply. These are of course your main PC components but we will need them all for todays part of the build.

To start you will need to remove the front panel of your pc case as shown in this picture.

As well as any other panels that you can. Next, we will need to put our RAM and CPU into/on our motherboard. This will require some thermal paste as well as a CPU cooler so make sure you have those for the RAM however simply plug the sticks into their slots

Push these caps open and insert and close the caps and your RAM is all set.

For the CPU however you will first need to unclip the CPU protector from the motherboard which is a small piece of metal that is temporarily hinged there.

Then carefully place in your CPU as shown above and close the clip

Securing it in place. From here on top of the metallic part of your CPU you will need to apply a pea-sized dollop of thermal paste and then put your CPU cooler on top of it as shown in the pictures below.

Make sure to place the bottom side of the CPU cooler onto the CPU as the top side is just the fan, and screw it in. Next, you will need to plug your GPU into your motherboard. Thankfully your GPU is likely quite large and can be put in its own place inside of your PC.

The cables should look something like this and should plug into your motherboard into a similarly shaped hole.

Our final step for today’s post is connecting the power supply which requires a very large cable and socket in the motherboard that should look similar to that of the GPU

That’s it for today’s post I hope you enjoyed and learned a thing or two and I’ll be back tomorrow with another interesting topic.

This is a series that I thought would be interesting as I have recently had an interest in getting stronger and as such, I have been making macro (macronutrient) friendly meals that have helped me lose fat and gain muscle.

In each post in this series, I will add a lunch a snack, and dinner. Because I wake up early for summer school I don’t have time for breakfast and fast from 6:30 am – 2 pm. Once I get home one of my favorite meals for brunch is my chicken & egg white wrap.

I used a low calories lavash bread which was 100 calories for a huge wrap almost a foot long. One large egg, 2 egg whites, 100g of turkey breast, sriracha 2 tsp, and 3 small cheese slices or one large cheese slice. The macros for this meal are as follows: 29.9g carbs, 19.8g fat, 57.8g protein, and 558 calories which is more than 1 gram of protein per 10-calorie!

For a snack, I kept it pretty consistent with A piece of fruit as well as a mix of regular milk and almond milk with a scoop of whey protein. The total macro of my snack is: 27.2 g carbs, 4.2g fat, 35.3g protein, and the total calories are 286 which means that in these snacks protein makes up half of all the calories consumed. This is because a gram of protein is roughly 4 calories and the ratio of protein to calories is 1 gram of protein to 8 calories so only 4 calories out of 8 are not protein.

Finally one of my favorite recipes for dinner is my glazed salmon with mashed potatoes. This may sound unhealthy however I will explain how I make my “mashed potatoes” in a way that makes them totally macro-friendly. To start let’s of course review the food and the meal macros.

This meal comes with 1 medium potato, 1 cup of carrots, 6.6 ounces of salmon, 1tsp of soy sauce, 1 tsp of sriracha, and 200g of mushrooms and onion. I glaze the salmon with soy sauce and sriracha which are both extremely low calories sauces. I get my salmon frozen from Costco. With that done let’s get to the macros: 53.3g carbs, 16g fat, and 51.1g protein and the meal has 641 calories. This meal is on purpose my most carb-heavy meal.

After this other than the occasional piece of fruit I’m not eating for about 20 hours so it is important I stay full. I also eat a filling carb-like potato instead of bread that digests more quickly.

Next, let’s review the entire day’s worth of macros and calories. In total, I had 146 grams of protein, 100 grams of carbs, 21g of fiber, 30 grams of sugar (all-natural and about 3 grams from sriracha), 1,900 mg sodium, and only 40 grams of fat! As well as a calorie total of 1,484.

On top of this healthy eating, I also exercise. This is to help digest my food and get my body into a caloric deficit that helps me lose weight. There are 2 main exercises that I do which are swimming and lifting. I tend to not lift nearly as often I mainly focus on cardio but I try to lift at least once a week.

Thats it for todays post I hope everyone has a great day see you next time!

I figured that people would be interested in how I am preparing for my AP European History AP test way in advance. I am doing this for a couple of reasons, the main reason is that I want a 5 on this AP and also because it will help me in the class as a whole so let’s get to it.

The first thing I am doing is ordering 8 books over the summer that have to do with AP euro. These 8 books cover 8 important fields of European history, a few of them include economy & art. These will help me understand the topic as a whole and will advance my knowledge I will go over each book in this post. However, only 6 of these 8 books are about European history topics the other 2 are for AP test prep.

The first book I bought was “Vienna 1814” written by David King. Which is a book on the peace treaties signed in Vienna known as the Treaties of Paris. That ended the Napoleanic wars which were a huge part of European history as they raged on for 15 years. This book provides a deeper insight into French history in particular and is definitely a good read.

Next up is “The Greek Revolution” which is another great book written by Mark Mazower. This book as you can imagine goes into extreme detail about all the events that took place in Greece’s independence and is another important book to read for historical context. It provides amazing information however the verbiage used is extremely complex and not for the average reader.

This next book is more about the economic state of things in European countries and it’s called “Gods Bankers” by author Gerald Posner. This book is all about money management in Vatican City and how it has evolved over the years under different popes. Overall it is a great boo but it is very long so be ready for that.

The next book that I got is called “Rescuing Da Vinci” written by Robert M. Edsel. This book is quite interesting as it is about how the N*zi’s stole European art and how the Allies attempted to recover it all. As well as how the N*zi’s stole part of the European culture as a result.

The Final normal book I got is called “The Ugly Renaissance” which goes over all the aspects of the Renaissance which is a period of artistic and cultural development in Europe starting in the 14th century. It is written by author Alexander Lee.

The final 2 books that I bought are for the AP test to prepare for it in advance. The first of which is called “Crash Course AP European History” written by Larry Krieger. This book essentially goes over a bunch of key terms and ideas in Europe that will likely be on the test and it is less in-depth than the second book I bought.

The second book that I bought is from The Princeton Review and it is called “Ap European History Premium 2022” This book includes 6 full-length practice tests as well as detailed information on every time period of European history up to the 20th century. It is written by the staff of the Princeton review and not one single author. Each chapter also includes a detailed timeline of when each event occurs in each chapter.

I hope you guys enjoyed this blog post and just as an FYI these books were all recommended to me by my high school Ap European History teacher so these books have all been vouched for and reviewed before I bought or recommended them to you guys. But that’s it for today see you next time.