---
title: 'Summer Summary: Challenging, but…'
author: Mingjie Jiang
date: 2017-08-28T12:29:00.000Z
---
<div class="kg-card-markdown">
  <p>
    My blog stopped updating at my birthday. Where have I been for the entire summer?
  </p>

  <p>
    I have been working nonstop this summer. I might have been the busiest summer of my entire life. But I enjoyed it.
  </p>

  <p>
    I accomplished things that I can&#8217;t even believe I accomplished.
  </p>

  <p>
    During my trip to Yellowstone, Arches and Grand Teton National Parks, I walked a couple hours a day under the 100 degrees sun; but I made it, made it to the Delicate Arch, made it to the Devil&#8217;s Garden, made it to some of the best overlooks of the world. It was hard, (since we accidentally walked into a hard trail) and there was once that I almost thought I&#8217;m never getting out of that trail.
  </p>

  <p>
    <img src="/img/uploads/upload-1503897083.jpg" alt="Me holding on to the rocks while getting over an almost vertical cliff" /><em><sub>Me holding on to the rocks while getting over an almost vertical cliff</sub></em>
  </p>

  <p>
    And that was not my only challenge this summer. There was so much more.
  </p>

  <p>
    I went to <a href="http://cathayfuture.us/">Washington Cathay Future Center</a> for internship/volunteering jobs. It might not be considered a real "job" for me, but I have definitely learned stuff from this wonderful opportunities. I met awesome people, adorable kids, practiced my leadership skills&#8230; Everything&#8230; Everything&#8230; I&#8217;ve been doing easy work: social media translation, teaching assistant, event filming&#8230; To some people, I might be working way too hard. Yet my goal was simple &#8211; I was doing it, so I wanted to show them my good work ethic; they were paying me, so I want to show them that it was worth hiring me.
  </p>

  <p>
    <img src="/img/uploads/upload-1503896238.jpg" alt="twins" /><em><sub>The twins at WCFC who had been bullying me for this entire summer</sub></em>
  </p>

  <p>
    <a href="https://cty.jhu.edu">Johns Hopkins Center for the Talented Youth (CTY)</a> was another big chunk of my summer. I haven&#8217;t been to a lot of summer camps, but CTY was so well-organized that I can promise it was worth the bucks. I was not expecting "math logic" to be like that. As a computer science fan, I think formal logic is probably more important than those boring school-curriculum-programming classes. It helped me start thinking about things in a different way.
  </p>

  <p>
    <img src="/img/uploads/upload-1503896524.jpg" alt="My classmates at CTY" /><em><sub>My classmates at CTY &#8211; Ellen, Skye and Raj</sub></em>
  </p>

  <p>
    Marching band. At first I struggled when deciding to join marching band or not, because I knew that marching band would take up a lot of my time. And it turned out that my concern was reasonable &#8211; because marching band rehearsal is usually half to full day, I had to take off classes for band. Sometimes I had to piss off my directors by missing half a day of band rehearsal and not knowing what to do after coming back. Standing in the sun for hours gave me sunburns; however, it also strengthened me both physically and mentally.
  </p>

  <p>
    Among all these amazing opportunities, I learned how to be a nice co-worker, a friendly roommate, a strong marcher, and in general, how to organize my summer. I really appreciate everyone I met throughout the summer &#8211; campers, volunteers, interns and staff members at WCFC; hallmates, classmates, my RA Marcus, TA Luba, and my instructor John at CTY; staff and friends at marching band; co-hackers at BigParser Hackathon; and all those who made my summer one of the worst, and one of the best.
  </p>

  <p>
    <img src="/img/uploads/upload-1503896687.jpg" alt="Hackathon" /><em><sub>Co-hackers at BigParser Hackathon</sub></em>
  </p>

  <p>
    It might seem like I wrote this for no reason and it looks extremely boring. This is just for my own record so that I know my amazing summer, as well as surviving it, was real.
  </p>
</div>
