News Post #4

In the Washington Post's "Metro’s Silver Line extension stirs redevelopment in Reston", Fredrick Kunkle talks about the expansion of the Metro's Silver Line and the Wiehle Avenue Station. Near the station, the city and the area is building a $750 million dollar area complete with hotels, parking and other expenses. This increase in urban spending in tandem with the expansion of the Metro line will hopefully draw a lot a water into the Reston area and bring the town a lot of revenue. The Metro Line is scheduled to open in December of 2013, but until then, the entire city is abuzz with construction. 


My grandparents, who moved to Reston in the 70s, were promised that a Metro Line expansion was coming in their near future, but now in 2012, I think that this line is incredibly overdue. Hopefully, when I come home from college over the summers, I will be able to enjoy being able to take the metro line into DC and spend the days there.

News Post #3

The first private space craft, the "Dragon" by SpaceX docked on the International Space Station this past weekend. Although it had some difficulty with the navigation aspect, SpaceX's Dragon is officially the first private vessel that has landed and docked in the International Space Statino marking a new age in private space flight. Mr. Musk, who runs the program, talks about how know that they have completed their goal of going to the International Space Station, they plan to get a vessel to Mars by the next 20 years at most. \

As a fan of space and space travel, I find this article amoosing because I'm fascinated about the idea of the privatization of the space industry because I want to go to space. Like Now. NOW. Why aren't I in space?

News Post #2

Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook, is officially a billionaire and now he is married as well. Last Saturday, he married his long-time girlfriend, Priscilla Chan, after his incredibly famous and popular website, Facebook, went public on Wall Street open to all investors. By selling some 30 million shares of his company last week, Mark Zuckerberg went from paper billionaire, to actual "I have a billion dollars" billionaire.

I find this important because as a techie and someone interested in going into the computer industry, I like to keep in the know about other industry veterans and happenings in the tech world.

http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/05/24/mark-zuckerberg-officially-a-billionaire/?ref=technology

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/27/fashion/who-is-priscilla-chan.html?ref=technology

News Post #1

In the New York Times article, "For Tech Start-Ups, New York Has Increasing Allure", Joshua Brustein argues that the Big Apple, rather than the bay area, may become the new go to locale for those who wish to start up tech companies and are looking for work in the computer industry. He does this by relaying the experiences of Doug Imbruce, a CEO of a start-up that works in interactive videos. He also gives empirical facts in the form of statistical data about how many start-ups in the New york area received venture financing compared to a couple of years ago.

 I find this article incredibly important and relatable to my life because I want to work in the computer industry and potentially start my own company. If most of the jobs are up in New York by the time I graduate, then I will most likely have to move north instead of moving west. 

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/28/technology/for-tech-startups-new-york-has-increasing-allure.html?_r=1&ref=technology

Senior Reflection #3 (AP Exams)

With AP Exam week being finally over, I think it would be an appropriate time to do a post mortem on them. I had the great fortune of having 5 days in a row of AP Exams which made things incredibly (in)convenient. First was BC Calculus which was not as difficult as I had imagined it would be, which is excellent since if I get a 5 on that exam, I will place out of the first year of mathematics at UVA. Second was AP Literature which I felt like I did well on, but it honestly doesn't matter due to the fact that I can only get credit for either AP English Language or AP English Literature for UVA. Next was AP German, which I have absolutely no idea how I did due to the fact that I can barely speak and understand German. Next was AP Physics which we all failed, and finally, AP US and Comparative which I felt surprisingly very confident on. All in all, I had been dreading this exam season for months, but now that it is over, I understand that it was not at all as awful as I had anticipated it would be.

Senior Reflection #2 (AP Classes)

Having taken 5 AP classes this year (6 if you break US and Comparative into two classes),  I feel like I am much better prepared for college level courses. Although I know that I will definitely have to repeat some classes in college (Physics), the AP exam scores from my sophomore and junior years will help me place out of a lot of introductory classes and start working towards completing my major requirements sooner. Also, I felt incredibly confident on many of the AP exams I took this year, so hopefully, I will have done well enough on these classes this year to help me place out of even more classes. At first I had thought that taking this amount of work this year would be incredibly difficult, but now that I am approaching the end, I am realizing that I am even more capable of takign a large workload and will be incredibly more prepared for the years to come.

Senior Reflection #1 (Application Process)

Now that everything is done with and I am heading off to the University of Virginia in the Fall, I can look back at the entire college application process and judge fairly that it was not as difficult as I had thought it would be. Thanks to online applications and a lot of similarity between apps, the process really did not eat up the amount of time that I had expected it to. However, I did procrastinate on the majority of the applications and waited literally to the last minute to submit some of the applications. In addition, the Common App made things incredibly easy, but I wish that more universities used it. If Virginia Tech and George Mason has used the Common App, it would have made my application process even easier. All in all, now that I have the experience of applying to universities and scholarships, I can be better prepared for applications for school loans/jobs/internships/ or any other competitive things that will come my way in the future.