Hey everyone,
I want to end this post on a high note so let me start with the bad news first: I’ve visited a few more doctors since the last time I updated and it turns out I am indeed hypermobile. It turns out that hypermobility syndrome could be a mild case of Ehlers-Danlos syndrome, which happens to be one of those vague connective tissue disorders that covers a wide spectrum of mild to severe and life threatening syndromes. Thankfully, I seem to have a really mild form of it since I’m not experiencing broken blood vessels or anything like that. Paganini happened to have it, which allowed him to have an amazing range of flexibility when playing the violin. Of course, the disease also hindered him, and he was pretty much sick for the most of his life, staying in bed for months at a time. An interesting thing to note is that he also suffered from a myriad of other sicknesses, such as tuberculosis, syphillis, scoliosis, and so on and so forth, and by the middle of his life he had lost all of his teeth and could only eat food after it was mashed into a fine paste. Amazingly, he was still able to pick up chicks after that!
So anyways, I had dabbled at the piano and viola maybe about 15 or so times since may, but the strange sensations started to return so I suppose I’m doing too much too soon. Basically, I have to wait for myself to age so that my joints get stiffer. In the meantime, I guess I should pick up a new hobby or something like that. When I was in highschool I used to do calligraphy, so I guess I should pick up where I left off. Here’s a sample of my handwriting from my notes from genetics class:
While it’s not perfect, I know that it’s pretty good compared to most of today’s handwriting so I have some promise here. This was done with a stiff nib fountain pen so it’s not exactly the best tool to use for handwriting. I got a hold of some dip pens with broad tip and flexible nibs, along with heavier paper which should yield better resluts. So if I feel like it I’ll post some of my work later on.
For the past 6 months or so I’ve been exercising a lot. I used to run until I hurt my ankle do to overuse I suppose. So now I’m just lifting weights and cycling, which I did competitively in high school. I’ll probably never compete again, but it’s a lot of fun and it keeps me in shape, so I’ll keep doing it until I can’t. I worked my way up to squatting aroud 200 pounds (I currently weigh 128), but sometime in July I realized that I had been using bad form, and I had only been squatting down to about 90 degrees, rather than a full squat, which goes below parallel. So I went back to just using the bar (45 pounds), and I adopted a new 5×5 program as well. More on that later. So now I go all the way down, and I’ve worked my way up to 100 pounds. It kind of sucks because going back to lighter weights makes you look like a wuss, but it’s better to look like a wuss than to get injured of course. I’ll work my way up to heavier weights anyways.
So now for the good news! I might have written in this in an earlier post, but I should mention that I’m currently in school and majoring in Actuarial Sciences (along with Economics, and another thing called “Plan II”). So in order to make it big in my profession, you need to pass about 10 or so professional examinations. These are administered on a pass/fail basis so you only need to pass, just like the Bar for the Law profession. Of course, it also helps if you get a high score, but the most important thing is that you pass. So in my profession, it’s like taking the Bar 10 times! So I took my first professional exam, called the P/1 test. It tests basic probability skills, and has roughly a 35% pass rate. It’s not as bad as it looks because the people who fail it fail spectacularly, while the people who pass often pass it with flying colors. It’s just that people think they’re good to go after having taken an intro probablity course, which doesn’t really give them the speed and accuracy that they need for the test. Anyways, I spent a couple months studying for the test and I passed! This is very good since it means I can get a job after I graduate. I plan on taking 2 more tests, the FM/2 and the M/3 exams before I graduate.