It's an ambitious goal, but I intend to try hard, and it would be really awesome if I achieved it. (Oct 16 is the last day of fall break, so it'd give me one real break day, and would greatly decrease my stress for the following 2.5 school weeks.)
New Betting Policy
For this personal goal market, I'm trying something new — instead of only betting YES, I will not bet at all, but will instead subsidize the market. I will also try to provide updates in the comments. Hopefully, this means the market will be somewhat accurate, and I can take actions with the motivation of "moving the market".
Resolution Criteria
To resolve YES: I must have everything done — such that I could simply paste my essays, question answers, activities, honors, etc. into the app and hit submit. (Rec letters don't count since they're mostly out of my control now. Portfolios do count if I decide to submit one.) While I'm sure I will further revise my essays and such after October 15, I must be satisfied with what I've got — there can't be any parts where I'm like "I know this is bad" or "I know I have to change this." They must also satisfy the word/character limits, at least according to Google Docs.
If I technically have everything done, such that it superficially meets the above criteria, but I know I'm not satisfied with one or more drafts (even though they were good-faith attempts as opposed to stream-of-consciousness or keyboard-mashing), then I will resolve 50%. Otherwise, I will resolve NO.
The Task Ahead
I will likely early-apply to two colleges, a private school with lots of supplementals and a public school with almost none. I am leaning toward submitting a puzzle portfolio to the private school. I may still change my mind about which colleges to early-apply to. The real deadline is like November 1st.
For the Personal Essay, I have a draft, but it still has clear areas of improvement. This will take many hours of work, but I see the path forward. It's one of the two key things to watch for this market.
For the supplementals, I have ideas of what I may write for most of them, but I haven't done most of the actual drafting yet. Again, will take many hours of work, but I see the path forward. If I switch colleges, then that changes the amount of supplementals I have to write, which probably makes it harder (since I haven't been thinking about them as much) but not necessarily. It's the other of the two key things to watch for this market.
For the puzzle portfolio, I will use puzzles I've already constructed, so I'd have to curate and blurb them. This could take a variable amount of time depending on how much I end up reusing words I've already written. It might matter for this market, though it's not as likely.
For the activities and honors sections, I have a spreadsheet with a tentative list and descriptions. I'll do some more fine-tuning, but I find it hard to imagine a world where I have all the writing done but the market resolves NO because of this.
For the random other application stuff to fill out, I've done the bulk of it, but there's some other stuff I have to enter. Again, though, this is a task with clearly defined scope, so unless I encounter something that requires an unexpectedly large amount of thinking, this will also not be the problem for this market.
If you have any questions, you can ask! I reserve the right not to answer them for privacy reasons, though.
General policy for my markets: In the rare event of a conflict between my resolution criteria and the agreed-upon common-sense spirit of the market, I may resolve it according to the market's spirit or N/A, probably after discussion.
Related questions
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@Joshua I think the 50% is more viable. The real issue is a lack of desire to stay up late to meet this goal. Which is kind of bad. Best case scenario for YES/50% is that in the next hour, I get a strong sense of guilt
@Joshua I’ll most likely do that. Gotta think through the format and whether I wanna do it differently though
@Conflux really the issue is that I’m not in a frenzy. the deadline doesn’t feel visceral to me right now. I’ll do more work, but in my current mental state I would be shocked if I finished all of it. this market is super overpriced
Y’all, I was ready to sort of call it quits but then I had a breakthrough on my personal essay; I figured out a way to reorganize it that I’m pretty happy with (and also a plan for my remaining supplementals). It’s still objectively a longshot for me to achieve this goal given how much is still left (and the constraint that it’s actually submittable - which is big - though recall that a 50% resolution is possible), but I can see the path. It’s…a lot of components though.
@Conflux Also, I’ve decided not to do a portfolio (at least for this early app).
I still don’t really know what to do market resolution-wise about my indecision over which of two colleges to apply early to. Let’s hope I finish the supplementals for both…
I assessed the task ahead, and it feels ambitious but tractable - even with my attempt to complete the supplementals of both potential early schools. I think even if I fail, this market/goal will have been helpful.
My plan is not to look at any notifications until noon tomorrow morning, leaving me (hopefully) focused on writing for the morning. I will manifest productivity! Stretch goal is drafts of everything tomorrow, then on Sunday I can go through and fix all the dumb parts, which will probably take just as long. But I’d settle for drafts of most things.
Goodnight y’all.
@RobertCousineau I’ve made substantial progress on the random other application stuff - also some revising of the writing. Frankly, my mood keeps vacillating, and so does my opinion on whether this market is way too high or way too low
@Conflux Also, my current opinion is that the personal essay is actually a bigger risk than the supplementals, since I have big dreams for the personal essay that may prove elusive.
@Conflux that all makes sense to me. Are you planning on working more on these today? Do you think of the real deadline for these as Monday or as EOM?
@RobertCousineau Yes. I’m planning on dedicating basically all the productive hours I can manage today and tomorrow to this goal.
Obviously I think of Nov 1 as the real deadline - otherwise I’d be panicking way more at having a 40% chance of getting something I’m happy with. Nevertheless, my objective here is that even if I fail at the goal, I make lots of progress so that I’m not super stressed before the deadline (where my schedule is fuller).
Update (sorry for not posting one recently): I’ve made some progress in the last week, and feel like I’m in a productive headspace. However, I just spent the last two of my break days focusing on winding down Puzzles for Progress (which is a good long-term decision for my college apps, but means those days were not dedicated to meeting my deadline). The good news, though, is that I have this afternoon/evening and the following two days basically cleared out for meeting my goal. Will it be enough? Will I be in a sufficiently productive mood? Time will tell, but I’m gonna re-read my drafts this afternoon and make a plan of action.
Also, I’m now strongly considering switching one of my early colleges, which means more work. Ideally I’ll finish the supplementals for both and there’ll be no controversy with this market, but I’ll have to think about exactly how I resolve if I’ve finished them for one but not the other.
@AlexbGoode Well, if I don’t do it by Oct 15, I still have to do it before Nov 1, when I’ll be juggling it with more other things
@Conflux I mean in general. You don't have to go to college in the U.S. My application for Uni took probably around an hour.
@AlexbGoode Oh, yeah, in theory I could apply internationally. Still, for me I think it’s a worthwhile tradeoff to do the annoying US holistic applications to go to schools that seem really awesome and like good fits for me
(and also there’s a broader sense in which international schools don’t feel “on the table” the way American ones do…it’d be an interesting experience but one with its own sets of pitfalls, I think)
@Conflux i can send you the oxford document (written by two people, one of whom was based in the bay). it has pros and cons and i think is an interesting read for if you're interested
@astyerche it’s just a whole extra set of work at this point. I did have one day where I watched a bunch of videos about uk schools and filled out some of ucas but then gave up bc it seemed hard