college-applications/personal.md

 I’ve lived my whole life as a series of time loops. My whole life has been a combination of different series of events that are very repetitive in structure, having a “loop” or reset at the end of whatever that thing is, then slightly changing in the next loop. I mainly live in three different loops: Hockey, School, and Home.
Hockey has been a consistent loop for me ever since I started playing in eighth grade. The repetition happens every year at the start of a new season. Every loop is mostly the same, sometimes the teams I’m on change (JV to Varsity, recreational to travel), but small things have shaped how each loop affected and changed me as a person. Starting high school hockey in 9th grade, my first year I was on my high school’s JV team, as well as a rec league team. Our JV team was not good at hockey, most of us being new to the sport and playing at this level only for the first time. Every year, my high school team stayed more or less the same up until my senior year’s team, where I’ve finally started a loop and been on the top team for our school. Another part of the loop is the other team I’ve played for outside of high school, be it a recreational team or a travel team. My rec teams have always had the same teammates, and the seasons were mostly similar, having the same coach and results. My junior year was my first year playing travel, which was a big change for the loop. Not only did the amount I had to practice triple, but I started practicing outside of on-ice time, and playing with much more intensity in game. All of this has always been something that takes up a lot of my time, giving me less time at home for the home loop to take place in. 

Another loop in my life is school. School underwent two major changes during my time in high school. The first was the change from McMillen High school to Plano East high school as part of my school district’s regular track for students, and the second was the change at the same time from taking only a few AP classes to taking mostly AP classes. My 9th and 10th grade loops were very mundane and similar, with me mostly just focusing on classes and not participating in anything much extracurricular at school. My 11th grade year was when I made the most difference, however. In 11th, not only did I switch to attending Plano East Sr. High, but I also took 6 AP classes with the 7th being a class of equal difficulty, Chinese 3 Honors. On top of that, junior year was filled with many extracurricular activities and clubs. Junior year forced me to change my work ethic a thousandfold, bringing me from someone who just finished his homework and moved on, to someone who would spend time studying the night before tests because I was finally facing a curriculum that challenged me. Senior year has inspired other big changes. I've taken a similar amount of extracurricular clubs, and added Cybersecurity club to the list, however, I’ve lightened my course load to only 5 classes total, 4 being AP and one being dual enrollment. I’ve learned different methods of time management, having to spend time not only on all my activities and classes, but also having to work on college applications and balance friendships and relationships. 

Finally, the other main time loop I live through is my home life. At home, I’ve lived through seven loops so far during high school. Each loop is usually from the beginning of summer to halfway through winter, then again through the rest of winter until the beginning of summer again. Home life has been characterized by time spent doing three main activities: time with my family, studying, and relaxing. Through all of the loops I’ve experienced all of these activities have had slight changes. Through the first two years of high school I experienced four loops, where my time with family and my time studying had a slow inverse relationship, where I studied more and spent less time with my family. That time climaxed in junior year, where I spent so much time away from my family that I stopped interacting with them much at all. I would go out and see plates of food left out for me instead of family dinners. I once overheard my brother talking about changing the position he played in football. The next time I saw a plate waiting for me, something changed. I realized  I hadn’t been putting my family as a priority in my life. Because of that, the next day after school, I went to my parents and told them all about my day, shocking and making my mom very happy, as this was something we used to do daily but hadn’t done since 9th grade. Later that night, I talked to my brother about football and asked what he did in his new position. Football had never been interesting to me and I didn’t know anything about it, so this was just about getting to know him and what he was doing better. Time relaxing has always been constant, but what I actually do to relax has changed significantly. In loops one to three, I spent a lot of time playing Tetris and Minecraft with friends to relax. In loops four and five, I switched to spending more time reading books. Also during loop five, I had a large change in how all of my time was balanced, with less time going to relaxing so more time could be spent either studying or with family. Loops six and seven have been characterized with finally reaching a balance between the time I spend on all my activities at home, with about a third spent each way, as well as finding new hobbies to do with my family like playing chess or watching tv series together. I also have found new ways I like to relax, including completing cybersecurity challenges and programming. 

As you can see, my life has been filled with lots of overlapping time loops that each have built upon the person I was in order to make me the person I am today. All of this has worked to let me improve my skills greatly and learn about many different topics. My loops have taught me different levels of time management, relaxation, maintaining relationships, and more. This is what makes me who I am.