Blog Entry 11.15.07


Nothing else matters
There are no moral victories in this one.

As Gaussian Math turns six months old, it’s perhaps time I shared a little bit about myself.

My name is Donny, founder of Gaussian Math. While my career has yet to take off, I never really thought that mathematics was something I would do full time. With an equal amount of passion for music, in particular playing electric bass, I also dreamed that I would play music as a career. I love to jam with those great jazz legends or even lead my own jazz quartet playing jazz and groovy tunes. The only problem is I came into the music scene late and didn’t have that musical training such as sight reading and hearing which was needed for a musician to go far. That ruled out the possibility of doing music full time. Now, I play for a jazz band that does occasional gigs in Singapore but still needed to turn to something else for the next twenty years of my life. That’s mathematics, something that I love to do and was good at.

Throughout my days as a high school student, I was working towards that ultimate goal of entering a top college in the United States. I studied hard for my exams, cramped extra curriculum activities into my schedule, and represented the school in various Olympiads all with the hopes to be a student from a school like MIT, Stanford, or Princeton. I knew they were hard to get into but I didn’t exactly know the percentages of enrollment or the ‘secret formula’ of getting into them. I simply thought straight As and 1400+ SAT would cut it. How wrong I was.

Receiving the acceptance letters in March this year, MIT, Caltech and Stanford said no. Columbia on the other hand put me on the waiting list. While MIT is considered as ‘the top’ school to many, I was growing fond of Columbia because it is an urban campus whose emphasis through its core curriculum on the arts, history, and music kind of appealed to me. Being in New York City didn’t hurt either, as I am after all a jazz musician. I knew there was some hope of getting accepted since they waitlisted me thinking there was something in my application that attracted them. I quickly referred to percentages on waitlisted students and found to my dismay that only a modest 2% gets admitted. After much anticipation, Columbia pushed me on the extended waiting list only to reject me much later in end of June.

That was like a knife to the heart. All my hopes of arriving in the Big Apple, walking out of Grand Central Station and entering Low Memorial Library to have a discussion with a Nobel Laureate professor on algebraic manifolds were destroyed. Throughout my high school years, I did everything to achieve that goal of entering the Ivy League. Endless nights of integrating countless of sums, proving numerous conjectures, and practicing past year examination papers were all meant to reach that finish line. It didn’t matter if I aced all my A level subjects. It didn’t matter if I have full points for my extra curriculum activities. It didn’t matter if I had wonderful testimonials. In the end, all that matters is a yes from Columbia. That didn’t happen.

It took me a while to recuperate from the sorrow that filled my days ahead. I turned to the NBA hoping that would cheer me up. It was this time of the year when the NBA playoffs were taking place. I was rooting for my favorite team, the Houston Rockets as they try to beat the Utah Jazz in a best of seven series. My favourite player happens to be Tracy McGrady, or Tmac, who plays for the Rockets. He is one fantastic player, averages 24.6ppg 6.5apg 5.3ppg for that season, who at one point in his career was arguably the best basketball player in the league. Still, being such a great individual talent, he has yet to advance past the first round of the playoffs. Now, with a great team consisting of Yao Ming, this season was his best chance.

Game 7 was played in Houston, and the final buzzer rang. The Houston Rockets lost 103 to 99. Tmac, yet again, did not get out of the first round.

I really sympathize with Tmac in this lost. I was rooting for Tmac since his days in Orlando. To me, his style of play coupled with his likable character would make me wish him success in the league. With him and Yao healthy heading into the 2007 playoffs, this was perhaps his best chance to go deep into the playoffs even up to the conference finals. Throughout the regular season, he certainly shined putting up some impressive wins against the leagues elite teams. He would dribble for a pull up, dunk on a few 7 footer centers, and simply showed his dazzling array of moves suggesting to anyone else that he, and the Houston Rockets, was to be feared in the playoffs. Yet, no matter how good you are in wins or statistics in the regular season, all these don’t mean a thing if you can’t win in the playoffs. Nothing else matters but to beat the opposition team in a best of seven series.

Just like how none of my distinctions and grades in my exams mattered if I didn’t get into Columbia. I now know how it feels to have put everything into a certain goal of yours only to have it vaporized. My accomplishments of a student, be it emotionally or intellectually meaningful, would mean nothing. There are no moral victories in this one, only a win or a lost. I lost. By no means am I blaming Columbia for not picking me. I understand that they had to choose other students, who just had that something extra, over me. What I did in my high school years was simply not good enough.

In the post game interview following the game 7 lost, Tmac broke into tears telling the media that he gave his best and yet lost the game. A grown man who shows his emotions like that certainly gets my respect. For 10 years in his NBA career, all the energy, blood, sweat and tears his puts into the game, night in and night out, was suppose to amount a championship, let alone a playoff win. But it didn’t and surely he must have felt disappointed, crushed, and destroyed. I too, felt the same way after getting the rejection letter.

Oh yeah, to Tmac or any Houston Rockets fan for that matter, if you are reading this: “The Houston Rockets are going to go far in the playoffs this year!” As for me, the undergraduate application period is right around the corner and another chance for me to get a win.