Now, supposedly, this blog is the last blog in the blog cycle (I still got to finish writing Case #3), so I thought I would take a break from my usual blogs and talk about more of the mystery that takes place in the other parts of my life. Most of my blogs have been topics that I have been really interested in, and they represented the passions that are more well known. But, I thought I would take some time to reflect on my school career, and talk about other passions, and where I am heading.

 

High school was… interesting, to put it one way. Freshman year was cut off due to COVID, and due to my lack of knowledge on extracurriculars, I only got to do so much before there was a year-long drought of activities. However, one of the best parts of freshman year were meeting new people and friends, and that helped me reconnect back so easily when we were all back in person in my junior year. One thing to know about me is that when it comes to meeting new friends, I am just like Hamlet in that I am unable to take action. Most of my friends, including my first friends in kindergarten, have all asked me to be friends. Of course, that made it easier for me to make friends, because even though I am extroverted, I still find it difficult to go up and initiate conversations with new people. However, in my freshman year, I did take action for once and I got to know a lot of great friends from doing so. And even though I met a lot of new friends in high school, I thankfully am still close with my old friends. In fact, two of my friends in my AP Lit class are people I have known since kindergarten. (Hello there, Adam and Evan!) Regardless, having old and new friends in high school was great and it helped me navigate North a lot easier. The goal is to make a positive impact on those I have met, and hopefully, I have achieved that.

 

Anyways, I think it is time to look at some other things I am interested in that don’t quite get emphasized. One such thing is interior design. A running inside joke I have is that I say that interior design is a hobby not a career, but as someone who is interested in interior design, I know that is not true. I found the website Planner 5D which let me design the house structure and the furniture within, which also helped in expanding my imagination. Here is an example of one of my designs:

I don’t really know why I started liking interior design, but it was cool to design houses and make creative places to live. Maybe it’s because as a kid, whenever I would go to someone else’s house for the first time, I would run around their entire house. I would map the layout of the house, and I think it’s because I thought of it as another mystery to solve, the layout of the house. But seeing how each house was structured and how furniture was placed amazed me, so maybe that’s why I started liking interior design, but who knows, it’s a mystery.

 

Another thing that I am passionate about is Pokemon. Maybe I have mentioned it before, but I just wanted to talk about it again. Anyways, take this Piplup:

 

I have always been interested in Pokemon, and excluding the 3DS games, I have played every main-series game. Recently, I have gotten on the grind of playing Pokemon Showdown which is a competitive training website for Pokemon. I started playing random battles, which is a battle format in which you and your opponent get 6 random Pokemon and you battle. I have played so many battles that I practically memorized the moveset of every variation of every Pokemon, which lets me just predict what my opponent is going to do. So… ya, maybe I was a little bit addicted

 

Welp, now that I finished my rant about some things, let me get back to what I needed to do. Solving the mystery of A. Mistry can’t be done without going back to my checklist. Last time I had written a blog about myself, I had a list of things that I was going to do this semester, so let’s see how I did:

 

• Tech Week for show Naperville: I got to be lighting designer for this show, but the time it took to prepare the lights made me behind in all my classes. I guess you win some and lose some.
• Start Track: I didn’t think I would do so well due to my commitments to other activities, but I managed to run all the races I wanted to run, and I got a personal record on all of them, so I guess I did something. After the musical I will go back to track for the final race.
• State Math Team: I mean, we did place 5th in state, and I also placed in regionals for the first time, so it was a success, and everything, but it is kind of sad that it is over now. But hey, it was pretty cool doing even more math!
• Coding a Schedule Algorithm: If you read some of my previous blogs, or have read Max’s, you may know about the wonders of coding this algorithm, but back in December, I did not know how much brain power it would take to create a single algorithm, and it still has my brain in pieces even though there is only like 3 weeks left.
• Jazz: I got put as the lead trumpet player in my jazz band, and I definitely did not think I was up to the task. But, during our performance festival and clinic, I did get an award for an outstanding soloist, so maybe I feel a bit more confident about my skills.
• ELA: Even though math is my favorite subject, and I am going to study it in the future, it does not make me immune from getting absolutely clapped by this class and Mrs. Moore. It’s a fun class and I still enjoy math, but my grade and GPA definitely doesn’t enjoy math anymore.
• Musical: Ah yes, the musical. Originally, I was going to play in the pit, but for some reason, there wasn’t a euphonium part of equivalent, so I signed up for tech instead and now I am doing lighting.

 

So, I guess, except for my regular classes, my semester so far has been pretty successful, but something still doesn’t feel right. I’m missing one more clue that helps me solve the mystery of A. Mistry. And I think that clue will show up in the next few weeks. So, let’s check out what I am doing to end my last year of school! 

 

First off, the musical. These next two weeks will be the busiest weeks of my year, and that starts with the musical. The production of the musical has been great so far, and I have helped build so much of the set, so I think it was pretty successful, so I hope y’all watch the show! Next, the following week, I have all my AP Exams, which include Chemistry, Psychology, Literature, and Statistics. All of these exams are one day after another, so I will practically have no time after school. Oh well. Within those weeks, I may have a track meet, so I do have to watch out for that. And of course, there are all the senior celebration events to graduation, like prom, actual graduation, senior brunch and everything else. And I can’t forget all the band concerts I have to finish for the school year. Oh, and all the finals I have to take. It seems that next month will be packed with things to do. But, I hope that I can still enjoy my last few weeks of school, and graduate checking all the boxes. 

 

Next year, I am going to Purdue to study applied mathematics and chemical engineering, but there is so much more that I want to do, so I hope that I can keep up with all my passions that I just wrote about, because that’s what makes me… me. So, to finish off the mystery, what we have learned about A. Mistry is that what I want to do is all the things I possibly can, I want to stay busy, as long as I am doing the things I want to do, because that’s what makes me happy, and that’s when I know I am doing the right things. 

And to you all reading the blog, I would like to say, enjoy solving the mystery of life and the future ahead of you, and finish senior year by solving the mystery of the present!

 

The Solver of A. Mistry,

Detective Aarav Mistry