Improving Social Skills And Making Friends In The Intermediate Grades: Fill & Download for Free

Before and at the outset of the Pacific War - extremely well-trained.But as the war progressed - became increasingly poorly-trained.It is no exaggeration to say that many Japanese naval aviators who successfully completed pre-war or early war training were the aerial Navy Seals - the best of the best. To truly understand this, it is important to know how the Japanese Navy recruited and trained pilots for its air arm.You will find it difficult to believe the level of rigor as well as brutality that characterized the training program undergone by Japanese naval aviators. In fact, it was so unbelievably brutal and rigorous as to defy belief and will make you roll your eyes as you read the rest of my answer.Overview of the Air Arm of the Japanese NavyIsoroku YamamotoAdmiral Yamamoto was the man who deserved most of the credit for the establishment of the air arm of the Japanese Navy. He was an advocate of air power at a time when powered flight and aviation technology were still relatively primitive. In 1924, after returning from the US, Yamamoto, by then a 40-year-old captain, requested and was designated executive officer of the Kasumigaura Naval Air Training Center. Thereafter, he held a series of prominent posts in aviation which deepened his knowledge and appreciation for the war-winning potential of naval aviation.Influenced by such a broad experience with aviation, Yamamoto was determined to create a formidable air arm for the Japanese Navy by implementing an extremely demanding training program that uncompromisingly insisted on the highest standards embodied in strict recruit-selecting criteria and insanely brutal mental and physical training.1/ SelectionThere were two sources from which the naval pilot training program drew recruits:Active-duty sailors: The vast majority of Japanese naval aviators were originally enlisted naval personnel: sailors and petty officers. Only a small percentage of the aviators were commissioned officers and graduates of Japan’s Naval Academy at Etajima. Thus, most Japanese naval air aces were non-commissioned officers who did most of the fighting and dying. Recruitment from this source started in 1920.Talented 15–17 year-old teenage boys: Starting in 1930, the Navy initiated a program called Yokaren designed to identify and recruit highly talented youngsters for naval aviation training.The pre-war Navy had an elitist mindset with regard to the development of its air arm. It was obsessed with producing a small but extremely capable corps of aviators. Accordingly, the selection process was fiercely competitive and the criteria were almost prohibitively exclusive as evidenced by the very low admission rate of early aviator classes. For the naval enlisted personnel source, during the 1920–1933 period, up to 2 classes of aviators of only 20–40 pilots graduated each year. Between 1933–1940, up to 6 classes graduated each year. The pre-war admission rate was incredibly low. For example in 1937, of the 1,500 sailor applicants, only 70 were accepted, meaning that the admission rate was 4.67%. For those recruited through the Yokaren program, the admission criteria were even higher. It was not unusual that every year, out of 20,000 applicants, only about 200 passed the initial written exam and were accepted, an acceptance rate of 1%, even lower than many Ivy League Universities; and the written exam was only the 1st filter in the screening process. Many of the fortunate few who passed the written exams would be eliminated during the rigorous physical examination.Consequently, those who passed through all the filters in the process were the cream of the crops of a nation of about 70 millions people. Despite being the best of the best, little did these men know, many of them would fail in the course of their brutal and demanding training to become naval aviators.2/ TrainingBeing admitted did not guarantee a pilot trainee graduation or even an assignment to carrier operation. In fact, the graduation rate was not particularly high and expulsion during training was quite common. Life for the recruits was rinvariably harsh throughout the training program.The fortunate few who passed the extremely rigorous screening process started out with basic training. A typical day began with a reveille at 5 a.m. The recruits rushed to the grounds, stood to attention and bowed in the direction of the Imperial Palace, recited the oath of loyalty to the Emperor. Then the punishing routine commenced. They had to immerse themselves in cold water, then perform lung-bursting calisthenics, ceaseless drills and basic combat exercises. Everywhere in the training camp, throughout the day while they were wakeful, the recruits were instructed to exert themselves to the utmost. They were expected to run, not walk. Injuries during physical training were rife. Takeshi Maeda, who would go on to become a torpedo bomber pilot during the war recalled his basic training at Yokosuka Naval Base on Tokyo Bay. Every day he and his fellow recruits spent hours in the bay rowing an open boat in all kinds of weather. Takeshi suffered chronic pain and recurring injuries:Because of the friction between my body and the seat, my pants were covered with blood. After that your flesh became infected, and it produced yellow pus. . . . I would go to the infirmary, and they treated my wounds by applying ointment and gauze. The following day, when I did cutter boat training, the same thing would happen again, and my old wounds would reopen, which was very painful.Takeshi Maeda in his naval aviator uniformMeals were austere, typically featuring rice mixed with barley, or miso soup and pickled vegetables, occasionally some fish or meat. At the end of a weary day, they slept in hammocks suspended from the walls of their barracks.Physical and field training were complemented by classroom instruction in mathematics, science, engineering, reading, and writing. The picture below depicts a typical scene in a pilot training classroom: trainees sitting on benches at a long table, listening intently to their instructor. They dressed in identical crisp white uniforms with oval name tags. Their hair were identically cropped short, their faces evinced immense level of concentration.(Image source: USN Carriers vs IJN Carriers - Mark Stille)Yokaren cadets during semaphore trainingAcademic standards were unyieldingly high. Each recruit had to maintain a minimum grade average otherwise he would be kicked out of school. Class standing was always determined by academic rank.Those who passed the basic training progressed to flight training called the Joint Aviation Training conducted at Kasumigaura (named after lake Kasumigaura located nearby). This was the beginning of a period of extremely demanding, brutal and lengthy flight training that will help you appreciate why Japanese naval aviators dominated the sky over the Pacific when war broke out.During this program, pilot trainees would seek to master the art of aerial combat. Before 1941, the program’s duration was one year. In 1941, it was reduced to 10 months. Flight training consisted of 3 phases in the following order:Primary flight training: lasted 2–3 months and a total of 44 flight hoursIntermediate flight training: lasted about 5 months and a total of 60 hours of flight time.Operational flight training: lasted about 5–6 months during which a trainee would fly a particular type of aircraft assigned to him - fighter, dive bomber, torpedo/attack bomber. At the end of this period, the graduated trainee qualified as an enlisted pilot. He would have had a total of about 250 hours of flight time. Pilots who started out as officers (mentioned briefly in the selection section above) received preferential treatment throughout the training and would have accumulated 400 flight hours upon graduation.The daily routine of a pilot trainee was stringently regimented. The first few weeks of the program revolved around intensive classroom instruction that lasted throughout the day and focused on teaching trainees such practical skills as over-water navigation, engine maintenance, and radio communications. After finishing classes, students were expected to do self-study at night. They pressed their noses into books and lecture notes for up to 2 hours every night before lights-out. Those who wanted to continue studying after that had to do so surreptitiously under the blankets with a flashlight.If you think the physical training during basic training was tough enough, then the physical training during flight training at Kasumigaura will make you roll your eyes. Kasumigaura sought to create a cadre of super-athletes, men endowed with superior physical traits honed in an intense and brutal training regimen. To this end, aviation cadets trained relentlessly in gymnastics and acrobatics to improve stamina, resilience, balance, muscular coordination, and physical reaction time. Typical exercises included:Walking on their hands and balancing on their heads for 5 minutes. Saburo Sakai claimed that he could balance on his head > 20 minutes.Running for miles in full gabardine flight suits in the oppressive heat in the summer.Leaping from a tower, somersaulting in the air and landing on their feet.Hanging by one arm from an iron pole for 10 minutes.Fast swimming. Those who could not swim had a rope tied around their waists and were thrown into the lake. Every trainee was expected to swim 50 meters in less than 30 seconds, to swim submerged for a distance of at least 50 meters, and to remain underwater for at least 90 seconds.Pilot trainees performing acrobatics. The exercise was designed to improve the trainees’ balance in accustom them to all the twists and turns in flying. (Image source: the Japanese War Machine)Since perfect vision was essential for military pilots, the cadets were subjected to a battery of vision-enhancing exercises to improve their eyesight. One exercise involved identifying objects and symbols flashed before their eyes for a fraction of a second. In another exercise, candidates learned to recognize and describe objects in the outermost corners of their peripheral vision. Saburō Sakai recalled that he and his fellow students were taught to search for and identify stars in broad daylight.Gradually, and with much more practice, we became quite adept at our star-hunting. Then we went further. When we had sighted and fixed the position of a particular star we jerked our eyes away ninety degrees, and snapped back again to see if we could locate the star immediately. Of such things are fighter pilots made.Even more ridiculous was the fly-catching exercise designed to sharpen reflexes. Students would sit still and try to catch a fly buzzing in a room by hand.Harsh physical training went hand in hand with mental training - the aim of which was to create and strengthen a state of mind of maximum concentration and mental clarity essential for successful aerial combat. Flight students trained in the time-honored martial art of kendo (Japanese swordsmanship) to hone their skills in attacking and defeating their adversaries. They endured long period of meditation and silence with Zen priests during which they were instructed to focus their attention in the lower abdomen, to clear their minds and imagine combat as a series of effortless acts, in which their hands and feet moved and controlled cockpit instruments without interference of conscious thought.All students eagerly anticipated the most important part of their training: flying. As mentioned above, there were 3 phases. During primary flight training, everyone started flying in a type-3 Primary Trainer-a two-seat, dual-control, open-cockpit biplane, powered by a 130-horsepower, 5-cylinder engine. An instructor sat in the forward cockpit, the trainee behind. The instructor guided the trainee via a one-way-communication voice tube running from the forward cockpit connected to the trainee’s flight helmet.Once the aircraft was airborne, the trainee was examined for basic flight aptitude. Meticulous attention was paid to his hand-eye coordination, the abilities to handle cockpit instruments, steer and keep the aircraft on a straight and level path. The most natural flyers were permitted to handle the aircraft in takeoffs and landings and even solo for the first time. Based on the results of these initial assessments, students would be assigned to various courses that determined their future aviation career: some would become fighter pilots, some aircrew, some bomber pilots, some torpedo-bomber pilots, carrier or land-based aviation.Having mastered the fundamental flying skills during primary flight training, the trainees progressed toward intermediate flight training in a more advanced trainer aircraft: the Type 93 biplane, or Akatombo, the “red dragonfly.” The Akatombo was powered by a 300-horsepower, 9-cylinder radial engine. In this machine, the student would learn to master flight aerobatics (rolls, spins, loops, stalls), formation flying in a 3-plane shutai and 9-plane chutai, flying on instruments in a cockpit covered by a canvas hood.Upon completing intermediate flight training, the trainee had to take a battery of tests. If he passed, he would be granted an insignia patch sewn on the left sleeve of his uniform: a pair of wing superimposed on an anchor under a cherry blossom. He could now call himself a naval aviator even though he still had to complete the last phase of his flight training.Then came 5–6 months of operational flight training in operational aircraft, usually obsolete warplanes phased out of active service. The men were divided into carrier and twin-engine land-based programs. The carrier men were further subdivided into fighter, dive-bomber, and torpedo-bomber units. Their training henceforth focused heavily on aerial gunnery, bombing, dogfighting, formation flying, and over-water navigation. Fighter pilots practiced firing at aerial targets towed behind another plane, with results captured by a gun camera. Bomber pilots attacked targets on the ground, with their results being meticulously recorded and scrutinized. Pilots assigned for carrier operation progressed from practicing lift-off and landings on short runways on land to low-speed and low-altitude lift-off and landing over an actual aircraft carrier.Finally, the pilots were qualified for combat operation and assigned to a front-line unit, either an air base or an aircraft carrier. NCOs and enlisted airmen were promoted to the rank of airman first class. COs were promoted to lieutenant. By this time, the average carrier aviator would have logged about 500 flight hours; and it was not over yet because it was with their units that the pilots underwent operational flight training alongside veteran aviators. Training schedules were intense. Japanese naval aviators flew constantly: morning, afternoon, sometimes at night, 7 days a week. This intense training was encapsulated in a popular song created to celebrate the navy’s intense training in the years before the outset of war in the PacificWeekends were a thing of the past. Now the days of the week were Monday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, FridayAs a result of this relentless training, in December 1941, the average Japanese naval aviator qualified for combat operations had accumulated about 700 flight hours.And that, ladies and gentlemen, was how aviators of the Japanese navy were produced. They were the products of a prohibitively exclusive selection process and an insanely rigorous and lengthy training process designed to weed out the weakest performers and retain only the brightest, most talented, most motivated, most mentally and physically fit.Kaname Harada - a naval fighter pilot. He was a natural fighter pilot, as demonstrated by the fact that he was 1 of the 26 candidates who graduated from the insanely rigorous and brutal training program that eliminated most of the 1,500 candidates who were initially recruited.Lieutenant Commander Egusa Takashige - nicknamed the God of Dive Bombing by his fellow aviators. He was universally acknowledged as one of the best dive bomber pilots in the world. He was renowned for consistently achieving very high accuracy in dive bombing attack against Allied Warships that destroyed several big Allied warships.Lieutenant Michio Kobayashi - another outstanding dive bomber pilot who struck the USS Yorktown at the battle of Midway. He was killed in the battle.Lieutenant Commander Shigeharu Murata - one of the finest torpedo bomber pilots in the Japanese Navy and arguably in the entire worldLieutenant Commander Joichi Tomonaga - one of the finest torpedo bomber pilots in the Japanese Navy. A veteran of the air war over China. He was killed in the battle of Midway during his attack against the USS Yorktown.Saburo Sakai - one of the best fighter pilots in the Japanese Navy.Those who made it through this training hell became not only the elites of the Japanese Navy, the nation, Japanese manhood, the society but also the pride of their families and communities. When a newly minted naval aviator returned home, his parents, siblings, and villagers were overjoyed to see him. He was bigger, stronger, tougher and wiser. However, for many of these elite warriors, homecoming was oddly poignant. Although they still loved their families dearly, they felt a keen sense of unfamiliarity and distance between themselves and their relatives. The reason was that their military life, brutal though as it was, had instilled in them a powerful sense of purpose and urgency to which they had grown accustomed. Such sense of purpose was in stark contrast to the comfortable, relaxed atmosphere and the aimlessness back in their hometowns. Consequently, these men felt that their family relatives were strangers who could never understand or imagine what they had undergone during their training - the fatigue, humiliation, sadistic beating (explained in the section below), deprivations, fear of expulsion, the exhilaration of flying, and the inconceivable joy they felt upon having the naval aviator insignia sewn on their uniforms. Those were the things only his fellow airmen could understand. By experiencing hardships together, the aviators forged an esprit de corps and a bond that was even stronger than familial ties. For them, their fellow airmen were their families. They belonged to each other, even more than their own beloved families. The Navy was now their home.3/ Brutality during trainingApart from fatigue induced by the strenuous training, the pilot students had to endure countless acts of brutality meted out to them by their instructors and upperclass airmen who had become aviators.Such acts of brutality were so commonplace as to become a matter of fact in military life in Japan, and they were generally much worse in the army. While sadism was undoubtedly responsible for them, there was another rationale underlying such brutality: the beatings served to harden and toughen them mentally and physically, thereby preparing them for combat. They were also intended to instill unquestioning respect for authority that would make the recruits carry out superiors’ orders unthinkingly.Indeed, brutality was not merely tolerated but actively encouraged. Savage beatings were administered for all sort of reasons and offenses, real or imagined: any infraction, weakness, wrong answer, or complaint. Beating could take any form: face-slapping, a sudden punch in the face, sadistic beating with a baseball bat. A recruit could be ordered to stand on his tiptoes for at least an hour, or stand rigidly at attention while a petty officer slap him repeatedly in the face, or bend over while the abuser repeatedly beat him on the buttocks with a club. Kicks and blows were inflicted on those who collapsed to the ground; a the recruits were expected to endure all of these without crying, displaying any pain, complaining or resisting the instructors. In some cases, an entire squad was punished for one man’s offense, real or imagined. If bones were broken, the injured recruit was hospitalized. After recovery he would be re-inducted with a subsequent class.Takeshi Maeda noted that the most violent instructors were rewarded with promotions. He was beaten savagely during intermediate flight training during which the instructor behind him kept shouting through the voice tube: “You’re so stupid!” and hitting him on the head with a wooden stick. To protect his skull, Maeda wrapped a towel under the lining of his leather flight helmet. But the instructor quickly realized that he was being cheated so at the end of a flight exercise, he ordered Maeda to stand at attention with his head uncovered and meted out the accumulated backlog of punishments.Saburo Sakai shared Takeshi’s view, adding that that his instructors were sadistic brutes of the worst kind. He recalled being dragged out of his hammock once in the middle of the night and beaten savagely in front of his classmates who were rubbing their eyes off drowsiness. The petty officer ordered Sakai to bend over and then, recounted Sakai:he would swing a large stick of wood and with every ounce of strength he possessed would slam it against my upturned bottom. The pain was terrible, the force of the blows unremitting. There was no choice but to grit my teeth and struggle desperately not to cry out. At times I counted up to forty crashing impacts into my buttocks. Often I fainted from the pain. A lapse into unconsciousness constituted no escape however. The petty officer simply hurled a bucket of cold water over my prostrate form and bellowed for me to reposition, whereupon he continued his ‘discipline’ until satisfied I would mend the error of my ways.Brutality was even incited among the pilot trainees as exemplified by vicious wrestling matches. After each round, the winner was allowed to leave the scene while the wearied loser was ordered to remain on the mat to fight the next man. It was particularly dreadful for a weak or undersized trainee who would be drained of all his remaining strength after a few matches. But the instructors were indifferent to the trainee’s plight and expected him to carry on wrestling until he had overcome a man or when he had been pinned down by every man in the class. If the unlucky recruit could not get back on his feet, he would be expelled from the program. Sakai recounted:With every pilot-trainee determined not to be expelled from the flyer’s course, the wrestling matches were scenes of fierce competition. Often students were knocked unconscious. . . . They were revived with buckets of water or other means and sent back to the mat.Notwithstanding the humiliation and brutality, all pilot trainees had no choice but to endure with forbearance. No one wanted to quit and all would do everything to avoid expulsion which might overtake them at any moment for the most trivial of reasons. Even those students who demonstrated good aptitude in both the classroom and the cockpit were often expelled for trivial offenses. Saburo Sakai pointed out that out of 70 students that began aviation training in his class, 45 did not make it through the 10-month course. In fact, expulsion or quitting was feared far more than savage beatings because to being eliminated would bring deep shame to oneself and one’s family and friends. Japanese society has always been a shame-based society and the fear of disgracing those related to oneself figured prominently in the mind of these students. A failed recruit’s family would suffer social ostracism and ridicule from neighbors. Those who did fail resorted to committing suicide to spare their families such shame.Final JudgmentBecause of the uncompromising insistence on the highest standards incarnated by an extremely competitive admission process and lengthy and challenging training process, the Japanese Navy at the outset of the Pacific War had at its disposal the best naval aviators in the world - literally the aerial Navy Seals who were masters of the air. They would shatter long-held and racism-fueled Anglo-American misconceptions of Japanese pilots. Before the war, the Americans held Japanese pilots in contempt, perceiving them as being myopic, dull-witted and unthinking automaton flying aircraft that were cheap knock-offs of European and American aircraft.Nothing could be further from the truth. Allied pilots who fought Japanese naval aviators were in for a rude awakening when they witnessed how their Japanese counterparts expertly handled some of the finest carrier aircraft in the world - esp the legendary Mitsubishi fighter - and disposed of their opponents with ease. A Japanese naval aviator who had fully undergone prewar and early war training was a highly skilled and resourceful fighting man who was confident in his ability and was always seeking to gain the initiative in combat. He shared a strong sense of esprit de corps with his fellow airmen who had survived a brutal training program. In addition, imbued with an indomitable martial spirit and the awareness that Japan had never been invaded or subdued by a foreign power, these men fought with absolute determination and conviction for the glory of the Japanese Empire and for victory. They were truly a force to be reckoned with and would go on to earn the respect of their American enemy during the war.However, there was a serious weakness. The elitist approach in training naval aviators meant that the Japanese navy could produce only about 100 super pilots every year, far too few to cope with the excessive demands of a protracted modern war with 2 of the biggest military powers in the world: the US and the British Empire. As war progressed, this small corps of elite aviators was gradually decimated in combat. The shortage of fuel coupled with the need to rapidly replace lost airmen forced the Japanese navy to reduce training duration and lower the rigor of training. The end result was that the new aviators in the middle of the war onwards became increasingly poorly trained compared to their fallen predecessors. They were also inexperienced because of the lack of experienced aviators who had been KIA. In the last 2 years of the war, the average Japanese naval aviator had fewer than 200, then 100, then 40 hours of flight time. By contrast, with ample fuel and the judicious policy of rotating experienced pilots back home, the US navy was able to produce a large number of pilots who, while not the super elites like their Japanese counterparts, were very competent. Ultimately, while the super pilots won battles, it was the average pilots who won the war. The US Navy emerged triumphant from the conflict because of a more judicious pilot training program.Reference(s)1/ USN Carriers vs IJN Carriers: The Pacific 1942 - Mark Stille2/ Pacific Crucible: War at Sea in the Pacific, 1941-1942 - Ian W. Tol.3/ Imperial Japanese Naval Aviator 1937–45: 1937-45 - Osamu Tagaya, John White4/ The awesome book below.

Hi there! I used to be a full-time English teacher for years in Taiwan and later cofounded a school, built its curriculum and ran the academic portion of the business. I've taught thousands of students, mostly native Chinese speakers, some from a very basic level up through fluency.There are three main areas I've seen cause learners problems:Poor PronunciationSmall VocabularyGrammar and word usage problemsPronunciationAt least decent pronunciation is crucial. If you're hard to understand, people won't like talking with you and if people don't like The first thing I'd recommend doing when learning a language is to listen to it and learn the sounds. If you can't hear the difference between sounds then you have no hope of pronouncing them correctly.After you've gotten to where you can distinguish between all of the sounds in a language, the next step is to learn how to make the sounds yourself. Usually students can make most the sounds in a language and struggle with a few in particular (such as the R sounds in English, French or Spanish). This is where a good teacher can make a world of difference. Ideally you want a native speaker of the language with a keen ear who is willing to give you constructive feedback and understands how the mouth and tongue must be positioned to make each sound in their language.VocabularyWhen it comes to vocabulary building, flash cards or especially *Spaced Repetition Systems can be very useful at the beginning but the most important things are doing a lot of reading, watching movies or better yet TV series and talking with people! I strongly recommend spending your time on materials easy enough that you don't have to constantly consult a dictionary. Graded readers such as the Oxford Bookworms (Graded Readers | Oxford University Press) are great. If you're really at a beginner level, spend time with a teacher and / or conversation partners willing to put in the effort to make themselves clear to you. Volume of practice is the most important thing!*My favorite SRS is Anki - powerful, intelligent flashcardsGrammar and word usageLike anything else related to learning a language, getting a lot of input (reading and listening) will help you. I would spend a bit of time looking at a textbook at the very beginning to get a basic idea of how the grammar works, and focus especially on your ability to understand native speakers / writers. After you get to an intermediate level, ask your friends and teachers to correct your common mistakes!Don't forget to enjoy it!Language learning can be frustrating, but it's also a great feeling being able to communicate with people who can't speak your native language! Don't forget that at its core learning a foreign language is a social activity.I love languages and put over a decade of my life into that industry. I've written a lot about the topic on my blog at Toshuō. Now, I'm putting my software engineering skills to use working Verbling, a platform where you can take English classes anytime, any day of the week, find a private tutor or do free community language-learning chats.

I wanted to be well-liked beyond anything else, and I also wanted to become friends with everyone (like, once upon a time, I often ended up friending anyone who was on the same Microsoft Ants/Age of Empires demo/Age of Empires II team as me - it did result in some good friendships). I joined an online forum for Age of Empires II (HeavenGames) and became super-super-involved with that, and the various clans that sprouted out of it. I now consider being super-involved with that community at age 11-12 to be one of the best decisions I've ever made in my life (I'd say that its impact on me is comparable to the impact of early college entrance or of joining Quora). HeavenGames/AoKH exposed me to so much in the world, and it was the beginning of my developing a widespread Internet profile. I also played the MUD Utopia, which seemed really magical at the time. And Runescape. :D (I once got a good portion of AoKH addicted to Runescape).Age 12 was also the age when I discovered that I might have some talent for recruiting people, as I recruited more people to my AoK clan than anyone else. :) I also helped renew an alliance between my AoK clan and another AoK clan too.The most exciting parts of the day were obviously the parts of the day in the super-early morning when I could go up to the PC by myself to play games of Microsoft Ants or AoK. :)I had a Geocities website (+guestbook!) that a number of people visited, but it didn't really have any substantive content on it. I created Geocities websites at even younger ages too (mostly to focus on legos and sim games, but alas, their archives are lost)I often felt insecure about my Age of Empires II skills relative to that of others. I managed to peak out at low/mid-intermediate level at 12, but my skill at the game never really improved again after that (but now, in retrospect, I can see how I could have improved - I never even bothered to learn the hotkeys for the units). I kind of stayed fixated to the same build orders that I always stayed fixated to.People often said that I acted unusually mature for my age, as they could tell from my writing. I've seen a number of unusually precocious 12-year olds on forums over the years. Also, someone noted that I seemed to be particularly "goody two-shoes" and "lawful" - I had a strong desire to appease older people and to just be "well-liked" in general, even though some of the "psychos" on HeavenGames didn't like that sort of behavior (something that seemed foreign to me). Also, I became vegetarian at 13.I had some really strange fears. I didn't want people to know my name (common among many of us 12-year olds) or the fact that I was Asian. I also avoided online forums/communities that had too much "mature" content in them, because I thought there was "scary" content in anything "mature" (especially, god forbid, anything that made references to sex). I even shyed away from playing mature-rated video games, which is something I now regret even at age 12. I don't think I really amassed the video game collection that many of my peers did (I never owned any consoles, which I kind of resented my parents for :/), although did I really need to do that? The positive effects I got from Age of Empires II alone were so immense that it more than makes up for some of the losses, but I still wish I had played more games like Civilization, Empire Earth, Starcraft, Age of Wonders, and even FPS games.Every computer/video game you play at that age feels so magical and you feel a compulsion to finish them all. I wanted free video games, but this was the era before BitTorrent became widespread, so if I wanted new video games, I would have to ask parents for them, and this wouldn't have been particularly easy to make too many requests about. But now in these carefree days, I wish I could have played them all (though not to completion!!).I used AIM, MSN Messenger, ZoneFriends, and email to talk to people. AIM Subprofiles were the rage and they were so cool! Though we also had flame wars on each other's guestbooks. Even on my subprofiles, I liked it when IRL people referred to me as my Internet name.I moved around a lot between schools, which hurt my ability to make good friends in real life (I never hung out with anyone after school). Already at age 11-12, most of my friends started being Internet friends.I faced some parental pressure to succeed academically (when I'd really rather be playing computer games - often on restricted time). But (after age 12) I later turned it in a sort of extreme direction. Also, one of my parents was really stingy with money, which I also feel hurt with my personal growth (especially since I couldn't play games as long as most of my friends from AoKH could have). But maybe I should have just been better at asking. I managed to finally get a better computer and a cable Internet connection, and I'm so glad I got those.But I also fascinated about having depressive/neurotic tendencies (there's an old "Life sucks" thread I posted on HeavenGames main that you can see..). 12 was when I didn't realize that a lot of people had it better, and it was also when I didn't realize what sort of school I was trapped in (which resulted in causing major anger/trust issues with parents/teachers/school/humanity/the world later on).I think at school, I was generally treated well despite not being super-close to anyone (I wasn't bullied, though I did have a tendency to over-react at minor slights). I was known for being super-nice to everyone before I was known for being smart (this happened at both school and AoKH/HG). I was once even the only male spontaneously invited to an all-girls party. On the other hand, it was hard for me to get anyone else interested in anything I was interested in, asides from peeking at my Geocities website.I guess age 12 was also the age when I really started losing interest in legos/other toys in favor of being obsessed with Age of Empires II/the Internet. I wish I listened to music more, and I really wish I made more of an effort to visit other people's houses.I miss being 12 SO much (well, other than the school [which really didn't cause that much suffering until late 8th/9th grade], constant fear of social rejection, and the nagging parents - both of which I could have admittedly handled better). I love the Internet so much. But the feelings of finding everything so magical.. I wish I could feel that with the same intensity now.Also, this was before I became academically obsessive (due to feelings of insecurity/anger that came from realizing what sort of school I was in). I'm not sure if being academically obsessive was ever good for me, especially given that I naturally have very high curiosity so I could have learned so much on my own regardless.Anyhow, I'm a huge fan of danah boyd and Alison Gopnik's stuff on edge.org.