Random Ramblings

YAY, I reached my goal for TSL already! It was to be in the top 500, and I just hit rank 494 with 2619 points. This is an all-time high for me, usually I max out at around 2200 before dropping back down again. Lately I've been playing better, or maybe just getting lucky. Anyway, I just wanted to celebrate because I never expected to get in the top 500 so soon, and I'm pretty sure I won't be able to maintain it, so I'm being happy about it while I still can. :D

And to make this a poorly disguised brag, as opposed to a straight-up brag, I'll ask you guys: What goals, if any, did you set for yourself for TSL or this season of ICCup?

Yeah. So I've been busy and putting them off, and now it's past time for me to be starting on my applications. I'm trying to apply early decision to RIT, but the deadline is December 1st and it'll be difficult to manage that because I haven't even began my essay or anything. In lieu of this little fuckup of mine, my parents have now decided to bug me every single day to do as much as I possibly can (compete in UIL, Robotics, volunteer etc.) to prepare myself and load up my application so I'll be accepted.

I'm willing to do some of this, but I honestly think they're overreacting just a bit. I'm taking the highest level of courses I can, and got a pretty good score on my SAT (1420). I don't think I'll have too much trouble getting into any college that isn't Ivy League or whatever, but seeing as I haven't done this before and they have, I'm starting to worry a bit.

They also say that workload is going to increase enormously, and that if I don't start doing a shitload of extracurriculars to prep for that increase, I'll be screwed. This I believe, but I still think I can keep up.

Basically, how much should I panicking at this point, and what's a good estimate of how hard the work is to deal with? Since a good percentage of TLers have dealt with this, I'm hoping for some good answers.

So I'm a pretty lame player, bouncing back and forth between D and D+ constantly.

One day I got curious, and saw that my ZvT and ZvP winrates are both sub 30%. However, my ZvZ winrate is about 50%. In ZvZ, I have consistently beaten C- players, and put up good fights against the ones I lost to.

Now, I was wondering why my ZvZ was obviously better than my other MUs, and thought that maybe it was because my race was Z. I understand Z better; I know what I fear from my opponent and know the builds well.

So I thought it might be a good idea to switch my race to Protoss/Terran for a week respectively, learn their builds better, and play PvZ and TvZ exclusively. This would allow me to better get in the heads of my opponents, so I know exactly what they are afraid of Zergs doing, what they are vulnerable to and when.

I was curious as to how many of you have tried this or think it's worth doing, because I don't want to waste 2 weeks learning PvZ and TvZ if it's not a good idea. If you have tried this, has it worked well for you?

Just want to point out that I'm not doing ICCup for the points exclusively, but it is somewhat of a motivator for me, and therefore this bothers me a little.

As of now I'm D, with stats of 30-58. I know it's bad and all, but I wouldn't really be bothered by it if I didn't feel that I could be solidly D+ right now. My problem is that everytime I hit D+, I lose immediately and get knocked back down into the D ranks, usually to go on a 2-3 game losing streak afterward.

I believe this is a purely mental thing, because the majority of the D+ players that beat me don't completely overwhelm me, and I have beaten D+'s without difficulty before. My stats as D are 28-41, but my stats as D+ are 2-17. The difference of 300 or so points can't be so huge as to cause that much of a % difference, so that's why I think it's all in my head.

My question is pretty simple: How do you guys overcome whatever mental blocks you may have when playing SC?

edit: Of course there's always the option that I just plain and simply suck.