The pile of SAT and AP prep books stacked in the corner of my room is the size of a small child. The idea of making critical thinkers with a step-by-step guide is worthy of bonfire destruction. I did enjoy the Barron's APUSH book, and I suppose Barron's AP Chem and Physics B were relevant, but what a waste of money. What a waste of worry.
As this year has progressed, I became increasingly dispassionate about the subject matter of my classes. Last year, biology was ruined for me because the teachers were the worst. I can't blame them; teaching such a complicated subject at such a basic level must be frustrating, especially with such assuming, gpa-oriented students, but now I'd hate to be a doctor, and not only because I get tired of people really easily. I got a B in Chemistry twice, so that's forever terrible. Plus I never understood buffers. Physics dried up really fast as well. While quantum mechanics are incredibly bewildering, the technicalities of electromagnetism and thermodynamics squeeze the enthusiasm out of me. I spent my last 100 minutes in Physics B today on Facebook and eating my friends double egg sandwich. There's calculus, but even with the best teacher in the world, I can't help but feel overwhelmed with impatience and tedium in class. Even when I understand redox or apush or integrals, there's no sense of joy.
Is this kind of college prep a monopoly? Or am I just short-sighted? Or do I have no idea what I want to do? When people ask me about my future field, I always reply with applied mathematics, or architecture, or something stupid and generic like engineering, but in the back of my head, I'm still thinking that if my parent's would let me, design. Maybe its the struggle to do this that will make my work passionate enough to be worth it. I go to school with an impending doom to tolerate seven classes. Still I feel the most free, the most happy, when I'm on the computer, tirelessly scrubbing away a tshirt cover.
When I watch vlogbrothers, browse dftba, the Ellen shop, read Redbubble's FAQ, I always think that if I could work the ropes like David Karp (he's the creator of Tumblr. If you don't read the link I gave you, you must not be a real blogger) did, wouldn't that be okay? To keep creating for a greater good than spending my entire capacity on computer programming. I can't imagine myself as an engineer. It always felt so wrong to say out loud, to think inside. Is this time the I face it? Because I don't think anyone else wants to do so with me.
Here's a video about art. http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=nDwTjPsG4b0
It makes context very romantic. I think John and Hank are going to change many worlds.
Thursday, May 23, 2013
Tuesday, May 21, 2013
Class o' '13
Because of AP Testing, I have done nothing in class for the past two weeks. I have gone to school with a folder and purse, armed with nothing but a pencil and a smartphone.
Smartphones have proven to be useful for several reasons:
1. The entire text conversations are shown, so I know to whom and what message I'm "RE:"ing. This also makes me less frustrated and more condusive to wasting money on texts. It also allows me to have a more wholistic concept of what my friends are thinking, so this function is kind of a social advancement. As Eungee said, I'm moving up in the world. Thanks sir...
2. Candy Crush, Ruzzle, 4 Words 1 Pic. When I'm sad, I play these by my lonesome. Candy Crush, by the way, is an extremely well-designed game. Its animation is very sophisticated, and the organization of its levels is complex enough to basically never get bored. Its employment of "lives" and tickets sells well in the gamer's mind. It gives us a sense of self-control, but not really. It also isn't necessarily based on time, which puts a lot of frantic smart people at ease. Its a lot better than games with basically the same objective, like Fruit Smash and Bejeweled Blitz. Kudos to King Games.
3. Youtube. The school network doesn't block the phone app, so I've spent many physics and chemistry classes watching the Ellen Degeneres show. Sidenote on Ellen - I was browsing the online shop. I didn't know men's underwear was so tight. Isn't that uncomfortable? If anybody wants to buy me something, I'm size small, but I'll accept men's mediums for a friend of mine.
4. Camera. I can now take pictures at will and put them on Facebook and Instagram. No longer do I feel the necessity to debate bringing a camera to special events. Plus, I can check myself out using the reverse lens in case there aren't any mirrors.
5. Wifi. So I can chat with my friends in my room while I pretend to study for some ridiculous test.
But anyway, since AP testing gets us out of six periods every day, I've spent a lot of lunch and health periods not particularly participating in lunch and health. Mostly, I curled up in my seat and almost cried because I felt lonely... just kidding. I didn't cry. But all of the seniors have left, which makes my aluminum grip on this school's networks the most powerful influence. Compared to the day I first stepped into North, I'm a lot less scared of people, and God and everything, and wow the trials, but now I've lost every generation of people that I looked up to. I understand the flaws in the year above me; a lot of them are actually really terrible, but I still have a wholehearted uplifting respect for my elders. Or maybe I've just heard too many "suck plairs" in my year to take them too seriously.
But it is our turn. I just got my senior photo appointment, and I'll be applying for parking soon. We'll get fliers about senior brunch, senior celebration, open campus lunch, hypnotists, and tshirts. We'll drive to school, talk incessantly about college, and regret lots of bad grades. I'll apply to big schools and make one or two schools of which I had never heard when I first dreamed about college.
Its okay though. I might end up with the camel after all.
Smartphones have proven to be useful for several reasons:
1. The entire text conversations are shown, so I know to whom and what message I'm "RE:"ing. This also makes me less frustrated and more condusive to wasting money on texts. It also allows me to have a more wholistic concept of what my friends are thinking, so this function is kind of a social advancement. As Eungee said, I'm moving up in the world. Thanks sir...
2. Candy Crush, Ruzzle, 4 Words 1 Pic. When I'm sad, I play these by my lonesome. Candy Crush, by the way, is an extremely well-designed game. Its animation is very sophisticated, and the organization of its levels is complex enough to basically never get bored. Its employment of "lives" and tickets sells well in the gamer's mind. It gives us a sense of self-control, but not really. It also isn't necessarily based on time, which puts a lot of frantic smart people at ease. Its a lot better than games with basically the same objective, like Fruit Smash and Bejeweled Blitz. Kudos to King Games.
3. Youtube. The school network doesn't block the phone app, so I've spent many physics and chemistry classes watching the Ellen Degeneres show. Sidenote on Ellen - I was browsing the online shop. I didn't know men's underwear was so tight. Isn't that uncomfortable? If anybody wants to buy me something, I'm size small, but I'll accept men's mediums for a friend of mine.
4. Camera. I can now take pictures at will and put them on Facebook and Instagram. No longer do I feel the necessity to debate bringing a camera to special events. Plus, I can check myself out using the reverse lens in case there aren't any mirrors.
5. Wifi. So I can chat with my friends in my room while I pretend to study for some ridiculous test.
But anyway, since AP testing gets us out of six periods every day, I've spent a lot of lunch and health periods not particularly participating in lunch and health. Mostly, I curled up in my seat and almost cried because I felt lonely... just kidding. I didn't cry. But all of the seniors have left, which makes my aluminum grip on this school's networks the most powerful influence. Compared to the day I first stepped into North, I'm a lot less scared of people, and God and everything, and wow the trials, but now I've lost every generation of people that I looked up to. I understand the flaws in the year above me; a lot of them are actually really terrible, but I still have a wholehearted uplifting respect for my elders. Or maybe I've just heard too many "suck plairs" in my year to take them too seriously.
But it is our turn. I just got my senior photo appointment, and I'll be applying for parking soon. We'll get fliers about senior brunch, senior celebration, open campus lunch, hypnotists, and tshirts. We'll drive to school, talk incessantly about college, and regret lots of bad grades. I'll apply to big schools and make one or two schools of which I had never heard when I first dreamed about college.
Its okay though. I might end up with the camel after all.
Saturday, May 4, 2013
Raindrops
I should probably wait until the weekend is over to reflect on it, but its 11:06 PM and I slept 4 hours on the bus and almost toppled over during the award ceremony, and now I'm awake, still writhing with self-hatred, wondering when on earth the constant fear of looking bad will ever go away.
A list of things that happened this week:
2 physics finals, 1 particle physics test (is weak force really the weakest force??? I am confounded.)
1 chemistry final (I have a B+ forever)
1 APUSH test, one APUSH debate (our opponents insulted our race, my teacher said I was pathetic, but he was nice about it, so we ended up agreeing that gpa is stupid)
Badminton sectionals (I got 2nd, which means everyone now continues to look down upon me because I'm not the best, which means they will continue to expect more but actually less, which means I just have to work harder)
A friend (a "friend", they say) threatened to hack my accounts, is now "so done with me", and tells everyone that I'm a terrible person, which is probably half true
Caught up with a couple friends
A timed writing, but by the time I found out, I could care less
Math team state. We did collectively poorly.
At some points, I remember reaching distinct euphoric moods- those of pleasure, what once I felt, I thought I might chase forever; those of friendship, companionship, of praying side by side, still allowed cry, esepcially since I just sounded like I was sick; those of exhaustion, the simple depletion of everything my body has left to give. Three times, three seconds - a rush, a wink, and sigh, I saw something more than dread for the next school day.
And no, I'm not in love with any of those things, even though they're what I'm left chasing at the end of a cold and starving chemistry class. Lately, I haven't felt anything but a deep and restless fatigue, accomapanied by the senselessness of waking the next morning to find out how mediocre numbers have made me become. Math team is over, but in the past month, I only got out of bed to check if my body had returned to normal, and if it hadn't, I would stumble downstairs, disoriented by ugly my reflection seemed to be. I would stay angry, still bitter of the sin that has flooded in and out of my life, bitter that she was a dying, unfreed speck and that we looked forward only to the end, because the present holds nothing but a standardized grip on our hunch back necks.
Laura Story had it right though. What if our blessings come in raindrops? They did, they do, not just because school was closed on a rain day without rescheduling finals. It was the rainy day that quieted my hearts in a cold and sniffly basement. It was when I was alone, still before God, still surrounded by pure motives. What if our healing comes through tears? I think there have been enough tears to just pass this through. I've trembled a lot this week... its been tough. What if a thousand sleepless nights are what it takes to know You're near? I guess I still have 800 more nights. What if my greatest disappointments and the achings of this life is the revealing of a greater thirst this world can't satisfy?
A list of things that happened this week:
2 physics finals, 1 particle physics test (is weak force really the weakest force??? I am confounded.)
1 chemistry final (I have a B+ forever)
1 APUSH test, one APUSH debate (our opponents insulted our race, my teacher said I was pathetic, but he was nice about it, so we ended up agreeing that gpa is stupid)
Badminton sectionals (I got 2nd, which means everyone now continues to look down upon me because I'm not the best, which means they will continue to expect more but actually less, which means I just have to work harder)
A friend (a "friend", they say) threatened to hack my accounts, is now "so done with me", and tells everyone that I'm a terrible person, which is probably half true
Caught up with a couple friends
A timed writing, but by the time I found out, I could care less
Math team state. We did collectively poorly.
At some points, I remember reaching distinct euphoric moods- those of pleasure, what once I felt, I thought I might chase forever; those of friendship, companionship, of praying side by side, still allowed cry, esepcially since I just sounded like I was sick; those of exhaustion, the simple depletion of everything my body has left to give. Three times, three seconds - a rush, a wink, and sigh, I saw something more than dread for the next school day.
And no, I'm not in love with any of those things, even though they're what I'm left chasing at the end of a cold and starving chemistry class. Lately, I haven't felt anything but a deep and restless fatigue, accomapanied by the senselessness of waking the next morning to find out how mediocre numbers have made me become. Math team is over, but in the past month, I only got out of bed to check if my body had returned to normal, and if it hadn't, I would stumble downstairs, disoriented by ugly my reflection seemed to be. I would stay angry, still bitter of the sin that has flooded in and out of my life, bitter that she was a dying, unfreed speck and that we looked forward only to the end, because the present holds nothing but a standardized grip on our hunch back necks.
Laura Story had it right though. What if our blessings come in raindrops? They did, they do, not just because school was closed on a rain day without rescheduling finals. It was the rainy day that quieted my hearts in a cold and sniffly basement. It was when I was alone, still before God, still surrounded by pure motives. What if our healing comes through tears? I think there have been enough tears to just pass this through. I've trembled a lot this week... its been tough. What if a thousand sleepless nights are what it takes to know You're near? I guess I still have 800 more nights. What if my greatest disappointments and the achings of this life is the revealing of a greater thirst this world can't satisfy?
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