Particle Physics Careens Towards Boringness

I went to SHP today and, for the most part, completely ignored my class. I tried to pay attention, I really did, but then I decided to take a break to do a math problem, and by the time I was paying attention, the lecture had advanced so much that I no longer could follow it.

Whoops.

The train ride there was relatively boring. It was just Helga, Archie and I. I sat between them, and we managed a little bit of conversation before Helga pulled out her book, I untangled my ipod, and Archie fell asleep. At one point, Archie actually started to snore. I could hear him through the music, so I started cracking up. Helga laughed a bit before returning to her book, which was for English and, according to her, incredibly boring.

Interestingly, both Helga and Archie are looking forward to the end of SHP, whereas I am dreading it. How utterly fascinating, how different people can experience some of the same events and have such entirely different reactions.

I had originally planned to meet up with Rube for Mariokarting, but he had done badly in something and requested a raincheck (Allana was actually confused by the whole thing, which is kind of odd, but, hey, I get by). I texted Helga when there were about 10 minutes left in class to ask where to meet, and she and Ariadne were already outside, so I met them there.

Archie was still in class, they had no clue about Mario, but Ariadne had texted him, so he, of course, called me. To be perfectly honest, I'm still not following that logic.

We as a group had a horrifically large number of awkward silences. It's really remarkable how it's easier to avoid them when with just one other person than when with four. I think that with one person, you feel pressure to actually carry on the conversation, but when you have a lot, you typically let someone else handle it, and when nobody does, it just kind of dies.

I'm going to relate a couple of conversations, but be aware that both are interspersed with a considerable number of unpredictable and unnecessary pauses.

Archie: Middle schoolers are nasty.

Mario: Sorry, what?

Tea: He doesn't like middle schoolers. What was the phrase you used?

Archie: They're awful.

Mario: To who? Us? Each other?

Archie: Everybody.

Tea: This is true.

Helga: Middle schoolers are just nasty. I mean, looking back at it, people were so mean.

Tea: It makes high school look better in comparison.

Ariadne: I hate high school.

Tea: Really?

Ariadne: Yup.

Helga: It's so short, though.

Tea and Ariadne: But it feels like forever.

Helga: Really? It seems like it's only just started.

Archie: Agreed.

Conversation Two:

Ariadne: So, where do you want to go to school? Like, a city or a country?

Tea: I don't know. Somewhere other than here.

Archie: Not a suburb.

Helga: Definitely not a suburb.

Tea: How would you define school suburb, then?

Ariadne: Yale.

Tea: I believe New Haven is a city.

End Conversation

You may have noticed Mario's lack of participation. This stems from the fact that I'd given him my math packet #4 and requested help, and he had been staring at factoring problems (no writing implement, just staring) for about twenty minutes. I then spent the entire forty minutes in which we were standing because the entire train was packed, passing him various math problems, watching him stare at them, and then listening to his explanations.

Once some seats freed up, we moved over there and spent the remainder of the trip trying to determine the number of possible ten-unit strips that could be created out of green three-unit rectangles and red one-units. We had to do out all of the possibilities, and it took a ridiculously long period of time, but we eventually arrived at the correct answer, with minimal weirdness on his part (ex: "It's odd that we arrive at the same conclusions at the same time." "What?" "Never mind." "Sure. Where did you get that 6 from again?" "I divided twelve by two." "Oh, right. That makes sense.").

We had just moved onto the collinear candles when Helga had the decency to remind us that we were at our town's stop, so we disembarked.

This Week At SHP

I got to the station rather ridiculously early because I had to buy a new ticket, and I really wasn't in the mood to move quickly. I stood around for about seven or eight minutes by myself, growing progressively more worried when no one else showed up. I then texted Melissa and called my house. Neither responded. A couple minutes later, pretty much exactly at the time when the train is supposed to show up, Mario walked out of the station.

"Oh, good," I said, and walked over to him. We exchanged the typical perfunctory greetings. "I was beginning to think I didn't have class."

"Oh." He frowned for a moment. "I dunno. I didn't check."

"I called my Dad, but he didn't pick up. I texted Melissa, also."

"She didn't text back?"

"No. I can only assume that she must be asleep, cause she always has her phone with her."

"Yeah." We looked awkwardly around and try to think of something to say. He put his notebook on the ledge. I took my hat off. He picked his notebook up. I put my hat on. He counted the number of pages in the folder. I looked to the direction the train was coming in. I looked the other direction because the sun was too bright.

"Do you think anyone else is going to show up?" he asked.

"I dunno. I think Archie said he had ACTs."

"Irving never comes."

"Melissa's sleeping."

"I dunno about Ariadne."

"Me neither and oh! that's me!" My purse had begun to play Mozart. I pulled out my phone.

"Hello?"

"Hi. Why'd you call?"

"There wasn't anyone else here so I wasn't sure if I had class."

"What?"

"There wasn't anyone else here so I wasn't sure if I had class."

"I can't understand you."

"There wasn't-"

"What?"

"I wanted you to check the class schedule."

"Oh. Why didn't you say so?"

"Well it's fine now, Mario's here- it's my dad- and so you don't really need to-"

"He probably should. I'm not certain that we have class," said Mario.

"Could you check? It's on the bulletin board and the internet."

"Sure. I'll call you back when I find it. It'll be a couple of minutes. I'm upstairs. I was in the bathroom."

"Great, Dad, thanks." I hung up. "He has to walk downstairs to check," I told Mario.

He nodded.

"Do you know what time it is?"

I've just come to the realization that if I don't stop myself, I could probably easily reiterate the entire days conversation right now. Well, it'd probably take me an hour or two- we definitely spent at least that long talking- but I'm pretty sure I remember all of it. I guess I'll try to give a highlight reel. We spent a good amount of the time, both up and back, doing colleges. I think that since it's a clear, overlapping interest, and Mario's slightly obsessed, it works reasonably well. What's really funny is when I relate his own opinions back at him, using different words, from things he's told me before, and he just nods along in agreement, sure that I came up with it myself, and not that I'm just trying to fill in his words so he doesn't have to strain himself thinking of them. During the cab ride back, he was talking about the repetitiveness of people's college essays and I mentioned that he sounded like he could work in a college admissions office already.

"I know." He paused. "It's kind of pathetic."

I didn't respond. I wasn't really sure how to.

Orientation

for SHP (which is back on! Wooot!)

In the morning, Mom dropped me off at the station. I waited by myself for a while, pacing in figure eights (or infinity signs) primarily out of boredom. Then, I looked over towards the station. I wasn't wearing my glasses, so everything looked a bit blurry, but I saw someone who looked a lot like Cormac. I tilted my head sideways and squinted, trying to decide if it was him or not. He turned his head sideways to imitate me, so I figured it must be him and said hello. It turns out he's taking a theater class on Saturdays until January, so he'll be on the train most mornings, which is most definitely good news. It's amazing how much faster the rides feel when you're talking to somebody.

I took a cab by myself from the station, since Archie and Helga had taken the earlier train for fear of being late. I was still early, though, so I went and got a delicious cranberry muffin from Nussbaum and Wu, the only deli I've ever been to that sells both sushi and baked goods. I went to Pupin to get my class assignment (cytoskeleton, which Melissa is in as well) and checked a few other people's (Ariadne is in nano, Irving in complex calculus, and Mario in psych) before heading to the orientation for returning students. I found Allana, a friend from last year, who was sitting in the back along with a bunch of Asian guys and one white guy who looked vaguely familiar but I couldn't remember the name of so introduced myself to anyways. We laughed about the ridiculous number of lost looking Asian kids with maps running around outside looking for Havemeyer. Then, the actual speech started.

I paid attention for the first few minutes until I heard the signature four beeps my phone makes upon getting a text message. I then spent five minutes digging through my bag for my phone before I found it and opened it up. I had a new message from Caleb. "Is that you in front of me? I think it is, but I don't want to awkwardly say hi to someone I don't know." I turned around and waved at him before unsuccessfully attempting to continue to listen to the lecture.

The Victim

Every English class has one. He (and the victim is typically male) doesn't pay any less attention than anybody else, but, invariably, when there is silence, he is pegged as someone who isn't paying attention and gets called on, and which point he stumbles out a response and goes back to trying to hid from the teacher.

Last year, the victim was Richard. We had four demo teachers, but the problem didn't truly become evident until the third one, who singled him out, calling on him repeatedly, trying to get him to talk. When the fourth one came, he eventually asked a question that no one knew the answer to, and he looked out at the class for someone to answer it. "How about you?" he asked, looking at Richard. The entire class burst into laughter. The poor teacher was very confused.

This year, the victim is Lyle (I don't know if this helps, but he's friends with Jeff and isn't related to Lisa (Lisa is a famous person, not a nickname) and was in all of my core classes in eighth grade). I'm fairly certain that Ms. Seltzia has called on him while he wasn't raising his hand once per class this year. To contrast, I have yet to be called on while I'm not raising my hand. Usually, he says "can you repeat the question?" before managing a half-hearted response. Today, she had put our next essay assignment up on the projector.

"... polire- that's Latin. I'm not sure if I'm pronouncing it right. Does anyone here take Latin?"

"Lyle does!" somebody said.

"Lyle?"

"Huh? Yes."

"How would you pronounce this?"

He squinted at the board. "What?"

"P-o-l-i-r-e."

He looked confused. "That's Latin?"

The class laughed.

"Yes. But how would you-"

Ariadne couldn't contain herself any longer. "It's Polire! You're right!"

Lyle nodded. "Yeah..."

State of the Tea

74% of my facebook friends are female. To be honest, I'm surprised that is isn't more of them.

For English, I'm supposed to write a one page narrative with an implicitly made argument. Is that like I theme? Doesn't all writing have a theme? I am not at all certain what to write, so I can't really do it tonight, but I'm not going to have much time tomorrow, and it's all horribly annoying. All I really want to do is eat dinner and then spend a few hours curled up with my book before I go to sleep. Unfortunately, this seems highly unlikely, as I still have a pile of ASR work to do, as well as a bit more math.

In somewhat better news, Ariadne got into SHP. I didn't even have to ask her, she asked if I was is in. I had a feeling that she was, because the second day of school, she was about to say something but decided not to, and I figured that was it.

I got called "honey" by the school principal the other day. Unfortunately, I didn't notice until I was far enough away that it would have been weird to turn around and yell at him. I mentioned this to my dad this morning, and he told me to confront the teacher in question if it happens again. Thanks, Dad, I never would have thought of that one on my own.

Honors List

Today, Gretchen came over, and we decided to combine our interests in gossip and academics to produce: The High Honors Predictions (Wood Knocking Enabled). This is also an opportunity for me to come up with lots of fun nicknames.

First, the top fifteen, also known as: Our Wonderful List, by Us.

1. Bryant, the somewhat smarter twin.

2. Tybalt, the other really smart twin.

3. Yuma, the Asian boy who likes to say "um." He is here because he is smart, and we like him.

4. Clara, who played Clara in the nutcracker and did very, very well on the math midterm and plays violin. We needed a girl on this list.

5. Julie. Because she is Julie.

6. Mario, because we like him more than

7. Livny. How we wish that he was stupider.

8. Brian. His first name is Avon's last name.

9. Jeff. Tierra is obsessed with him. However, he has taken a lot of journalism, which might pull down his GPA, but whatever.

10 and 11: Tea and Gretchen. Because we are awesome.

12. Avon or Natalie. They have the same first name, and we aren't really sure.

13. Sonny. The taller of the two workshop boys from Avon's elementary school.

14. Ariadne. Her dad gave a speech to our math class.

15. Nyx, because we love her. She's pretty good at school, too.

It'll be interesting to see if any of this rings true after another year and a half.

Also, I've been taking art classes at the art center in a nearby town. My teacher has a porno-stache, and it creeps me out a lot.