Eeenteresting

I don't know if I've ever mentioned this, but I absolutely love babysitting elementary-school aged children. There are few things as wonderful as being paid to watch TV or do my homework after they've gone to bed. And even before the kids crash, they generally make perfectly good conversation. Aside from that, making $90 on a Saturday night is totally worth missing a night out with friends.

I saw that nasty substitute teacher who I saw on a flight to Florida at the deli near my house. This was the second time I'd done so. Let me just say that I will never, ever be happy to see her. Never never never.

I'm trying to work out the order of dorms for my housing lottery form. I have a paper to read for internship that I really need to actually read. I have some free time on my hands and very little to fill it with.

I have a lot.

The actual Thiel Fellows got announced a few days ago.  I suspect that they were going to have 25, and I wasn't replaced, but perhaps not. 24 is a nice round number in its own way. I don't feel that I regret the decision I made---I wasn't ready, and I recognize that. Unlike some people (I kind of want to make a comment about Jeff here), I've been trying not to let all of this go to my head, though I'm uncertain as to whether I've succeeded. I suppose if I'd actually taken the Fellowship, and I'd spent recent days giving interviews and whatnot, I'd probably be even worse in the arrogance department than I am now.

I'm trying to figure out how many pegs college will knock me down. I know it'll be hard, but how hard? Hard enough that I should take regular-level multivariable calc? I've been looking at the psets, though, and they're manageable. I'm thinking I might not work during the days this summer. I won't make that much money in comparison to what I already have, and there are too many productive things I want to do.

I want to make those black box cost estimates I was told would be a good idea. I also want to use the online resources to teach myself the difference between this year's multivariable calculus and 18.02 (yeah, the school anonymity thing is totally not working out), because I'd like to try to ASE out. I think that, given the fact that I only have a month, those are sufficient goals. One is less structured, one is much more regimented, but I like it, and I like the idea of spending my days learning. And the fact that my parents are buying me a laptop saves me the equivalent sum of money to what I would have spent buying one.

So, on the whole, I think it's a good idea, and I think the productivity will mean more to me in the long run than the extra cash (my savings have been doing pretty well after this year, despite the rather large crash-related hit).

These are my plans. They may not be grand, but I think they'll be just as good.

Societal Implications

When I visited Princeton, my host Eve had to ditch me to go to crew practice pretty much exactly when everyone arrived. I also managed to arrive while all of my fellow prefrosh were involved in a mandatory activity, which meant that I was alone. I was also in an unfamiliar place, and tired, and Princeton is always pretty quiet, so there weren't even random people around for me to go talk to, so I was lonely.

I went to a meeting of the entrepreneurial society. It was boring--most of the people seemed like they were leaping after whatever idea could net them a lot of money. It bugged me, since my motivation was to make a difference in the environment and electricity distribution and generation anywhere I could (at this point, I was still deciding whether to take the Fellowship, so this was relevant). At some point, another prefrosh (I don't know his name, but he had an orange lanyard and was very attractive (not that the second bit is at all relevant)) left, so I waited about a minute and then skipped out. I texted Julie soon after that, and went to meet her in a courtyard (Princeton has a lot of courtyards. So many that I think they may cease to be courtyards and just turn into a giant field of grass that happens to be occasionally interrupted by buildings). It should be noted that chronology is loose, and events may not have actually occurred in the order they appear here.

Julie was sitting with two of her host's suitemates as well as another prefrosh (I actually ran into this prefrosh again at Visitas. She recognized me. I didn't remember her. First, I blamed it on thinking she wasn't a prefrosh, then on the fact that she'd been wearing sunglasses). The girls started talking about the best places to party on campus--not a topic of great interest to the three prospective physics majors. Then we got a detailed description of the eating clubs, including some rude words about the fact that the engineers just like to hang out at their's on your average Friday night.

I have to admit that, by that point, I wasn't particularly fond of them.

I know there was a reason that I decided to tell this story. I have this recollection that the point of the story was the conversation with Julie and the others.

I remember! The students asked us what we did as extracurriculars--how do we occupy our time not at school?

Forgotten prefrosh said dance, or something like that.

Julie said track and The Challenge, I think.

They looked at me expectantly. "Um...science?"

"No, outside of school."

"I do research. Or go to different classes. Or read about science or apply for sciencey things."

They looked at me as if I were some sort of alien. It was disconcerting, to say the least.

--------------------------------

I believe that I also promised the complex manifolds story, so here goes that.

Once upon a time, long, long ago (so long ago that it was, in fact, the weekend of April 9th-10th of 2011) and far, far away (so far away that it was, in fact, in Cambridge, Massachusetts), James fell asleep.

Now, James is the sort of person who does not like to admit that he would fall asleep unintentionally. However, his good friends Tea and Hyunmi, as well as his new acquaintance Victor, were aware of this fact. Thus, Hyunmi recorded a video of Tea talking about the fact that James was sleeping, as well as the visual of James sleeping.

When James awoke, he claimed the video was a forgery, but I'm sure you all know who was the right in this argument.

Regardless, the following weekend, the group--not including Victor, who had had the good sense to make his college decision early--was reunited. They spent much time in each other's company, not sleeping.

On the second night of not sleeping, it was 3:30 am, and they were very tired. However, they knew that this would be their last night together for a very long time. They also knew that if they left the common room of this random dorm that Felix had so kindly let them into, they would be unable to return.

Thus, it was with heavy hearts that they decided to take a two hour nap. Tea fell asleep quickly. This storyteller is unable to comment on the time to sleep of James and Hyunmi, but is confident that it was quite short. Tea awoke two hours later to the quiet conversation of Hyunmi and Felix. James, however, was still asleep.

Tea, Hyunmi, and Felix attempted to wake James. They spoke his name loudly. They laughed loudly. Tea poked and prodded him repeatedly. Hyunmi also participated in some quantity of poking and prodding. Eventually, it reached a point where his eyes were open, but he was not yet capable of logical conversation.

However, Tea embarked on the ambitious task of keeping his eyes from staying shut. Whenever they dropped, she would poke him again. This went on for some time. Eventually, Tea grew tired of leaning all the way over to reach the other couch. She pushed James's legs over and sat on the other end of the couch on which he was no longer sleeping. The next time his eyes were open, she informed him on no uncertain terms that, in the event that his lids fell again, she would sit on him. Even this attempt proved unsuccessful--both threats and actual sitting were insufficient cause for wakefulness.

Tea settled back onto the other end of the couch, annoyed at the ineffectiveness of her methods.

Then, James began to speak. "What are my soles connected to?" he said.

"What?" asked Tea.

James mumbled. She poked him.

"What did you say?"

"What are my soles connected to?"

She looked at his feet. "My hip?"

Hyunmi and Felix were watching him, somewhat concerned.

"No, no," said James.

Tea looked to Hyunmi and Felix for help. They laughed, but could provide no further clues.

James questioned them a few more times before they decided to leave him be for a little while. When he eventually awoke, they asked what he had been asking.

He tilted his head, his eyes looking at the same far away place that people examine when they perform mental calculations. "I thought," he said, "that we were in a non-euclidian manifold."

The others laughed. Few people other than James would use that sort of vocabulary to describe early-morning hallucinations.

"But what does that mean?" asked Tea. "I don't speak math."

"Oh," said James. "It's a manifold that doesn't always simplify to a plane. Some of its points are connected to points that aren't necessarily nearby, as we'd think of it. Like, I might drop my cellphone and it would reappear above my head, because points below were connected to those on the top."

"But what were you asking?"

"I thought my feet were connected to something else, and I was hoping one of you would know."

The Last Presentation

Julie and I are chilling at school. It should be boring, but Julie is awesome, so it isn't. Yay!

We all were just practicing for our Super Student Challenge presentation tomorrow. On Overcoming Obesity. That was our title until Gretchen started saying that the Os looked like little fat people. I actually wanted to put little fat people in, but then Yuma came up with the name "Shaping Paperclip," which is really much better anyways.

Julie says hi to the world.

I'm worried about the presentation--not really stage fright (I have stage fright for Julie because I'm getting nervous for her), but there's the fear that, like last year, the presentation might be the thing that keeps us from winning. Not that we really know if that was it, but I'm still nervous.

I'm also sad that our little team is dispersing after this. No more Science Bowl, no more Moody's, no more this, no more math team (not that Julie was on math team or Ginny showed up, but still!). The posse of awesomeness, or whatever we want to call ourselves, won't really exist anymore, and it's sad. They've been good to work with, and I've really gotten a lot out of the experience of working as a team with people who I can actually depend on academically. And I've really gotten to know all of our strengths and weaknesses--we're so well meshed together, it's a pity to break that up.

But we will. Because we're graduating. Internships, summer, college. I am so so so so so excited.

Today

• I found this really awesome applied math paper called "Forecasting Hourly Electricity Using Time-Varying Splines."
• I read half of said paper before recalling that I should be doing more pressing homework.
• I wrote about half a sentence more on my "better get done in the next few weeks" paper. Note to self: work faster.
• I rewrote my abstract (will anyone notice if it doesn't match the one on the poster?)
• I sent an email stating that my poster is free-standing.
• I took an accidental 1.5 hour nap. I got out of the shower, wrapped myself up in a towel and began to read Act II of "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf." The next thing I knew, I was lying groggily on my side and Shelby was saying "If you don't respond to the question of when you're eating dinner, I'm going to unwrap you." I fortunately discovered that I only have three pages of the act left.
• I ate dinner with my mother. We talked about how I've already picked up the MIT habit of referring to everything by either an acronym or a number.
• I freaked out about how much work I had to do.
• I decided I really like applied math and drew up more drafts of courses. If I take the math courses, plus the energy studies program, the 5 electrical engineering courses I want to take and the flex major in physics, I will have a reasonable schedule (4 courses a semester (yes, I factored in HASS and GIRs). If I do the focused option, it would result in overloading. I suppose this is something I can worry about in another 1.5 years, once I've taken more of these courses and have a better idea of what I actually enjoy.
• I wrote a blog post.
• I became hungry and went to eat more food.

Well, I will anyway.

Monday, Lovely Monday

There's a title that will probably never get repeated. Oh, how happy I am that there is no school tomorrow.

My younger sister's carpool buddy for swimming got a foot through the sclera and she's at the hospital. My stomach churns just thinking about it.

Ginny and Yuma are coming over tomorrow and we are cooking chocolate donuts. If Ginny's mother asks, we are working on physics. All of you, remember this.

In other news, I should be practicing for math team, but I'm putting it off because I'm busy. I should be working on college applications, but I think I'll be able to get my drafts done by tomorrow morning. I should be talking to people, but I'd rather read.

I hope that Kathrya is doing well, and that she continues to do well in the coming days.

I need to get going on The Purity Myth, which I think I'm going to add to my Lit X paper. The first three books (Orlando, The Scarlet Letter, Tess of the D'ubervilles) are from very different eras, but I think I can make it work, and I'll possibly be able to incorporate Lolita as well, in which case I'll be done with the reading phase of the paper. My current plan, though I haven't yet read the nonfiction text, is to focus on marriage and virginity through time. My main point is that the definition of marriage has changed considerably, granting much more power to the female counterpart (I'm going to have to think of any modern books I've read that would support this well, but I'll hopefully be able to find something...I wonder how Jane Eyre would fit into this analysis. I'd also rather like to read The Age of Innocence, which seems applicable. There are so many things I want to do in so little space!), while the societal perspective of virginity, placing it on such a pedestal, giving it this grand significance that is so similar to the power it has in Tess of the D'ubervilles (loss of virginity is equated with marriage to the partner in the text) is in a marked contrast.

Yay for plans!

School, Miserable School

I need to keep writing.

Right, blogging. More writing. More work. I need to keep it from becoming that, because that would qualify as a Bad Idea.

I still have all this weird capitalization left over from God of Small Things.

I still have 10,000 things to do. College shall be the death of me. So will school. But mostly college applications.

I like that school and college are somehow different. In the world that is in my head, anyways.

I like A.P. Physics because it is a review, and I can read during it. I like A. P. English because it involves books. I'm worried I'm more of an English geek than I originally intended to become.

Ah, well.

Gifted Ed for School Newspaper, Again

Gretchen says the last one was whiny. It probably was, as I am frequently whiny.

Such is life.

Gifted Education

I submitted the first draft of my research paper with that as the title. It's probably the most boring title of all time, but it does get the subject across. Gifted education is, put in the simplest way possible, the teaching of gifted kids. However, any understanding of gifted education must rest on an understanding of what makes gifted kids gifted.

And no, "smart people" doesn't count.

Giftedness manifests itself in many ways. There are kids who learn to read before starting kindergarten. Some bury their noses in college math textbooks for fun. Some sneak literary classics under their third grade desks or devote their spare time to their own stories. Others become engaged in aspects of the sciences, finding a cool looking rock and spending the next three months wholly devoted to the study of rocks, and where they come from, and how, precisely, this particular rock came to be in their backyard.

The constant acquisition of knowledge leaves these students ahead of the school curriculum; studies have found that they typically know half of the information being taught- and that's before the course has even started. They frequently are also learning at a faster rate, finishing classwork with so much spare time that the day becomes a series of tedious waits rather than a continuum of work.

It is understandable, then, that some of these children become bored as the schooldays slog slowly on. I gleaned a list of time filling activities from interviews with gifted students. They fill notebooks with doodles, and stare at the clock in such as way that six hands appear, and play snake on calculators and perform Beethoven's 5th with their fingertips on their desks. One girl even went to far as to exercise discreetly, contracting various muscles or doing calf raises, to the point that she would experience muscle soreness. Even so, they cannot find enough useless entertainments to fill the long classroom hours.

The emptiness that is left is time used by other students to acquire new information, but also to learn how to think and work. Gifted children, however, are in want of a challenge. Leaders in the educational field focus on the importance of a perfect level of difficulty. A too challenging class yields frustrated kids who come to think that they can't learn. One that is too easy yields frustrated kids who come to think that they don't have to. Gifted kids can be spotted by their yearning for complexity, but when they don't find it early on, they don't know how to cope when it eventually shows up.

To give them this complexity, they need challenging classes at a young age. However, it's a lot harder to put gifted kids into their own classes than I've made it sound. For one thing, how does one decide if a child is gifted? The OLSATs, while great for finding precociousness, don't show much in the way of passion or complex thinking. On top of this, there is the force of the parental unit. No parent wants to be told that their child is not gifted; some even go so far as to hire tutors to get their preschoolers to pass the tests for gifted kindergartens. Teacher evaluations can get around the testing issue, but they're biased, with children misbehaving due to boredom frequently overlooked, and racial prejudices showing far more than they should.

These are a few of the problems associated with finding gifted kids to put into programs in the first place. This is completely disregarding finding teachers supportive of gifted kids, training teachers to teach them, finding funds for the classes themselves and this training, working any sort of acceleration into curriculum, making groupings fluid enough that borderline students are stuck between too hard and too easy, and doing all of that while keeping insatiable students satisfied and prickly parents pleased. I couldn't do it in ten pages, and I can't do it in five hundred words here. It's absolutely evident that gifted children need some form of added difficulty; it's just as evident that getting it to them may possibly be more complex than the complexity these children crave.

My Research Paper in 500-600 Words

As requested by Brian, for the school newspaper.

Gifted education and why it's important in five hundred words. This should be interesting.

I'm not certain that I get an introduction, so I'll start with that:

I chose to write my junior year research program on gifted education. I wanted to do how to teach gifted kids- this turned out to be very complicated. I focused instead on what gifted programs are and why they're important.

Every child is unique; gifted kids just seem exceptionally so. They'll read Jane Eyre or The Origin of Species under their desks in elementary school, or absorb higher-level mathematics textbooks and learn computer programming before starting high school. They'll spot an interesting rock and spend the next three months reading geology textbooks with a flashlight after their parents have gone to bed.

A standard school curriculum, such as the middle school classes we all took together, is not enough to sate this curiosity. We've all been bored in class at one point or another- imagine if this boredom was every day. I interviewed former gifted kids (I suppose you'd call them gifted teens at this point) about how they cope with boring classes. Each offered a list of activities, including staring at the clock in such a way that six hands seem to appear, playing snake on calculators, filling notebooks with doodles, and-this is the one that shocked me, the classic physical activity-phobic nerd-discreetly exercising by contracting various muscles or doing calf raises, to the point that this particular student would experience muscle soreness the next day.

This boredom is more than just boring. It keeps students from learning new material. It also keeps them from learning good study habits, how to learn effectively, and how to face and defeat an academic challenge. Some students interviewed spoke of severe difficulty keeping up at all when they finally found a challenging class. Others looked at me blankly when asked how they dealt with a difficult course; they apparently hadn't found one yet. Challenge, however, is an important part of learning, and gifted students need to experience that challenge in order to have any intellectual growth.

There are many conflicting views about how best to provide that intellectual stimulation. The method most familiar to Paperclip students is likely the Workshop program at the town's elementary and middle schools. This is what is known as a pullout program. Kids miss class to attend it, and it meets once a week, a tiny percentage of time when compared to the hours spent staring a walls. That's the biggest issue with these programs- they simply aren't enough.

Another form of gifted education, and one that provides something much closer to enough, is so omnipresent at Paperclip that most students don't give it a second thought. However, academic classes separated by ability are...

I'll finish this later. I'm tired, and at this point, I really don't care.

I am Acutely Exhausted

So I'm doing the lazy thing and making you read my old schoolwork.

Mindbender #15

The Pleasure of learning and knowing, though not the keenest, is yet the least perishable of all pleasures. A. E. Hausman

Knowledge, while not the most desired pleasure, is the one that lasts the longest, staying with one until the ravages of Alzheimer's and age have fully destroyed it. Love, on the other hand, is as perishable as the one loved, who is as turn as perishable as the delicious food they once ate.

I mean, seriously, romantic relationships are rarely enduring. Spouses can die, and relationships can crumble, and we all end up mopey and depressing, eating Ben and Jerry's and watching horrible romantic comedies. For instance, A Time Traveler's wife is about a woman who, after the death of her husband, spends most of her life waiting for him. How utterly depressing.

Food is even quicker to rot. We all crave a little something yummy, but we don't have chocolate cornucopias. Be it the Halloween candy that eventually runs out or the fresh kiwis that go bad before they're eaten, food just doesn't last forever, and cake never sticks around as long as we expect it to. Here is a poem I found online about how quickly chocolate cakes is gone. It wasn't a very good poem, so I won't bother to link to it. There is a finite amount of cake, unlike good poems, of which there is surely an infinite quantity.

Knowledge, however, sticks. I remember a speech made by the minister of my church at Walden pond. He remembered the works of Thoreau. Thoreau remembered the world and nature when he wrote Walden. The knowledge gained stuck with the minister and it stuck with me. Food is eaten and love dies, but knowledge endures.

Slangy Research Paper Outline, formatted properly

as ordered by Cammie

-Gifted children

------IQ points

------quick learners

------need more than can be offered by the typical classroom

-The used to have programs

------but now they don't

-----------NCLB is a bitch. And it's not my bitch.

------It's helping slower learners

-----------and this means teachers and schools have less time/funds for the gifted

----------------they're not getting attention

-Everyone thinks they don't need it!

------They'll make it anyways! They have it made! Everything is sunny in smart kid land!!!!

-----------it's unpopular! Teachers hate them! OH NOES!!!

-But seriously, dude, they totally need it.

------school sucks for geeks

-----------remember those nerdy high school guys on TV, like Brian in the Breakfast Club, who never got a date?

------yeah, it's like that, very nightmarish, to quote a study

------Can't be too smart. And nerdy is evern worse. Pop culture says we can't have one without the other. It's a stigma!!!11! WOO!

-Consider also, the need for intellectual stimulation

------Kids learn best in a middlingly challenging environment

-----------Boredom, like too much challenge, is an issue

----------------Yeah, gifted kids- totes bored

---------------------They already know the material

---------------------This makes them suffer (McClure)

------They don't want to try

-----------Mario

-----------That mother with the kid who's acting out

-----------Prevents them from learning how to learn/work

----------------Big paragraph quote about stumbling

---------------------Nyxiepie!

-Chronic underachievement sucks balls

------Dropouts

-----------Conflicting numbers (all the hell over the place)

-----------------But, clearly, there are gifted children dropping out

----------------------And this is an issue

---------------------------Want to "attain extreme levels of capability"

-Why should you want this? They'll save the world!

------They're your doctors

------They help us compete with China

-----------Down with China

----------------Our principal's faculty meetings (no, I won't actually mention them)

-For the betterment of the nation, gifted children should not be made to languish

------Easier said than done.

-----------Fears of damaging other children

-----------Expenses

-----------Years of accepted educational dogma

----------------All at stake. A stake through the heart. Of a VAMPIRE!

---------------------Equity verses excellence

--------------------------Who wins

-------------------------------Can we have fairness while pursuing excellence?

------------------------------------Maybe if it's eggcellent?

-----------------------------------------Snack break!

-Equality debate --> leading view is that students stay in the classroom

------"integrated learning"

-----------language win

----------------but, yeah, doesn't really end up happening

---------------------?

No Matter Where You Go You Stay Where You Are

As some of my older readers know, when I am not in the mood to generate a current post, I reach into the past. For today, I'll go back to an old English mindbender, written on September 11th, 2008.

The Mindbender is: No matter how far you go, you stay where you are.

A Summary:

People are boring, and constant, and never ever change, and I think that whole concept is obnoxious. My introduction is only two sentences long because I am lazy. Also, I'm using the first person, because I'm cool like that.

The Palace Thief is a book. It involves a big Roman history competition and togas, but all anybody cares about is that Patrick Dempsey is in the movie. I suppose that I can let Cammie keep her weird George Clooney thing if I can have Dempsey. Anyways, the cheating boy in the competition grows up to be a cheating, good for nothing grown up. He stays where he is. Isn't that a great example?

I think the cheating boy is a dickwad. I'm going to try to pretend that he's an isolated dickwad.

Oh, darn, Sarah Bareilles says that people don't change either. Since it's set to music, she must be right. Wait- Sarah's actually talking about moving around in the literal sense. But it's a song, so we'll pretend that it's figurative.

People are always trying to change, so the mindbender is wrong. I know that it's actually right, but I am going to be an optimistic for as long as I possibly can.

The End

Interestingly, even though the mindbender was written on September 11th, I make no mention of September 11th, despite the fact that it is a somewhat important date. To see if I even thought about the historical significance (twin towers! ahhh!), I went through my old journals to find something. Below is my September 11th entry:

Still Crampy. Still bleeding profusely from my vagina. It is muy disgusto.

Mom's going to the hospital tomorrow to have her uterus scraped out. She has to be anesthesized and shit. It's kinda annoying, but standard procedure. Intellectually, I'm sure she'll be fine, but I can't shake this odd foreboding feeling.

Though that could be more related to my audition tomorrow. Turns out there'll probably be only one piano, so that guaranteed spot- basically unattainable. Not that I won't try, but I'm somewhat lacking, confidence wise.

But it's alright. Worst case, I'll apologize to the set painters for my illness and join up. I'll go once or twice a week and paint out my sorrows, then try not to cry when everyone walks out and they're having fun and Ryan is being sexy and wahhhh!!!!

Well, that did not help.

I need to go to sleep I'll try to dream of D (I think?) from music theory, and hope that Mario turns out to be wonderful (and takes the train).

See, better already.

As I'm sure you noticed, this, too, contains no mention of terrorists. My aversion to discussion of world disasters seems to have been present for at least a year.

Interestingly, the mindbender is saved as 5.doc, but is titled mindbender 4.

How very peculiar.

Found Objects

in my A.P. English pocket divider that literally exploded last week:

• R-rated movie permission slip for Spanish class
• A New York Times Op-Ed article we analyzed about 4 months ago
• 1 sheet unreinforced blank notepaper
• 3 sheets reinforced blank notepaper
• 8 pages of museum synthesis prompt
• registration details for a science fair I'm not participating in
• 2 scoring commentaries written in incomprehensible handwriting (even worse than Peter's)
• Leo Africanus's description of Africans from Shakespearian times
• 4 pages of synthesis essay prompts
• The first page of Umber's research paper from last year about plastic bags
• an exemplar photocopy of my essay about pennies
• my actual essay about pennies
• the first chapter of Sarah Palin's book
• an 8 page packet on invasive species
• 2 more sheets of unreinforced notepaper
• a full transcript of Obama's speech on race
• 6 page packet on space exploration
• Othello 4.2.52-80
• the actual penny essay exemplar
• 10 page packet on pennies
• my entire A.P. English midterm

Countdowns

Number of...

...midterms left: 2

...English essays to write during the midterm: 2

...rice crispy treats eaten during midterms week: 2

...cookies: 3

...blueberries: 726

...pills taken: 23

...minutes remaining with Mrs. Hirten: 35

...free periods thus far: 0

...free period in the rest of the year: 7

...twins in that free period: 2

...other friends discovered in free period: 0

...pages of science research paper: 12

...pages of research paper left to rewrite: 10

...colleges visited: 3

...visited colleges in Forbe's top 15: 2

...top 127:3

...times I have looked up RSI on college confidential: 612

...times I have worked on my Rockefeller application: 0

...practice SAT tests taken: 2

...days until SAT: 4

...people I owe clothing to: 1

...friends in the hospital: 1

...minutes on phone with Avon: 102

...percentage of that time in which Avon talked: 11

Yes Man

I got home from school today utterly exhausted. There should not have been school today. I don't care how goddamned not-icy the roads were, the online snow day calculator gave me a 99% chance of snow day. I think the problem is the administration. Harsh doesn't begin to cover it. Our frog of a superintendent would simply prefer to pretend that snow doesn't exist. I think Becky's plan is the best- get into a car crash, and put your blood on his hands. Now, I probably will not actually do this, and likely neither will she, but I have a feeling that nothing short of a catastrophe could change the administrative opinion in question.

I just watched Yes Man, which basically consisted of a rubber-faced, not particularly attractive protagonist who never does anything because he's so insecure he thinks that as soon as people truly know him they'll just start hating. Then, he goes through some mystical self-help transformation and says yes to everything and finds his own manic pixie dream girl. The basic idea behind the Yes Man premise is that we shouldn't be letting opportunities pass us by, and if we'd just embrace it, our lives would be fuller and better and a whole host of other positive adjectives.

I can understand that, to a certain extent. I do think that one needs to be careful- there are people who say yes too often, who don't get their own homework done because they're too busy helping everyone else in the entire class, who give so much that they don't have anything left to hold as they fall asleep at night. I'm not sure I really have either of those problems. I mean, I do do some things. There are times when I say no, I'm too busy, no, I don't want to, no, I have a...thing, but most of the time, I do try to be somewhat open. After all, I know how depressing it is to not do anything.

When I was younger, I used to always have absolutely nothing planned for the first week of summer. I would veg, completely and totally, for that time period. Then, the year after fifth grade, all of my friends (granted, I only had three friends at the time, but this is beside the point) went to camp, and I was left alone. I did nothing for a week, and my clearest memory is of lying sprawled across the couch in the kitchen, moaning to my mother, "I'm soooo bored."

So, moral of the story, do stuff, because boredom is boring. On that note, I'm going to find something to do.

The Pain of Grammatical Errors

How does anyone expect to be taken seriously in life if they can't even bother to properly punctuate an important class assignment? I attend one of the best high schools in the country, but these kids seem to be barely literate. I'm reading briefs for cases, and I have to stop myself from cringing.

Examples are below, my comments in italics:

• Is The Washington State mitigating factors law a violation of the Eight Amendment's Ban on "Cruel and Unusual Punishment"?

Because Everything must Sometimes be Capitalized, and punctuation goes Outside the Parentheses.

• He went into the School Library and opened fire on the students, causing 4 students to dies and 5 to be brutally injured.

Spell out integers under ten. Since when is a school library a proper noun? Has your English teacher taught you nothing?

• The Court found that he had bipolar disease but was sentenced to death due to the brutality of the crime under Washington State Law.

Murder is only brutal under Washington State Law- it is soft and fluffy in North Dakota. Bipolar disorder is no longer a disorder; it is now a disease. Don't get to close- you might catch it!

• The ruling of the Washington State Supreme Court was incorrect because the

Yes, let's all not finish our own damn thesis statements, what a phenomenal idea!

• In Ten similar Case of Eddings vs. Oklahoma, Eddings was convicted of murder, he was then interviewed by a team of psychiatrists and was proven to have an unstable behavior, he was exempt from the Death penalty due to prior cases like Lockett v. Ohio through individualized consideration of mitigating factors required by the Constitution.

This is a boy who will not pass is SATs, he will never write a word after high school, his college professors will bang their heads against their desks due to the absurd grammar of his general writings.

• Although People who are 18 years old aren't considered to be a minor, this could've also been a factor within this case because the Teen's mind hasn't fully developed.

I want to stop skewering Stanley here, but it just keeps getting worse and worse. In fact, I'm just not going to read the rest. Moving along...

• No 09-_______

Is it really that difficult to fill out the form?

• Is the Washington State mitigating factors law a violation of the Eighth Amendment's ban on "cruel and unusual punishment."

Weirdly, Word auto-corrects this to a question mark outside of the parentheses. Has my grammatical education steered me down the wrong path?

Twelve Months of Tea

This is blatantly ripped off from Dr. Jay, who stole it from Dr. Isis. It is the first post of each month of the year, accompanied by the first sentence of the post and the first comment on it.

January: I apologize for never writing and rave about my love of Girl Overboard.

Well, would you look at that. I haven't written in a very, very, very long time.

------I was still blogging anonymously, so there are no comments on this post.

February: I read A Thousand Splendid Suns and experience emotional overload.

I forget, sometimes, what finishing a good book will do to you.

------Ditto.

March: I attempt to teach my younger sisters to notice sexism in advertising.

There's gonna be snow tomorrow, and I, for one, am psyched.

------Do I need to write anything?

April: We are introduced to the perversions of Nyx's chemistry class.

Two tenth graders in science class today.

May: I introduce myself to the communications medium of texting.

The rest of the dream makes even less sense than the first half, so I think I won't bother with it.

------Vicky: HAHAHA your conversation with mario is really funny.... Question though: why would you possibly tell Mario that your random friend from camp types fast?? I can just see that scene: Mario sitting peacefully reading the WSJ, you texting away then you blurt out: Hey Mario, my camp friend can type fast!!

June: I blow off studying and my U.S. portfolio in order to make lots and lots of schedule permutations.

The massive tree chart at left is what I used to make certain that I had accurately determined all of my possible schedule options (I had, and they are included at the bottom of this post).

------Vicky: OMG teaaaaa.....I can't believe you did that!! usually I just randomly make like 9 scheds a couple days before arena!! that's sooo cool, would you make one for me??

July: I get lost at the train station.

I am back in my home, sweet home, and I am oh so very happy.

------Vicky: OMG TEA!!!!!! I was at the YMCA (on main street) because my brother was working out there (yea, I know Gretch, someone in my family does actually exercise!) and I went over to the snack machine to get a snack. The snack machine's background/casing was made with 5 or so pictures of kids playing sports at the Y. AND guess whose picture was big (like 3 feet tall 2 feet wide) and front and centered? MARIO'S!!! I was like OMG! it's mario and my mom was like who? and I was like "this boy Tea know" and my mom said "why would Tea know an 11 year old (it was a younger pic but it was unmistakably Mario!) and I was like "he's 15 or 16 now...." anyway, I just thought you'd want to know that there is a picture of your lover emblazoned on the TMCA food machine...(not just like a picture taped on, his image was actually part of the machine!!!) your most faithful mario spy, vicky/bruney.

August: A detailed description of plumbing issues in my house.

The plumbing in my bathroom, my sisters' bathrooms, the living room powder room and basement is out. Although my dad has not yet determined why, we still aren't allowed to so much as wash our faces in this half of the house.

------Gretchen: hmmm...not sure what to say...

September: I recount my first day of school.

Guess what, everybody- I survived.

------Gretchen: yeah, my day was okay until english. i sat in the front and i didn't see nyx for some reason. i was all alone... :( i'm going to see her in the morning tomorrow. still hoping...

October: I gush about science.

The math team advisor who is known to call the house at odd hours just called and informed that I'm on the A-team for the meet next week.

------Gretchen: noooo mrs. cumulonimbus didn't flag down Irving!!! we did. well holly did. we were in the library and cumulonimbus had alread yleft! holly was just like "irving! can you come over here for a second?" after he left we found out that she didn't actually know him. of course mrs. cumulonimbus knows Irving!! she's the only one who teaches physics C

November: Halloween is detailed.

I haven't posted for the past two days because I didn't get home until after midnight, at which point I figured there really wasn't much point, since it was actually tomorrow.

------Gretchen: what pants were you wearing?

December: I freak about Mrs. Hirten's group assignments.

The first day of class, she thought that Edmund and I were twins.

------Gretchen: i am so sorry for you. if it gets worse, feel free to come running into my english class

In Search of Interview Subjects

First, I tried that kid at church who's home-schooled. His belief statement was that he believe in knowledge, so I had high hopes.

"So Alec-"

"It's Jake."

"Right, sorry. So, Jake, do you mind if I ask why you're home-schooled? Did you perhaps find school easy and boring?"

"No. Let me put it simply. The schools I went to sucked."

"Oh."

That was the end of that.

Today, I was walking to science with Julie and Gretchen when we passed Reese, who skipped a grade a while ago and who my English teacher had suggested that I interview.

"Reese!"

He turned, looking confused. "What?"

"You're Reese, right? You know Vicky, we were introduced..."

He nodded, giving me the impression that he remembered, but he might have been just assenting to his acquaintance with the vunderful Vicky.

"Well, this is going to sound kind of weird."

"Okay..."

"Look, you skipped a grade, right?"

"Yes."

"Well, I was wondering- that is, I'm writing my research paper- the big junior year research paper- on gifted education, and why it's important, and whatnot, and I've been doing interviews, and I was wondering if I could maybe ask you a few questions, just be email, if that'd be alright."

"Yeah, sure."

"Great. Um, can I just roundcube you or something?"

He shrugged, and I started to walk away.

"Wait, Reese, what's you're last name?"

I got it, I roundcubed him, and now I just need to hear back.

Vicky, if you find the time to mention that I sent the roundcube and can actually email it instead if he gives me an address, assuming you still see him with any sort of regularity, I'd be much appreciative.

I was going to talk about falling over...

but Kathrya has it covered, although she did miss the one where I fell off of my own chair during math.

In that case, I'll have to use an alternate story.

One fundamentally awkward aspect of the school bathrooms is the presence of those little communal tampon bins, particularly in the cases where the bins were removed from the door and instead sit between the stalls, displaying their bloody contents to the world.

Now, I don't know about you, but I don't really want the acquaintance in the next stall over seeing the evidence of my menstrual cycle as it seeps through the toilet paper I wrapped my tampon up in. It's a private, personal part of being a woman. And I'm proud of my vagina and all that jazz, but I still think the blood is gross, and I generally avoid announcing the current state of my bits to the world, this blog and Nyx aside.

However, today, as I was swapping my own feminine hygiene products, Becky (an extremely petite senior in my physics and government classes) dropped an applicator into the bin. My first thought was "How odd, I thought seniors were post-menstrual and didn't get their periods."

Time Travel

"Mr. Mubble?"

"Yes, Umber?"

"Does the Hubble telescope see back in time?"

"What?"

"Is it like a time machine? Cause you said it can see all the way back to the big bang."

"No, it's not a time machine."

"But, like, if you turned it on Earth, wouldn't you see stuff that already happened."

"No. Well, yes, but not very long ago."

"So, could you use it to look at historical events and see what actually happened?"

"No. The delay is whatever the speed of light is, so you'd only see back a few milliseconds. For instance, right now you're, what, ten feet away from me. Now, let's say you pass out riiiiigggghhht NOW."

"Huh?"

"Now, you're passed out, but I don't see it right away."

"Yes, you do."

"No, I don't."

"You're not going to just stand there while I'm on the floor."

"Well, not for very long. It takes something like three nanoseconds for the image of you falling to reach me, so there's a delay. If you pass out on the moon, the delay is longer. If you pass out on the sun, it's 7 minutes."

"Because if she's on the sun, all she's going to do is pass out," I muttered, forgetting momentarily that the sun is gaseous and you can't truly be 'on' it.

"Wait, so if I took Hubble to, like, Pluto, then would I see stuff that already happened?"

"Yes, but you won't see anything from before your telescope took off."

"Oh. Okay."

Tea Does Spanish

Señora is really a tad to prone to personal questions. For instance, my responses to the homework today:

If I lived on the island and didn't have a job, I would look for work as a babysitter because the children are pleasing to me.

If I could ask for the autograph of any person, I would ask for the autograph of the President Obama because he is pleasing to me.

If there was a limited amount of water, I would shower less times.

If I saw a person for the first time, I would not be capable of falling in love with that person.

If my parents made a toast on the day of my wedding, they would give me felicitations.

If I were Mario and I read a letter from Neruda (don't ask), I would hope that the letter is interesting.

If I had a son, I would give him the name Pedro.

If my spouse died before my son was born, I would become sad.