Rememory

I was looking through old drafts of blog posts, and I found this one. Apparently I never posted it, or, if I did, I went to edit it later and never put it back up. An essay from my junior year of high school.

I am in their house, his house, but the doors are twice my height. My sisters wear large pink dresses, layers of tulle bursting around their legs. They wobble about, unable to support their heavy crowns. Although I must stand on tiptoes to see over the couch, the dresses are too small. I leave the other girls and go upstairs, looking for him. I find him using the computer in the kitchen. I sit next to him, on the same chair but barely touching, and he shows me how to fight with animated soldiers.

He races up the hill in my backyard and I chase him, trying to release the competitive spirit that he has been coaxing from me all night. He trips over a tree root and slows, I slam into him, we tumble down. He catches himself on his elbows before landing above me, but his leg still comes down on mine and I groan. I look down, trying to disentangle, and I see his pale, pale arms, glowing in the barely-there moonlight.

The moon is above us, and we are silhouetted in its light. I dance down the middle of the street, ignoring the glass shards in my hand, forgetting that I’m leaving tomorrow. I dangle the spicy mint he wants so badly in front of his face before snatching it away as he lunges and I twirl down the street, singing “mine, mine, mine.” He gives up, returning to the sidewalk, but I continue to twirl and joy under the dull moon. Then he is beside me, grabbing me, pulling me over and a car runs by so fast I can barely see it, so close I can almost touch it. He saves me. Our mothers say that now we have to get married, like the rescued damsels in distress do in all the stories, and our blushes are hidden by the dangerous darkness. I still do not give him the mint.

We are back, before it all, in Iona, where the beach is close and the tide closer. My sister hit him earlier, and he didn’t hit her back, because he never hurt anyone, not back then. He has taught me to fight the way I could, has taught me not to flinch from pain by hurling ping-pong ball after ping-pong ball right at me, but would never hit a girl, would never hurt a soul, would always save my life. I trust his goodness. Our families are on the couches, spread out and close together, and we play a card game that is more laughing than thinking. I am wet for the first time. I notice, but I don’t know what it means. When I go to the bathroom later, there is a bloody spot on the inside of his basketball shorts, the ones I wear because my luggage is lost. My mother gives me Motrin and a bulky pad and cleans the shorts and tells me that I am a woman now, and I wear her sweatpants to bed and think but I am still twelve, and I am confused by all this growing up when all I really want is to play another round of cards.

I lie in bed that night in a room with my sisters but in my own bed because now I am special, now I am old. I realize, as the last bit of wakefulness leaves me, that my body has just told me that it is ready for sex, for love, for children. I try to picture it, but I don’t know how. The next day, I examine the books in the house until I find one with vivid sex scenes, perfectly specific, and I read until I can see it in my head and have to put the book down because the image disgusts me.

I am fifteen now and he is naked, above me around me within me, sweating, panting, shaking arms dark and glowing in the dim lamplight. I toss and turn, the visual plaguing me even though it has not happened and is based entirely on imaginings, but it makes my insides warm in a way that no other dreams do, and I decide not to chase it away.

It is snowing, and he is at my house, and we chase and run with a flock of children, throwing snowballs, and I see him break a window but he doesn’t know I saw. When the window is found later, no one ever knows that it was him. He wrestles his sister who is less than half his size after she calls him weak and emasculated and worthless. He is pushing her, tugging her, pinning her down with the arms that hold him over above within me. She claws at him, writhes, but cannot escape, and he tries to smother her with a pillow. I scream.

I can never marry him, never be with him, says my mother, because he is angry and only knows how to hit. That’s what comes of having a father like his.

I am sprawled across a couch in my basement, the gangling limbs that I’ve finally come to control and love and cherish stretching all the way from armrest to armrest. He is seated on the other couch, joystick in his hands, voice calm, steering an animated car around and around an animated track, destroying competitor after competitor as he tells me that he and his girlfriend broke up because he got angry and didn’t know what to do, that it just comes out, that, that now he’s not allowed to drive because his mother saw him hit his sister. “I don’t know why it happens,” he tells me, looking only at the television. “I can’t control it, can’t see it coming, I just get angry, sometimes.”

He breaks things.

We stand in the lights of the subway car, close together although it is late and the car is empty, falling into each other with each bump and curve and turn and stop. His eyes go transparent, the pale green-blue washed out by the bright bright lights, and I can see through him and into him and he is mine and I love him and I want him but I know he is not safe.

I bike down roads less than a mile from home but they are foreign now. I go faster and faster, imagining monsters on my tail, fighting to get away, fighting the urge to go to his house and throw rocks at his window and cry that I want him and need him and beg him to hold me. I cannot go there, cannot do that, cannot let him know because even if he loves me, even if he wants me, I cannot have him. I pedal, and I cry, and I pray, seriously for the first time in my life, that this hurt can go away, that this love can run its course and leave me because I am too feeble to fight him and to weak to let go. I must not love a boy who is dangerous.

Arrival

We got home yesterday afternoon, and then I lazed about (/wiped my hard drive and reinstalled my operating system because one of the changes I'd made left it extremely sluggish) for the evening. I'm almost halfway through Winter's Heart. Weirdly, all I want to do is go clothes shopping, which probably just means that I'm stressed out and desire retail therapy (not exactly news).

My freshman advising folder came out. It included what seminar I'm taking (Conversations You Can't Have on Campus--should be awesome) as well as my AP scores (no news there). It also had a downloadable copy of my college application that was meant for my advisor. I, of course, downloaded and read over it. It's funny to look back at it now. I'm not sure I'd do much differently, though I'd probably have written about energy studies instead of electrical engineering as far as what interests me goes, but, as you can see from the fact that I got in, it didn't really matter.

It did remind me, though (well, that coupled with all the college-app-related status messages among my senior friends) that there are a lot of people working on college apps right now, poor things. I should probably do what I did with the RSI app and generate something resembling advice, though maybe not--there's certainly a lot more existing college app advice out there than there is RSI app advice. Plus I'm lazy. I suppose we shall see.

But now--time for breakfast!

Sheer Idiocy

Crazy people are crazy. I really wish I remembered what the one in the bathroom was going on about. She walked in, smiled at me, and then started going on about how desperately she'd needed to wash her hands. I ignored her and went into a stall. While I was there, another woman walked in, and Crazy started babbling on about how she was the devotee of some book. This book had taught her to go outside her body, and she'd been all over the universe, to the stars. It was awesome, and she just wanted to tell us about it. I can't remember the name of the author or the book, now, but Crazy kept repeating it.

It was utterly bizarre--at least it seemed that way to me, but I'm not accustomed to crazy people. My general idea of a crazy person is any Republican presidential candidate.

I'm flying away from Hawaii tomorrow. Getting home Monday evening. I really wish we'd just gone for the two marathon flights--I want to be done.

Zippadeedooda

We flew from Maui to the big island (The Big Island?) today, which was a flight only slightly longer than the one I took from LA to Santa Barbara a week ago. There's a lot of volcanic rock here. At least, I think that's what it is. I can't imagine what else could cover everything the eye can see (except the ocean) in crumbling darkness.

Shelby's in the shower, but we're supposed to go to dinner at 6:45. This is inconvenient, especially considering I just exercised (be impressed) and am vaguely sweaty (okay, maybe I could have done with a little bit more on the exercise front, but at least it's better than nothing).

I can't get over how easy this keyboard types. I mean, in theory, the keyboard on my desktop should be the same, but this just feels so much smoother. Maybe I just got too used to the keyboards in the Athena clusters--but I'll be back in those soon enough, so I suppose it all works out.

I really need to figure out how to get ahold of the next Wheel of Time book while I'm still here, because I really don't want to think about getting through the six hour plane ride to San Francisco without one. We're stuck in some far-off corner of resortyness, though, and I'm not sure what the major booksellers are our here anyways. I'm going to have to come up with some more creative googling. Just because there's not Barnes and Nobles doesn't mean there's no anything...right?

Another Banal Update

Dad's pronunciation of all the hawaiian words is atrocious. He gets the first letter---sometimes even the first syllable---correct, and the last vowel, typically, but then all the letters in between turn into some sort of monkeyish jabbering. It's hilarious, and it drives Genie beserkers.

We drove the Hana (Hanna? Hannah?) Highway today, which meant that we went all the way around Maui in our rented minivan. We visited a lot of waterfalls, spent a lot of time in the car, swam in some pools and drove down the twistiest, most beautiful road I've ever seen while singing whatever songs my sisters and I could remember the words to. It was wonderful.

Now I'm back at our condo, sleeping on the couch (well, I will be sleeping, once I get off of the computer and wash up and crawl into bed, which I expect won't be for a while since Shelby is currently in the shower). There's not really anyone online to talk to--the time difference takes care of that. I started A Crown of Swords today, which is wonderful but a bit depressing, since it's currently focusing on Perrin and Faile, and I keep thinking about the awful mess that they're going to end up embroiled in, which makes me sad, not to mention how many books it is before Rand's craziness issue is going to be improved upon. I'm not sure if the books get darker, or if it's just that the plot lines developing now hadn't been resolved at the point where I last stopped reading, but the darkness of the story is suddenly bothering me a lot more.

I need to decide whether to go back to frisbee club when I get home. On the one hand, I need the exercise, I've missed playing, I had a lot of fun with it this spring, and it will make it 100% clear to Peter that I'm not avoiding him without me having to actually spend any time sorting things out with just him. On the other hand, I really would prefer not to have to deal with seeing Peter, because I strongly suspect that however over it I am now, seeing him is going to destroy that resolve (I mean, seeing Dawson did that to a certain extent in April, and that was a smaller involvement and a greater time lag...but it's hard to say). I also feel like if he wants to see me, that should be up to him. I'm more or less letting my pride lead me at this point, which is probably not a good thing, as I'll more likely than not end up embarrassed (oh, the number of times I spelled that wrong while writing up things for the summerbook....) about something that wouldn't bother me otherwise. I just don't want to let on to him that I'm still affected--that I was ever affected at all--because he's the one who ended things. Frisbee isn't about seeking him out, but I'm worried it'll seem that way to him, and I don't want him to think that, so I'll end up embarrassed and awkward, and then it'll really seem like I'm seeking him out. If I avoid any place he might be, though, that could be a problem. That I won't do. I want to avoid him, but I won't, because that would be both obvious and rude.

This is ridiculous. I shouldn't care. I don't care, not really, but I still worry.

Nyan nyan nyan

Right before I woke up this morning, I dreamt that I was leaving for college. But, for some reason, the place I was leaving looked exactly like MIT (minus the fact that the dorm was more 'generic dorm' than 'Simmons hall'). I was looking for Cammie and Kathrya and Nyx to say goodbye to them, and Dad was waiting for me. I'd already said goodbye to Julie, as well as some random small child who was somehow someone else I was going to miss. Jared, for whatever reason, was walking with me the entire time, and I knew I wasn't going to actually say goodbye to him until Dad and I pulled away in the car.

Then I woke up. Other than the obvious--i.e. I'm going to be leaving behind my own childhood--I'm not sure there's anything deeply symbolic, but I did remember the damn thing.

In other news, I can list off the top of my head everything I've eaten since waking. I'm not sure whether that worries me, but I'm fairly certain that it should. I swam in the waves, today; they're a lot bigger than the ones at home. I had some fun attempts at body surfing and a generally good time. I also finished Lord of Chaos, which means that I'll probably be starting in on book seven tonight. Isam would be proud.

Vacation, Take One

Hawaii as a state seems lovely. The geography rather absurd--many changes over very small distances--but pretty darn cool. I need to figure out if the RSI 2010 Rickoid whose nickname I forget (I don't dare attempt to open googledocs and access my spreadsheet on the tenuous thread that is my current internet connection). I miss my Ricklings, though. I'm a bit surprised at the volume of my post-RSI depression---for some reason I'd thought it wouldn't be as bad this year. I'd talked with Jared about it, and we'd both agreed that this year we weren't as emotionally involved and would hardly be upset at all.

The amount of crying I did the last day definitely belied that statement, as did the fact that I was too depressed to sleep the following night (so many empty rooms...).

My internet connection is shit. This is incredibly frustrating. I always forget how dependent I am on high-speed wifi until I no longer have it.

That said, my new macbook pro is phenomenally shiny, as I demonstrated for everyone in a recent bedcheck by holding it and its built-in webcam up to a mirror. So much shiny. Lots and lots of shiny. I really need to get it a hard shell to protect it from scratches. And maybe a plastic sheet for the screen, and definitely a keyboard cover. If this baby is going to get me through the next four years, I need to be nice to it from day one.

In other news, I'm too lazy to unpack and my clothing is accumulating. Snorkeling was fun and I saw a shark. I continue to believe that snorkeling should be spelled snorkling. I'm really hungry (this whole 'dieting' thing doesn't agree with me, but I'm pretty sure that just plain 'eating healthy' is not going to make me drop the 10 lbs I picked up, and I really don't want to continue to have the weird gut I currently have going). The Wheel of Time is awesome. Hawaii is pretty. I want dinner. Life is good.

A Wonderful Feeling

Today, my grandparents got back from their winter in Florida, so, of course, they had to come over for dinner. Mom made something yummy, and Grandma found a way to make a dessert that Mom wouldn't object to.

My grandparents, having been in Florida, naturally had not yet seen my prom ensemble. So I left when we were about halfway through washing up to zip myself in and slide (or, erm, wrestle) on my shoes. I love the way the dress feels when I put it on---just the right weight, just enough give in all the right places, the perfect shade of purple. And it's soft on me, and light, unlike the layers I've been piling on for lab every day.

I went into the kitchen and did my best imitation of a model's strut. I stood still and twirled while they preened, Papa being his typically skeevy self and Grandma being nothing but kind. It was nice to be preened over, nice to be the center of attention. When I was, at length, dismissed, I went upstairs rather than back to my room---the closest full-length mirror to my room (discounting my younger sister's, which is small enough that I can't see my entire person in it) is in the exercise room upstairs.

I clacked up the stairs, and I stood on the rubberized mats, and I looked at myself, and I was beautiful. That's how I looked to me, anyways. The right balance between legs and curves, the perfect dress, the perfect shoes, the somewhat glowy smile---perhaps I wasn't wearing glasses, so I couldn't see the flaws, but, in that mirror, I was as sexy as sexy could be. I looked at myself and I saw that ugly duckling daydream, of the great nerd---who is really only nerdy because of her glasses and involuntary participation in some variant of Quiz Bowl---showing up at prom and being suddenly beautiful, suddenly breathtaking, and leaving them all in awe. It's ridiculous, I know, but I felt like I could be Taylor Swift at the end of that cheesy, cheesy music video.

And I didn't care. Seriously. I was more excited about getting into Harvard than I was about this---which is saying something, since the only reason I was even glad I got in was that it meant that Bryant hadn't fared any better than me. I looked at myself, and I could see the dream existing, that little thought in the back of my nerdy mind that I was the belle of some imaginary ball, and I didn't care.

I liked the way I looked, sure. I hopefully will still like it once I get through the actual event (with any luck, it'll be enough to allow me to survive prolonged contact with Peter's mother). But it paled in comparison to my academic accomplishments. RSI, MIT, April 30th, Thiel, even last night's High Honors dinner, was worth more to me than the discovery that someone pretty lurked underneath my cargo shorts. What matters to me is exactly what I have.

It's a triumphant feeling, somehow. I'm not at all certain that I'm expressing it properly, though maybe it doesn't matter. I feel, to use something Meg Cabot liked to have Mia worry about in those Princess Diaries books (the books, mind, not the movies), self-actualized. I'm not sure Mia ever realized what it was---or maybe she did, and I wasn't old enough to appreciate it, so I've forgotten whatever life lesson she picked up---but it was something about knowing who one is and being excited about it. And being an adult, or mature. But I think it was understanding of oneself and satisfaction in that understanding. And right now, I feel like I get it.

It's a wonderful feeling.

Whhheeeeeee

Chem. We learned organic nomenclature. Yuma still does not appreciate being hugged.

Science Research. We watched interviews with Feynman on youtube. I read more of that bio paper I really need to read even more of.

Fiction. Boredom. Book talks.

Math. Again, nothing was done. I think I did four practice polar integrals before the boredom overwhelmed me. But then we went to lunch, which involved food, which is always nice, and then I got Yuma and Ginny and Brian and Nyx to play Contact, which made everything still more better (and the multiple ands? Totally necessary).

Then I at last made up my David Copperfield essay test--for some reason I was required to answer two essay questions, and she only gave me one test booklet, so I wrote two separate essays, each crammed onto two double-sided pieces of extra-wide margin paper. Yay! Talking excessively about Uriah Heep and making uninsightful points!

I then went prom dress shopping with my mother. We went to a bunch of stores, and decided on something that is pretty and purple and not-too-short-not-too-long, which was pretty much exactly what I wanted anyways. Then I went home and didn't do homework.

Not doing homework is becoming a disturbing trend.

The fact that I'm not longer willing to use this medium as a mode of expressing my general sense of "gahh, boys are stupid, mrgh" has made this post somewhat boring. My apologies.

Musings on Nothing

I am cold. For some reason, the temperature of the air when I'm walking outside in the sun doesn't translate well to the inside of my room.

I am hungry. Apparently the cupcakes I devoured during lunch were not sufficient to hold me over. The dry rice crispies that my tutor-ee and I ate while I was teaching her to classify triangles was also not enough...Shelby just came in to call me to dinner. More later.

It is now later. Dinner was chicken parmesan, and it was delicious. I wish that I was capable of spelling delicious without the assistance of spellcheck, I really do. I'm now trying to think of what happened today in an attempt to come up with something halfway worth reading. The squabbles in the truck on the way to school with Genie and Shelby, for example, do not qualify as interesting. Nor does the fact that our household ran out of 2% milk.

I keep wanting to add \ to the front of the percent. LaTeX is slowly doing me in.

I have been be-ticketed for prom. I let Peter pay for my ticket--I'm not sure that I should have, but he said that he was in a brook-no-arguments sort of tone that really ought to have bothered me but didn't. Dad advised me, when I was worrying over it later, that his mother was probably paying for it, and she'd given me at least eighty dollars of grief over the years, so I really shouldn't worry. Ginny and Yuma have also both be-ticketed themselves--I'm not totally clear on whether her parents are aware that she's going with Yuma, though I don't know how much they'd care at this current point in time anyways.

I hope Ginny starts blogging again when she gets to college, because I'd like to have some way to keep up with her life. Hopefully I will have more to write about than just psets, and this will be a decent medium for keeping up with my life.

The second half of my physics final was uneventful. At least, I think it was uneventful--first period isn't usually clear enough in my memory for trustworthy recollections. My free periods in the caf dragged on for far too long. Facebook ate a bunch of notifications. I should probably play the piano but lack the motivation.

I've continued reading Woolf's The Voyage Out. Her characters are remarkably realistic. I feel like I know them, and they're tangible, and yet they're far too complex for me to predict their behaviors. It's a big departure from Sanderson's characters--his women in particular seem to all be somewhat similar, a complaint that's frequently been made of Jordan's work, which is interesting. But, then again, Woolf is on a whole different playing field.

I'm going to go back to my reading.

Finishing The Way of Kings

Brandon Sanderson sure is good at writing an ending. His beginnings can get confusing--I feel like he occasionally forgets that not everyone has an extensive background in the worlds inside his head, but hanging on through well-written confusingness is far from a chore. There was a period in the middle that lagged; because so many characters were started up at once, it took a while to figure out and care about where the plot could actually be going. But the ending? Awesome. Tied together plot lines cleanly without the barrage of Elantris, while still leaving room to grow. And just generally amazing. I'm seriously desperate for the next one to come out, now.

I keep coming back to what someone told me a few weeks ago, that all of his books--at least, I think it was all, though I'm not certain of Warbreaker (or whatever the one with the colors was)--exist in one universe. I feel like there are connections there that I'm only just beginning to piece together, overlapping bits and pieces that half make sense...I love that feeling. It's like the moment of embarking on a good research project, once you've working out your direction and know that the answer is there, and you know where to look, you just need to figure out precisely how, and then get down and look for it.

I love that feeling.

Mom wants help with dinner, so I've gotta go. Think of Ginny and her "day of wreckoning" construction hat while I'm gone.

Day Off

Last science fair was today. It kind of sucked, actually. On the plus side, I made a couple of new friends--Karel, who knows some RSI folks and is super legit, and Dayton, who I am currently chatting with on facebook and have pressured into contacting me if she visits [college of choice] in the future. I also had some quality time with Dr. Verona, who got annoyed with me for referencing that time he talked about drinking and deriving during class.

I left early, what with getting out during the first round (Karel did too, so I'm not that mad, but still) and went shopping. Tried on a buttload of random clothes and dresses, came home with one pair of cargo shorts. It was fun, though, and finding dresses that fit was pretty easy, which makes me think the great prom dress search won't actually turn out to be quite so great.

Then I came home and read half of Squire, which is every bit as good this time around. I also played The Sims 2 for the first time in a while, which was pretty fun. Now I'm talking to people on the computer. When my hair gets a bit drier, I'll get dressed and head over to Josh's house, and that'll be that.

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.

This Has Been

A lovely weekend, all told. Nyx came over on Friday, and we lolled about, chattered, and made origami. On Saturday, I went to SHP for the first time in ages. I was placed in cosmology along with Gopika, Rube, Sarah, and this random talkative girl who seems really familiar (there was also a girl from Rube's school who had heeled rainboots (no comprendo) who sat next to a different girl who looked really familiar (I think she was at Math Prize for Girls, and is one of those people who is all into math competition gossip, because that was the discussion while waiting in line for the bathroom)). I don't know if Rube signed up for cosmology because of me, or if he landed his second choice, but I'm not going to ask. I was kind of late (I wanted a latte more than I wanted to be on time), so I ended up between him and this adorable girl from New Jersey (not Gopika, actually). It should also be noted that I really wished the namesake for the Gopika I usually talk about was still around (she's two years older than me, sadly), because our instructor is quite cute. Based her comments to the 15-year-old me back in our neurobiology days, she's the sort to appreciate a good-looking teacher.

I've also been devoting much time to rereading Anathem, which is every bit as engrossing the second time around (I'm hoping to finish it up today, in keeping with the three days I managed it in last time...I also don't think I'm going to get any homework done until it's finished, so I ought to take advantage of this brief period of no-homeworkness).

After class on Saturday I took the 1 line really really far to meet Chao in Chinatown. Her family took me out for dim sum, which was just as yummy as I remembered, though she was on the whole very disappointed in my inability to identify or remember what I'd eaten in the past. I always figure I'm not allergic to anything, it smells halfway decent, I might as well eat it (we discovered, however, that chicken claws (or whatever those were) kind of weird me out). It was nice to meet her family, and the food was yummy. After that, we spent a few hours wandering through Chinese groceries. I saw fish (alive, dead and whole, dead and chopped up, dead and dried, dead and dried and chopped up...I could go on), and all sorts of unusual (to me) fruits and veggies, including something that looked like giant grapefruit. On the whole, though, it was mostly just nice to see Chao.

Since then, I've been at home. I messaged with Gaea a little bit last night, and I think I sent her some ramblings around midnight (though probably before...it was before I left bedcheck (where "bedcheck" refers to "discussing international politics with James in a forum visible to members of the RSI '10 community")) regarding my current internal debate, which is what I want to do with my life. For some reason, "SCIENCE" is insufficient. I have this urge to find a meaningful place in society. I could probably do this by having children, but I was sitting on the train last night and listening to a group of mothers discussing how they managed to get their children enrolled in public school gifted programs (because, as we all know, those are designed to assist whichever students had the most outside help...), and it struck me that I couldn't do that. I am not a person who will be capable of making her family into her life--I love family, I think I want to make my own someday, but that will never be enough for me. I need more--I need science.

But what sort of science? I love physics, but where in physics. Do I do something that has the potential to actually change the world--nuclear fusion, for example, the plasma physics Julie so adores--or do I follow the piece of my heart that wants me to leap off the deep end into the math-heavy world of something like particle physics. I'll probably end up in the former--I love math, and it's beautiful, but I put it under a header more like art, and while art is beautiful, I probably will never create a masterpiece, and I don't want to sit at the edge of my life and realize that for decades of work, I've created a few small pieces of a few small formulas that will be rendered obsolete by the tides of history. But who's to say I'd make a mark anywhere else--how do I know? Why am I so obsessed with creating something enduring when nothing truly endures in the first place?

I'm not sure where I'm going with this. I found out yesterday that I'm still in the running for the Thiel Fellowship. I think, if I land it, I'll take it, because it might be a chance to do something. But I'm also terrified that I don't have the expertise, that the funds won't be enough, or that living by myself would do me in, or that my ideas have no merit, I'll find that out within a month and then be stuck twiddling my thumbs for two years (realistically, I'm not the sort of person to do that, but I worry nonetheless). It would mean going to college while feeling like an adult--I'm not sure how well that would work--and also heading into one of the most rigorous undergraduate curriculums in the country while not having done any schoolwork in two years. But if I actually accomplished something meaningful, it would be worth it, I think.

But that argument is likely irrelevant, as it's highly probable I won't land the fellowship and it won't matter. I'll still be stuck under wondering how I want to change the world--I'm a bit worried my daydreams of academia have become another microcosm of the "what if I just gave up all of this ambition" question--but then, getting to a point where I'm doing research is ambitious.

I have a feeling when I'm older I'll look back at this and laugh, regardless of whether I'm doing theoretical work or telling a large group of engineers what to do.

Extended Weekend of Awesome Awesomeness

This can also be referred to "the time that Tea decided not to study for her midterms, and instead elected to enjoy her spontaneously week-long school vacation."

No, I am not kidding about the week bit. Wednesday was a snowday, Thursday had a delayed opening, Friday was staff development, Monday was Martin Luther King Jr. Day, and Tuesday was another snow day. Yes, this is a lot of no-school, so, of course, I did a lot with it.

Thursday afternoon--ran science bowl practice. I made a list of all this stuff to look up, then didn't look it up. In my defense, my teammates said they were unwilling to start learning it before midterms anyway. Drove Julie home from ScienceBowl Practice. Well, not quite home--I started the weekend off with a bang by getting into my first ever car crash. Yup. Good stuff. Julie was giving me directions while talking about her sexy boyfriend (not that I'd know if he was sexy because I STILL HAVEN'T MET HIM!!!), she broke off midsentence to say "you should have turned there." I then totally misjudged the truck's ability to break (I blame it on the fact that the entire bed was full of snow, but I didn't think of this until the next day, so it's not a very good excuse), turned anyways, and whipped straight into an oncoming car. The driver of that car was really, really really really pissed, but I stayed relatively calm, even after she (totally unnecessarily, I might add) called the police. Then I called my dad, who untangled the vehicles, both of which are still totally drivable. Cosmetic damages, people. I drove the truck home, explained everything to my mother, then panicked about how much money I was going to lose.

Friday: I discover that the deductible on the insurance is a mere $500, so I'm only down between 500 and 627 dollars (those gosh-darned police gave me a ticket for driving on the wrong side of the road, which I'm likely going to argue because I wasn't driving on the wrong side of the road, I swerved into the wrong side of the road due to an inability to judge the breaking ability of my father's pickup truck...but I digress). This was immensely comforting. I also rediscovered the buckyballs I got for Christmas and proceeded to spend most of the day attempting to build a 6x6x6 cube (for the record, I did eventually succeed). I also took my younger sisters shopping at Delias, where I bought a gray sweater, new boot-cut jeans (note that I've stopped referring to the clothing that now fits me as fat pants), and a $20 jacket that I am head over heels in love with. Shelby spend a lot of money in exchanges and gift cards and is still pretty excited about it. I'm just glad that I have pants that fit that I can wear with boots, because given the current snow situation, boots are a must.

Saturday: I spent all of the daylight hours milling around and feeling like I ought to be doing something. I probably started in on my final project for Mideast. I finished reading the entire archive of Ben Jones's blog at MIT, then read the entirety of Laura's. I went to a yoga class, where I failed miserably at giving off the appearance of having any idea what I was doing. The fact that my calves are so tight that I can't do a proper downward dog (apparently a very important portion of vinyasa), and my arms are so weak I can't do this weird lying down thingy we had to do a kazillion times, and the my blood pressure is still so low I felt like I was going to black out by the time we reached the 10,000th forward bend--where was I going with this?--oh, right, did nothing to diminish my enjoyment of the class. It was not quite as successful as the first class was--I spend a good three days after that one feeling sexy (no, I do not know why, but it probably was some sort of hormonal thing meant to reward me for finally getting my ass off my swivel chair)--but still nice. Then I came home, inhaled my dinner, and spent three hours ice skating. The ice skates made circular bruises around my ankles for reasons as-yet unknown. I felt so active on Saturday night, you have no idea.

Sunday I don't really remember, which means it was probably boring. I think I got the oil changed on the cars, but that might have been Thursday. Or Friday. I think it was Friday, actually, now that you mention it. And I've just remembered that Sunday wasn't boring! Kathrya came over, ostensibly to do homework (we didn't). We skyped with Bart! Saudi-Arabia-dwelling Bart! Kathrya was so excited I'm kind of surprised she didn't implode. I enjoyed the opportunity to actually put my computer's built-in webcam to use (also, talking to Bart was fun).

Monday I did stuff. What did I do? Again, I'm rambling because I don't remember. Stuff probably happened, most likely. I slept pretty late. I went to Borders and exchanged one book my parents got me for Christmas for a host of other books, including 2 Eloisa James romance novels (I read one, but the second one isn't really working for me, since the protagonist is like 20, very much unrelatable, and is pretty definitely going to end up with a 43 year old. Laaaame). I also got Ned Vizzini's autobiographical essays written at age 19. I am in love with teenage Ned Vizzini. It is unfortunate, but it is true. If he was my age, he'd probably have a blog. I should probably find blogs of random teenage guys to read, so that I develop weird writing crushes on people my own age, instead of the historical version of older people. I'll work on it later--for now: Hot Guys Reading Books!

Tuesday I set my alarm for 6:10, called the snow line with my eyes closed, then slept for another three hours. I read books. I played the piano. I hid in my room while my sisters cooked both dessert and dinner (I'm really going to need to get over my irrational fear of cooking). I played with buckyballs some more. I ignored messages from Rube and Bart while I was reading, didn't manage to respond to Bart until he wasn't there anymore, never responded to Rube, talked briefly to Greg before he had to go to lab (but not before Olive stole his computer and started typing to me). Then I started reading Yan's blog over on MIT admissions, got about halfway through her freshman year posts, then saw that she got a UROP at Sadoway Group. Then I had an absurd jealous breakdown, followed by a decision to actually read some of the papers by the group to make certain that my minor obsession was founded on fact and not some imaginary "OH MY GOSH FLOW BATTERIES" thing, since they work on other stuff (that said OH MY GOSH FLOW BATTERIES AND HE WAS REFERENCED IN THE CANON THE DAY AFTER I WENT BY HIS LAB AND MET WITH RANDOM GRAD STUDENTS OH EM GEEEEE. Plus he teaches intro chem and is apparently really awesome. And the lab appears to be doing cool stuff). Pardon the all-caps, but I have limited self control. I started reading one of the papers (well, I saw that layer-by-layer is abbreviated LbL, giggled madly, then went to the living room to collect my laundry). I decided to write this post instead of reading the paper, took note of my current more-intellectual reading (it's about the fact that gender bias and subconscious-driven gender discrimination is damaging our nation's school children, and it's particularly awesome in that it's addressing the fact that gender bias is harmful to both girls and boys (something that a lot of boys with high feminist-potentials seem turned off by is the whole "only girls are being damaged" thing)), then came back to my room, where I proceeded to while away the hours until I was tired enough to go to sleep.

Some Highlights of my RSI Notebook

We will ignore the fact that I may have already done this, then forgotten.

On the first day, we learned about The Odyssey. "Odysseus ~ Hephaustus (skill, craftmanship). He knows the value of disguise and restraint, except when he's hungry." In bio, nothing funny happened. In chemistry, I was confused: on June 21st's chem sheet: "Look up: ELECTRONEGATIVITY". On the side--"what is this electronegativity?" Oh, how naive I was. We also talked about the oil spill, and I legitimately contributed to the discussion by suggesting that we nuke the source. Our professor also produced this gem: "Before petroleum, the world was a much darker place . . . literally." The solutions we examined included "hair"--using the stickiness of hair to absorb the oil--not kidding--and "petroleum eating microbes"--though an associated flaw is "NEW ORGANISM AAAHHHH" and "SCOTT WESTERFIELD = EVIL." I'm not really sure where I was going with that one.

The next day, we learned about The Odyssey again. I drew a lot of pictures. In bio, I noticed that the teacher did that thing where she pronounced Ws with an h in front, like hwere, and hwat. Also, mitochondrial issues can be described as when the "mitochondria go rogue," which I have to say sounds really cool. In chem we learned about birth control. At first, emmenin was extracted "from the urine of pregnant women (yum.....)", but premarin came from a "less squishy source" (thank you, prof. Michael)--horse piss. An interesting bullet on this page is "-chem stuff that supposedly makes sense."

Day three involved a lot more pretty pictures during English and a couple of very coherent quotes a la "life sucks after you die." In chem, we learned about why mountain dew isn't transparent. Day 4, I finally stopped taking notes during English. In Chem, we made a nice chemistry vs. biology comparison chart. Bio left, chem right.

Temperature

body temperature/whatever you want

Presssure

1 atm+/whatever you want

Concentration

1mM to 1 micromolar/ .1M -1M

Sequence

sequential transitions/one step at a time

Solvent

Water of pH 7/non-polar

Energy

thermoneutral and reversible/exothermic

Specificity

very specific/general

I then have notes on the one grid study meeting I went to (where notes is defined loosely as "a titled page with a lot of doodles"). Weirdly, I have "what is a parallelepiped" in my notes from the first few days in the Nuclear Sciences department; I distinctly recall getting to math this year and not knowing what they are." From here on...it's my research notebook. The only interesting things are the song lyrics scribbled in Teaish in the margins, which looks to be a lot of "You! Me! Dancing!" The only remotely interesting thing remaining is the doodletastic page shown below.

I do not want to do my homework

I don't want to deal with life, or my endless to do list, or my room, or my family, or really just about anything.

I hate that I get like this sometimes, and I hate that I don't know what triggers it. I just need to stay calm, and keep working, and hope that it all blows over by the morning.

Which it will. Because it always does. Then, in another week, all I'll want to do is curl up in the fetal position and cry, like I do now.

I hate feeling like an emo teenager. When I say that I want to be "more normal", I mean that I want to drive around on Saturday nights with a car full of screaming teenagers, and dance like a maniac to bad pop songs, and sigh over boys, and cry about silly things, and be rude to my parents and talk on the phone too long and maybe, every now and then, actually fail a test.

Sometimes, I want to stop being responsible, and figure out what living is. As Louise Gluck wrote in Meadowlands, "Those/with the smallest hearts have/the greatest freedom" (Penelope's Stubbornness). Because if I didn't care for the world, or my future, or my family, or my friends, or the people who care, I would run off somewhere and die in an errant attempt to find myself.

What has the world come to, that teenagers suffer from midlife crises?

Things I Do Not Like

People who willfully cause pain to others.

Computer software with a trial period.

Ubuntu partitions that don't function.

Cellphones with diminished battery capacity.

Poorly written books.

Poorly written fan fiction.

Poorly written scientific papers.

My lab partners.

My scientific paper.

My inability to properly work a scanner.

The lack of image editing software on my computer.

My innate stinginess.

The fact that I still haven't practiced piano.

How loud my leg-twitching habit is.

Undercooked cookies.

My ex-not-boyfriend.

Mean people.

Whoever invented menstrual cramps.

Evolution deniers.

Feminist haters.

Feminist haters who argue incompetently.

People who talk faster than I can think.

College applications.

The fact that I am still obsessed with MIT (even Yale couldn't break me).

Headaches.

Menstrual cramps.

Menstrual cramps.

Menstrual cramps.

Why are English papers so much work?

Because I devote hours and hours (and pages and pages) to the following drivel:

The intersections of morality, religion, and sex.

How does an individual define what is right? When people choose a path, what makes them determine in which direction they want to bend? Society influences, yes, but in what ways? How so?

The power of religion. Decisions are made around it, people join or flee it. Yet it is defined, more often than not, but the individual.

Religion and the conscience. How do we decide things?

Tess of the D'bervilles

-innocence destroyed by rape

-rape defines a marriage

The Purity Myth

-goodness of women is defined entirely by what they have between their legs.

But is it? Really? Truly? The fallen woman can be seen in so many places, but she redeems herself in the eyes of the reader. But what is redemption for the men?

Gender and atonement: what sins are worth a life?

Jane Eyre—he's redeemed himself, but has she?

Orlando—a man, a woman, both at once, but he is not a man who ever needs redeeming

Tess of the D'ubervilles—Tess, obviously, spends a lifetime trying to make up for a sin that wasn't hers, but it seems, in the end, that it is religion understanding, not atonement, that drives her (with the death of her 'husband' she returns to her husband). For Alec, though, what is there? He turns to religion, then believes that the only way he can make it up is through marriage, a life's commitment.

Redemption is sacrifice.

What is it that makes an individual good? How do people define what is right and what is wrong, and to what extent is this dichotomy of thought present in our everyday lives?

The Purity Myth, by Jessica Valenti, centers on the idea that the societal perception of a woman's morality stems entirely from her chastity. No quality is as important, no trait as worth protecting, as virginity.

Is this true? Judging by the books, the answer is resoundingly yes. In Tess of the D'ubervilles, we have a woman who, after she is raped, is a ruined woman; her eventual marriage falls apart, her life is spent searching for redemption.

When old books—centuries old, not whatever your grandmother considered popular literature—are read, it becomes very clear that from a modern perspective, with its own take on what is morally upstanding and politically correct, the good can be far more evil than the author intended. Who today would consider the ivory trade savory, the oft-said 'nigger' polite? This is made even more clear when considering opinions that haven't changed. In past centuries, marriage has shifted away from a sacred institution, defined by God.

The lack of stagnation in moral perceptions is demonstrated clearly by shifting perceptions of marriage. In days of yore, marriage was defined by sex.

You should see how much worse the handwritten crap is.

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!