Thou gleeking malmsey-nosed giglet!

There are lots of things I'd like to talk about and record, but I'll have to be brief so I can go back to studying for my 5 AP tests. @_@

1.) we had our Every 15 Minutes program yesterday and today. The juniors and seniors were herded to a set of bleachers in front of the school, where, for forty minutes under a blistering summer sun, regarded with varying degrees of awe and trepidity the crash scene and ensuing coordinated chaos that followed. Besides the lack of good acting, the excess of fake blood, and the illogical positioning of the "dead" pedestrian participant, it was a very enlightening experience for many of the students, myself included. The better part of the show took place today in the gym, where they had a funeral-like assembly with dimmed lights and flower wreaths and a real coffin (though I doubt anyone was in it). There was a video of the events before and after the crash itself that elicited many strained emotions within us; the parents and students involved had openly cried as part of the act, but their words seemed very real. Afterwards, some students and parents and also our volunteer teacher walked up to the podium and read their letters through a microphone. The students wrote dying letters to their parents, the parents to their children. It was all very poignant and many tears flowing all around. Thanks to some considerate individuals, courtesy tissue boxes were scattered around the crowd. I myself welled up, but I held back the tears bravely, immersing myself in my own thoughts about what I would write in a final letter. That subject I'll return to some other day.

2.) I managed to finish Bill Bryson's "A Short History of Nearly Everything" and borrowed another book from my Chemistry teacher called "The Periodic Table" by a Jewish Italian named Primo Levi, which, interestingly enough, has very little to do with the elements themselves. The author had survived through Auschwitz.

3.) I am reading "The Great Gatsby" for English class, and I must say, F. Scott Fitzgerald has a mighty way with the pen. Every word seems like it was chosen especially for its place, and some things he says amuse me immensely, though others are equally as confusing by their depth.

4.) I love doing scratchboard art. I am currently working on a portrait of a tiger from here, and I really really like how it's coming along. Usually I struggle substantially with proportions in copying other images, but with this kind of fur, a little botching here and there won't be noticeable. I hate to be a brag, but I really do like how I've been doing it >.< I lurve me tiger~~

5.) I utterly failed on the practice speaking section I did in French class today x_x For one of the questions, I remained silent through at least 80% of its one minute.

6.) I really need to practice piano too...and I haven't been wearing my retainer in a while...Ok now I'm just complaining about stuff again and my writing formality has visibly deteriorated.

Ah well, another time.

~H

P.S. Since I was at a loss for titles, I obtained the one from here.

A push

Also stands for "AP U.S. History", the lovely class that is so far giving me the most suffering out of all my classes. Here is a record of it for safekeeping purposes...



My teacher is the school basketball coach, Mr. Busby, who has also taught European History AP and Government P. He graduated from the same high school and from UCLA, which he liked very much. A tall, slightly rotund, pink-faced man with his entire neck as a second chin and globular bright blue eyes, Mr. Busby wants to give us a proper "college-level" class experience. Namely, he doesn't believe in lecturing; we are expected to read everything beforehand and come in with questions. For every unit, he gives us a test one class, then a DBQ the next class, and then an FRQ the class after that. He doesn't grade the first drafts of essays we write in class, only collecting them all by a certain due date, but he highly encourages us to rewrite them and have him revise them with us. In between, he gives us "filler" assignments mostly designed to help boost our grades.
As can be expected, the majority of the population a) does not read all the material before the due date (now he makes us have socratic seminars so we actually read it all) b) doesn't really write the DBQs and FRQs in class because he doesn't grade them until later c) doesn't go in to see him with rewritten drafts before the due date, and d) gets A's anyway because he scales everything at a certain point. Having us submit a bunch of rewritten essays at a pretty distant due date calls for procrastination and then major crunch-writing time. I'm in one of them now. I have ten essays to rewrite. Yippeee....
In other words, his ideas are good, but they don't necessarily work out all the time.

We have pretty much read our entire history book. Compared to other school years, this is an incredible feat, and makes us feel both accomplished and consternated that we'd actually read all of it. Most of the time in class, he'll go off on long and frequently off-topic tangents (typical for history teachers). He used to be the Activities director at the school, so he's had a lot of experience with teens and with the bureaucracies of "The Administration". He's not afraid to talk back to people and can pwn us without so much as batting an eyelash. He's not afraid to cuss in front of us either. But he can be entertaining and likes cracking jokes as well.

I earned a reputation in his class even from sophomore year when he first came in to talk to us about APUSH (I wore a UCLA sweatshirt and did a headdesk several times, among other things). My mannerisms seem to amuse him excessively. Namely, I get intimidated by him and he finds it funny, and I get frazzled when he teases me, which only induces him to tease me more. Nowadays, when he makes eye contact with me, he'll open up his eyes really wide. In response, I mirror him. He laughs. Then he says I'm plotting his demise one day. Ah well. Don't really know what to do about that. ¬__¬

All in all, he's not my favorite teacher, but one I'm willing to learn from.

SAT scores available April 7...

Crit Reading: 740
Math: 790
Writing: 780

Grand total: 2310

BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHA GOODBYE SAT FOREVERRRRRR XDDDDDD


Sorry, just had to get that out of my system.

Isms

Optimism = seeing the glass half full
Pessimism = seeing the glass half empty
Realism = the glass is twice as big as it needs to be (as phrased by my dear friend Weslie)

I oscillate between the three pretty often, I think, but these things tend to be slightly unconscious, so I may not be correct in this self-analysis.

I try to maintain a certain level of happiness/cheeriness that makes life reasonably tolerable. More often than not, life does not want to be tolerable and I lapse into a rather depressed mood for a few days. However, no matter how unhappy I get, there comes a time when I can cheer myself up again, most times just by looking up at the sky and the trees and feeling the sun in my face. Those times remind me of how nice life can be. Other times, though, most people would say I'm rather pessimistic, or just a killjoy. Which I tend to be. This I would call "being realistic" I suppose, and not necessarily pessimistic. Pessimism is kind of like criticism; you see what's missing. As someone with high standards to maintain, this principle has been ingrained in my mind for a long time. Nowadays, it's been chipping away at the edges by the optimism of others to be satisfied with just a B on a test and the like.

As of right now, I am leaning towards a lapse of discontentedness, but which will disappear momentarily this Friday and then return full force next week. =/

Books

I used to be a bookworm in elementary and middle school. The teacher would catch me reading books under my desk propped on my feet. Yes, I also read books while walking around and no, I did not ram into anything, though I was quite close a few times.

In ninth and tenth grade, however, things changed and I seldom read for pleasure or outside the school requirements. It was very saddening, as I realized only too late. I needed to read more so I could understand more and comprehend other things as well (like the English AP test). And it is something that must be accumulated over an extended period of time.

My cousin in England studies at a prestigious middle school where his mother works as a teacher. To improve his English, she had him read one English book a day (or a week maybe). He did. And his English is not only immaculate, but also very heavily accented (so I've heard). I haven't seen him in ages, but from what I know, he's doing splendidly and is going through more than I can imagine. I do admire him.

Just yesterday I began reading Bill Bryson's A Short History of Nearly Everything, and I couldn't put it down. It's so refreshing to read something for pleasure once again, and all the more so for this book, for it is not only all about science, but it has an engaging author who makes everything so much more interesting to read about than your average textbook author is paid to do. I've taken to reading a bit after school everyday, whilst waiting in my van for the traffic to clear. So far I've read Sense and Sensibility (with a ridiculously happy ending) and am currently tackling Jane Eyre, a favorite of my mother's. There are tons of books that I want to read and tons (literally) of books that I should read. But unfortunately, my poor reading speed and lack of time have prevented me from getting anywhere. In between I also had to read an incredibly boring (but still useful) research book on the Crown-of-Thorns starfish and The Grapes of Wrath for a history essay of all things.

I need to go to bed now (and curl up with my book).

Until next time!