i'm not going to lie and say that my blogging will continue after the end of the school year. there's a good chance that this will be the final post from me, not that many of you read this and care. i'll continue to read the blogs of my classmates if they keep their blogs going.
my relationship with blogging has been a rough one. i was very aprehensive in the beginning. when i first heard the assignment that we would be keeping blogs i wasn't all that excited. blogs tend to bring up the image of 30 something men living in the basement of their parents' house. can you say creepers? we were given plenty of days in the lab to read actual blogs and try to find a topic for ours. i never really picked a topic, i've just blogged about anything and everything. blogging was very challenging for me at first; i would forget about it easily and when i did try to post it was a stretch to reach the 400 words. i almost wished that we just had writing notebooks because i could fill that easier than i could blog.
somewhere in the middle of the school year i began to actually like blogging. there was even a time when i got ahead on blog posts. i don't know what brought about this but the words just came easy and i just kept on typing. this is also about the time when i began to read the blogs of my classmates, and not just the blogs of my close friends. i became very interested in what everyone else had to say. needless to say, my enthusiasim for blogging may have faded but i still enjoy reading them to this day. blogging has gone back to that task that i don't really want to do and have to force the 400 words three times a week. i have often been behind on blogs.
when i treated the blog as strictly a homework assignment it became harder and harder to complete. it was something i saw as being required to do rather than me wanting to do. somewhere around half way through, when i began liking blogging, i wasn't thinking of it as a homework assignment. i was thinking of my blog as more of a place for me to just ramble on and say things that i didn't say during the day. i wish i could say that others would find my blog interesting like i find the blogs of my peers interesting but i don't think i can and i'm okay with that.
i didn't realize just how much i have written on here until i looked back at all my posts. there is a lot of writing here and i'm honestly glad that we did blogs instead of writing notebooks. it's been rough but it was worth it in the end.
Monday, May 25, 2009
junior year: a reflection
the school year is wrapping up and junior year is coming to a close. where did all the time go? i'm gonna be a senior next year and it seems like freshman year was last year. who ever said high school flies by sure wasn't lying. because everything passed by so quickly i'm going to take a walk down memory lane and go through my junior year once more.
summer 2008:
i got my very first job: detasseling. strange as it sounds, i loved it. i received my very first paycheck. i made some great friends out in the fields. was a section leader in the marching band. i may have found myself hating it most of the time but not going to lie, i missed it when it was done. my family and i drove to minnesota for a day to watch a baseball game. twins :). i wanna go back.
fall 2008:
i got a real job at old navy. i walked in knowing no one and now have many new friends. youth leadership for five seasons orientation and retreat. took a leap of faith, meaning i jumped off a telephone pole. met a boy. talked to boy. fell for boy. juggled school, marching band and work. went trick or treating with the foreign exchange students. added one more to the locker. drove to wisconsin with mom and dad to get apples. auditioned for all state.
winter 2008-2009:
took one/two wednesdays a month off for youth leadership. struggled to keep up with all my classes. let my grades slip. experienced working retail during the holidays. got a $500 paycheck. froze in the cold. went to florida with the band. marched in a nationally televised parade. went to everything disney. continued to talk to the same boy. went to my first ever basketball game as a spectator, we won. pitched up in independence. began to work out every wednesday at the y with dad. picked out a flute and piccolo solo for contest. graduated from youth leadership.
spring 2009:
began to refocus on my grades. started my countdown with the beginning of the term. studied here and there for ap tests. got a new car. city solo contest. said goodbye to boy. cried. went to chicago with the spanish class. millennium park and the bean. tried authentic spanish food, even the octopus. began to study more for ap tests. state solo contest. SNHS induction. NHS induction. softball. took three ap tests without studying as much as i should. sprained my ankel. picked up a new perspective on life. anxiously awaited the end of the year.
looking back there were ups and downs and periods of painful boredom but i wouldn't have done anything differently. whatever happens, happens.
summer 2008:
i got my very first job: detasseling. strange as it sounds, i loved it. i received my very first paycheck. i made some great friends out in the fields. was a section leader in the marching band. i may have found myself hating it most of the time but not going to lie, i missed it when it was done. my family and i drove to minnesota for a day to watch a baseball game. twins :). i wanna go back.
fall 2008:
i got a real job at old navy. i walked in knowing no one and now have many new friends. youth leadership for five seasons orientation and retreat. took a leap of faith, meaning i jumped off a telephone pole. met a boy. talked to boy. fell for boy. juggled school, marching band and work. went trick or treating with the foreign exchange students. added one more to the locker. drove to wisconsin with mom and dad to get apples. auditioned for all state.
winter 2008-2009:
took one/two wednesdays a month off for youth leadership. struggled to keep up with all my classes. let my grades slip. experienced working retail during the holidays. got a $500 paycheck. froze in the cold. went to florida with the band. marched in a nationally televised parade. went to everything disney. continued to talk to the same boy. went to my first ever basketball game as a spectator, we won. pitched up in independence. began to work out every wednesday at the y with dad. picked out a flute and piccolo solo for contest. graduated from youth leadership.
spring 2009:
began to refocus on my grades. started my countdown with the beginning of the term. studied here and there for ap tests. got a new car. city solo contest. said goodbye to boy. cried. went to chicago with the spanish class. millennium park and the bean. tried authentic spanish food, even the octopus. began to study more for ap tests. state solo contest. SNHS induction. NHS induction. softball. took three ap tests without studying as much as i should. sprained my ankel. picked up a new perspective on life. anxiously awaited the end of the year.
looking back there were ups and downs and periods of painful boredom but i wouldn't have done anything differently. whatever happens, happens.
Monday, May 18, 2009
countdown
there are 18 days left in class. seniors have seven. twenty five days from today i will be done with junior year. ap tests are done. i have seniors in many of my classes so we're kinda just sitting and doing nothing. no final exams, just some final projects. my physics project is done. my bio project died. this is proof that i cannot grow plants to save my life, i killed them all. i think i watered them too much? or not enough. one of those. for lang we have a multimedia essay that i'm kinda freaking out about because i'm not good with multimedia. what is the point of being in school right now? for the most part i'm not going to be learning anything new in the next 18 days of class, all except for my us history class. we're going to do some learning and not take our final exam until final exam days. i was all for taking the final right around ap test time but no. i have to wait until june 10th to take my final. cool.
Sunday, May 17, 2009
this is see you later, i'm not into goodbyes
as the year is winding down it's finally starting to hit me that i have less than 10 days left with this year's senior class. after graduation i probably won't see the majority of them ever again unless i randomly run into one of them somewhere later in life. my brother is graduating this year and even though my parents insist on him trying to live at home i know he isn't going to. yes, it would make more sense for him to live at home and continue to go about life as if nothing was different but i know that he won't make it through more than a semester living at home. there is already tension between him and my parents over things like curfew and such and i know that college will only intensify these feelings.
growing up ray and i never really got along the best. we argued and fought more than we got along. as we both grew up we started to become closer. i wouldn't go so far to say that he and i are friends, i don't think he would ever acknowledge me at school if i didn't say something to him first, but we get along. as strange as it sounds, we always do the reader's digest vocabulary together. it's just what we do. i've lived with him for my whole life and i'm thinking that our days left together are limited and this saddens me. we're family and i want to see him more than at our family gatherings.
growing up ray and i never really got along the best. we argued and fought more than we got along. as we both grew up we started to become closer. i wouldn't go so far to say that he and i are friends, i don't think he would ever acknowledge me at school if i didn't say something to him first, but we get along. as strange as it sounds, we always do the reader's digest vocabulary together. it's just what we do. i've lived with him for my whole life and i'm thinking that our days left together are limited and this saddens me. we're family and i want to see him more than at our family gatherings.
i guess you could say that i'm afraid of change. i happen to like my life the way it is and i don't really want things to change. next year it's going to be just me and nolan. i don't like nolan. his xbox obsession annoys me to no end and i hate how his friends have changed him from the loveable kid he once was to this rude, disrepectful teenager he is now. he and i used to get along so well and now all we do is argue, mostly over him living on his xbox.
recently, i have found that i'm not good with goodbyes. I don't like goodbyes because goodbye means forever, little tidbit from peter pan for ya. my last goodbye left me in tears and that was over a month ago. in a few short weeks i'm going to be saying my goodbyes to the senior class. i'm not extremely close to anyone there, i only talk to them daily at school. they will go off onto their next adventures and my friends and i will take their places next year.
Wednesday, May 13, 2009
conformity
in class we recently read the essay corn-pone opinions by mister mark twain. the main purpose of the essay was about conformity and after our discussion in class i really got to thinking about conformity. and i formulated a conclusion of something that really bugs me; people who refuse to do something just because everyone else is.
they are too wrapped up with trying to be unique that they refuse to do anything they consider conformity. i am going to use the book twilight as an example. i thoroughly enjoy reading so when my friend kristi told me i should read the book because it's really good i did. i enjoyed the book and read the remaining three in the series. i am not going to name names here but i overheard a conversation between two people concerning the book twilight. girl one was very disappointed in girl two for even considering reading twilight just because the book, and now movie, have become mainstream america. girl one claims to be her own person and not do anything that she considers conformity. i want to ask her if she ever gave twilight a chance. did she ever pick up the book and read it? if not, i see no validity in her argument. give it a chance.
people like girl one are afraid of what other people think. they are afraid that other people with think of them as a conformist. who cares if you read the book twilight after it has become a popular book. it's the same for people who stop listening to a band if one of their songs gets played on a radio station. they just can't seem to stand it if other people listen to that band. i don't get it, if you like the music they're making then why stop listening just because others are too? i personally don't care if you started listening to them before they were on the radio or after, it's not that big of a deal.
they are too wrapped up with trying to be unique that they refuse to do anything they consider conformity. i am going to use the book twilight as an example. i thoroughly enjoy reading so when my friend kristi told me i should read the book because it's really good i did. i enjoyed the book and read the remaining three in the series. i am not going to name names here but i overheard a conversation between two people concerning the book twilight. girl one was very disappointed in girl two for even considering reading twilight just because the book, and now movie, have become mainstream america. girl one claims to be her own person and not do anything that she considers conformity. i want to ask her if she ever gave twilight a chance. did she ever pick up the book and read it? if not, i see no validity in her argument. give it a chance.
people like girl one are afraid of what other people think. they are afraid that other people with think of them as a conformist. who cares if you read the book twilight after it has become a popular book. it's the same for people who stop listening to a band if one of their songs gets played on a radio station. they just can't seem to stand it if other people listen to that band. i don't get it, if you like the music they're making then why stop listening just because others are too? i personally don't care if you started listening to them before they were on the radio or after, it's not that big of a deal.
relief
please let me now jump up and down while gleefully exclaiming AP EXAMS ARE DONE! AP EXAMS ARE DONE! over the course of a friday, monday, and wednesday i have taken three tests that determine exactly how well i have mastered the subjects of us history, biology, and english language and composition. it is the score i get on these tests that will determine if i receive college credit or get an exemption from introductory courses in college. my final grade in the class does not matter. are ap tests really a good way to determine if i have mastered the material?
if i would have been asked this question either two years ago or last year then i would say yes, yes they are a good way to determine my level of mastery for the material. this year, my answer has changed. i no longer feel that ap tests are a good way to measure how well i grasped the subject material. wanna know why? it's not because i found this year's tests to be excruciatingly hard, i actually found all three of them to be not bad so i'm not here complaining that they shouldn't count because i think that i failed them. i think they shouldn't count because i honestly don't really know the subject material very well for any of the ap tests i took. thankfully i was able to learn it somehow but i definitely didn't learn it from the books.
in my us history text book there are 31 chapters from early 1700s up through the presidency of george h bush. i read a total of three whole chapters: 29, 30 and 31. in my biology text book there are more chapters, more pages and more words and i don't think i read a single whole chapter. i read sections of chapters but never a whole chapter. then there's lang. there isn't a textbook that goes along with this class; it's nothing like biology or history. those classes are straight facts and biological life processes. lang is not. i went to class almost everyday and that's really the only way to prepare for that test. it's a reading comp test with a lot of analysis and some fancy terms thrown in. there's three essays and i feel like i answered two of them well but the second essay just wasn't good. it's the kind that i never scored well on when we practiced them in class too.
i never did extraordinarily well on tests in either biology or history but my thoughts after taking those tests were that i did well. especially on the history test- i found it to be easy. wait, what? an ap test, easy? how does that happen. the essays were very manageable and because it's over two days since i took the test i can freely talk about the essay topics. i wrote an essay about the relationship of the colonies and great britain. i didn't need to take ap us history to be able to write that essay, that's something i have been taught for years and years now. then i wrote an essay about the homefront of world war II in respect to japanese americans and african americans. i didn't expect essays like that to be on the test. i expected them to be more like the essays i chose not to write because those were tough. the rise of the republican party from 1820-1860? can't do that. didn't read my book.
if i would have been asked this question either two years ago or last year then i would say yes, yes they are a good way to determine my level of mastery for the material. this year, my answer has changed. i no longer feel that ap tests are a good way to measure how well i grasped the subject material. wanna know why? it's not because i found this year's tests to be excruciatingly hard, i actually found all three of them to be not bad so i'm not here complaining that they shouldn't count because i think that i failed them. i think they shouldn't count because i honestly don't really know the subject material very well for any of the ap tests i took. thankfully i was able to learn it somehow but i definitely didn't learn it from the books.
in my us history text book there are 31 chapters from early 1700s up through the presidency of george h bush. i read a total of three whole chapters: 29, 30 and 31. in my biology text book there are more chapters, more pages and more words and i don't think i read a single whole chapter. i read sections of chapters but never a whole chapter. then there's lang. there isn't a textbook that goes along with this class; it's nothing like biology or history. those classes are straight facts and biological life processes. lang is not. i went to class almost everyday and that's really the only way to prepare for that test. it's a reading comp test with a lot of analysis and some fancy terms thrown in. there's three essays and i feel like i answered two of them well but the second essay just wasn't good. it's the kind that i never scored well on when we practiced them in class too.
i never did extraordinarily well on tests in either biology or history but my thoughts after taking those tests were that i did well. especially on the history test- i found it to be easy. wait, what? an ap test, easy? how does that happen. the essays were very manageable and because it's over two days since i took the test i can freely talk about the essay topics. i wrote an essay about the relationship of the colonies and great britain. i didn't need to take ap us history to be able to write that essay, that's something i have been taught for years and years now. then i wrote an essay about the homefront of world war II in respect to japanese americans and african americans. i didn't expect essays like that to be on the test. i expected them to be more like the essays i chose not to write because those were tough. the rise of the republican party from 1820-1860? can't do that. didn't read my book.
Tuesday, May 12, 2009
oops
note to self: when using el cabrito's itouch to go blog reading and commenting remember to log out of your blog. i forgot to and then wondered what the heck happened when i looked at my blog today and saw that i apparently love on the border chips and salsa. no lies, that is true it's just that i didn't post that. el cabrito did. sorry for any confusion.
i am a big fan of his itouch. it's quite the nifty little piece of technology and i'm wishing that i had one instead of my cute little pink ipod. don't get me wrong, i love my little pink ipod it's just the more i use his itouch the more i want one. a lot.
i am a fan of technology, it's just that i'm generally not good with it. i can solve the simplest of computer problems and i know how to successfully navigate my way through the world of cell phones and ipods but other than that i'm pretty techonlogically stupid. which is why this final essay is kind of worrisome for me. i do not possess the skills, or required materials to make a video nor do i have any clue how to make a radio essay. i understand that he wants us to get creative and not write just a normal essay but that's what i want to do. i just want to write an essay.
i am a big fan of his itouch. it's quite the nifty little piece of technology and i'm wishing that i had one instead of my cute little pink ipod. don't get me wrong, i love my little pink ipod it's just the more i use his itouch the more i want one. a lot.
i am a fan of technology, it's just that i'm generally not good with it. i can solve the simplest of computer problems and i know how to successfully navigate my way through the world of cell phones and ipods but other than that i'm pretty techonlogically stupid. which is why this final essay is kind of worrisome for me. i do not possess the skills, or required materials to make a video nor do i have any clue how to make a radio essay. i understand that he wants us to get creative and not write just a normal essay but that's what i want to do. i just want to write an essay.
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