school > funding > teachers > sports > students > learning

This is the hierarchy of school. With one year left of high school and five schools under my belt, I believe I have enough experience in this department to have a valid opinion. This week has been a fine, fine example of this. We shall start with exhibit one:

- A fellow student at my school has been given a D instead of a C in a class because the teacher felt "she didn't deserve the C" that she had earned. I do not know how this student acts in class, but if one earns and works for a grade, one deserves a grade.

- I got caught texting (I know, I'm hardcore *rolls eyes*) in class. Ever since, the teacher has a) given me lower grades on homework assignments which are only checked for completion and which I have all completed b)given me lower classwork grades although I have been paying more than enough attention in class and volunteer to answer almost every question and d)took off 4/5 points on two problems on a test because I got the correct answer, but in the wrong way. I guess being able to solve the problem without the plugging in the formula he wrote on the board means I'm dumb. This all may seem arguable but today in class, I kept answering questions and he kept telling me I was wrong... until he "heard me correctly" or else "saw my answer on the page correctly" and discovered I was right. Automatically told me I was wrong. I was right. My grade has dropped from a 3.7 to a 3.2 because I got caught texting (though when he caught me I was only checking the time but was honest enough to fess up to texting) once out of two years of having him as a teacher.

- My cousin, along with half of her class, a week from graduating, was suspected of plagiarism and given an F on a paper which could have kept her from graduating. After interrogation, the teacher concluded that she didn't plagiarize and she was able to graduate. Really, Miss-teacher-who-accused-half-the-class-of-plagiarizing, really?

- The last event that made me question this hierarchy was when I went to see my school guidance counselor about retaking a Latin class. I am currently taking Latin I online. This means that I am teaching myself Latin. Although I have an A in the class, I get Cs on the tests and I feel as though I am getting further and further behind. It is really, really difficult to teach yourself a language using only an itty-bitty textbook. I told my counselor that I have already taken all of my language requirements and over and I am just taking Latin for fun and I would really like to retake the class with an actual Latin teacher we are getting next year. He blinked and said no. He said that the school is already bending the rules for me as I am taking two college courses next year (which someone did this year, and btw, I'm not sure how one rule can be "too many"). Also note, many students in Spanish courses have retaken a year so they would be more prepared for the next level. I asked him "So if I fail Latin II next year, I'm just going to fail?" He nodded. Let us get the scenario straight, I am taking a class, for fun, because I wish to learn. I feel as though I am not learning enough, but this doesn't matter. The fact that I feel as though I am not learning does not matter to my high school guidance counselor.

So there you have it folks, the learning system of the day. What in the world is going on?

I eat life like chocolate chip cookies

I had to write an essay about what I hunger for in life. This essay, perhaps a strikingly unusual, childish essay, is the only answer I knew would be truthful. Maybe you can find truth in it as well.

Richard Wright once said that there is a "hunger for life that gnaws in us all." It is a quote that I find resonates with many of us. Everyone has that desire for something more that wrenches at our gut, pulling us forward until we are dizzy with confusion. What is that more that we all seem to be ensnared by? If you come a little closer, I'll whisper a secret to you, I'll whisper-- or at least type in a whisper-like fashion-- to you that one thing that has wrenched at my gut so often, it's grasp is imprinted there. An Adventure.

You see, I know exactly what I want and I want it so badly that tears form in my eyes as I think of it. I hunger for an adventure. It may seem silly or pure fantasy, but adventures may sneak upon you in many different ways, from a simple, unexpected friendship to something on such a grandiose scale as discovering a continent (granted the likelihood of discovering a continent in this age is nil). People are out having adventures as you read this: people are facing their fears, falling in love (which is always an adventure), just last year, a seventeen year old boy sailed around the world by himself.

I do not yet know what adventure I will take upon, nor do I know what adventure might find me but I do know why I want one, to discover who I am. The word adventure comes from the Latin advenire which means to arrive. I would like to believe that this arrival is the nature of adventure, to arrive at the discovery of oneself. Adventures, these new and strange experiences we find ourselves having, are more often than not risky, mentally and/or physically, and which risks we take, which risks we find worth taking or not, what we truly care about or not, what morals we will stick to or what morals we never really had, tell us more about ourselves than anything else possibly could. Perhaps, that more that we, or at least I, lust after, is not truly more perhaps we are only seeking to discover what we already have.

Soooo....

So. So. So. I sit here now, in bed, on a Saturday afternoon, at 3, without pants on because I was wearing sweatpants and I got too hot but I didn't feel like turning the heater off or changing into shorts, in the aftermath of a mental breakdown. Do you know what my schedule has been like for the past month? You do not want to know because I have been taking nine classes including a college course after school and teaching myself Latin. With ten million clubs to go to but didn't have time for, applications for various things left undone, and soccer practices before our first and last play-off game that I had to skip. I spent my time with Google, textbooks, and the Golden Girls on hand as I pet my cats and stuffed myself with TV Dinners and king cake.

So, here I am now. Everything is more or less the same with the exception of soccer which *thank god* ended last night, and one would think that I would have had many nights of crying and screaming and decisions made to just flunk all of my classes, you know, the usual when I get stressed. This time though, something even WEIRDED happened. I snapped. It wasn't a big thing, but all of the sudden I started singing Disney songs in the middle of class picking out mismatched outfits, talking to smiley faces I draw on my shower and doing things like not wearing pants and fussing at my parents when they offered to clean my room for me.

Now, I do not see an end to this until May or April and next year when I start college applications, I foresee it being worse, but as my insanity increase, I promise it will at least me entertaining and that it will not effect my ability to write-- which I will try to do here again soon. Good afternoon. I must go and feed my fish and memorize all of the presidents in order.

This is the title to my blog

No excuses.

I don't really have anything to say right now, probably because I have a headache. I'm visiting my sister right now, we are watching this TV show called Intervention. Its about drug addicts and then at the end of the show they have an intervention. As you can see, its very interesting.

I also have a very bad headache, I'm not sure why, maybe I'm going through sympathy withdrawal symptoms. Surely they must get bad headaches.

I really don't understand why people start drugs in the first place, I know "their life is tough", "peer pressure", yada, but REALLY? Here is my list of comparisons

Reasons to do Drugs:

1. It is summertime and when you exhale, fog does not come out of your mouth like is does when it is cold out. As you miss pretending to breathe like a dragon, you do drugs so that smoke can come out of your mouth even when it is warm.

2. You like small crafts, rolling things up in small pieces of paper, tying bows and creating bracelets for your upper arm... drugs allow you to do these things.

3. You have no imagination and this deeply depresses you, you do drugs so that you can have an imagination and the kindergarteners no longer point and laugh at you.

4. You find pleasure in doing nothing with your life

Reasons not to do Drugs

1. You can think clearly

2. You have ambition

3. You realize that there are better ways to release stress and improve life than doing drugs

4. You can think for yourself and you don't have to do what everybody else does to be "cool"

So there you go, and yes while I would enjoy being able to breathe like a dragon during the Summer, usually it is never a top priority and I can wait until weather. So there is my blog. Apologies for being absent for two months. Happy Holidays :)

Scaredy Cat

Dearest blog readers, if you exist, I am a scaredy cat. A few nights ago I heard a tapping in my room and I ran out of it and slept on the couch. After I saw the Happening I wouldn't go outside for three weeks until I was confident enough that the plants would not make me kill myself. So last week, when I was coerced into going to a haunted house with one of my good friends, I thought I would end up either peeing on myself or breaking down and crying in the middle of it. I have never peed on myself, but I fear that I am that kind of girl; the scaredy cat. As the time drew closer to the event I became more scared but by the time I coughed up the $21.80 for my ticket I knew there would be no going back. And dearest blog readers, the line even scared me. With reason, I hope as there was a real cemetery next to the converted mortuary that was the haunted house I was going to, with reason. You know what I did though? I put on my brave face (as seen here) and walked on in:

grr.. I'm brave!

The group before us was a group of about ten teenage boys, all overwhelmingly confident before the doors opened to let us in. of course, they were chivalrous enough to live by the saying "ladies first" and let my friends and I go in before them. Somewhere between my first step into the converted mortuary and the steps to the landing where we would decide whether to enter the left door of doom (where we'd previously seen a man dressed as an evil clown wave at us through a window) and the right door of doom, I summoned up the bravery to be the first person to follow the man dressed as a creepy (butler? Ill never know, but his costume was meant to frighten) to the decision point. As I lead the group of fifteen my bravery rose and my fear was swept away. I felt adventurous as I turned to the right door of doom and continued through the haunted house and amazing because for once and my life, my sense of adventure trumped my fear and I had fun.

*sorry for the rushed end, but class is over*

Stars

I have an obsession with stars. I don't know why-- or maybe I do, I've just never put it in words. Things are usually like that, you think you don't know something but if you just take a second to clear your thoughts, you know everything... or maybe thats just me being dramatic. I'm day-time tv dramatic. The stars though, you can never be too dramatic about the stars. Have you ever been outside when everybody around you is asleep? Its just you and the stars and theres a certain magic to it. Maybe its only me, but when you look at the stars every thought seems more clear, and happy. Whenever I have a bad day if I end it with some great music and stars, everything that had been worrying me or making me feel horrible goes away. As you can probably see, I'm not much of a party-heart. I'm a dreamer and maybe thats the reason stars are so wonderful. They are so far away, not even distance wise, but the light you see is millions of years old, and at the same time, they're just right there for you. They will always be there for you, those dumb little pricks of light in the sky that don't really provide any light and disappear if a city is too big. Now, I have to go because it's nine o'clock and I haven't even started my homework.

Today I am in my ONLINE LATIN CLASS and as this is about to make my head explode, I am taking a break... actually, I'm still "doing Latin" I est in Latine. See? Latine? QUID FACIT CORNELIA QUOD DEFESSA EST? QUID FACIT?... AMBULANT! HAHAHA *maniacal laughter* HAHAHA I go it! I got in! Cornelia quod defessa ambulant! Cornelia because tired walk.. don't got it? Okay, well it is definitely break time.

I coming to you, dearest blog reader, with great news. Guess what? Guess? You can't guess? I have written TWENTY-FIVE THOUSAND words for my story. I am half way done the horrible 50,000 word deadline. *does half-way done dance* Sadly, I'm actually way behind and I now need to write two thousand words a day. Yesterday I wrote three thousand. I wrote one thousand at 1 (in 45 minutes) I wrote another thousand at six (in 51 minutes) and I wrote another thousand at eleven.... in THIRTY FIVE MINUTES! DO you know how crazy this all is? because it is SO, SO crazy. I feel like a real writer person, and you know the best thing about my twenty-five thousand words? It's too late to turn back. It is way to late to have waste a countless amount of effort on this to just quit.

Do you know what happened before my three thousand word day of awesomeness? I didn't write for almost two days. On Friday I wrote ZERO and on Saturday I wrote THREE HUNDRED. Sunday I had to kick it up a notch but I was completely stuck, I had hit the wall. Yes, I had hit the wall. You know when you run and you get to this point and its just like "if I take another step, I shall DIE. I will literally just DIE." This is what I had reached. I had reached the point where I just couldn't write. I had no idea what to write next. I had finished one story arch and when the next was supposed to begin I had no idea what to do. I just had to WRITE but just WRITING is so impossibly hard. You know what though? I broke through that wall; I annihilated that wall. I wrote five thousand words in two days (do not look up the three day novel writing competition to lesser my accomplishment, please).
I have another two thousand words to jot down in the midst of piles of homework, chores, and sleep I have left undone, a pile I have just made bigger by disregarding my latin work and writing this instead, but hey I'M HALF WAY DONE. Only two more weeks before I act like a normal human being again!