One of my New Year’s resolutions was to have an Academic comeback. Last semester, I procrastinated a lot, and I had moments when I was extremely stressed because I had so much work to do. For example, pretty much nightly, we get AP world history notes, but our teacher only checks them before the end of the unit, and I would always skim through them and not do my notes till right before. Because of how many i hadn’t done I would be doing the till past midnight along with my other homework. I have been doing them the night they are assigned now, and it’s been so much less stressful. My brother is a junior, and he’s getting ready to look at colleges, and the idea of college is so stressful. What classes I’m taking next year is stressful I have no idea what I want to major in and collages look at junior year so I need to pick the right classes and do well in them. I had ok grades last semester, but I feel like I could push myself to get better grades this year.
Month: January 2024
It’s becoming real.
Basketball is coming to an end and the last sports season is approaching.
but what’s really becoming real is how I feel about people in my life. how I really feel about them, and especially how they feel about me.
Even though no one else has seen it I feel like I have changed a lot. Middle school to high school was a huge switch, and from then I kind of (pardon my French) screwed myself over.
I tried to be better in high school, and have a better experience than middle school, and freshman to sophomore year was pretty good. Junior year sucked. Now Senior year is a little bit of both.
I guess I was trying to paint a certain picture of myself and then in the end I got trapped in that same picture.
I don’t feel as energetic or enthusiastic as I was during my freshman year. I feel a lot more calm and quiet, I like the silence more. Just because I’m not screaming at the top of my lungs doesn’t mean I’m not having fun. just because I’m silent doesn’t mean I’m angry.
I love people who let me be silent KME(D). My favorite people without a doubt. they understood as soon as I did and they accepted it. Other people still don’t understand and make faces as soon as I go quiet. I just feel uncomfortable. What am I supposed to do? I can’t when it’s everyone vs 1. At least that’s what it feels like.
Music. That’s the only thing that helps in those situations. I wish I knew what to do or what to say. Personally, I wouldn’t treat my friends like that.
I wish people were more real. Instead of faking I wish they acted how they talked. The switch-up is insane. The contradiction is insane. Honestly, everything is insane.
Anyway, I guess this really is just how I see it. Maybe it is a totally different experience from the other side.
I just can’t wait to leave. I’m ready, but I’ll miss my friends. It’s all becoming too real.
memory
I don’t understand memory. Why don’t we get to choose what we remember and what we forget. I just think it’s weird that I remember every word to every song I listened to as a kid but not the formulas for my chem exam. I don’t remember a lot from living in Seattle except a few flashbacks. I remember when someone broke into the house I was born in, I could see the broken door and my mom’s face when she saw it. I remember crying when we moved out. I remember breaking my leg on the stairs. I had a bright pink full-leg cast, and all of my preschool friends drew on it. I remember when I got my brand-new rainbow bed. I remember having a dream in the same bed where I could fly. I remember when I was still close to my sister, and she taught me how to eat spaghetti. And I remember moving to Bend. That’s what I think about most. Everything changed when we moved. I think for me it changed for the better, but we moved away from my grandparents, who we now see once a year. It’s crazy to me how time goes by, and we forget things that were once so important.
I’m So Tired
It’s literally only been like a week since we started school after the Holiday Break, and I am already so exhausted. A grand combination of horrible classes, ungodly homework, extracurriculars that take up too much time, and aggressive and long-lasting sports games have contributed to me feeling like I have zero time again and literally am hanging on by a thread. All I want to do is just sleep and lie down in my bed. But, the issue is that if I relax and do that, a massive part of my brain is telling me that I am not being productive enough and could be doing other things with my time that would be better for me. I am trying so hard to not be behind on work, and I did a decent job of that, but is the effort that it took to get there even worth it? I guess we will only know as soon as I get accepted into my dream college or something.
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Gypsy Rose
Lately, me and my friend have been really into watching “The Act” which is about Gypsy Rose. Some people may call her a murderer because she helped in the killing of her mother, but she is just a daughter who got put through mental and physical abuse. She trusted her mother, who was her best friend, but her mother had been lying to her her whole life, making her go through constant unnecessary surgeries and pills, and she was put into a wheelchair even though she and her mother knew that she could walk. Her mother lied about her age to attempt to keep Gypsy childlike. Her mother used her to make money, but money is no excuse for torturing your daughter. Gypsy wanted to live a normal life like any other girl and her mother not only ruined her childhood but gave her trauma that she still carries with her today.
Korea town with my bestie…
Last weekend my roommate and I spent some time outside of school. Our main goal was to go to Korea Town for some good food and shopping. Saturday morning, we woke up at 8:00 and went to Korea Town. We ate Sundubu right after arriving there. I felt like I was on a trip to Korea because of all the Koreans around me. The food was very delicious. After I finished eating, I went to a nail salon. I had black nails, so I decided to get white nails to make me feel like I was going back 180 degrees. I also had a Valentine’s Day design heart painted on my nails. Nails make me feel good and motivate me to do everything. After that, I went to a cafe because it was very cold that day. There we had warm tea and taiyaki. The dough was sticky and the outside was crunchy. Finally, we went shopping. I bought a lot of food. The things I was most happy with were grapes from Korea and a key chain for my cell phone that my roommate bought me.
That night we went to a Japanese yakiniku restaurant called Gyukaku. It was a happy day, eating delicious food all day long.
pc;me
Paths
This is kind of silly, but do you ever think of the chances of something happening? Like, you coming across this blog post. Even if you are from my school, or in my journalism class, think about how rare that is. In this entire world of eight billion people, here I am, writing about something insignificant, and you are reading it. I think about this with friendships, too. For example, my roommate is from Japan, and I was born in America. The chances of us ever meeting were slim. What if she never went to school in America? What if I had stayed at a day school in Los Angeles? There are so many little daily decisions that you make, even subconsciously, that technically change the entire trajectory of your life. It’s weird to think about.
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Organized
I genuinely don’t think I would be able to survive school without my planner. Like, I give the greatest props to the people who don’t use one. Every night, I will write down all my homework for every class and check stuff off as I go. It’s the only way I could fully be organized and not forget to do anything. I don’t understand the people who have a mental checklist and go from there, I don’t think I could ever do that successfully and not forget to do half of my homework. I also really enjoy highlighting in my journal. Colors make everything easier to read for me. If you look at all of my notes without knowing what each color represents, it definitely gets a little confusing. I feel bad for people who are colorblind. Just in general, I mean. Dumping ink onto all of my notes and planners and stuff is just so fun. If you don’t use a bunch of colors, that’s understandable. But if you don’t use a planner or something to write down your assignments, props.
A short story about waiting for the bus
Once upon a time, there was a man named Bill. He sat at the bus stop, and it was raining. He held of bouquet. It was a bouquet of roses. They were very pretty at one point, but he had been sitting and waiting at the bus stop for a while, and they were wilting. It was wet and cold outside, but he knew that it would be better when he got on the bus. He wore a dress shirt and pants that were not warm enough to shield him from the cold, wet, weather. Bill shivered.
He stared out at the supermarket across the street. It would be dry and warm in the supermarket, but he was waiting for the bus.
Bill looked out at the damp scenery, doing and thinking nothing. He was simply waiting in a cold, trance-like stupor.
A woman walked along the sidewalk, holding an umbrella. She was walking her dog, and the dog was wearing a little raincoat. As she approached the bus stop, she could see a man sitting on the bench. She wondered if he was waiting for the bus, and she wondered if he knew that the bus had been decommissioned earlier that month. The woman hesitated. Should she tell him that the bus would not come? He looked quite still and content, waiting, and she did not want to intrude. And perhaps the bus was back in order. She was afraid to interrupt his day and afraid to be wrong, so she walked past the bus stop and said nothing.
Bill waited for the bus, but the bus never came. It continued to rain for years, and for years, the bus never came. Bill sat a the bus stop, waiting for the bus. Every year that passed watered the seedling of despair that Bill nurtured in him. His bouquet of roses died, and his clothes faded. With this despair, Bill clung to the hope that the bus was almost here and that when the bus came, it would restore the delicate life in his bouquet and the robust color of his clothes, and everything would be right again. Sometimes he thought he heard the hiss of an engine or the grumble of the wheels, but it was an illusion brought on by the rain.
Eventually, Bill grew old and died at the bus stop, waiting in the rain.
Photo by Jana Shnipelson
Moral progress
There is actually none. Zero. I do not believe that the biology of human brain has changed enough to make us lie, cheat, hurt less.
But the culture has. The institutions that uphold our societies have been modified, transformed, reinvented. I doubt it was due to everyone’s sudden enlightenment that we have formed fundamental ethical principles. But I can see how through a painfully slow, gradual shift in culture, technology, and environment, we have changed our views and with them our ways.
Take the women’s current status in society. If it wasn’t for the World Wars, one can only wonder how many more years it would have taken for them to reach it.
Men were drafted, factories became empty, someone needed to build ammunition. Women finally got a taste of independence. When the war was over and the women were sent home, they were reluctant to go back to the previous state of things
It was scientific advancements that gave us the Enlightenment. It was Industrial Revolution and Urbanization that altered the class system and stopped the slavery.
The ethical arguments for why something should be changed usually comes only after the necessary economical, technological, scientific, and other circumstances are already in place.
The most important conclusion from these facts is that even our chaotic nature can be directed in the desired path.
Even if by nature we are prone to enslaving one another, hating one another, and a myriad of other very human kind of things to do, we are, in fact, capable of controlling this nature.
Through cultural, scientific, technological and other changes, we can restrain what’s negative, and maximize what’s positive.
It can happen accidentally, as it has been for the most of human history, or, we can bring these changes about with our own efforts – by creating the necessary institutions, pushing for the appropriate cultural changes, and making the right personal decisions.
We have abolished slavery and written the human rights. Then what should stop us from ceasing lying or murder?
The truth is, it can only be us. Since we can construct these institutions and manifest these changes, we can also bring them to ruin. And much much easier so than build them.
It seems NORMAL to us that humans have rights, men and women are equal, and slavery is wrong. But it does not take much for all of this to disappear. It might be a nuclear war, it might be forming your whole identity of off your political affiliation, or simply being a jerk to the people around you. So let’s put some thought into it all.
We have been give the ten commandments. But what if we create our own – ones based on empathy, deep thought, and mutual flourishing?
OVS Journalism Blog 
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