Tag: school

so upsetting → so exciting

poofypuffyLeave a comment

I just realized college is just four more years of school. 

Yes, logically I knew that. There are a lot of things that I think you can understand logically, but emotionally it doesn’t hit you for a while. 

I kept romanticizing college and finishing high school in my head- going somewhere new (a big city!!), meeting new people, living closer to people I know, participating in cool programs at my college… 

But I was just filling in some important dates on my calendar, and when I wrote “First Day of Class” I realized that at the heart of all the shiny new things is the reality that college is still school. I am going to go to wake up and go to class where I will sit and listen to a teacher talk. I will do homework and study and take tests. 

But actually writing this I am changing my mind. Yes, it will be school. But it will also be learning more independently. I can shape my class schedule to my personal schedule and not vice versa. I will be living on my own(ish) and taking classes that interest me (and some that are less interesting). Actually, thinking about that I am really excited. Right now I really do like CompSci and I am excited to take classes on that. Living more independently is very exciting to me.

Picture Credit: Tanner Boriack

3 things I am grateful for #4

poofypuffyLeave a comment

I noticed a lot of the things I write about being grateful for are foods. I do not think that is an issue because food is good and often taken for granted, but I am going to try to write about all non-food things today just to diversify things. Although I am eating my greek yogurt right now and it is so good that I started singing about how much I love yogurt.

  1. Graduation. I am very grateful for graduation coming soon, and I am grateful for my education, and also grateful to end one chapter of my life. My cousin has a sign in her room that says something along the lines of “Every beginning starts with an end.” I didn’t get it, and she explained to me that every time something ends, it signifies the beginning of something else. Every time something begins, it came at the cost of something else ending. I liked that a lot, because sometimes I get so excited for the next thing, not realizing it comes at the cost of the first thing ending. To me, it is a reminder to appreciate the things we have when we have them.
  2. Cups. Right now, I am drinking out of a metal cup with nature propaganda on it. I don’t understand what it is talking about but it has REI, North Face, Merrell, Patagonia, and Keen printed on it. I am grateful for it because it is a cute cup. 
  3. Mice. Mice are cute. Today, Rory showed me a poster that had the Mouse Grimace Scale. It is made by people who are trying to reduce animal testing. The poster is supposed be scientific and show different levels of various types of reactions by mice, but the poster looks like it is just a bunch of mouse faces.

Photo Credit: https://www.nc3rs.org.uk/3rs-resources/grimace-scales/grimace-scale-mouse

debt blog

poofypuffyLeave a comment

I am going to be in so much debt after college. I’ve gotten a good chunk of institutional aid, and I am still waiting on federal and state aid, but the way things are shaping up currently, I will likely be in six-figure debt at the end of my education. 

That’s pretty crazy. I don’t pretend to be any kind of expert in finances or anything, but I’m pretty sure 100k is a pretty unfavorable number of anything to owe.

Do I have it better than someone else? Of course. I know there are people out there paying the full sticker price of college or going to a school that charges a lot more in tuition. I’m grateful I am in the circumstances I am in. However, I’m still going to be in a lot of debt.

How did it get to this point? 

Yes, I chose to go to this school, being fairly aware of the cost. 

But I mean on a larger scale. In a news report, they said that in the past, a college education had a pretty big percent chance (I don’t remember what, but it was probably 80-90 percent) of helping the graduate make more in the future. However, today, college graduates have about a 50 percent chance of doing better, just because the cost of college is so high that the debt cancels out the benefit in the job market. Isn’t that crazy? You flip a coin. If it’s heads, your college education helped you in the long run. If it’s tails, you just shot yourself in the foot (financially).

Picture Credit: The Public Purpose

Even though I worry,

urmom8beanLeave a comment

I tend to worry a lot. Do they still like me? Are we really friends? Will everything be okay?

Lately, college and school have been at the top of those worries. Along with other more personal stuff I’m not comfortable sharing here. I have to make it, survive my senior year, and graduate. After that then what, I have to get money to afford my school and then go through 4 more years of worries. Why do we do this?

I wish I had the money to travel and not worry about school and life. I wish could see the world, and experience a world without worry.

But even though I worry, I’m alive. I’ve survived this long. I’m fighting and staying afloat. Everything is stable, and everything (god, I hope and pray) everything will be okay. I have amazing friends who make me laugh so hard that I can’t breathe and start to cry. I have two legs that carry me through track practice, no matter how light-headed I get. I get so many opportunities each day and get to experience everything with my own two eyes. I get to have music, which is the only thing that I’ve given everything to, and I’ve gotten everything back.

I’m so lucky. Even in my current situation (which shall not be discussed) I still manage to go to school every day with a smile on my face. I take tests, do mock trials, and run track. I’m surviving. I’m living.

And even though I worry, I will not let that stop me.

PS The only thing that could stop me is college decisions so wish me luck!

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poetry rambling

poofypuffyLeave a comment

In English, we have a “March Madness” poetry bracket. I like that we are reading poetry instead of writing essays. Writing essays is fine too, but reading poetry is more enjoyable. After reading so many poems in one sitting, I’ve found a greater appreciation for poetry, because the range of poetry styles and topics is so diverse. I submitted “The Rose Family” by Robert Frost because I thought it was really cute. Another poem I really like is “My November Guest” by Robert Frost, even though I didn’t like it at first because it seemed like any other poem. Once I found an analysis of the meaning, however, I felt more appreciation for it. However, there were some other poems I also really liked. I liked reading “This is Just To Say”  by William Carlos Williams, although I’m not sure how exactly poems like that qualify as poems. I don’t like descriptive poems about landscapes and things, because they feel so dry and meaningless. I like the poems that don’t make any sense because they seem more profound that way. For example, I have no idea what “They Shut Me Up in Prose” by Emily Dickinson means, but it is really enjoyable to read, and I bet it will be even better when I understand it. Also, “Masks” by Shel Silverstein is really cute and it has a good message behind it. Shel Silverstein writes a lot of nonsensical, funny poems, but there are some really good, more heartfelt poems buried among the fun ones. Even some of his silly poems, like “The Generals,” potentially have a more serious message behind them. I find it really impressive how authors of poetry and other writing have such a capacity for evoking emotion and experiences.

Picture Credit: Department of English

I am changing

baka228Leave a comment

I am changing and cannot understand the nature of my changes. At the beginning of the year, something happened to my consciousness, and I began to make decisions that I would have never made before. I gave up all my bad habits, which was not easy, but I managed to do it and continued to work on myself. I took up sports and started going to the pool again. But not only did my physical habits change, my consciousness began to undergo a kind of transformation.

I started to question again how I feel about myself in society and in my body. I realized that for a long time, I’ve been hiding a large part of my personality because it doesn’t fit into the society in which I currently find myself. I tried to assimilate and be part of society, but it just never worked for me. I am chasing something that doesn’t belong to me and just wasting energy on it. I shouldn’t chase; I should attract the people and events that I deserve.

Also, I once again questioned what I would like to do in the future. It’s a difficult question, but now I have something like a life plan for the next year. This pleases me, and my plans look intense, but I understand that it will not only be fun, I will have to work very hard again to achieve what I want. But I’m not afraid of hard work, so I’m ready to do everything I can to achieve my goals.

Also, I’m worried about my appearance. Living in California, I started dressing in hoodies and sports pants. This style doesn’t suit me, and I feel lazy and unattractive. Also, I stopped doing facial massages and taking care of my hair sufficiently for it to look the way I want. In short, I started taking care of my appearance again, I see the first results, and it cannot but please me.

In general, unexpectedly for myself, I am undergoing a kind of transformation, and everything is moving in a good direction.

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Usually i try to write

baka228Leave a comment

Usually, I try to write about something worthwhile, about my thoughts, feelings, or events that happened to me, and which would be interesting to share. But today is not that day; today, I want to talk about all sorts of nonsense that has been on my mind lately.

47 days. After precise calculations, I realized that I have exactly 47 days left to go to school. It seems like this number should be much larger, but definitely not in my case. I am the most vivid case of senioritis you can find on planet Earth. Immediately after receiving the acceptance letter from the university I wanted, unexpectedly even to myself, I just stopped worrying about what happens at school. I am absolutely calm about not doing homework, and it doesn’t bother me much. I won’t lie, I never really liked the process of studying in an American school, and the only reason why I truly strived and learned subjects was my admission to the university; now that the goal is achieved, the motivation is completely gone. In my case, trying to find opportunities to reduce my days spent in school buildings, I discovered that some camps take away as much as 5 days! I signed up for many, which significantly reduced my time spent at school this semester. I am glad that I have very little time left until the end of school. I won’t lie, I will be the happiest person on graduation day, during the ceremony I will definitely be crying, but not out of sadness but from overwhelming happiness.

The second thing I wanted to talk about is my sleep. Lately, I’ve been having terrible problems with sleep. I wake up every hour at night, and if I’m unlucky enough to start thinking about something that bothers me, then I can’t sleep for a couple of hours simply because I can’t stop thinking. It bothers me, but I can’t do anything about it.

PC: me

Overwhelmed

uwucutiepatootieLeave a comment

Lately, I have been struggling with keeping up with my homework. I have been sick for the past week and focusing on school has been really hard for me. I took the past two days of school off and now I am even more behind. I have an essay, project, and test due next week, along with all of the homework I haven’t done from this week and I don’t even know what to do. I am missing even more school next week to go on a mandatory camping trip with my school and I’m going to fall even more behind. I still feel exhausted and not fully healthy and thinking about starting the hours and hours of homework I need to catch up on is horrifying. I have only missed a day and a half of school this whole school year until this week and I feel like because I’ve been sick, I have mentally missed a week of school even though in reality I have only missed two days. I hope that I feel better before my camping trip or else my week will get so much worse.

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Do grades matter

progstenLeave a comment

This is a question that I ask myself almost daily. Personally, I have been in an environment for most of my life that deems grades to be an important and necessary part of my life. I want to be successful in my life and future career. So, I have mostly believed that no matter what, as long as I get good grades, I will be fine in whatever is thrown at me in my life. However, I have never been able to get “good grades” from the school I go to standards. So, for a while, I believed that I was going to struggle in my life once I got to college and once I got into the “real world,” but I have started to change my views over these past few years. Is the reason I have started changing my views due to the fact that my grades never got up to what I see as good? There’s a chance of that, but mainly, it is because whenever I focus on school and grades, I see a trend in my overall life going in a downward trajectory, which is not the way you want it to go. I did some light research ( a Google search) and found that only half the people who get degrees were able to secure a full-time job in the field they studied, and 16 percent were unable to secure a job. The rest are all into somewhere in between either getting a part-time or switching fields fully cause they couldn’t find a job. So, back to the original question on hand: do grades matter? Well, I am going to say It depends. I know that this is the easy way out when it comes to the answer, but it all really depends on what you want to do. If I were to ask a doctor or someone aspiring to be one from their perspective, I’m sure grades impacted a large part of their life because it allowed them to pressure their passion, but if I were to ask this same question to someone who plans to do a trade, start their own business, become a pro athlete, or a job that doesn’t a full degree, then they might answer differently. Ultimately, this is about whoever is reading this perspective, and in my case, I’m the one reading, so I personally don’t believe in grades as I think it’s more important to enjoy life, and if the pursuit of grades is taken away from that, don’t pressure them.

the days are slow.

urmom8beanLeave a comment

Slow enough for me to notice more things.

I like being quiet, but I don’t want to be boring.

I overthink too much about what to say and how they react after I say something.

It’s been a little worse lately but what I have noticed the most is how I don’t like being treated rudely.

Whether it be accusing me of stuff I didn’t do or mocking me. I don’t like it, and it’s even weirder because I don’t start it. Yet it always turns into an aggressive comment back to me. I usually don’t have the energy for it, and I hate how extra those comments are. What’s the point of being mean?

Now, I’m not saying I’m a saint either, but if it’s with my friends, I don’t think I’ve ever initiated the aggression. I think it may be a misunderstanding. I’m not always going to respond in a happy, bubbly tone, but that doesn’t mean I am angry. I just don’t have enough energy. I wish they were nicer.

I have noticed how off I have been, the slow decline

The days go by slower because I keep looking back. I’m afraid that as soon as I look forward and back again, I’ll already be at the end.

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