[We (my parents and I) went to Yale on Labor Day. I don't know why I didn't blog immediately about it, but I guess I got caught up with work. Anyway. This is what I remember now.]
We left pretty late, I don't remember exactly when, but it was definitely late (because I remember eating brunch). The drive to New Haven was not too bad, although it wasn't too exciting either. We had already been there once, during winter (maybe it was the holiday break?), and needless to say, a New England winter is not the prettiest thing in the world, not when the snow is day old and half-molten and icky black. Since it was so cold, we did not get to explore the campus either.
This time, we came (more) prepared. At least it was a nice day, not too cold but not too hot, and we had plenty of time to explore. There were no info sessions, but as we arrived on campus, there were lots of students everywhere. Walking. Chatting. Going to class.
They had classes on Labor Day. I was surprised, because I thought everyone (within reason) took the day off. But it was also a good thing, because we were able to see what the school was like when there are actual people there (yes, they were normal people, doing normal-people-things except for that one person with the banners condemning animal cruelty, but I don't think you can do normal things when you're advocating for a cause). We also slipped into one of their dining halls, where we got a glimpse of the food (average). My dad complained, but he doesn't like anything except Chinese food (and only some regions of Chinese food at that) so I am not surprised he was complaining. I thought it was okay—if you go by our school's cafeteria food standards.
When we left the dining hall (Hogwarts-style, I'd say, except that is overrated among colleges, it seems), I paused and tried to figure out where I wanted to go. Some friendly (albeit somewhat creepy, I have to admit) man in his mid-50s to 60s came up to us and asked, "Are you applying to Yale?"
After some introductions and explanations, I learned that this man lives around New Haven and has a Chinese wife (and stepson), so somehow this means that he stops and questions any Chinese person he sees. His stepson also went to Columbia (graduated a few years ago) and now works on Wall Street. He is an ardent fan of the Ivy League, and not so much of UConn, the state school. He believes all Chinese people are smart (my mom later said to us, "that's because it's so hard to get a visa here and usually only the smart people can come"). He also gave me some advice about schools (who knew fencing would be a good way to get into the Ivies? Now if only I wasn't so inept at all sports...) and, uh, he talked for almost two hours.
My parents eventually got his number, although they haven't called him yet.
Then we went to see the engineering and science buildings, but we detoured into the MBA building instead. There wasn't much there, just empty rooms with comfy-looking chairs, so we left. I led my parents up a hill, where we saw a floating lily/other-plants pond, which was really cool, and we even saw some fish. The rest I don't remember much. I think by this time I was tired and I wanted to leave because we couldn't get into the biology tower anyway. On our way back we saw a professor and his class sitting outside, on the grass, discussing something. Reminded me of after the AP test, when Mrs. James took us outside and we sat on the pavement while we talked about crazy things and I just tried to finish my homework (that I didn't do at home any longer). We also went into one of those buildings that is probably a residential hall, because it is really, really tall (or so the old-fashioned elevator with the iron gates that you can pull claims), and not exactly in the best condition in terms of paint. It really needs a fresh coat of paint.
So, anyway, my summary:
Overall, it's a beautiful school, if you're into antique buildings and everything (this also means possible lack of central A/C in some buildings, but hey, this is in New England, if you're not staying over the summer then it doesn't matter too much). Outdoor space is good (above Columbia, on par with Cornell when you're nowhere near a river), although it's not extremely big. City campus, after all. There are plenty of trees. Busy campus, lots of people, centralized—everything's close together. Definitely urban setting, and part of the campus is integrated into New Haven.
I liked it. I wouldn't go as far as to say I loved it—I didn't come home with a "wow, that's where I want to go" feeling—but it wasn't anything bad or even average. Maybe the peeling paint killed the mood.
Showing posts with label Mrs. James. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Mrs. James. Show all posts
Thursday, September 30, 2010
Tuesday, May 11, 2010
Top Ten Reasons Why You Should Never Walk Long Distances In Flip-flops*
(*Also known as: the longest title Nephria has and will ever see. Ever.)
Anyway. I have miraculously (and most unfortunately) discovered almost all of these reasons today. Needless to say, I will not be walking in flip-flops (or high heels, but that's another story) for an extended period of time anymore (until the next time I forget, or whatever). But here is the list:
Elaine had, a very, very long time ago, lent me two bottles of blue nail polish (which I still need to return her), so I went and bought a bottle of pink nail polish and a bottle of silvery one. There were so many I couldn't really decide which ones I wanted, and I didn't find any glitter (to make the shiny effect), but the silvery nail polish had mini-glitter inside, so I suppose that will work (or I can go ask the art department if they have any spare glitter). I plan to paint them (my erasers, that is) on Friday, when Mrs. James is not here. Not that I think she will mind, but I probably will be reading for US on Thursday, and she so happens to not be in school on Friday.
Also, here, I would like to wish all my friends who are taking AP English (and there are quite a few of them) good luck on the test tomorrow. I personally could never write an essay in pen. I would just hate it so much. But you (all of you) will do wonderful and ace the test but will do much, much better than it because I do not have a high opinion of anything that claims to judge your ability with a three hour long test.
I suppose there lies a certain level of ability to the test, however, as Bryant finished his multiple choice section of the AP chem test 45 minutes earlier. Camel (who sat behind Bryant) looked up at the clock with 45 minutes left to go, and saw Bryant sitting upright, with nothing in his hands, just staring ahead. Granted, the test was not hard (and some of the questions were downright ridiculous, but I can't spill them "ever," according to CB), but 45 minutes is a bit absurd when the entire section is 90 minutes long (okay, fine, I had 30 minutes to spare, and I spent them coloring in every one of my bubbles again, but still).
But I have no more excuses to skip class anymore. I must do my homework now (or do them during chem). English vocab/10 chapters of Huck Finn/SAT-type prompt here I come (yay...).
Anyway. I have miraculously (and most unfortunately) discovered almost all of these reasons today. Needless to say, I will not be walking in flip-flops (or high heels, but that's another story) for an extended period of time anymore (until the next time I forget, or whatever). But here is the list:
- When you walk for more than 45 minutes (or over 4000 steps) your feet will hurt. A lot.
- Since you will not be anywhere near your intended destination (or home) after 45 minutes or 4000 steps (because if you were, you would not have this problem), you will have to walk even more. And it will hurt. A lot.
- Because you have been walking despite your feet complaining that perhaps you should not be walking, your feet will retaliate with the suicidal approach of—gasp—growing blisters.
- Blisters hurt. A lot.
- After your feet complain/protest/make your life miserable, your flip-flops will decide to be even more harsh on you (or maybe that's just the placebo effect).
- Since you are wearing flip-flops, you are most likely (although maybe not always) not wearing socks, and so there is nothing to cushion your feet against the hard soles.
- You will be in a lot of agony. So much that, while others complain of their legs hurting because they have walked over 4000 steps, you will not feel anything in your legs because all of the attention/pain has been hogged by your feet.
- When you (finally) get home, you will discover that the shoes your mom makes you wear (because the floor is dirty) resembles flip-flops. (This step/reason is not necessary, but may occur.)
- You will sit down in front of your computer and your feet will still hurt. A lot.
- Lastly, you will become inspired to write a list of top ten reasons why you should never, ever walk long distances while wearing flip-flops, except you only chose the number "ten" because it forms an alliteration with "top," not because you actually had ten reasons, so you basically made up the other seven.
Elaine had, a very, very long time ago, lent me two bottles of blue nail polish (which I still need to return her), so I went and bought a bottle of pink nail polish and a bottle of silvery one. There were so many I couldn't really decide which ones I wanted, and I didn't find any glitter (to make the shiny effect), but the silvery nail polish had mini-glitter inside, so I suppose that will work (or I can go ask the art department if they have any spare glitter). I plan to paint them (my erasers, that is) on Friday, when Mrs. James is not here. Not that I think she will mind, but I probably will be reading for US on Thursday, and she so happens to not be in school on Friday.
Also, here, I would like to wish all my friends who are taking AP English (and there are quite a few of them) good luck on the test tomorrow. I personally could never write an essay in pen. I would just hate it so much. But you (all of you) will do wonderful and ace the test but will do much, much better than it because I do not have a high opinion of anything that claims to judge your ability with a three hour long test.
I suppose there lies a certain level of ability to the test, however, as Bryant finished his multiple choice section of the AP chem test 45 minutes earlier. Camel (who sat behind Bryant) looked up at the clock with 45 minutes left to go, and saw Bryant sitting upright, with nothing in his hands, just staring ahead. Granted, the test was not hard (and some of the questions were downright ridiculous, but I can't spill them "ever," according to CB), but 45 minutes is a bit absurd when the entire section is 90 minutes long (okay, fine, I had 30 minutes to spare, and I spent them coloring in every one of my bubbles again, but still).
But I have no more excuses to skip class anymore. I must do my homework now (or do them during chem). English vocab/10 chapters of Huck Finn/SAT-type prompt here I come (yay...).
Thursday, May 6, 2010
So This Is What It's Like After APs
I had calc first period this morning, and when I walked in, Sonny and Dino were already there (I don't remember seeing Sonny at the library this morning, so either I somehow missed him, or he went straight to class). Since I was on my MID*, I sat down and took out my physics lab, the one that was due today that I was going to do at 2AM, but decided against it after reading three chapters of BDSMN. Interesting how physics labs always have titles with puns and such. I still remember one of our earliest labs, on kinematics and using fans attached onto plastic cars, was called "I'm a Fan of This," and my lab today, on standing waves, was called "Do The Wave."
Anyway, I had already started by drawing the x- and y-axis, and labeled them with Tea's help. That was only question one. I had around five questions in total, and question five had five parts. So I started plotting points and writing down definitions. Mrs. James (along with most of the class who were not away) came in within the next five minutes, and then we promptly started class.
Which was mostly Mrs. James trying to guess what our—oh, wait, I can't say, it's not been 48 hours yet, but it's the last question on the free response, if you know what I'm talking about (and if you don't, it's not a huge loss). Then Scott talked about the AP econ finals scandal, and how one of Mr. Wollen's class will not be getting a curve on their test because of the suspicion of cheating. Mrs. James said we could watch movies for the next week, and then we had to get down to work (the long-awaited project), but it would be nothing too hard. Half-way through the class, Mrs. Pastel came in and talked about how the two period 5 calc classes should compete against each other in outdoorsy activities the week after the seniors are gone.
By the time the bell rang, I had finished four questions, and was on my fifth, and I think that had been one of the most unproductive calc classes I have ever had (except on those days when Mrs. James was out and we played computer games instead of the problem sets she gave us).
I managed to finish my lab by period 4, my physics class, and handed it in (although I would not bet on its accuracy). Then, after a brief review of sound waves (and the promise of another lab tomorrow), Mr. Stencil went on Youtube to find a video of a wine glass breaking when the sound waves from an amplifier is in resonance with the natural waves (at least that's what I think they are) of the crystal/glass. We watched that, which was really cool, because the glass wobbled so much before it actually broke. Then we watched the video where a girl sang to break the wine glass (after many, many tries and many, many deep breaths). After that, we watched this video, which is by far the most amazing one of all of them.
During this time, I read two more chapters of Huck Finn (I needed to read ten by period 6), which was a rather huge accomplishment for me, because I had been watching all of the videos as well. I think my multi-tasking skill is improving. I'm not sure if that's a good thing.
After physics, I had my other post-AP math class, stat. We were watching a movie, 21 (the one where the MIT students count cards in casinos). It was an interesting movie, despite the few bits I managed pull out, because I read six more chapters of Huck Finn during that time as well. Their memorization skills are amazing. But I suppose they're MIT students (the leading guy was supposed to go to Harvard med school, but he didn't have enough money to afford it), so it's not that surprising.
I went to English having two chapter not finished, and the guy who sits next to me told me that I had missed a pop quiz on the reading yesterday. Angry guy and Mogley had also missed it (I never knew angry guy was in calc—I just knew he was in my stat class), so our teacher gave us the quiz, which was supposed to take only five minutes. Despite having skimmed most of the pages, read more than half of them while watching movies and videos, and not reading the last two chapters, I managed to answer with certainty all but two questions (they were multiple choice questions, which made it much easier). I guessed the last two, one of which was that (major spoilers, perhaps) Buck died. I remembered something along the lines of Buck dying back from the first time I read the story (three years ago, I think), and afterwards, I learned that it was right. Yay for super long-term memory!
So what did I learn today? In US I learned (somewhat) that our judicial system is still pretty flawed (why can't the prosecution appeal? That makes no sense at all, at least not to me), but it's been much better than before (when all the jury were white and male). And in health, we learned birth control methods. Did you know that you leave something like NuvaRing in your vagina for 21 days, take it out for 7, then put it back in for another 21?
Yeah. I've learned a lot today.
(Also, after school, as I was walking over to my bus, I saw Owen standing there, looking back at who knows what. Then he went back towards the front entrance, and I got on my bus. Later on, as I sat in the front row, I saw him and Dino getting on the bus next to mine together. So much for Owen driving.)
*Mission: Ignore Dino.
Anyway, I had already started by drawing the x- and y-axis, and labeled them with Tea's help. That was only question one. I had around five questions in total, and question five had five parts. So I started plotting points and writing down definitions. Mrs. James (along with most of the class who were not away) came in within the next five minutes, and then we promptly started class.
Which was mostly Mrs. James trying to guess what our—oh, wait, I can't say, it's not been 48 hours yet, but it's the last question on the free response, if you know what I'm talking about (and if you don't, it's not a huge loss). Then Scott talked about the AP econ finals scandal, and how one of Mr. Wollen's class will not be getting a curve on their test because of the suspicion of cheating. Mrs. James said we could watch movies for the next week, and then we had to get down to work (the long-awaited project), but it would be nothing too hard. Half-way through the class, Mrs. Pastel came in and talked about how the two period 5 calc classes should compete against each other in outdoorsy activities the week after the seniors are gone.
By the time the bell rang, I had finished four questions, and was on my fifth, and I think that had been one of the most unproductive calc classes I have ever had (except on those days when Mrs. James was out and we played computer games instead of the problem sets she gave us).
I managed to finish my lab by period 4, my physics class, and handed it in (although I would not bet on its accuracy). Then, after a brief review of sound waves (and the promise of another lab tomorrow), Mr. Stencil went on Youtube to find a video of a wine glass breaking when the sound waves from an amplifier is in resonance with the natural waves (at least that's what I think they are) of the crystal/glass. We watched that, which was really cool, because the glass wobbled so much before it actually broke. Then we watched the video where a girl sang to break the wine glass (after many, many tries and many, many deep breaths). After that, we watched this video, which is by far the most amazing one of all of them.
During this time, I read two more chapters of Huck Finn (I needed to read ten by period 6), which was a rather huge accomplishment for me, because I had been watching all of the videos as well. I think my multi-tasking skill is improving. I'm not sure if that's a good thing.
After physics, I had my other post-AP math class, stat. We were watching a movie, 21 (the one where the MIT students count cards in casinos). It was an interesting movie, despite the few bits I managed pull out, because I read six more chapters of Huck Finn during that time as well. Their memorization skills are amazing. But I suppose they're MIT students (the leading guy was supposed to go to Harvard med school, but he didn't have enough money to afford it), so it's not that surprising.
I went to English having two chapter not finished, and the guy who sits next to me told me that I had missed a pop quiz on the reading yesterday. Angry guy and Mogley had also missed it (I never knew angry guy was in calc—I just knew he was in my stat class), so our teacher gave us the quiz, which was supposed to take only five minutes. Despite having skimmed most of the pages, read more than half of them while watching movies and videos, and not reading the last two chapters, I managed to answer with certainty all but two questions (they were multiple choice questions, which made it much easier). I guessed the last two, one of which was that (major spoilers, perhaps) Buck died. I remembered something along the lines of Buck dying back from the first time I read the story (three years ago, I think), and afterwards, I learned that it was right. Yay for super long-term memory!
So what did I learn today? In US I learned (somewhat) that our judicial system is still pretty flawed (why can't the prosecution appeal? That makes no sense at all, at least not to me), but it's been much better than before (when all the jury were white and male). And in health, we learned birth control methods. Did you know that you leave something like NuvaRing in your vagina for 21 days, take it out for 7, then put it back in for another 21?
Yeah. I've learned a lot today.
(Also, after school, as I was walking over to my bus, I saw Owen standing there, looking back at who knows what. Then he went back towards the front entrance, and I got on my bus. Later on, as I sat in the front row, I saw him and Dino getting on the bus next to mine together. So much for Owen driving.)
*Mission: Ignore Dino.
Wednesday, April 7, 2010
Math Is Definitely A Sport
I am not much of a sports player (seeing as every sport I play—except maybe for KanJam, which I believe I am quite an expert at because I can aim a frisbee into the tiny slot on those KanJam cans—can be described with the words, "flailing arms everywhere and horrible hand-eye coordination"), so I do not know what a real sports team is like, at least among the players themselves. I cannot claim that solving complex geometry problems is the same as scoring a goal in lacrosse (which I still have no idea how it's played, but I'll probably ask soon).
However, math is most definitely a sport in its own right. It's competitive, we have a team, and we have matches and rivals and most of all, there are different levels of competitions.
In fact, our rivals in math are pretty similar to our rivals in, say, soccer or football.
Anyway, I promised earlier that I would blog about the state math meet, and so, after much homework-tackling and procrastination, here it is, a transcript of (nearly) everything that happened.
When I handed in my permission form on Monday, Ms. Sherbert told me that we would have a dismissal at one. I went on the website that night and checked the schedule (because I only have end-of-class times memorized by the minute hand, not the hour hand), and realized that I would still technically have to go to period 5, my calc class. But everyone was going to be taking a test that I had already taken anyway, so I figured that I wouldn't need to stay. That was what I told Argon (who has half of period 5 free, lucky him) during lunch, and he agreed to come with me upstairs to see Mrs. James and tell her that I was "skipping."
We made it halfway there when we saw Micro wandering down the hall in the opposite direction.
"We have the entire period off, right?" Micro asked as we approached him.
"Well," Argon said, "our dismissal's at one, so you still have to go to period 5."
"Oh, well, I have Spanish, so I'm skipping."
For students who supposedly represented some of the "brightest of Paperclip High," as Mr. Stone said the other day before AIME (while Tybalt stood on a swivel chair trying to dismount a projector, and Mr. Stone commented on what a shame it would be if Tybalt fell off and hit his head), we sure love going to class.
Micro followed my entourage (which expanded from one person to two) upstairs as we debated the world language department. Once we got to the calc classroom, I slipped in and explained the situation to Mrs. James.
"Where is Dino?" Mrs. James asked. "You guys have half an hour. He could have squeezed in part of the test today. Oh, he's such a slacker."
Later on, as we wandered the halls some more, Argon said, "I feel kind of bad for feeling sorry for everyone who's stuck in class while we're out here."
We had just walked past the ASR room, and I suggested that we go back and say hi to Tea and Mario, but this notion was dismissed as soon as we saw Mr. Fisher.
"Hey, Mr. Fisher," said Argon, who had had him for bio last year. Mr. Fisher nodded hi to Argon and I, and then spotted Micro.
"Where were you yesterday? Were you skipping?"
"No," Micro said. "I was sick yesterday."
"Sure you were. You were skipping yesterday, and you're skipping now."
We then made our way to the library, where I spotted Irving, Tybalt, Bryant and Dino sitting at a table together. Looks like everyone (except Mario, who, according to Tea, was in ASR, and Argon, who actually had a free) decided to skip.
After half an hour of basically doing nothing (I printed out all of my US documents, but that was about it), we re-congregated at the front door, where another school was already there waiting. I could not figure out what school it was, although it may have been the high school from the town next to ours. The bus still had not arrived yet, so we loitered in the lobby.
"Dino," I said, turning to him. "Mrs. James said that you're a slacker for not taking the test today."
"Oh, yeah," Tybalt agreed. I'm not sure how he knows this information, as he was in the library for the entire time, but perhaps he has superpowers I am not aware of.
"Come on," Dino said. "Cut me some slack. I'm not going to take half the test today and then take the rest on Thursday. I have a research paper due."
"So do I," I said. "And I took mine already."
"Yeah, well, English is your first language." Right. That made a lot of sense.
"No, it's not," I said.
"Yes, it is. It's not mine."
"What do you speak then?" Bryant asked. "Robot?"
The bus came at this time, so all discussions about Dino's robot status ended. Micro headed the line to go on the bus, which was already filled with people from other schools (I spotted Treeburg's red sweatshirt), and sat down in a random row. Argon sat next to him, and I sat across from Argon. Since there wasn't enough space left for the rest of them to sit together, Mario led the rest of them towards the middle of the bus.
The bus ride itself was rather uneventful, either because I didn't sit anywhere near Mario (and his gossip central), because I sat in front of Treeburg, who were all playing Pokémon loudly for some reason, or because I had lots of work for US that I had to do and I didn't want to be too overburdened. Probably a combination of all three. I did manage to get Argon to promise that he will trim down his backpack by the end of spring break ("You'll be really surprised at the results," or so I've been told), and highlight several documents (except the one that had "centrifugal" forces, which I rejected to the bottom of the pile because centrifugal forces do not exist and is obviously false).
Ladies and gentlemen, we will be right back afterI sleep for the night, finish my EOQR, my essays (note the plural) and review for my finals the commercials! Stay tuned to find out what happens next!
(A.k.a.: I am tired now and will go sleep, but I've already written half of this, so I might as well post it now and then be lazy and write the rest later.)
However, math is most definitely a sport in its own right. It's competitive, we have a team, and we have matches and rivals and most of all, there are different levels of competitions.
In fact, our rivals in math are pretty similar to our rivals in, say, soccer or football.
Anyway, I promised earlier that I would blog about the state math meet, and so, after much homework-tackling and procrastination, here it is, a transcript of (nearly) everything that happened.
When I handed in my permission form on Monday, Ms. Sherbert told me that we would have a dismissal at one. I went on the website that night and checked the schedule (because I only have end-of-class times memorized by the minute hand, not the hour hand), and realized that I would still technically have to go to period 5, my calc class. But everyone was going to be taking a test that I had already taken anyway, so I figured that I wouldn't need to stay. That was what I told Argon (who has half of period 5 free, lucky him) during lunch, and he agreed to come with me upstairs to see Mrs. James and tell her that I was "skipping."
We made it halfway there when we saw Micro wandering down the hall in the opposite direction.
"We have the entire period off, right?" Micro asked as we approached him.
"Well," Argon said, "our dismissal's at one, so you still have to go to period 5."
"Oh, well, I have Spanish, so I'm skipping."
For students who supposedly represented some of the "brightest of Paperclip High," as Mr. Stone said the other day before AIME (while Tybalt stood on a swivel chair trying to dismount a projector, and Mr. Stone commented on what a shame it would be if Tybalt fell off and hit his head), we sure love going to class.
Micro followed my entourage (which expanded from one person to two) upstairs as we debated the world language department. Once we got to the calc classroom, I slipped in and explained the situation to Mrs. James.
"Where is Dino?" Mrs. James asked. "You guys have half an hour. He could have squeezed in part of the test today. Oh, he's such a slacker."
Later on, as we wandered the halls some more, Argon said, "I feel kind of bad for feeling sorry for everyone who's stuck in class while we're out here."
We had just walked past the ASR room, and I suggested that we go back and say hi to Tea and Mario, but this notion was dismissed as soon as we saw Mr. Fisher.
"Hey, Mr. Fisher," said Argon, who had had him for bio last year. Mr. Fisher nodded hi to Argon and I, and then spotted Micro.
"Where were you yesterday? Were you skipping?"
"No," Micro said. "I was sick yesterday."
"Sure you were. You were skipping yesterday, and you're skipping now."
We then made our way to the library, where I spotted Irving, Tybalt, Bryant and Dino sitting at a table together. Looks like everyone (except Mario, who, according to Tea, was in ASR, and Argon, who actually had a free) decided to skip.
After half an hour of basically doing nothing (I printed out all of my US documents, but that was about it), we re-congregated at the front door, where another school was already there waiting. I could not figure out what school it was, although it may have been the high school from the town next to ours. The bus still had not arrived yet, so we loitered in the lobby.
"Dino," I said, turning to him. "Mrs. James said that you're a slacker for not taking the test today."
"Oh, yeah," Tybalt agreed. I'm not sure how he knows this information, as he was in the library for the entire time, but perhaps he has superpowers I am not aware of.
"Come on," Dino said. "Cut me some slack. I'm not going to take half the test today and then take the rest on Thursday. I have a research paper due."
"So do I," I said. "And I took mine already."
"Yeah, well, English is your first language." Right. That made a lot of sense.
"No, it's not," I said.
"Yes, it is. It's not mine."
"What do you speak then?" Bryant asked. "Robot?"
The bus came at this time, so all discussions about Dino's robot status ended. Micro headed the line to go on the bus, which was already filled with people from other schools (I spotted Treeburg's red sweatshirt), and sat down in a random row. Argon sat next to him, and I sat across from Argon. Since there wasn't enough space left for the rest of them to sit together, Mario led the rest of them towards the middle of the bus.
The bus ride itself was rather uneventful, either because I didn't sit anywhere near Mario (and his gossip central), because I sat in front of Treeburg, who were all playing Pokémon loudly for some reason, or because I had lots of work for US that I had to do and I didn't want to be too overburdened. Probably a combination of all three. I did manage to get Argon to promise that he will trim down his backpack by the end of spring break ("You'll be really surprised at the results," or so I've been told), and highlight several documents (except the one that had "centrifugal" forces, which I rejected to the bottom of the pile because centrifugal forces do not exist and is obviously false).
Ladies and gentlemen, we will be right back after
(A.k.a.: I am tired now and will go sleep, but I've already written half of this, so I might as well post it now and then be lazy and write the rest later.)
Friday, April 2, 2010
Because We Believe In Equality
This was started yesterday. Anything that mentions "this morning" or "today" means April 1st.
First of all, this post is entirely dedicated to evening out the huge discrepancy in the assignment of labels (or "libellés," as my Blogger page now displays, because I just recently converted it into French as part of an ongoing project to have everything I use be explained in French). Therefore, this page is dedicated to talking about those people who I have mentioned more than once or twice (since those that I only mention once or so I probably won't really talk about anyway, although I might) but have definitely mentioned less than ten times (effectively weeding out those two whom I shall not mention).
So, after scanning my alphabetized label list, these are the people I will blog about today (if this is necessary again, there will be a repeat of this post to some extent) in alphabetical order:
That's it, really. Any more, and Blogger won't let me label them due to the "maximum 20 labels at a time" rule. Anyway. The tidbits about these people that happened since the last time I talked about them, or whenever, really.
Camel: I think he has a jacket complex as well (first thing that popped into my mind, since nothing really interesting happened in chem today—except Mr. Coffee's friend jumping from the roof into a pool thirty feet below or crawling into a crypt and scaring people for fun). In fact, now that I think of it, a lot of the guys I know seem to have a favorite jacket that they will wear allday week long. Camel has this dark blue jacket, which is not particularly ugly (although I may not be the best judge for fashion), but after seeing it for several months in a row (maybe with the occasional AC/DC shirt in between), I may have permanently associated him with his jacket.
(He is also on my bus, and I have seen him wearing that jacket ever since before I even really knew him, so this may be another reason why.)
(Dino, whom I shall not tag because there is no space anymore, and Jack, not tagged for similar reasons, both also have a jacket they almost always wears. Argon has his sleeping-bag-like thing he carries around with him, although with the warmer weather he has now acquired a new, navy colored jacket which is a tad bit too big for him, but he'll probably grow into it. This morning, at gym, we were standing together and he commented on how he might finally be taller than me, as he always had a notion that he was shorter. We later decided it may have been because of the shoes—his heels were significantly taller, as I had been wearing really, really flat shoes.)
(And I thought this was supposed to be about Camel? Anyway. Next.)
Dora: This is also rather unrelated to Dora, but she was sitting at the table and so this story will be filed under her name. This morning, before class started, Dora and Tierra were already seated at a table in the library. I joined them, and Gretchen (who is below, I know, but there will be another story for her) and Kathrya and Tybalt (wow, this story has a lot of people in it) came as well. Kathrya commented on how her friends were more mature, because "they didn't start singing wedding songs."
Later on, Dino walked in to the library (why does everything have to always include him?), and someone said, "He walks strangely." This was met with a chorus of agreements, and Kathrya's remark, "Now where is Ginny?" before realizing that I was standing right next to her.
(I need to stop making Dino appear in this. The whole point of this was so he wouldn't be mentioned as often compared to the others.)
(I also saw Dora in English today, but we watched a movie—"Death of a Salesman"—so we didn't get to talk to each other.)
Gretchen: I don't know why Gretchen's never broken ten labels. This will probably change with the Chile trips (I'm still working on Easter Island—I really am!), but in the meantime, I will insert a link here to her blog. I'm not certain that my blog sees more traffic than hers, but in the minute event it does, we can pool them just like pooling standard deviations in a difference of means test. Except in this case, Gretch's sample size may be larger than mine, so pooled variances may not be the best bet.
Irving: I must say, I haven't seen Irving around today. Strange. Usually, I see him sauntering down the hallway (well, he doesn't really do that, but he does walk differently in a way), going to a class that's in the opposite direction of mine. Perhaps our constant existence on the third floor is a reason why I see him so much. So instead of a personal recount, I will broadcast the (probably by now commonly known) news that he got into Harvard. Wow. Well, I mean, he deserves it and everything, but that's still very, very amazing.
(Yeah. That's about it. No wonder he isn't tagged so much.)
Joss: Let's see. Joss believes that the secret to teleporting is to throw a smoke bomb and then run really, really fast. He also still needs to pay Reese (or do something else, but I'm not sure what) so Reese can teach me grammar, so I can teach him how to draw clothes. Although, if you ask me, I doubt my pictures of clothes are correct all of the time. I just add folds randomly (or in obvious places). I also don't know how well this whole exchange thing will go. Too many unknown variables, I suppose.
Mario: I don't see Mario that much lately, or maybe I still do but I no longer respond to his appearance. Well, anyway, I saw him during lunch today, along with Tea and Bryant and Boris. He seemed rather preoccupied with his SAT vocab book. Which reminds me, I should probably also study my vocab, if I wish to avoid the same fate as Bryant's. Or just cram Latin roots. Those always help.
Melissa: I didn't see Melissa today—away at a college thing or something, I believe. I still need to get a cupcake recipe from her as well. This may also be the shortest one yet, because I have not talked to Melissa in such a long time. She doesn't really go to math team anymore. Maybe that's why.
Mogley: He is weird. One of the weird guys I know (and by far not the weirdest) but definitely weird. He was attempting yet another 6x6 sudoku in English today. I asked him if he ever tried the 9x9 one (because honestly, 6x6 isn't really sudoku; it's like diluted HCl—isn't quite the same as the original), and he said that he had tried one today, but messed up. Compared to Mogley, Matt is a sudoku whiz. (The extraordinary amount of time Matt devotes to sudoku every day may be the reason though. If this keeps up, I'll begin to fail stat.)
(Also, as compensation for his horrible sudoku skills, Mogley said that he was getting better at the Jumble questions. I guess you can't have everything.)
Mrs. James: I walked into calc today just as Mrs. James said, "I really want a Snapple!" I have no idea how this whole Snapple thing started (which also reminds me of the xkcd strip on the tin apple—I'm reading too much xkcd, it's definitely not good for me).
Jay then said, "I have a Snapple in my bag."
"Really?" Mrs. James asked, all excited.
"Nope, April Fools!"
(This went on for several minutes, in which many people in the class took turns saying they had a Snapple in their bag—Scott said he had over 100 of them at home—and then saying, "April Fools!" Mrs. James retaliated by telling Jay, "Oh, I'm going to give you an A+ for the quarter—wait, April Fools!")
Mrs. MacDonald: Is conducting an experiment on the number of texts people send and receive in an average class period. It's due to begin next week, and will last an entire week. Statistically speaking (although I knew before I ever took stat), if texting in class is so prevalent, I (and Matt) will definitely be outliers. My phone doesn't allow text messages. Matt's too preoccupied by his crosswords and sudokus and Jumbles and word finds to care about texting (he also has an iPhone, which may deter texting as he can't physically touch the keys on his phone to know which letters he's typing if he placed the phone in his pocket or something).
Nyx: Said that her phone's autotexting dictionary does not have the word "zombie." This prompted Camel to say, "What if there was a zombie invasion, and only you knew about it? You have to text people, but then you'd have to type 'zombie' out, and by that time the zombie might have already attacked you!" Also, her phone doesn't have "haha" as a word either. (Tybalt should be glad he doesn't have this phone. He would be seriously crippled in his texting abilities.)
(This also reminds me, Scott is now called "Texty-Pants" in our calc class, because he tried to text under the table, and, when caught by Mrs. James, attempted to deny it.)
Owen: Will be receiving his alpaca soon. Alpacas, according to my research yesterday, likes being in groups of two or more, and around six to eight alpacas can live on one acre of land. I hope Owen's backyard is large enough, because he needs to keep at least two alpacas to ensure that his alpaca doesn't die of loneliness, and so he needs at least 1/4 of an acre of land set aside for this special, special friend (and its girlfriend, but the girlfriend would be much more expensive).
Reese: I have yet to see his shiny new laptop. Among other things, but this is the first that pops up. (Camel supposedly made Reese's old laptop crash via remote accessing, so that's why Reese needed a new one.) I've been promised that this new one is every bit as shiny as the last, except perhaps not red anymore and not the one that underwent SSSC's brutal conditions.
Stella: Is probably on another bout of "I-hate-school-ism." I haven't asked yet, but the past few times I've talked with her, she has complained about the, to quote her words, "the stupid people." She is really the opposite of many people I know. I mean, most people, regardless of what they say, at least care a little about their grades and their futures. Stella just doesn't care anymore.
We talked about our futures for some brief moment before, mostly with me asking her what she would do after high school. She didn't want to talk about it, and I agree with that sentiment. I don't know what I want to with my life after high school. I mean, I obviously want to go to a good college, but why? And which one? Whatever college I go to—that's my future path there. If I go to McGill (which is probably very likely at this point), that means I'll most likely be focusing on pre-med. If I go to UBC or, although very unlikely, Penn, I would be going down the path of economics. If I go to Waterloo (yeah right, I'll be crushed by all the crazy Canadian math geeks, since that's the school for math and science oriented people in Canada) or Cornell (again, unlikely, especially with their financial aid situation), it's probably engineering. And then there are the schools we consider mostly for their prestige—Harvard, Yale, and the rest of the Ivies along with a few other schools. Are they really that much better? We (not including me, because the probability of me getting in those places is very, very, extremely, very slim—statistically speaking), as some of the brightest among our peers, do everything we can in order to get into one of these schools, conforming to their ideals of what is a "perfect" student, just so we can bear the honor of having gone to such a school and gain the privilege of acquiring a good-paying job and the respect of others.
(God, maybe I should just go get a job to paint the Golden Gate Bridge like I've always said I should.)
(Well, there are also the good points, like learning new things with teachers who really know what they're talking about—granted I understand them.)
Tamir: I don't know why I have mentioned him so often. Really. We barely talk. Let's see. I saw Tamir in physics today, and he complained about the magnetism unit. Or maybe that was Alec. Then I saw him in English, but he didn't talk because we were watching a movie.
Yeah, boring. Next.
Tea: I also can't believe I have not talked about Tea very often in my blog. I think it's mostly because everything I know about Tea, she pretty much blog about it anyway. Well, I will insert a link here to promote her blog instead, although I'll bet she doesn't need any promotion from me because her faithful followers are much more numerous than mine. Just in case I have a lurker though.
(Also, as a note to Tea: your "about" page doesn't link to an actual about page. Mine doesn't either—all I've managed to set up was the "contact" part. I think I half started an "about me" page and then forgot about it.)
Tybalt: Just a general question out there (to those who know about it)—does Tybalt know of my, uh, hopefully-will-be-affiliation with Dino? (Once again, Dino is EVERYWHERE. I think I'm getting obsessed.) Otherwise, I have not seen him since this morning with Kathrya, and since Kathrya's story has already been told in Dora's place, I won't repeat it again.
(In his place, I will talk about Bryant, who was barely eliminated because he has exactly ten labels. Today, as I handed in my chem test corrections, I saw Bryant's "test corrections," namely his name, the title, and nothing else on it. Later on, he said that receiving a 3/3 on those test corrections actually brought his grade down. Ugh. He kind of makes me jealous sometimes.)
Vincent: I think I've pretty much covered everything about him before. I don't remember if I've seen him today. Maybe I have.
UPDATE: (from Facebook, my constant source of information) Apparently Vincent's family is moving out of state? He's currently asking if he can board at someone's house for nine months. I seriously doubt this will happen (although you never know), but I do hope he can stay. Who else will I be able to discuss plans for travelling to alternate universes via thousands of giant lasers with?
(There is always Dino—ugh, him again!—but I think he would probably even prefer owning his own alpaca over talking about lasers.)
Zephy: We went Easter egg-hunting today! Zephy's a natural at these things, as she found four or five eggs in the library alone, in under ten minutes. I have no idea why there were eggs everywhere (someone in my calc class said she knew who put them there, but wouldn't tell us). Also, this reminds me, I still need to give her back her chocolate egg, because I was carrying it in my plastic egg container since she had too much candy to fit inside hers. I was supposed to give it back, but I completely forgot about it until after we said goodbye when we got off the bus. Huh. I suppose chocolate won't go stale anytime soon.
(Hmm...)
Actually, considering how long this thing is, I probably will not ever do this again. At least not with so many people. I'll just talk about Dino and Argon less. Maybe.
First of all, this post is entirely dedicated to evening out the huge discrepancy in the assignment of labels (or "libellés," as my Blogger page now displays, because I just recently converted it into French as part of an ongoing project to have everything I use be explained in French). Therefore, this page is dedicated to talking about those people who I have mentioned more than once or twice (since those that I only mention once or so I probably won't really talk about anyway, although I might) but have definitely mentioned less than ten times (effectively weeding out those two whom I shall not mention).
So, after scanning my alphabetized label list, these are the people I will blog about today (if this is necessary again, there will be a repeat of this post to some extent) in alphabetical order:
- Camel
- Dora
- Gretchen
- Irving
- Joss
- Mario
- Melissa
- Mogley
- Mrs. James
- Mrs. MacDonald
- Nyx
- Owen
- Reese
- Stella
- Tamir
- Tea
- Tybalt
- Vincent
- Zephy
That's it, really. Any more, and Blogger won't let me label them due to the "maximum 20 labels at a time" rule. Anyway. The tidbits about these people that happened since the last time I talked about them, or whenever, really.
Camel: I think he has a jacket complex as well (first thing that popped into my mind, since nothing really interesting happened in chem today—except Mr. Coffee's friend jumping from the roof into a pool thirty feet below or crawling into a crypt and scaring people for fun). In fact, now that I think of it, a lot of the guys I know seem to have a favorite jacket that they will wear all
(He is also on my bus, and I have seen him wearing that jacket ever since before I even really knew him, so this may be another reason why.)
(Dino, whom I shall not tag because there is no space anymore, and Jack, not tagged for similar reasons, both also have a jacket they almost always wears. Argon has his sleeping-bag-like thing he carries around with him, although with the warmer weather he has now acquired a new, navy colored jacket which is a tad bit too big for him, but he'll probably grow into it. This morning, at gym, we were standing together and he commented on how he might finally be taller than me, as he always had a notion that he was shorter. We later decided it may have been because of the shoes—his heels were significantly taller, as I had been wearing really, really flat shoes.)
(And I thought this was supposed to be about Camel? Anyway. Next.)
Dora: This is also rather unrelated to Dora, but she was sitting at the table and so this story will be filed under her name. This morning, before class started, Dora and Tierra were already seated at a table in the library. I joined them, and Gretchen (who is below, I know, but there will be another story for her) and Kathrya and Tybalt (wow, this story has a lot of people in it) came as well. Kathrya commented on how her friends were more mature, because "they didn't start singing wedding songs."
Later on, Dino walked in to the library (why does everything have to always include him?), and someone said, "He walks strangely." This was met with a chorus of agreements, and Kathrya's remark, "Now where is Ginny?" before realizing that I was standing right next to her.
(I need to stop making Dino appear in this. The whole point of this was so he wouldn't be mentioned as often compared to the others.)
(I also saw Dora in English today, but we watched a movie—"Death of a Salesman"—so we didn't get to talk to each other.)
Gretchen: I don't know why Gretchen's never broken ten labels. This will probably change with the Chile trips (I'm still working on Easter Island—I really am!), but in the meantime, I will insert a link here to her blog. I'm not certain that my blog sees more traffic than hers, but in the minute event it does, we can pool them just like pooling standard deviations in a difference of means test. Except in this case, Gretch's sample size may be larger than mine, so pooled variances may not be the best bet.
Irving: I must say, I haven't seen Irving around today. Strange. Usually, I see him sauntering down the hallway (well, he doesn't really do that, but he does walk differently in a way), going to a class that's in the opposite direction of mine. Perhaps our constant existence on the third floor is a reason why I see him so much. So instead of a personal recount, I will broadcast the (probably by now commonly known) news that he got into Harvard. Wow. Well, I mean, he deserves it and everything, but that's still very, very amazing.
(Yeah. That's about it. No wonder he isn't tagged so much.)
Joss: Let's see. Joss believes that the secret to teleporting is to throw a smoke bomb and then run really, really fast. He also still needs to pay Reese (or do something else, but I'm not sure what) so Reese can teach me grammar, so I can teach him how to draw clothes. Although, if you ask me, I doubt my pictures of clothes are correct all of the time. I just add folds randomly (or in obvious places). I also don't know how well this whole exchange thing will go. Too many unknown variables, I suppose.
Mario: I don't see Mario that much lately, or maybe I still do but I no longer respond to his appearance. Well, anyway, I saw him during lunch today, along with Tea and Bryant and Boris. He seemed rather preoccupied with his SAT vocab book. Which reminds me, I should probably also study my vocab, if I wish to avoid the same fate as Bryant's. Or just cram Latin roots. Those always help.
Melissa: I didn't see Melissa today—away at a college thing or something, I believe. I still need to get a cupcake recipe from her as well. This may also be the shortest one yet, because I have not talked to Melissa in such a long time. She doesn't really go to math team anymore. Maybe that's why.
Mogley: He is weird. One of the weird guys I know (and by far not the weirdest) but definitely weird. He was attempting yet another 6x6 sudoku in English today. I asked him if he ever tried the 9x9 one (because honestly, 6x6 isn't really sudoku; it's like diluted HCl—isn't quite the same as the original), and he said that he had tried one today, but messed up. Compared to Mogley, Matt is a sudoku whiz. (The extraordinary amount of time Matt devotes to sudoku every day may be the reason though. If this keeps up, I'll begin to fail stat.)
(Also, as compensation for his horrible sudoku skills, Mogley said that he was getting better at the Jumble questions. I guess you can't have everything.)
Mrs. James: I walked into calc today just as Mrs. James said, "I really want a Snapple!" I have no idea how this whole Snapple thing started (which also reminds me of the xkcd strip on the tin apple—I'm reading too much xkcd, it's definitely not good for me).
Jay then said, "I have a Snapple in my bag."
"Really?" Mrs. James asked, all excited.
"Nope, April Fools!"
(This went on for several minutes, in which many people in the class took turns saying they had a Snapple in their bag—Scott said he had over 100 of them at home—and then saying, "April Fools!" Mrs. James retaliated by telling Jay, "Oh, I'm going to give you an A+ for the quarter—wait, April Fools!")
Mrs. MacDonald: Is conducting an experiment on the number of texts people send and receive in an average class period. It's due to begin next week, and will last an entire week. Statistically speaking (although I knew before I ever took stat), if texting in class is so prevalent, I (and Matt) will definitely be outliers. My phone doesn't allow text messages. Matt's too preoccupied by his crosswords and sudokus and Jumbles and word finds to care about texting (he also has an iPhone, which may deter texting as he can't physically touch the keys on his phone to know which letters he's typing if he placed the phone in his pocket or something).
Nyx: Said that her phone's autotexting dictionary does not have the word "zombie." This prompted Camel to say, "What if there was a zombie invasion, and only you knew about it? You have to text people, but then you'd have to type 'zombie' out, and by that time the zombie might have already attacked you!" Also, her phone doesn't have "haha" as a word either. (Tybalt should be glad he doesn't have this phone. He would be seriously crippled in his texting abilities.)
(This also reminds me, Scott is now called "Texty-Pants" in our calc class, because he tried to text under the table, and, when caught by Mrs. James, attempted to deny it.)
Owen: Will be receiving his alpaca soon. Alpacas, according to my research yesterday, likes being in groups of two or more, and around six to eight alpacas can live on one acre of land. I hope Owen's backyard is large enough, because he needs to keep at least two alpacas to ensure that his alpaca doesn't die of loneliness, and so he needs at least 1/4 of an acre of land set aside for this special, special friend (and its girlfriend, but the girlfriend would be much more expensive).
Reese: I have yet to see his shiny new laptop. Among other things, but this is the first that pops up. (Camel supposedly made Reese's old laptop crash via remote accessing, so that's why Reese needed a new one.) I've been promised that this new one is every bit as shiny as the last, except perhaps not red anymore and not the one that underwent SSSC's brutal conditions.
Stella: Is probably on another bout of "I-hate-school-ism." I haven't asked yet, but the past few times I've talked with her, she has complained about the, to quote her words, "the stupid people." She is really the opposite of many people I know. I mean, most people, regardless of what they say, at least care a little about their grades and their futures. Stella just doesn't care anymore.
We talked about our futures for some brief moment before, mostly with me asking her what she would do after high school. She didn't want to talk about it, and I agree with that sentiment. I don't know what I want to with my life after high school. I mean, I obviously want to go to a good college, but why? And which one? Whatever college I go to—that's my future path there. If I go to McGill (which is probably very likely at this point), that means I'll most likely be focusing on pre-med. If I go to UBC or, although very unlikely, Penn, I would be going down the path of economics. If I go to Waterloo (yeah right, I'll be crushed by all the crazy Canadian math geeks, since that's the school for math and science oriented people in Canada) or Cornell (again, unlikely, especially with their financial aid situation), it's probably engineering. And then there are the schools we consider mostly for their prestige—Harvard, Yale, and the rest of the Ivies along with a few other schools. Are they really that much better? We (not including me, because the probability of me getting in those places is very, very, extremely, very slim—statistically speaking), as some of the brightest among our peers, do everything we can in order to get into one of these schools, conforming to their ideals of what is a "perfect" student, just so we can bear the honor of having gone to such a school and gain the privilege of acquiring a good-paying job and the respect of others.
(God, maybe I should just go get a job to paint the Golden Gate Bridge like I've always said I should.)
(Well, there are also the good points, like learning new things with teachers who really know what they're talking about—granted I understand them.)
Tamir: I don't know why I have mentioned him so often. Really. We barely talk. Let's see. I saw Tamir in physics today, and he complained about the magnetism unit. Or maybe that was Alec. Then I saw him in English, but he didn't talk because we were watching a movie.
Yeah, boring. Next.
Tea: I also can't believe I have not talked about Tea very often in my blog. I think it's mostly because everything I know about Tea, she pretty much blog about it anyway. Well, I will insert a link here to promote her blog instead, although I'll bet she doesn't need any promotion from me because her faithful followers are much more numerous than mine. Just in case I have a lurker though.
(Also, as a note to Tea: your "about" page doesn't link to an actual about page. Mine doesn't either—all I've managed to set up was the "contact" part. I think I half started an "about me" page and then forgot about it.)
Tybalt: Just a general question out there (to those who know about it)—does Tybalt know of my, uh, hopefully-will-be-affiliation with Dino? (Once again, Dino is EVERYWHERE. I think I'm getting obsessed.) Otherwise, I have not seen him since this morning with Kathrya, and since Kathrya's story has already been told in Dora's place, I won't repeat it again.
(In his place, I will talk about Bryant, who was barely eliminated because he has exactly ten labels. Today, as I handed in my chem test corrections, I saw Bryant's "test corrections," namely his name, the title, and nothing else on it. Later on, he said that receiving a 3/3 on those test corrections actually brought his grade down. Ugh. He kind of makes me jealous sometimes.)
Vincent: I think I've pretty much covered everything about him before. I don't remember if I've seen him today. Maybe I have.
UPDATE: (from Facebook, my constant source of information) Apparently Vincent's family is moving out of state? He's currently asking if he can board at someone's house for nine months. I seriously doubt this will happen (although you never know), but I do hope he can stay. Who else will I be able to discuss plans for travelling to alternate universes via thousands of giant lasers with?
(There is always Dino—ugh, him again!—but I think he would probably even prefer owning his own alpaca over talking about lasers.)
Zephy: We went Easter egg-hunting today! Zephy's a natural at these things, as she found four or five eggs in the library alone, in under ten minutes. I have no idea why there were eggs everywhere (someone in my calc class said she knew who put them there, but wouldn't tell us). Also, this reminds me, I still need to give her back her chocolate egg, because I was carrying it in my plastic egg container since she had too much candy to fit inside hers. I was supposed to give it back, but I completely forgot about it until after we said goodbye when we got off the bus. Huh. I suppose chocolate won't go stale anytime soon.
(Hmm...)
Actually, considering how long this thing is, I probably will not ever do this again. At least not with so many people. I'll just talk about Dino and Argon less. Maybe.
Tuesday, March 30, 2010
It Takes Two To Love
Today, for English, we had to bring in an image of what we thought represented success. I (partly inspired by Tea), chose a scene from xkcd, and said that it represented how success meant something different for everyone, regardless of what the "norm" dictated.
Of course, I said it in a way more choppier way, probably because when I usually write things, I jump from one thing to another, so I do not have a clear, cohesive string of consciousness. I wonder what it would be like if I could put my thoughts into a pensieve? I don't know if anyone would be able to successfully navigate my memories.
Anyway, onto more choppy thoughts, I had gym during the lunch period today. Since everyone gets out early for gym (except those stuck in health or swimming or Argon, who changes really fast when he's going to gym but really slow when he's coming out), Nyx and Dora and Tierra were still in the cafeteria by the time I got there.
The three of them giggled when I arrived. When prodded why, Dora said, "Oh, we were just talking about you."
"About what?"
"Prom," Nyx said. "And who you're going to go with."
"It'll be really sweet if you go with Vincent."
I was about to say something along the lines of, no, I'm not so sure about that idea, when Vincent came by and said hi.
"Oooh," Tierra—or someone else, I couldn't quite tell—said. "Vincent, ask Ginny to go with you to prom!"
That was rather, uh, straightforward and to the point. Vincent looked really confused. I didn't blame him.
"Come on, ask her!"
After much persuasion, Vincent finally conceded. "Okay. Will you go to prom with me?"
There was a small cheer at the table, punctuated with Vincent's remark, "So, what is this prom thing?"
That could be quite an issue. The topic slowly dissolved as Vincent had to go and the discussion diverged towards who Dora should go with—with a random remark of "Ginny shouldn't go with Dino" inserted somewhere and Tierra's question of "I don't know this Dino guy. I just know that everyone doesn't like him (this statement is obviously not true)." After the three of them left, Tea came, and we went on discussing this prom "problem" while lamenting (this is one of my favorite words of the week, it seems) that no one will actually ask us out. (Vincent doesn't count. He was confuzzled into agreeing, and I still don't know if he comprehends the extent of what prom means, although I do know that he would hate it.)
So here, as a cheer-us-upper (since the laws of the Internet and Nephria decree that anything is possible), I will confidently proclaim that there will be tons of guys who will ask both of us (and everyone else who belongs to our possibly date-less group) to prom, and they will have to wait in line and hand us résumés and have us closely inspect their possible behavior before we decide who we want to go with. Or, to make life easier, the guys that we want to ask us will do so, and we'll skip the whole "application" part of the process and choose directly.
Anything's possible.
(Except "forcing Dino into the corner on the third floor where there are no tables and making him ask me to prom with various suspicious methods" is not an option, ever. Even in Nephria.)
However, since I accidentally spilled my bag at the end of lunch, I was late to calc. Mrs. James was about to ask me a question (that I most likely would not have known the answer to because I haven't reviewed any of the material yet in lieu of math packets and general procrastination), but Jay saved me by blurting out the answer per usual. As I approached my seat, Dino said, "I don't trust Ginny," and waved to me. Calc itself went by pretty fast, with relatively few "butt-jokes" compared to yesterday. This unit is going pretty well so far, I must say. I'm surprised. (Of course, all of these formulas could pose a huge problem, as I can't remember formulas. It's sad.)
After class, I asked Dino if he was going to take AIME tomorrow. He said no, and Sonny mistook it for ARML.
"Wait," he said. "So you were the only one representing our school and you didn't make it?"
"No," Dino said. "It's something else. And no, I'm not taking it. Don't worry about it."
The last remark comes from me asking if he had gotten his test rescored. I have no idea why he thinks I'm "worrying" about it, but it has been previously proven that he is strange, and therefore I am allowed to be puzzled.
By this time, we had reached my stat classroom, so we said goodbye and he strutted on in his strange hands-holding-the-backpack-straps pose towards what I predicted (correctly) was gym. After stat (because stat was kind of boring and we just got our tests back and fiddled with the calculator), I stood outside the math team classroom as I always do, because it's across the hall from my stat classroom and I usually just wait for the people in the classroom to leave and then go in.
This time, Dino was already there by the time everyone inside had left. He went in first, and took a seat and sat down and did nothing. Really. Nothing at all. After I put my bag down, went outside, waved to Gretchie, and turned back, I saw him barely out the door, looking at us (or Irving down the hall, but I'd like to say that it was us) before scooting back into the classroom.
But that's enough musing for the day. I have to do all the other stuff I have to do (like practice mock questions for AIME and generally doing homework, perhaps), so go over to Gretchie's post for our next several days in Chile! (I am still working on shipping a llama back home. It will happen. One day.)
Of course, I said it in a way more choppier way, probably because when I usually write things, I jump from one thing to another, so I do not have a clear, cohesive string of consciousness. I wonder what it would be like if I could put my thoughts into a pensieve? I don't know if anyone would be able to successfully navigate my memories.
Anyway, onto more choppy thoughts, I had gym during the lunch period today. Since everyone gets out early for gym (except those stuck in health or swimming or Argon, who changes really fast when he's going to gym but really slow when he's coming out), Nyx and Dora and Tierra were still in the cafeteria by the time I got there.
The three of them giggled when I arrived. When prodded why, Dora said, "Oh, we were just talking about you."
"About what?"
"Prom," Nyx said. "And who you're going to go with."
"It'll be really sweet if you go with Vincent."
I was about to say something along the lines of, no, I'm not so sure about that idea, when Vincent came by and said hi.
"Oooh," Tierra—or someone else, I couldn't quite tell—said. "Vincent, ask Ginny to go with you to prom!"
That was rather, uh, straightforward and to the point. Vincent looked really confused. I didn't blame him.
"Come on, ask her!"
After much persuasion, Vincent finally conceded. "Okay. Will you go to prom with me?"
There was a small cheer at the table, punctuated with Vincent's remark, "So, what is this prom thing?"
That could be quite an issue. The topic slowly dissolved as Vincent had to go and the discussion diverged towards who Dora should go with—with a random remark of "Ginny shouldn't go with Dino" inserted somewhere and Tierra's question of "I don't know this Dino guy. I just know that everyone doesn't like him (this statement is obviously not true)." After the three of them left, Tea came, and we went on discussing this prom "problem" while lamenting (this is one of my favorite words of the week, it seems) that no one will actually ask us out. (Vincent doesn't count. He was confuzzled into agreeing, and I still don't know if he comprehends the extent of what prom means, although I do know that he would hate it.)
So here, as a cheer-us-upper (since the laws of the Internet and Nephria decree that anything is possible), I will confidently proclaim that there will be tons of guys who will ask both of us (and everyone else who belongs to our possibly date-less group) to prom, and they will have to wait in line and hand us résumés and have us closely inspect their possible behavior before we decide who we want to go with. Or, to make life easier, the guys that we want to ask us will do so, and we'll skip the whole "application" part of the process and choose directly.
Anything's possible.
(Except "forcing Dino into the corner on the third floor where there are no tables and making him ask me to prom with various suspicious methods" is not an option, ever. Even in Nephria.)
However, since I accidentally spilled my bag at the end of lunch, I was late to calc. Mrs. James was about to ask me a question (that I most likely would not have known the answer to because I haven't reviewed any of the material yet in lieu of math packets and general procrastination), but Jay saved me by blurting out the answer per usual. As I approached my seat, Dino said, "I don't trust Ginny," and waved to me. Calc itself went by pretty fast, with relatively few "butt-jokes" compared to yesterday. This unit is going pretty well so far, I must say. I'm surprised. (Of course, all of these formulas could pose a huge problem, as I can't remember formulas. It's sad.)
After class, I asked Dino if he was going to take AIME tomorrow. He said no, and Sonny mistook it for ARML.
"Wait," he said. "So you were the only one representing our school and you didn't make it?"
"No," Dino said. "It's something else. And no, I'm not taking it. Don't worry about it."
The last remark comes from me asking if he had gotten his test rescored. I have no idea why he thinks I'm "worrying" about it, but it has been previously proven that he is strange, and therefore I am allowed to be puzzled.
By this time, we had reached my stat classroom, so we said goodbye and he strutted on in his strange hands-holding-the-backpack-straps pose towards what I predicted (correctly) was gym. After stat (because stat was kind of boring and we just got our tests back and fiddled with the calculator), I stood outside the math team classroom as I always do, because it's across the hall from my stat classroom and I usually just wait for the people in the classroom to leave and then go in.
This time, Dino was already there by the time everyone inside had left. He went in first, and took a seat and sat down and did nothing. Really. Nothing at all. After I put my bag down, went outside, waved to Gretchie, and turned back, I saw him barely out the door, looking at us (or Irving down the hall, but I'd like to say that it was us) before scooting back into the classroom.
But that's enough musing for the day. I have to do all the other stuff I have to do (like practice mock questions for AIME and generally doing homework, perhaps), so go over to Gretchie's post for our next several days in Chile! (I am still working on shipping a llama back home. It will happen. One day.)
Monday, March 29, 2010
More Adventures (in Chile) + Panic IRL
This was long overdue but necessary in the grand scheme of life this trip. Therefore, it is here, and I will be off to do my homework ("Gasp!") because I just checked the schedule and the CALC FINAL (-cue screaming sound effects-) is in two weeks. (±Math run-offs, AIME's, and an assortment of other things.) Therefore, I probably won't be getting any homework done, and so I might as well post this now so I don't get too distracted.
ALSO YOU GUYS: Ignore tenses in this thing. I don't know what land I'm in, but this land's Laws decree that normal tense situations do not apply here.That, or I'm writing about past/present/future at the same time, so I'm really, really confused.
Today is the first day of our (Gretchie has joined my trip) adventures! After an entire day of packing, we have decided that we have EVERYTHING we could possibly needthat we can think of right now. So, relying upon our trusty RANDOM.ORG random coordinates generator, we have decided to travel to the most coveted—
ALSO YOU GUYS: Ignore tenses in this thing. I don't know what land I'm in, but this land's Laws decree that normal tense situations do not apply here.
Today is the first day of our (Gretchie has joined my trip) adventures! After an entire day of packing, we have decided that we have EVERYTHING we could possibly need
Chile!
But first things first. We need a picture of Gretchie since she's coming along as well.
After quite some time of fiddling with paint the camera once again, here is a picture of Gretch (to the right). (A/N: This picture did not exist prior to this post; however, due to unfortunate media leakage, this picture is now old news and therefore lacks the "wow" factor it was supposed to bring.)
Great, now we can begin!
So, since we're in the middle of nowhere not anywhere near Chile, I ordered tickets from TravelWithUsJerk.com (see bottom of page). They came in the mail yesterday, while we were still packing, and boy, were we excited! I literally jumped up and down until I got tired and had to stop.
Gretchie added a water filter, cards, a Spanish-English dictionary, a Swiss army knife, eating utensils, and walkie-talkies to her bag. I've also last-minutely added a small, hand-held mirror, just in case we're plane-wrecked in the middle of the ocean and we need to flash Morse code signals at planes to make them notice us.
Anyway, at 9:30AM, we decided that we had everything. With a few final checks (making sure we locked the doors and windows and said a teary farewell to our friends for thehour day week possibly eternity), we were ready to depart!
The closest international airport is JFK, and it's a very, very far distance away (anything that can't be tackled reasonably by foot is a very far distance for me), so naturally we rode a taxi! I love yellow taxis—they make me feel happy on the inside, especially if it's raining outside and the water puddles make the road all reflection-y when the yellow taxis drive by.
The ride to the airport was pretty fun, and when we got to the airport, we still had plenty of time left (the plane was scheduled to leave at 2PM—haha, 2PM—and we arrived at 11AM). So we did what normal people do when they're about to embark on a round-the-world voyage.
We jumped up and down (figuratively for Gretchie and literally for me) and ooh'd and ahh'd over everything we saw. Well, of course, we had to get our boarding pass first, go through numerous layers of customs (tricky—I never did like customs), and find our waiting room. Once we got there, however, the realization that the trip was finally happening made both of us giddy. I pulled out my laptop and we went over the itinerary for the next few days, which I will outline below in order topacify you because the actual trip writing may take a long time to solidify give you an idea of what is to come:
So, there you have it! Almost two weeks of fun in Chile, or at least we hope it will be. Alas, time flies when you're rechecking over itineraries (or maybe just when you're having fun in general), and by the time we finished going over the details and planning what we will do after we get off the plane, it was about time to board our plane.
Here's a picture of the plane we're going to board:
Isn't it pretty?
This is a plane owned by Lan Chile Airlines, the major airline company in Chile. It's also the only plane that travels to Easter Island, which is where we're going to go later. (How this hasn't directly attributed to grossly unreasonable fares, I have no idea, but I assume I'll know next year with a year of econ under my figurative belt.)
I found some random picture online took a picture of the landscape as we were about to depart. Can you believe it? We're going to leave the country soon, and then our continent!
South America, here we come!
Of course, for the entire flight, Gretchie and I watched this strange documentary about glaciers in Greenland. I don't really remember much of it, because I was more focused on the beautiful background music they played while showing the films of the glaciers.
It takes around nine hours to go by plane from NYC to Chile, and so by the time we arrived, it was a staggeringly late 11PM by our watches. However, by the Chilean time zone (UTC-04), it was already midnight. Gretchie and I were both pretty tired by now, so our first priority was to find a hotel and rest for the night.
(I think we'll have to push back our schedule for a day, because rest is very, very important and visiting Santiago is also very, very important, and we have plenty of time to spare anyway.)
Gretchie took some pictures of the night-time Santiago as we rode in our taxi and headed toward our hotel. Here's one that we both really liked:
After much sight-seeing through the streets of Santiago, we arrived at our hotelwhich is not named because I have been too lazy to actually find one, duh. Tired as we were, we did not forget to take a picture of our room. So, here it is, and we'll update infinitely later tomorrow on how our first actual day in Santiago goes!
OOH (see earlier posts):
We (both of Mr. Coffee's AP chem classes) got back our acid/base equilibrium test today—or, at least, the multiple choice part. The "bell curve" for test score distributions were one 95+ (Bryant, most likely, as this spot is usually reserved for him), a small cluster of 90+, a huge cluster of 80+ (including 85+), pitifully few in the 70+ (including 75+), and another huge cluster at or below 65+.
On the bright side, this unit is so dubbed, "If you can survive this, you can do anything." So, seeing as I survived the test (with lots of freebie points from Mr. Coffee because he messed up on several questions to help), I must be able to do anything!
(Well, anything except my research paper, it seems, because I almost failed that, and the only reason I didn't fail was because I had clear sentences and good language usage, so the next two weeks will be frantic as I basically rewrite my entire paper.)
I am also awaiting my free response for this unit, which I have my doubts in because I didn't (unlike Bryant and Nyx and basically everyone else who was sane) do any of the AP problems on College Board. Well. On the even brighter side, the next unit is relatively easier (although it also seems that easier units are the ones I perform worse on in tests), so everything should be fine until I start panicking about the calc finals.
Which, if the introduction paragraph haven't warned you yet, CALC FINALS!MAY 5TH IS APPROACHING! APRIL 12TH IS APPROACHING! Ahem. Right.
Our class has yet to panic, it appears, because we spent today discussing what the "ç" was called ("A cedilla." "Oh, Ginny, can you teach me French?") and whether the cardioid looked like a "butt." Dino also spent considerable time persuading Mrs. James to hit the "print" button on the Smartboard so he could go grab a copy of the calc notes he forgot to print out ("We were supposed to bring 10.6? No one told me that!") while Jay used "going to the bathroom" as an excuse to print out a copy of the notes himself but forgot to print out an extra set for Dino.
Not that I did anything in any of my other classes. We had a sub for physics, and Camel, lamenting that the $10 he spent on buying Monty Python was wasted because he couldn't open the file, used his laptop to go on Youtube to watch more Monty Python. I took this time to use an extremely long yard-stick (meter-stick, actually, and they can't be extremely long because they're supposed to be one meter long, but that's not the point) to draw scatterplots for stat. Nevertheless, it wasn't necessary, it seemed, because Mrs. MacDonald wasn't here either, and we had another sub (who suspiciously looked like the sub we had for physics, but I'm bad at recognizing people so I'm not sure). Matt and I worked on another sudoku puzzle, and then later on we (mostly me) worked on some math packets. I can say now with 70% confidence that I can tackle most of the round 1 questions, half of the round 2 questions, and maybe half of the round 3 questions.
Oh, I'm doomed.
But wait, there's more!If you call NOW AIME is coming up, Wednesday. I still have to ask Tybalt what room I'm supposed to be in, and I still have to go over at least some of the problems to see what they're like and what my probability of failing is (very high, although I shall try a Nate Silver-esque approach and conduct some research based on past problem performance).
So. Anyway. Homework.
DISCLAIMER (read the small font): Any hyper-link not "linked" is not true and is merely a figment of the authoress' imagination. There may, however, be a slight chance that such a link exists in real life and therefore accessible. We [Gretchie and I] do not wish to infringe upon the rights of those organizations, and we are not associated with them in any way. We are not liable for any loss, whether financial, physical, laptopial, or any thing else, incurred due to the searching and/or subsequent visiting of said websites. If you have any questions, comments, or concerns, please contact us at ginnyofnephria(at)gmail.com or comment below. Please note that we reserve the right to ignore you (within reasonable boundaries of law) or delete your comment as we see fit. For further questions, read the sentence before the sentence before this sentence.
Gretchie added a water filter, cards, a Spanish-English dictionary, a Swiss army knife, eating utensils, and walkie-talkies to her bag. I've also last-minutely added a small, hand-held mirror, just in case we're plane-wrecked in the middle of the ocean and we need to flash Morse code signals at planes to make them notice us.
Anyway, at 9:30AM, we decided that we had everything. With a few final checks (making sure we locked the doors and windows and said a teary farewell to our friends for the
The ride to the airport was pretty fun, and when we got to the airport, we still had plenty of time left (the plane was scheduled to leave at 2PM—haha, 2PM—and we arrived at 11AM). So we did what normal people do when they're about to embark on a round-the-world voyage.
We jumped up and down (figuratively for Gretchie and literally for me) and ooh'd and ahh'd over everything we saw. Well, of course, we had to get our boarding pass first, go through numerous layers of customs (tricky—I never did like customs), and find our waiting room. Once we got there, however, the realization that the trip was finally happening made both of us giddy. I pulled out my laptop and we went over the itinerary for the next few days, which I will outline below in order to
- Day 1: Arrive at Santiago (the capital of Chile and where the major International airport is located), look around, check into a hotel, scream, "WE'RE IN CHILE!!!" (Preferably in Spanish, although that is a feat only Gretchie can accomplish right now.)
- Day 2: Continue tour of Santiago (I've heard that they have amazing food there), in the afternoon take a plane to Atacama Desert and stay the night there.
- Day 3-6: Explore Atacama. Highlights: museums, geysers, beautiful views, adobe hotels! On the last day, take a plane to Easter Island.
- Day 7-11: Explore Easter Island. (More) highlights: Moai (those stone faces Easter Island is famous for), volcanic craters, scuba diving/snorkeling. On the last day/afternoon, take a plane back to Santiago.
- Day 12: Rest a bit, check any really good tourist attractions (or restaurants), then depart for our next destination (undecided as of yet).
So, there you have it! Almost two weeks of fun in Chile, or at least we hope it will be. Alas, time flies when you're rechecking over itineraries (or maybe just when you're having fun in general), and by the time we finished going over the details and planning what we will do after we get off the plane, it was about time to board our plane.
Here's a picture of the plane we're going to board:
Isn't it pretty?
This is a plane owned by Lan Chile Airlines, the major airline company in Chile. It's also the only plane that travels to Easter Island, which is where we're going to go later. (How this hasn't directly attributed to grossly unreasonable fares, I have no idea, but I assume I'll know next year with a year of econ under my figurative belt.)
South America, here we come!
Of course, for the entire flight, Gretchie and I watched this strange documentary about glaciers in Greenland. I don't really remember much of it, because I was more focused on the beautiful background music they played while showing the films of the glaciers.
It takes around nine hours to go by plane from NYC to Chile, and so by the time we arrived, it was a staggeringly late 11PM by our watches. However, by the Chilean time zone (UTC-04), it was already midnight. Gretchie and I were both pretty tired by now, so our first priority was to find a hotel and rest for the night.
(I think we'll have to push back our schedule for a day, because rest is very, very important and visiting Santiago is also very, very important, and we have plenty of time to spare anyway.)
Gretchie took some pictures of the night-time Santiago as we rode in our taxi and headed toward our hotel. Here's one that we both really liked:
After much sight-seeing through the streets of Santiago, we arrived at our hotel
OOH (see earlier posts):
We (both of Mr. Coffee's AP chem classes) got back our acid/base equilibrium test today—or, at least, the multiple choice part. The "bell curve" for test score distributions were one 95+ (Bryant, most likely, as this spot is usually reserved for him), a small cluster of 90+, a huge cluster of 80+ (including 85+), pitifully few in the 70+ (including 75+), and another huge cluster at or below 65+.
On the bright side, this unit is so dubbed, "If you can survive this, you can do anything." So, seeing as I survived the test (with lots of freebie points from Mr. Coffee because he messed up on several questions to help), I must be able to do anything!
(Well, anything except my research paper, it seems, because I almost failed that, and the only reason I didn't fail was because I had clear sentences and good language usage, so the next two weeks will be frantic as I basically rewrite my entire paper.)
I am also awaiting my free response for this unit, which I have my doubts in because I didn't (unlike Bryant and Nyx and basically everyone else who was sane) do any of the AP problems on College Board. Well. On the even brighter side, the next unit is relatively easier (although it also seems that easier units are the ones I perform worse on in tests), so everything should be fine until I start panicking about the calc finals.
Which, if the introduction paragraph haven't warned you yet, CALC FINALS!
Our class has yet to panic, it appears, because we spent today discussing what the "ç" was called ("A cedilla." "Oh, Ginny, can you teach me French?") and whether the cardioid looked like a "butt." Dino also spent considerable time persuading Mrs. James to hit the "print" button on the Smartboard so he could go grab a copy of the calc notes he forgot to print out ("We were supposed to bring 10.6? No one told me that!") while Jay used "going to the bathroom" as an excuse to print out a copy of the notes himself but forgot to print out an extra set for Dino.
Not that I did anything in any of my other classes. We had a sub for physics, and Camel, lamenting that the $10 he spent on buying Monty Python was wasted because he couldn't open the file, used his laptop to go on Youtube to watch more Monty Python. I took this time to use an extremely long yard-stick (meter-stick, actually, and they can't be extremely long because they're supposed to be one meter long, but that's not the point) to draw scatterplots for stat. Nevertheless, it wasn't necessary, it seemed, because Mrs. MacDonald wasn't here either, and we had another sub (who suspiciously looked like the sub we had for physics, but I'm bad at recognizing people so I'm not sure). Matt and I worked on another sudoku puzzle, and then later on we (mostly me) worked on some math packets. I can say now with 70% confidence that I can tackle most of the round 1 questions, half of the round 2 questions, and maybe half of the round 3 questions.
Oh, I'm doomed.
But wait, there's more!
So. Anyway. Homework.
DISCLAIMER (read the small font): Any hyper-link not "linked" is not true and is merely a figment of the authoress' imagination. There may, however, be a slight chance that such a link exists in real life and therefore accessible. We [Gretchie and I] do not wish to infringe upon the rights of those organizations, and we are not associated with them in any way. We are not liable for any loss, whether financial, physical, laptopial, or any thing else, incurred due to the searching and/or subsequent visiting of said websites. If you have any questions, comments, or concerns, please contact us at ginnyofnephria(at)gmail.com or comment below. Please note that we reserve the right to ignore you (within reasonable boundaries of law) or delete your comment as we see fit. For further questions, read the sentence before the sentence before this sentence.
Saturday, March 20, 2010
Life Is Strange.
I probably had already concluded this some time prior to today, but I feel there needs to be a reassertion.
Life is strange. Bizarre. Weird. Odd. Completely wacko.
What has made me come to this conclusion (again)? Well, it all started . . .
(-cue person sitting in a wicker chair reminiscing about the past-)
Anyway, this Wednesday, sometime in its glorious sunny afternoon, my mom received a phone call from the Superintendent informing us of the extremely likely possibility of school the next day. The exact words were more along the lines of, yes, there is school tomorrow, but after last weekend, anything could happen.
I was psyched. I wanted to go to school really badly. Staying at home for a prolonged period of time was not my idea of fun.
However, it appears that my body had a different idea.
I spent an entire Thursday, home, sick, stomach hurting and drowsy (although that could be a side-effect of sleeping too much). It was miserable. I went to the doctor's on Friday, received some general information coupled with fancy words, but I was too out of it to comprehend. My mom took me to the pharmacist's to get my new medication, and then we went to Barnes and Noble's somewhere to just "wander around," as I had suggested.
When we came home, it was already late (3pm-ish), so I decided to ask around and see what I had missed.
Lacking phone numbers (not that I use my phone regularly anyway, besides the occasional call to my mom to pick me up), I went online. Bryant was, as I suspected, there, and so I asked him about chem and physics.
"We learned titration curves in chem," he said. "They're not that bad."
Well, for the past most likely every time I've asked him about anything schoolwork related, he has said, "It's not that bad." Not sure how much his words applied to me.
"What about physics?" I asked. "Was there a lab?"
"No, we learned about series and parallel combinations, and how you would go about solving them."
"How do you go about solving them?"
And thus he launched into a very long near-monologue about the complexities of solving circuits, interrupted occasionally by my odd, "Oh, it's like in that video we watched!" or the ever-so-common, "Okay." It got to the point where I decided, no, I wasn't ever going to memorize everything he said, so I went ahead and copied our conversation and pasted it elsewhere for future reference.
Then, Bryant said, "There's a couple questions about circuit breakers on UTexas."
Wait, what?
I hurriedly checked my Quest account, and, there they were, 45 brand new questions sitting there, waiting for me to unravel theirevilness mysteriousness. With a nice message at the top reminding us that the network will be down over the weekend due to maintenance, so we should print out a hard copy to work on it instead.
Before I had a chance to start on those questions, Dora started a conversation with me.
"Hi Ginny! Why weren't you in class today?"
"I was sick," I said. "Did I miss anything?"
"Yeah, we handed in our papers today. Mrs. Tallchief thought you gave your paper to me. She was surprised you weren't there."
Oh. Oops. Right, research paper.
"Don't worry about it," Dora said. "Just send her an email. You should be fine."
Which I did later on, but I haven't received a reply yet, so I'm not sure how that's going. I also have several books I accidentally left in my English classroom, all of which are in danger of disappearing.
I saw Dino as well, so I figured I would ask him about calc. Except, of course, he disappeared right after I attempted to start a conversation. He and Owen both seem to do that a lot.
So I went back to UTexas, fiddled around with the questions, and arrived at a section where there was quite a number of bizarre diagrams that made no sense at all. Frustrated, I checked back to see if anyone else was online to provide useful class information, and I saw Dino again.
"Dino," I said. "You are very elusive. Anyway, what did you guys do in calc today?"
"Where were you?" Or, in Dino-speak, "where werw=e u?" (I find it amusing that he actually noticed his mistake, attempted to hit backspace, missed backspace, and decided to go on regardless.)
"Home," I said. "Sick."
To my surprise, Dino made a frowning face and said, "Feel better."
"Thanks," I said, grasping with this new, nice side of Dino as he reassured me that we didn't go over anything new in calc (yay, because I had thought Mrs. James would go crazy due to our unexpected "break") and told me to let him know if I needed help. Wow.
And this time, Tea, he did say something along the lines of goodbye before he left, so I think there's either still hope, or he's really picked up a "Easy Steps to Being Nicer" book somewhere in lieu of the "Compliments for Dummies" we suggested he get.
I went back to my physics problems, finished all of them except the ones with the weird diagrams, and spent the rest of night watching Youtube videos recommended by Gretchen and Stella (after I found my headphones), and deciding that vocal trance is really nice, and I feel kind of sad I had never explored this genre further before.
The next morning (well, this morning, really), I received an email from my physics teacher (too lazy to search up his nickname) telling us that he's sending over the diagrams for the eight-part question that I had trouble with yesterday. So the weird diagram problem wasn't just me!
On the not-so-bright side, UTexas is officially under maintenance right now, so I don't feel motivated enough to do any of the questions.
Life is strange. Bizarre. Weird. Odd. Completely wacko.
What has made me come to this conclusion (again)? Well, it all started . . .
(-cue person sitting in a wicker chair reminiscing about the past-)
Anyway, this Wednesday, sometime in its glorious sunny afternoon, my mom received a phone call from the Superintendent informing us of the extremely likely possibility of school the next day. The exact words were more along the lines of, yes, there is school tomorrow, but after last weekend, anything could happen.
I was psyched. I wanted to go to school really badly. Staying at home for a prolonged period of time was not my idea of fun.
However, it appears that my body had a different idea.
I spent an entire Thursday, home, sick, stomach hurting and drowsy (although that could be a side-effect of sleeping too much). It was miserable. I went to the doctor's on Friday, received some general information coupled with fancy words, but I was too out of it to comprehend. My mom took me to the pharmacist's to get my new medication, and then we went to Barnes and Noble's somewhere to just "wander around," as I had suggested.
When we came home, it was already late (3pm-ish), so I decided to ask around and see what I had missed.
Lacking phone numbers (not that I use my phone regularly anyway, besides the occasional call to my mom to pick me up), I went online. Bryant was, as I suspected, there, and so I asked him about chem and physics.
"We learned titration curves in chem," he said. "They're not that bad."
Well, for the past most likely every time I've asked him about anything schoolwork related, he has said, "It's not that bad." Not sure how much his words applied to me.
"What about physics?" I asked. "Was there a lab?"
"No, we learned about series and parallel combinations, and how you would go about solving them."
"How do you go about solving them?"
And thus he launched into a very long near-monologue about the complexities of solving circuits, interrupted occasionally by my odd, "Oh, it's like in that video we watched!" or the ever-so-common, "Okay." It got to the point where I decided, no, I wasn't ever going to memorize everything he said, so I went ahead and copied our conversation and pasted it elsewhere for future reference.
Then, Bryant said, "There's a couple questions about circuit breakers on UTexas."
Wait, what?
I hurriedly checked my Quest account, and, there they were, 45 brand new questions sitting there, waiting for me to unravel their
Before I had a chance to start on those questions, Dora started a conversation with me.
"Hi Ginny! Why weren't you in class today?"
"I was sick," I said. "Did I miss anything?"
"Yeah, we handed in our papers today. Mrs. Tallchief thought you gave your paper to me. She was surprised you weren't there."
Oh. Oops. Right, research paper.
"Don't worry about it," Dora said. "Just send her an email. You should be fine."
Which I did later on, but I haven't received a reply yet, so I'm not sure how that's going. I also have several books I accidentally left in my English classroom, all of which are in danger of disappearing.
I saw Dino as well, so I figured I would ask him about calc. Except, of course, he disappeared right after I attempted to start a conversation. He and Owen both seem to do that a lot.
So I went back to UTexas, fiddled around with the questions, and arrived at a section where there was quite a number of bizarre diagrams that made no sense at all. Frustrated, I checked back to see if anyone else was online to provide useful class information, and I saw Dino again.
"Dino," I said. "You are very elusive. Anyway, what did you guys do in calc today?"
"Where were you?" Or, in Dino-speak, "where werw=e u?" (I find it amusing that he actually noticed his mistake, attempted to hit backspace, missed backspace, and decided to go on regardless.)
"Home," I said. "Sick."
To my surprise, Dino made a frowning face and said, "Feel better."
"Thanks," I said, grasping with this new, nice side of Dino as he reassured me that we didn't go over anything new in calc (yay, because I had thought Mrs. James would go crazy due to our unexpected "break") and told me to let him know if I needed help. Wow.
And this time, Tea, he did say something along the lines of goodbye before he left, so I think there's either still hope, or he's really picked up a "Easy Steps to Being Nicer" book somewhere in lieu of the "Compliments for Dummies" we suggested he get.
I went back to my physics problems, finished all of them except the ones with the weird diagrams, and spent the rest of night watching Youtube videos recommended by Gretchen and Stella (after I found my headphones), and deciding that vocal trance is really nice, and I feel kind of sad I had never explored this genre further before.
The next morning (well, this morning, really), I received an email from my physics teacher (too lazy to search up his nickname) telling us that he's sending over the diagrams for the eight-part question that I had trouble with yesterday. So the weird diagram problem wasn't just me!
On the not-so-bright side, UTexas is officially under maintenance right now, so I don't feel motivated enough to do any of the questions.
Monday, March 15, 2010
Modern Technology
I would like to start off this post with a quote from Tamir (edited for language):
Thanks to modern technology I live in the woods and there are 4 trees blocking my street, none of which have been removed since last night in spite of calling the fire department at 4 pm.
Modern technology indeed. I can also add that, thanks to modern technology, I have discovered that many of my classmates are in a state of powerless, Internet-less panic. And flooding, of course, but lack of power is usually the first thing people apparently talk about when they share their latest news online.
(Perhaps it's because when you're in the public library, basking under *gasp* fluorescent lighting, sitting in front of a sluggish computer, it's hard to remember that you have six inches of water in your basement.)
Regardless, I am very glad that my power--and Internet--are all very well alive and perfectly fine. There was that brief moment yesterday when the lights came whirring to a stop, and my mom had contemplated turning off the laptop to conserve battery-life, but the lights came back on again and everything went on as usual. And the only Internet loss I experienced was due to my modem rebooting after the power loss.
I don't have a basement, so I don't have any flooding issues as well. Most importantly, all of the trees around our house have their roots firmly planted in the ground.
Not that it matters, really, because my house is one minute's drive away from a major road and a fire station (maybe the same that is not clearing the trees in front of Tamir's house), and unless a tree happened to fall in that short stretch of "neglected" road, we're guaranteed road access.
But obviously, there are both positives and negatives to this situation.
The positive is that there is no school tomorrow, yay! I get to sleep in late tomorrow, and, when I do get up, I have plenty of time to go over the AP calc problems Mrs. James gave us on Friday.
Of course, this brings up a critical negative: Mrs. James is probably panicking right now, with the mantra "May 5th is approaching" stuck in her head. We had already missed lots of class time with our snow days, and our limited knowledge of series and whatever else comes after them is definitely not good.
Speaking of school, I have also (accidentally) left a few books I needed to quote from for my research paper in my English classroom. I was hoping to get them tomorrow, and finish my last edits before I have to hand the paper in on Tuesday. Right now, I can only hope that "house nearly surrounded by water," as Mogley eloquently puts it, is good enough of an excuse for the deadline to be extended, if only for a day or so.
Hey, it's better than the hackneyed "my dog ate my homework."
No Internet for many people in town also means nearly no communication with other people (as my parents think the phone is the next worst thing after video games, at least for me). So I compromised by chatting with my friends back from my old city. Stella informed me that "there's something on the net describing what would happen if we lost the Internet." But upon further probing, it appears that she has lost the link for me to read more, so our conversation disintegrated into a series of pointy emotes (e.g. >.> and <.<).
I guess times like these I really wish we still socialized 100% like cavepeople--completely face-to-face with no technology whatsoever.
(Incidentally, the wind did not stop countless people from taking the SATs--or the PPPPPPSATs--this weekend. Well, all except for Argon, who had taken them the month prior and so left early. We're all such studious people, aren't we?)
Ps. I also just realized that this places Argon tied for most-tagged with he-who-must-not-be-named-or-else-the-tie-shall-be-broken.
