ENGGGGGLISH blog

Summer is SO close. Three weeks from today we will be not in another day one, but probably at the pool, just lying there doing NOTHING and having grilled cheese and a slushie. CANT WAIT.

Sometimes I just am not good at getting things done and being able to go to bed. oh well. These are things I’m bad at: 

1. Going to bed 

2. Waking up

3. Time judgment

But on the other hand, that means I’m good at staying up late, sleeping in, and living without regard to time. So that’s good!

I have one more chem lab left until I am done with chem labs FOR-EV-ER (sandlot?) because there is no way I will take chemistry ever again in my life. I’m so excited to take Biotech next year. It’s actually an interesting science that relates with everyday life, unlike chemistry. Well chemistry kind of does but not in a way that I’m interested in. Ok movie questions:

What is the name of Hallie’s dog in Parent Trap?

Would you rather be Hallie or Annie in Parent Trap?

What movie is this quote from: “Oh my God – Danny DeVito! I love your work!”

What movie is this quote from: “Math is a wonderful thing. Math is a really cool thing. So get off your ath, let’s do some math. Math, math, math, math, math. Three minus four is? ”

Recently I have been extremely clumsy. A few days ago at dinner, I was tipping my chair back like I always do. My mom always tells me not to because I’ll fall, but I never do. I fell, and the chair came down too. It didn’t really hurt it was just mostly funny. Then last night I was running up the stairs at home, like I always do, and I tripped and completely fell. Since when do I fall down all the time?

This was a short week with lots of work. I had a chem quiz this morning and I think I did better than I usually do. This week has been really stressful, but it’s so nice to think that we now only have 5 1/2 weeks left until finals! Not that I’m excited for finals, but as soon as we’re done with finals, it’s  Stime for SUMMER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I cannot even wait for summer. Seriously seriously seriously. This summer will be so fun and I’m just so excited to not have school. CAN’T WAIT.

Today I had an AP chem test. It was awful. Afterward, I said something along the lines of “That test might as well have been in another language.” After school today, I went to the nursing home for community service, where I sat and communicated for 2 hours with a frail elderly woman who speaks almost completely in Italian. I think I know more Italian than chemistry. I’ve been in chemistry for two years and have never taken Italian. 

I got really excited when I heard we would be doing a scavenger hunt in English. First, I looked at the clues and saw which ones I immediately knew: Courage and Joy. So I went off and found those two, as I figured that both are pretty important qualities. Then I continued to try and decipher the clues, and from there I was able to find compassion, discernment, heart, wisdom, humility, and integrity. While I think that all of the medicines are very important, especially the 8 that I found, the really important ones to me were courage, joy, humility, and integrity.

Courage is an incredibly important quality for any hero to have on his or her journey. I thought it would be particularly helpful on my hero journey so that I will have the courage to accept my calling, even if it may be something completely new and unfamiliar. I thought it was very fitting that courage was found with Mr. Hicks, because I remember how nervous I would get before every speech I gave in his class, and how it took a lot of courage to get up there.

Joy: I think joy may be the most important quality to me. I certainly don’t want to go through my hero journey sad or angry, and I think that happiness is definitely an ongoing goal of mine. I think the fact that it was found in the community service says a lot about where a hero can find joy along his or her journey: through helping others.

Humility: I really liked the clue for humility- “where acknowledging your strengths is as important as identifying your weaknesses in order to achieve true humility.” I’ve learned that it really is important to acknowledge your weaknesses in order to grow, and I think that growing is a huge part of the hero journey. One of my huge weaknesses this year has been ap chem, and I’m definitely still struggling with it, but hopefully I will gain some sort of life lesson out of it.

Integrity: To be honest, I wasn’t exactly sure of the meaning of integrity when I found it; it just sounded important, and I figured that anything found in campus ministry must really be important. So I looked up integrity and found “firm adherence to a code of especially moral or artistic values.” It makes sense why I would need this on my hero journey. To me, it seems like having integrity is like having a backbone. While I, as any hero might, falter along the “firm adherence” part and along the way will most likely go against my own morals at some point, I think integrity has to do more with the inner-knowledge of these morals and not letting yourself stray too far from them.

I really enjoyed this scavenger hunt. Not only was it exciting and fun, but it was also really meaningful as a part of the hero journey.

This was a really fun weekend, especially dance marathon. This coming week is very very busy, since everything needs to be done before spring break, including my service hours for religion. Also, I was looking through my phone calendar, and I realized that I have something planned every weekend until we’re out of school. Some are more favorable than others, but they include spring break, college visits, SAT, prom, and relay for life. That’s ridiculous, but I guess it just means that summer’s going to come very quickly. 

Tomorrow and Friday I am doing Model UN. I have never done it before so it’ll be interesting to see what it is like. My country is Haiti. I did a little research but really learned nothing about it. I should probably do that before going tomorrow. I just learned that Haiti is actually in the Caribbean, not in Africa like I thought. It’s a good thing I learned that now and not tomorrow, that could have been embarassing. So we’ll see how it goes.

I have officially figured out what makes school weeks dreadful. It’s the night of a Day 3, when I have to stay up late somehow doing a lab report and prelab. Once I have done both that and the lab that is the morning of the following Day 4, everything is great again, and the rest of the week flashes by. So really it’s just a stretch of less than 24 hours that’s rough. In other news, I finally did my course requests today. I’m really excited for my classes next year: AP lit, AP calc, AP gov/econ, sociology, Eastern religious thought, biotech, and drawing/painting. Did anyone else request those?