College Musings (I swear I’ll stop soon)

(I feel like I talk about college decisions wayyyy too much on here, but soon it’ll be all over! Just not before this Friday because I’m going on a student visit day at Maryland. Haha get ready for another post!)

So, now’s the time of the year when everyone finds out where they’re going to college. Of course, I’ve known for a while now where I’m going. At first, I thought I’d feeling some sort of envy when hearing where other people got in, especially when it’s an Ivy League or just somewhere I got rejected from. But surprisingly, I feel really at peace about going to a school that I never really wanted to go, at least until the past few weeks. I also feel no regret/envy when people announce that they got into and are going to places that I didn’t and am not. Instead, I feel this fierce pride that my friends and peers got into some of the best schools in the country. I feel happy and proud to know them. I also know that I am just as likely to succeed in life going to an excellent honors program at a state university as others are likely to succeed going to Ivy Leagues. After all, what matters is really what you do at college and not where you go. Anyway, I was just kinda surprised at my lack of bitterness as I hear people announce where they will be attending.

It’s a very competitive environment and everyone is constantly compared each other as far as grades, scores, colleges, socially, whatever. This is pretty much inevitable at the type of high school I go to, and I realize competition is a part of everyday life. However, I just wish that people would keep this weird compulsion to compare yourself to other people more internal, if that makes sense. For instance, a few months ago when early decisions began to come out, someone began a spreadsheet to keep track of where each person had been accepted. It’s totally awesome to feel proud of our friends for getting into great universities, but I feel like that spreadsheet was deliberately posted in the IB facebook group knowing that people would (maybe unintentionally or subconsciously) use it to compare different students. This competition puts weird expectations and pressures on all students, which we already get constantly from parents, teachers, media, etc. I think it’s mostly the already established hyper-competitive IB environment that’s mostly to blame. Anyway that was basically a long-winded way of saying what we all know already: that the college application process and pressure-cooker IB system suck.

I’ve also decided that it should not matter if I miss a specific friend, because I should just take responsibility and do something to get back in touch with them. But I have the feeling that I’m going to dearly the presence of the all the people I sit near in class, and all the people that I  wave to in the hallways, and all the people I sometimes talk to after school when we’re all bored. I’m close enough to them to miss them, but not so close I could actually contact them without feeling weird or awkward or that they would judge me because they don’t know me that well. And if we would see each other again, we would probably spend a little time catching up, but it’s not like we could make plans to keep getting together in the future. I’m not that outgoing, so it’s not like I need to be surrounded by many people. I love having close friends and I hope to make more at Maryland, but I also like having people who kind of…float around, without getting too close to you. Cool people with their own interests and in-groups, who you just see around during the day. That’s how you know you’re in a community, not a clique. And that’s is one thing I loved about IB.

 

Dream Sounds

I dream so that the wind

will hear me coming

and step back to let me pass

I dream with eyes open

and fingertips grasping

and shoulders flung back

and elbows thrown wide

everyone tells me to

wake up

all my life I have said

yes yes yes

and tonight I’m learning

to say no

I pocket the silvery shadows

and smuggle them

just under my skin

into morning but

they never glow quite as bright

in the daylight

slipping away

sand in my fist

I dream so that the neighbors hear me

I dream so that the Gods hear me

everyone tells me

to wake up

I dream of

keeping my eyes squeezed shut

saying

no

The Future of this Little Blog

I used to keep a paper journal but never had much success in keeping it updated.

I wrote in one of those pretentious little moleskines, the kind with the unnecessary “e”. None the less, I loved that notebook. I remember being impressed by the tastefully ivory-colored paper slip that was originally stowed in the back pocket of my moleskine. You know, the one that claims that the Moleskine is “the legendary notebook used by artists and thinkers over the past two centuries: among them Vincent van Gogh, Pablo Picasso, Ernest Hemingway, and Bruce Chatwin.”?   Unfortunately, as I have gained a few years of wisdom, my ability to romanticize what can only be described as an excellent marketing campaign has steadily diminished. First of all, Moleskine, you didn’t exist until 1997, so I’m pretty sure Ernest Freaking Hemingway probably wrote in a regular fucking notebook.

Anyway, after that side tangent:

Obviously, I had similar problems keeping this blog updated; however, I think I will continue to try to keep this thing updated with bits of my life/thoughts. I also plan on continuing to post some of my writing on here. I think it will be easier now. I have many more thoughts that I want to get out, and I also want to record some of the mundane events of my life. Or interesting ones that may pop up. Actually, I seem to think to myself several times a day, “Oh, I will add this to my blog.” Most of the time that doesn’t really happen…maybe this summer? In addition, I prefer the electronic nature of a blog. I like the idea that there is one collective place I can put my thoughts without losing them. I can imagine myself, a frail 70 year old woman with a stooped back, crouching over a holographic computer reading posts from when I was 17. Also, I detest my own handwriting.

Driving

Very high levels of caution generally don’t make for a full or interesting life, and thus I am slowly learning to drive.

I never really wanted to learn how to drive before and I had many excellent reasons:

• Driving is bad for the environment.

• I couldn’t actually afford a car or gas so what was the point?

• I was staying fit by walking everywhere.

But the truth was, I was afraid and I excused myself from trying.

For a while.

I got my permit and took an entirely unnecessary Driver’s Ed class last summer. (‘Is a deer a stationary object? I mean, like, if it’s standing still?’ is actually a question that was asked). Technically, I could have had my license for a while now, if I actually had been trying. My dad is teaching me and, to his credit, he is quite calm when I am behind the wheel. We have been going to the middle school parking lot near my house. Today we went to a neighborhood and I drove in circles for a while. I need 60 hours of driving and 3 in-car sessions to finally take the test for my license. I have decided that it is my goal to drive a few hours a week so I can go for my in-cars in June and then test for my license in August. I at least need to somehow get my license before college.

Future

I’ve been working on finding a summer job recently. I need the money for college and my parents want me to be doing something productive this summer – like marathoning Parks and Rec and eating way too many grilled cheese sandwiches isn’t productive pshhh. So far I’ve applied to two: A bakery near my house (hahah I’d be like Harry Styles anywayyyyy moving on) and a job at the library. The bakery place emailed me and told me that they had found someone. They were very polite about it, though. Then yesterday I applied for a job at the library, which sounds a little boring but whatever.

It’s getting progressively harder to care about anything related to school recently. On the upside, we only have two more months and then exams. I keep thinking about what I’ll miss most from high school when I’m in college next year. I think that I’ll miss the people the most – both teachers and my friends. I go to a big high school but I only take classes with about a 150 students, so I know pretty much everyone. It’s gonna be weird not seeing everyone every day. Of course, a lot of us are going to the same university, so I’ll still see a bunch of people I know around campus. And I know all my friends will be off doing amazing things where ever they go. On the other hand, I have some great teachers. In fact, it’s mostly the teachers that have me coming back to school each day. I’ll miss my social studies teachers the most. There are two of them – one teaches european history and the other teaches anthropology. Anyone who goes to school with me reading this knows who I’m talking about. Their knowledge passion for their subjects is incredibly inspiring and I have been very lucky to have met them.

Mostly because of the drag of school/life, my friend and I have decided to do things that make us the most happy this summer before college. A bucket list of sorts. I thought I’d post some of my list here.

This Summer:

• have a picnic on a rooftop or near that lake by my house or anywhere really. multiple picnics.
• get a job
• fill a pool with jello and swim in it
• make and try a macaroon
• learn how to longboard
• meditate
• be able to run 5 miles at once
• get my drivers license
• tie dye stuff
• cook indian food with my friend
• tattoo!
• go paintballing
• play chess on one of those big outdoor sets
• go to hirshhorn museum and actually see everything this time
• go that thing where people light lanterns and let them float into the sky is this called a lantern festival?
• steal a grocery cart
• swim under a waterfall

Story Time

Once upon a time, there was a distant star that shone bright gold in the night sky. Of course, there were many stars in the dark sky, but this particular star was the brightest of them all. Whenever anyone below was lost, they would gaze up at the sky, spot that star, and immediately it would guide them home. They called that star their treasure and its beautiful face starred in all their artwork, films, and bedtime stories, and everyone loved that star.

But the star was too distant from them to feel any of their love. She lived far far away, all alone in a house of darkness, and hardly knew of love the people down below had for her. Every night when the star woke up to shine her brightest, the people down below would see nothing but her light, but she would see nothing but the darkness that engulfed her. Because of this, the star felt more and more lonely every single night, and every single night she shined a little dimmer.

The people down below did not notice this, blinded as they were by her beauty and light, and even if they had, they would’ve had no idea how to get the star to notice their love. So the star kept shining as long as she could, growing a little dimmer each night, and the people kept loving her without her knowledge. Until one day, finally, the shadows over took her and she became dark enough that somebody noticed something was amiss.

He was an astronomer, one of the only stargazers in all the world, and spent most of his time peering up at the stars, inspecting them, and trying to find a way to reach them. None of his attempts had ever worked and so he eventually resigned himself to watching, rather than touching, the stars. She was his favourite star. Not because she was the brightest or the most beautiful but because she was so full of life and love and he felt she deserved those things in return. He knew she was all alone in that house of darkness, seeped in black, and he knew she had no one to share her love with. She was the reason he had spent so much time trying to touch the stars. He figured if he could reach them, if he could reach her, he could let her know that she wasn’t alone in the world at all.

By the time she got dark enough for the people down below to notice, the astronomer had given up any hope of reaching her. The other people down below moved on from the star; no longer the brightest in the sky, she had lost all her value to everyone but the astronomer. So she began drifting through the inky darkness to cling to something, anything, to make her bright again but she found nothing. After a while, the darkened star became very tired and became the first star in history to fall asleep. As she fell asleep, she lost her foothold in the night sky and began falling down to the world below. At first, it seemed like there would be no one to catch her, as none of the people down below paid her any attention anymore. But the astronomer noticed her falling and was there to catch her as she fell. She awoke soon after, for the first time in the land down below, and discovered that she wasn’t alone in the world after all. Though it wasn’t exactly how the astronomer had imagined touching the stars, he still found a way to let this star know how much he loved her.

And so they lived together as long as they could, the fallen star and the star-watcher, and both of them shined brighter than all the stars in the sky.