|
Teenage_Grammar_Whore
|
read my profile
sign my guestbook
Name: Jenna.
Metro:
Gender: Female
Interests: Music, British accents, studying languages, old films, Europe, other cultures, good literature, history, the classics, Victor Hugo, masquerade, geekliness, Broadway, uniqueness, liberation, politics, cats, black and white, psychology, flutes, musical instruments, the Internet, sight-reading, general nonsensicality, philosophical conversations at three in the morning, House MD, Scrubs, writing, nerdy board games, biology, listening to people, watching the night sky, and most importantly: you.
Expertise: Anything you can do, I can do better...
Occupation: Student
Message: message me
Website: visit my website
AIM:  TheferretAttacks
Member Since:
4/20/2005
 True
|
|
SubscriptionsSites I Read
|
|
|
|
| It's certainly been an interesting first day back, for lack of a better term. For one thing, almost all of the freshies that I have encountered or as tall as or taller than me, which usually isn't weird considering that I am only 5'2" (and three quarters!), but they're thirteen and fourteen and still growing. Me, on the other hand? I stopped growing in eighth grade; I think I've squeaked out maybe a quarter of an inch since freshman year. There is one exception, as is dictated by the bell curve of standard distribution (...*beats self in the head with my lovely brand new precalc book*), since there's this one eensy tiny hobbit kid in my French class who is 4' if he is lucky, but he's a special case. Wait, who am I kidding? All freshmen are special cases, really. One day, if you were to peek into the hallways from above like you're a deity or something, you'll see all of these 5'5"+ freshies running around all OMGWTF WHAT AM I SUPPOSED TO DO MY HEAD IS ON FIRE!!!!!111!!1/ and among the masses, look for awesome purple pigtails. Awesome purple pigtails that stick out as if to say LOOK AT ME I AM BRIGHT AND OBNOXIOUS PLEASE COMMENT MY HAIR K so bright that I could probably blind you with them in the right light. But you'll probably mistake me for a freshie, anyway because I am shorT, with a capital T for Tiny, but never ever ever as bad as the 4'11" Kate who lies and says she's 5' even though she is clearly, clearly not. Watch out, Broadalbin. You have a severe case of the Napoleon Complex on your hands.
So I am a senior now! And on the one hand, it is awesome to have privileges like not having to sign out in that study hall (which is the first I have had since eighth grade) and going basically anywhere for lunch and teachers trusting me for no reason except that I am a non-troublemaking honors student, but it also kind of sucks because it means having to wake up at 5.30 again and having work to do and that I am OLD and there are [dramatic chord] college applications to do. Mind you, some of mine are already finished and I've already asked for recommendation letters! "Whaaaat? Wherefore art thou pestering professors so early in the year, you silly goose?" Well, my friend, let us take a gander (get it?) at the scoreboard...
PROCRASTINATION 0
JENNA 1
College Applications My soul
I'm ahead of the game! Let's see how long this keeps up, shall we? My best guess is that the plague of laziness will strike around halfway through October. Which is coincidentally my birthday. Well, it makes sense -- 17-year-olds think they're above everything. Perhaps if I actually make an effort to stay ahead of my work this year, it won't be so stressful and there will be time to have a life and everything will be happy-happy! But ehhh, that requires effort...
Scheduling was, unsurprisingly, a royal pain in the patookus. So royal of a pain, in fact, that I probably could have given it a crown and scepter and named it Edward. In fact, to be honest, it rather ruined my day utterly. For the second year in a row, GUIDANCE TRIED TO TAKE ME OUT OF BAND. Me, separated from band!? Me, the uber band nazi who practices far too much!? ME, THE ULTIMATE BAND GEEK!? I scoff at you, guidance office. However, this dreadful plight was more than simply Storming the Castle with my Royal Rump; they replaced band, the love of my life, with AP Psychology/Sociology, the two classes I have been looking forward to since freshman year. Oh, woe is me! It was heartbreaking a la junior year. So during eighth period, I go down to guidance...
Jenna: "'scuse me, you took me out of band when I specifically said not to..."
Guidance: "It is your fault! Your schedule does not work! You are too ambitious! *BREATHES FIRE*"
Jenna: "Capital D colon."
I have to now make a rough decision. Band is only offered during first period; physics is only offered during sixth period; psych/soc is offered both first and sixth periods. People in the past have taken all three, so I thought to myself, "can't be too hard, right?" What I suggest is taking band and psych/soc and just dropping physics, because we all know that I am an EXTREME MATHEMATICAL GENIUS *snrk* anyway. AP psych/soc looks good on a college application, right? It fits in with my intended major and I would likely do far, far better at a social science than at physics. Moreover, I have only heard bad things about physics, eg, "it ruined my life" and "it's so hard" and "too much math" and the class has thirty eight people in. That is 3 and 8! 38! My biggest class size in the past has ever been 28, and there was hardly room then...let alone ten more! But no, guidance responds with a prompt "four-year colleges look for physics." Even though I already have, you know, four years of science credit. It's as if she thinks I am completely unable to get into college without it or something, when psych/soc is way more impressive at the college level. So whatev. Moral of the story: I'm in band again, I'm going to find a way into that class whether it means having shrimp gnawing my toes off, and panic is not appropriate. But life is good now, so there is no more point in complaining. And that is that.
The cafeteria clocks are evidently fifteen minutes late, so when I left lunch, study hall was almost over. Clearly, I am made of win.
Is there anything else of note? My first wind ensemble practice is on Sunday, although I still really wish that they had put me in the orchestra because I really, really like orchestras, but c'est la vie. Am saving up for a Russian Ushanka. The Giants just won their game. And I am not really a good writer anymore, not nearly as funny because science reports have dried up my spring of creativity, boooo. Hope you're well, dears!
| | |
| Irony: when I don't try to make friendships work, people like me; when I do try, they shut me out. Moral of the story? Eheheh. =X
I think JD from Scrubs put it best when he said "the easiest way to lose something is to want it too much." Damn straight, Doctor Dorian. Damn straight.
On the bright side, Syle and I had a wonderful phone conversation on Thursday and it basically completed my life for the time being, so I honestly am happy. Hope you're well!
| | |
| I want to write something brilliant and thoughtful here, but I have the sneaking suspicion that if I wrote something cosmic it would turn out mostly crappy, and if I wrote about myself, I would feel mostly self-centered and put it on private as usual. So I will take the third option and just write and write and write until something useful pops out of my head; sometimes streams of consciousness can come in handy, you know.
Do you ever wonder why people continually verbally abuse themselves? Is it because they want attention, or because they seriously think they are horrible, or both? Probably both. That has certainly been my case, anyway, but al otro mano, I am not exactly the best basis of comparison because I have stagnated in my mental maturity over the past few years. But then again, nobody is exactly a "good" person during those formulative teenage times, which are vaguely akin to a donkey on a rollercoaster (<4, Patrick) unless he or she is one of those wannabe-good people (read: "brown nosers") who work for the Red Cross and Big Brothers Big Sisters just because it looks decent on a college application, like so many of the people in my grade do. Not saying everyone who does nice things is fake, of course -- only that you have to admit that there are a lot of pretentious folk out there who try and be something they aren't. (Moreover, high school students are generally not the be trusted. We always, always have some sort of ulteriour motive.) Everyone is somewhat pretentious on occasion, and so as not to be a hypocrite, it must be said that I have a habit of doing so in conversation due to excessive amounts of awkward, but at least I can come out and admit my faults and try to change them. (And I do try. Very hard. But it does not seem to be working well, which means I simply have to try harder and quit whining about them.) Pretending to care about the world while truthfully using this ostensible "kindness" to one's advantage is unfair. Although it does help people, most of the time, so I suppose it's not really worth knocking them over about, is it? One of those instances of irony. Hope that didn't sound self-righteous.
I really don't have much of anything in my head right now. That, though, may be the culprit of being over-tired. It's been such a long day. Week. Summer, actually, and I am worried that my brain may not be appropriately dumped by September 4, because I was so burned out by the end of the summer semester and that was only six weeks in. Six weeks isn't even 25% of the school year. My grades need to stay up. RAWR. Then again, trying to take the optimistic route, it could always be worse and
ALL I TALK ABOUT ANYMORE IS SCHOOL OR COLLEGE OR TRYING TO BE A GOOD PERSON AND THIS IS NOT OKAY. BUT I CANNOT THINK OF ANYTHING ELSE. WHY AM I USING CAPSLOCK?
Give me a writing prompt. I have so much to say -- and at the same time, I have nothing at all to write. Mayhap it's just because I have been reading my old entries lately, the awesome ones back from the end of/summer after freshman year, and feel the need to say SOMETHING productive rather than whine whine ANGST like this entire year was. But I don't know what! BECAUSE MY BRAIN IS DEAD. Arrrrrrrgh. Maybe I care too much about the world. Maybe I just need a break from seeing people. Seeing people drains me, and I have been so social this summer that my consciousness is quite fuzzy. Awful as it may sound, I need to crawl up into a hole and be a reculse for a week or two. (See, and I was doubting my being an introvert for a few weeks there. No. Definitely still introverted. And the strangest part is that the people I have been associating with don't even like me because we are certainly not the same types of people. But because they are acknowledging my presence, the false social one, I feel as though it is necessary to change myself for them. I am attempting to avoid that, because it is stupid to change oneself to have friends. It makes me feel rather divided.)
Wangst. Sorry. I'm really okay, life is good. =)
Crickets are chirping right outside my window. The sky is very dark, according to the window behind my computer monitor, but it is not actually visible due to the glow from my screen and the orange light pollution of the streetlamps down the road. I wish that I could be outside, though. I love the outdoors in the summertime. It's so calm and peaceful and warm and the bugs aren't too awful and you could walk and just keep walking towards the horizon until the sun comes up, which you definitely can't do in the wintertime, especially around here. I have nobody to walk and try to catch fireflies with, though. (Speaking of which, fireflies are quite possibly the coolest insects evar. Who wouldn't want to make body parts light up sometimes!? That would be killer if you were headed to a rave.) My friends all want to talk when they're around, and the problem is that I do not feel like, and physically have no capability of, talking constantly. Sometimes I want someone who would be content with simply being together and enjoying the company of one another without feeling like something absolutely needs to be said. And suffice to say, I have not yet found that person. It doesn't have to be romantic, of course, because I am undoubtedly not emotionally mature enough to handle a relationship. Just a friendship. There are a few people whom I know would be okay with that, with not having to actually say a word, but they all live so far away.
Don't you wish sometimes that you could bring all of your close friends together in one spot? Jennifer and I were discussing this earlier. We can take Rhode Island, because it's beautiful and tiny. Nobody would ever have to say goodbye, because it is big enough so that everyone can have space, but not small enough to cause heartbreak from large spans of distances between one another, and we could easily hop in cars or onto bikes and ride a few miles to say hello. I would take my Jackie and Syle and Jeremiah and Kate and a very few people around here and the Xanga people who could have intellectual conversation and anybody that I might meet in college or later on and stick them all together, but maybe that would be stifling. Maybe that would eliminate what's so special about each and every person, and not having the opportunity to miss their little quirks that maybe people would not allow me to see in person (or only allow me to see offline, because they are bad at being conversational online), or the silly things that make them one out of six billion. As painful as it is sometimes, I like having my distance friends. On top of everyone here, who have made my life a better place, of course. But Jackie would be my clone and someone I look up to (and do our typical silly stunts with, of course), and Syle could be my platonic lesbian lover and the one who's also in love with Keith Olbermann and the one who would be okay with just being together, and Jeremiah can be my crazy lunatic psycho. And Kate is my Katicus, to whom no words can be properly assigned. We could all hug *GAG* and be happy and maybe, finally, be at peace, if we had our dearer ones nearby instead of separated by sometimes thousands of miles. More than that, I miss everybody who's going away to university soon, especially Trisha, because they've added something special to high school that can't be taken away or replaced. And without her, to whom will my comments about politics and crappy flute-playing go? Kate isn't a Republican like Trisha. I don't know. This is entirely too long and rambling; the quote by Snoopy well summs it up:
“Why can't we get all the people together in the
world that we really like and then just stay together? I guess that
wouldn't work. Someone would leave. Someone always leaves. Then we
would have to say good-bye. I hate good-byes. I know what I need. I
need more hellos.”
Hellos, indeed. It's like that commercial. Also, another good Snoopy quote: "Good grief." (So what if it was said by Charlie Brown? They're sort of a package deal, those two.)
Evidently, Joe Biden is going to be Obama's running mate? Me likey! He is outspoken and very much liberal, but he isn't fake and does not feel the need to vote YES on every single leftist resolution that comes through Senate. He is experienced in realms where Obama is not, and he has a lot of good ideas on foreign policy, so that perhaps once we finally have a President with the ability to think about something other than oil, terrorisim, Iraq, the world can begin on the long road to rebuilding itself. It will take a while, but to be civil again is possible. Then again, I am a hopeless optimist sometimes, so take that as you will.
This turned out awfully self-centered and not how it was meant to at all, but it consumed so much time tippity-typity away that I can't bear to shield you all from it. Blahblah. How are you? Well? Hopefully. =)
| | |
| A tad bit of postulationI ride my bike a lot, and in a town of less than two thousand, there really aren't many unique places to see. Sometimes, more often than not, it gets me to thinking -- which may not be recommended as you are riding your bicycle in the middle of the street, but hey, that's the fault of the village for frowning with disdain upon my tires on the sidewalks.
Do you ever go back to a place that you frequented as a kid -- a softball field, a playground, or perhaps driving by an old friend's house -- and swear that you can almost see the little ghost your former self running around? Time is such a funny thing. How do you ever really leave a place, exactly, once you have already been there? Every nanometer of every path you have tread in your entire lifetime, you've left your essence. There are thousands or millions or billions or maybe even trillions of individual footprints in one place, but so much of the time they are ostensibly empty; and yet sometimes, if you look hard enough, you can almost see your own among the invisible masses. Maybe not the literal impression that your sole left in the soft earth, but the less visual one that your soul, whatever that may be, left in the air around you.
It is something like the final fate of voices. Where do words go after you've spoken them? Do they just disappear into the oxygen-carbon-nitrogen-helium-hydrogen blanket that enshrouds us and allows us to survive? Or do they surf the sound waves so far out into space as they can possibly scientifically go so that maybe, if an alien with the proper hearing capabilities at such low frequencies can listen in on all of our earthly conversations, no matter the language? Sure, he might not understand, but maybe, just maybe, she can hear them all. Every last syllable that trickles over that bow of your lower lip. Of course, this may be an unfathomable number of light years away, so the ones they hear now as your brain interprets my own words, be they visual rather than audio, are the ones before our so-called "great conversations" of the world: our evolutionary origins, the grunts and baubles of early Homo generations before language was what we consider it to be today.
Even when you die, you never really go away, do you? You still exist. Your impression, whether you believe in the religious or areligious spiritual entity of a soul or whether you think in terms of electromagnetic fields as I do, will be there as long as there is life to recognise it, and even when the grass is trampled or the trees cut down or the buildings eroded after years of disuse once our civilisation has finally imploded upon itself, we were, are, still there.
| | |
| As she said, "Joe, the linkspam is en homage to you"It is official: I procrastinate on everything procrasinateable. I have been wanting to write a proper entry for about two weeks now, but every time I go to try, something comes up and/or my brain is absolutely fried. (Seriously, a six-page essay every week and a two/three-page paper due every day? That's not normally something that would bother me too much, but I think I have run out of words, and that, as they say, is that. Especially considering that I am currently drowning in applications, although that is another story.) I procrastinate on working. I procrasinate on not working. I procrastinate on procrastinating. Sometimes, I even procrastinate on going to the bathroom, even if that may be sheer laziness. This is a bad habit that needs to be remedied before the school year begins anew...
Until that point, I continue procrastinating on my economics homework to bring you my thoughts on random bits of the world. Hooray! (Readers: "Drat! Foiled again!")
Firstly, and perhaps most importantly, has anybody else heard about the recent slander wrapped up in neat little packages from McCain to Obama? And by "neat packaging," of course, I mean "a lack of factual base and an excess of senility, but it has a pretty gray bow." There are two new advertisements which come prominently to mind: Obama making time to go to the gym, but not supporting wounded troops (presented by my new celebrity fixation, Keith Olbermann), and evidently, Barack Obama is equivalent to Paris Hilton and Britney Spears. While I could not rip apart the former nearly as well as Mr. Olbermann can (and has done on numerous occasions, this being my personal favourite (I think I'm in love)), it disgusts me that Presidential campaigning has gone from friendly competition, to complete mudslinging, to absolute falsities broadcast nationwide. And this, of course, ignoring that slander is illegal according to the United States Constitution and Supreme Court proceedings! In the first link, Obama's senior advisor made a good point that this ad was only shown approximately five times across the nation, but it is nevertheless sickening -- almost as sickening, in fact, as the very idea of the second link. This one, however, has been shown on national television as well as picked apart on morning television shows and evening political analysis alike. In brief, my thoughts: Obama has more brains in an eggcup than Paris and Britney have combined; he is hardly what one would call a "celebrity"; and if we use McCain's definition, then let's start calling him Estelle Getty.
On a somewhat lighter and far less political note, since I doubt anybody else who reads this could care less about the bickering between Republicans and Democrats, I went on my first real college visit last weekend. Yeah, I know, it's already been mentioned, but it was pretty important to me, you know? I was the little kid who was tailgating and wearing the Penn State football cheerleading outfit at the age of three, and going somewhere that is a veritable Mecca to me was pretty exciting. The only real downside was spending 14+ hours, there, around, and back again, in a car with my family. To be frank, I don't get along with my family very well. Some have that closeness, that sense of "we're all related, let's get along!", whereas mine is more like "okay, I live with you. That's vaguely tolerable." The sad part, mayhap, is that I really don't care. My cat is the only one whose company I truly enjoy, even though she clearly does not feel the same way. (Look at that eye! It's glowing like a laser of death.) I am nothing like any of them -- least of all my mother, who was a right drama queen the entire time we were on campus. But don't get me wrong, I honestly had a great time. If you couldn't tell, Penn State really seemed good for me! Nice and far, too.
Also aforementioned, I am drowning in college applications. [Dramatic chord] The sort of silly thing is, I don't mind it too awfully much. Certainly the process of writing another twelve thousand essays on top of the ones due for summer school is a rather daunting and harrowing task. But I like writing so much that it makes me wonder whether I am missing my calling as a potential English minor. Besides, it's a good idea to get everything out of the way in the summer so that I can focus on losing my head/scholarships during the school year, right? Hear ye, hear ye! Jenna is a nerd! Who says July 29th is too early to send out an application when the Common App has the format posted on July 1st? It's just being practical, I say.
Thoughtful entry? Not really. I rather liked that one about growing up, but that endeavour is failing rather fantastically. Maybe I'm setting my goals too high; for sure, I said I would not procrastinate tonight, but writing an entry seemed rather more pressing than an assignment which isn't due until 10 tomorrow evening anyway, and this may get my creative juices flowing, right? Right. My new idea is to start smaller. Finish what I say I am going to do, and then move on. As for being a better person? I'm so socially unconscious that this may not be possible. Advice?
Social activity is highly overrated, anyway. Humans are, by evolution, social creatures, which may prove the general theorem that I am not actually a member of H. sapiens but instead that of H. introvertus. On the other hand, I did go out to a wedding today because Sam wanted me to. It's a little bit funny to think that she and I were best friends from first grade until we reached high school, and I was over at her house and we were at her neighbours' house practically every weekend, and then once ninth grade hit, we suddenly just grew apart. We joined different social circles -- me first of the omgz gawffick freaks and then of the nerds, her of the drama kids and her boyfriend -- and after almost a decade of friendship, we became totally different people. Her neighbours' son decided to get hitched today, though, and they didn't forget me absolutely, thank goodness! It was fun, casual, and slightly awkward because Sam and Boy were attached at the hip the entire time, but it got me to thinking, all the same. You really don't realise, sometimes, how much you miss something, until you actually go out and do it again. There are a lot of things about my old life that I miss a lot: having the closest thing I could identify as close to a best friend, being able to perform socially without feeling self-conscious, confidence, playing softball, people liking me. But I can't go back to that place. I can't keep dwelling, and I do have to grow up and move on and make due with what's going on nowadays. If you live in the past, you miss the present. I just hope that I've grown a little bit, because she undoubtedly has. Who knows where life is going to take me next, really? I'm not the marrying type, not the living-in-one-place type, and I don't keep friends easily. Am I destined to ride the winds, so to speak, forever, with no constant in my life besides my ancient cat and my music?
I should start wearing one of these just for kicks and giggles.
I had something else to say, but lost it. Alas! Earwax. It was delightfully thoughtful, too, but I fear that I may be losing your attention, so the time has come to cease my endless raving. If you read the entirety of this, kudos. You deserve a cookie. Until next time, I work on my economics! One week left, Jenna, you can doooo it! Hope you're all doing fan-tastically.
| | |
|
