ENDOFTHEYEAR.

Once again I'd like to cover a few topics in a blog post, and not just one. Since this is also the last blog assignment for the year, it seems appropriate to say the least.

First and foremost, I'd like to talk about the experience of blogging. I feel like I'm going to end up saying what I've already said in my other posts when I talked about this, but oh well. Blogging was a great opportunity for me to let out a few /personal/ things that I had going in my head. I've noticed that most of my blog posts were around that area. I can safely say that my statement and restatement of purpose[s] have been fulfilled the way I wanted them to be. My posts centered around what I had in mind, and blogging acted like something I could use to vent them out. And not just me, but other people seemed to have learned and realized a lot of things by blogging too. It's really benefited all of us one way or another. Another thing I like[d] about blogging is that it's really.. unusual and unexpected. I had no idea this Sutherland guy that teaches English was going to use modern technology to assign work for his students when I first came in. Utilizing what most of us are available to to assign work is a brilliant idea and I hope other teachers could follow suit in the future. Going "paper-less" is definitely a good step in an environmental heavy time.

This other half isn't going to be that /enlightening/ but nevertheless this is why I blog. I find it really hard to word but I'll do the best I can.

Crushes are the most pointless things you can ever have in high school. Especially when you don't do anything about it. I've heard of people having crushes for YEARS. I'm surprised at that fact but then at the same time I'm not. Honestly, I've been in that situation before and it's the biggest time waster life will ever give you. The way it works is you find someone you like, start crushing on them, and then become too scared to actually do anything to approach. To show them how you feel and fearing what they're going to say when you tell them the truth. So what ends up happening is you become a locked up bottle thats more than likely never going to open. In my personal situation right now, I'm giving up because it's been a huge waste of time.. and it's taken me this long to realize the better things I could've accomplished if I never, or stopped crushing on the person earlier. Lesson learned.

I would really like to know if people who aren't afraid of rejection are more successful overall. I mean, if you aren't afraid of rejection, that means you aren't that self conscious, right? Having a "I don't give a fuck about what they think" attitude is bound to help, isn't it? I don't know..

trail mix.

Due to lack of any good ideas or sparks of what I could write about lately, there's always the option for me to blog about.. plain and simple life.

Well, okay maybe not so plain and simple. Life is just a roller coaster all the way through, till the day you die. There's going to be huge drops where you experience a rush of thrill all at once, or for an ongoing time too. And then theres times where you feel like all you're doing is slowly inching up the track, waiting impatiently for that huge drop.

Lately for me it's always been a bit of everything. I'll have a really fun day but then the next few days would be completely boring and shit. I'm not saying that I'm complaining or anything, it is after all better than nothing, period. I sort of feel comfortable saying that my friends and I.. have run out of things to do. It's mostly the same things every time and new ideas don't come very often. With summer approaching, I would really like to change that.

This week has been.. meh. On Monday I was dead tired because Ricky let me borrow his laptop for the night on Sunday and I stayed up all night doing really pointless things. But hey! It wasn't completely a waste of time. I also got some homework done too, haha. I really wish I had a laptop; it'd help me procrastinate on assignments I don't want to do. But if I get that, then I would lose a ton of sleep and I really can't afford to lose anymore the way I am now, haha. Tuesday was one of those days where I was actually too tired to do anything. The lack of sleep from Monday caught up to me and I just felt DEAD the whole entire day. Went home straight after school to get some rest.

Wednesday was quite the turning point. Nothing EVER happens at school so that's one thing I will never write about. After school however, a few friends and I played some basketball Edison school. At first it was pretty normal, but then we ended up playing some adults that were there too. It was a really intense and fun game, and we even ended up winning! That was a great feeling, haha. To know you beat a team of adults that are about two times bigger than you is satisfying. I don't even know how we won, but now we're calling ourselves the dream team. Haha, hilarious.

Thursday was a day where we really didn't do much. For some reason that I'm unaware of a bunch of people went missing and only Andrew and I were left. We settled for going to my house and playing some games. It's fun with him because he's pretty much the only competition I have in a majority of games. From that day emerged an inside joke as well. Jab jab jab.

FRIDAY! I always look forward to this day of the week, who doesn't? I've noticed that complicated plans make me feel like a super sophisticated businessman. Directing and following them, and then seeing it all come together feels good too. Haha. 'Frisbee' isn't really frisbee anymore though. We haven't played Ultimate in a hellllla long time. All we do now is basketball and socialize. And more recently, wrestling. I don't wanna get into too much detail with that, haha.

ramblings.

It’s almost the end of the school year. As it gets closer and closer everything gets just a wee bit faster and harder. Teachers try to cram in material that they somehow “forgot” to teach and all the students want is for everything to be over and relax the days away. Lots of tests come up along with final exams and AP tests as well. The last stretch of school is hard for everyone, but in the end it’s always rewarding.

I think of the school year as being divided into at least three periods of time. In the beginning, everyone has to get accustomed to being in school again because of the fun times over the summer. They almost always forget everything they learned, too. I know I do for sure. Past the beginning and into the middle, it’s a long stage of chill assignments. The assignments are nothing too hard, nothing too easy. It’s just right. This is usually the second and third quarters. The end, which in this case is now, is a rapid rush of information. Big end of the year projects to “apply what you learned” comes as often as the sun.

Moving on from a general point of view on things, I’d like to share my own personal experience with this school year. Everything I said up there applies to me too, of course. In the beginning I forgot all the material I learned in freshman year. The reviews of last year’s stuff and the like that teachers gave me was almost perfect to get back in the rhythm. As it hit second and third quarters it just felt a bit… numb. It was when Sutherland introduced the concept of life being on autopilot. That was what it felt like. School days were monotonous and lackluster. It’s the part I hate the most.

Sometimes I still haven’t accepted the fact that MY freshman year has already passed. I find it hard to believe that I am currently a sophomore at times. And already, I’m turning into a junior in high school. Life goes by so fast it’s unbelievable. I really want to cherish these years and make them something I would remember at least twenty years later.

I don’t know if it’s a bad thing that I have no idea what my dreams or passions are after high school. It feels like I have a large variety of careers I could pursue, but not knowing what I like or am passionate about makes it a lot harder. To connect with my earlier blog post, I know that I have to know what I like to do in order for me to get a career that I would actually enjoy. The path to at the least a satisfactory future is pretty simple, but getting started is what I’m having trouble with. I hope to have everything figured out by at least the end of junior year and I could spend my senior year preparing for whatever I’ve decided.

school, colleges, and the future

I wrote this on my Tumblr a while ago. So I'm just using it now.

With the schedule thing happening last week, it felt like a really uncomfortable rush of decisions. For that week, people are planning for their future and the main, which also seems to be the ONLY topic going on in conversations is what classes your friends are going to take. Everyone’s throwing around suggestions to each other like ‘TAKE THIS, TAKE THAT! NO DON’T TAKE THAT I HEARD IT WAS HELLA HARD.” And me? Well. I’m just in the background, confused and dazed because I don’t know what the hell I’m going to do either. To be honest, it kinda sucks being like that. All of the people around me seem to at least have an idea of what they want/are going to take next year, and it seems like I’m the only one who doesn’t really know. Fuck man. The deadline for the form is a bit unclear to me too; some people say it was this Monday and I’ve heard that it’s this Friday. I’m gonna choose to believe that it’s due Friday because I still haven’t done counseling. But I still have a recurring thought in my head that, maybe I shouldn’t turn it in. Maybe I should just let the school pick my classes for me. It’s basically what I did last year, and I’m pretty okay with it. Hell, I still don’t even know.

Concerning all that shit, a conversation on Thursday with Sutherland was enlightening. He said some things that.. well, seem to have made my thought process clearer about what I’m going to do in the future. One of the things he said was that colleges were beginning to devalue AP classes. This really makes sense to me because well, imagine this. A shitload of people take AP classes as is, right? But will that really stand out to a college? If all a college sees in applications is ‘I took __ AP classes” over and over again, it’s basically become a common thing. The same concept as money, perhaps. The more you have of it, the less valuable it gets. All of the people taking so many APs confuse me. AP Physics, AP Calc, AP Stats, APUSH, APES, and so on. I’m pretty sure they aren’t interested in all of those subjects at once. The purpose of an AP is to expand your knowledge. Say you really like math, it makes sense if you plan on taking AP Calculus or AP Stats. But it doesn’t make a bit of sense if you’re taking APUSH too. APs seem to have evolved into something that’s like ‘HEY LOOK AT ME I’M REALLY SMART.’ or just something that’ll ‘make you look good’ in college applications. But among other things, Sutherland also helped me in the subject of picking a college.

People seem to have the idea that attending a good college equals having a good job. Well, what’s the definition of a good college? Is it some college with super high standards or an Ivy league? Does popular mean good? Personally, I don’t think so. My definition of a good college is a college where it best suits your interest. Think about it. Why take a subject if you aren’t even interested in it? Just because it looks good, right? I don’t know, but I guess it could be a legit reason. It just seems like you’re pushing yourself into studying a subject that you don’t even like in the first place. Which in case, is a total waste of time. I guess what I’m trying to say is, before you pick a college, you should at least have an idea of what your interests are and pick a college that best suits that interest. For example, if you’re interested in art.. well, you’d obviously go to an art school. In medicine, a medical school. In law, then law school. If you know what you like, it’s a lot easier figuring out what your profession could be. It’s like, why bother going to a “good” college that’s really strong in mathematics when your main interest is science? I don’t know, I know my main idea, but I find it hard to explain.

glorification.

Normally, glorification is good, right? It's making something seem better than what it really is. In other words, it could be put as 'bragging.' But at the same time, it could be bad. Like when you glorify an item, it's like you're telling little white lies. "Oh hey, this thing does this and that and it could do this too!" Yeah, that's what I'm talking about. That's when things turn bad. Glorification is just a bunch of white lies to help you gain something. Whether it be money, respect, or anything else, it's all for the same purpose.

Something different though, is when you glorify a person. It probably has the same concept, but it's just so much worse. For one thing, the person that's glorified could either be pompous and accept the glory, or maybe even add on to it. Or they could feel pressured and scared. I can mostly relate to the latter.

From personal experience, I can pretty much say I hate being glorified. I'll admit a few things. I learn things pretty fast, and in turn that makes me get better at something going at a pretty good speed. And I'm usually /the best/ in my circle of friends when it comes to something like video games. It's kind of irritating though. I'm always expected to be super pro and beat everyone. Like I said before, it kind of makes me feel pressured and/or scared to lose. I don't know, really. But I just hate being glorified.

But hey, everyone reacts different to it. That's just how I do. Maybe you yourself love being glorified, and always do well. While some of us stick with our average talents and just cruise on by.

PS: Man. Finals are gonna suck. The only good thing is that we get out early. We do, don't we?

good bye, two thousand nine.

As the end of the year approaches, things are coming to a conclusion. Along with conclusions, new beginnings take part as well. I don't really remember much of the beginning of the year, when I was a silly freshman. Haha. But there are some things I remember that I can recap about. There were a lot of firsts for me in '09. I met new people, had some unforgettable experiences, and of course, tragedies.

First of all, my holidays this year were all unforgettable. Like 4th of July, where Adam, Nathan, Andrew, Ricky, Sandy, and I just biked around Alameda and Bayfarm for the whole day and watched the fireworks at Shoreline. Or Halloween, where I went out until around midnight just walking around with friends. It was my first ever time trick or treating too! Haha. And I can't forget the countless adventures I had over the summer too. Getting close with new people, seeing them every day. Being around them changed me for the better. I owe you guys a lot of appreciation, but for now I'm really glad I met and got to know all of you.

But towards the end, things weren't all peachy and smooth like it was the beginning and middle of the year. Things got complicated, shit went down, but hey. With ups come downs. That's just how life works, right? We all have to deal with some bad things in life though. No one leads a perfect one. Now, I'm ready to say goodbye to a life-changing year. Let 2010 come and throw whatever it has in store straight to my face. I'll be waiting. Haha.

I don't know if I'll have any New Years resolutions, I've never done it before. But I guess I should start. I have no idea how though. What could I change? Hmm. Haha. Whatever. I'll see all of you in the new year. Enjoy your breaks.

ponderponderponder.

What's going on in my head right now? I can't even answer that question myself. A lot of things are going on. For a while, life turned off auto-pilot and I was flying high. But now, it set itself on auto-pilot again and I'm back at cruising altitude. I really miss those weeks. I was on cloud 9, a state where I'm rarely at. But one mistake ruins it all. Life just isn't fair sometimes, huh? Yeah, it sucks.

Come to think of it, I wasn't alone on that cloud. I was flying high with a very close friend of mine and we were both just so happy. But for some reason, everything decided to collapse and things just went haywire. Now we're both back where we started. Seriously. I can't describe how much it sucks.

Whatever. The past is the past. Can't change that. The present and future however, is still ours. Right now life was like how it was before, with a couple of things missing. I try not to let things effect me too much, because my neutral kind of lifestyle fits me well. Sure, shit might happen and I might be totally dead for a few days but eventually my chin'll be back up, back to the old France.

Wow, what the hell am I writing about? I don't even know, haha. I guess it was just some things to get off my chest. I hate bottling things up, but it's something I can't avoid doing. I always seem to keep things to myself. It's weird though, because I know I'm really open too. I don't know how that works out.

Haha, this post was probably boring as hell, but whatever, I'll blog about something more.. interesting[?] later on this week. But for now, this is it.

secretssssss.

Secrets. We all have them and their effect on us can vary. There are those secrets that you just don't want anyone knowing, the ones that kill you inside, and the ones that are just plain personal. Either way, secrets are still there. When someone says that they don't have any secrets, I'd frown at them and strongly disagree. You just have to think for a while and you'll find your secret.

The worst secret of all to me is the one that absolutely kills you inside. I can't really give good examples, but I do have a good one in mind. Suppose you like someone and your relationship with them is at a pretty satisfactory level. You might want to tell that person, but at the same time you might not want to risk that comfortable level you're at with them. You're stuck in your own abyss of thoughts. But you know the longer you keep that in, the more it kills you. Sucks to be in that situation, doesn't it? Yeah.

But then there are those neutral secrets. That when you tell someone, you wouldn't really care. Those are my favorite kinds. It's fun to know things about people that others don't know about.

Secrets suck, secrets are awesome. It all depends on which kind.