You know what’s always weird about school this time of year?       Signing yearbooks.

There’s several types of yearbook signers:

• Those who take up a whole page with giant, bubbly handwriting. These people probably don’t really care what they’re writing to you; they just want to make themselves feel important.
• Those who take up a whole page with an actual, heart-felt letter.  These people are probably some of your best friends. The letter is either sentimental and will make you cry and sad to graduate or it’s hilarious and will make you laugh until you cry and possibly pee your pants.
• Then there’s the complete opposite: The people who write “HAGS” and their name, if not their initials. Or they only sign their name/initials. (Warning: if I sign your yearbook like this, I probably sort of hate you.)
• There are those people who have one signature message that they write in everyone’s yearboook. This message probably goes something like this: “Hey! This year was so much fun with you! I hope you have an awesome Summer! We should totally hang out! Stay cool!”  Blah blah blah.
• Those people who, similarly, write the same thing in everyone’s yearbook but it’s only an uncomfortable little rhyme that they think is clever.  Example: “Some sign in front, some sign in back, but look at me, I signed your crack!”  (…..Yeah.  I’ve had that one before…..)
• There are those who write something just to write something. “Hey. Hi, hello, howdy, hola….  H is a fun letter.” (This is an actual entry in my own yearbook.)
• Those who read all the other entries in some one’s yearbook and secretly try to top them all with the ultimate yearbook message.
• And then there are those acquaintences who mention only a couple inside jokes: “Remember when you hit your head on a broom stick and got that bruise on your head for Homecoming? Sooo funny! See you next year!”  (Also an actual entry in my yearbook.) (I never did that.)

I’m pretty sure I’ve experienced all the above sorts of yearbook signers by now.  But, you know what?  I have one more year left and I hope that next year I’ll be able to read some messages in the back of my book and not think “I wonder if they actually meant it.”

There’s also a couple different MOs when it comes to people letting you sign their yearbook:

• Those who reserve three pages – each page for a different “bestie” to take up the entire space of.
• Those who won’t let anyone at all sign it until their BEST FRIEND signs it first.
• Those who secretly compete with everyone else to get the most signatures in their yearbook, regardless of whether they are actually friends or not and secretly check out everyone else’s yearbooks.
• Those people who are too cool for you to sign their yearbooks and lend it out to their exclusive groupies and whenever you ask if you could sign their yearbook always say that one of their cronies has it.
• Those people who tell you that they didn’t get one because they don’t want you to want to sign it.
• Those who really don’t take it that seriously but might appreciate the nostalgia and lets anyone who really wants to sign their yearbook. I am this person.

So my first term started last Friday.   First off, let me explain the situation: Exams for third term wre Wednesday and Thursday, we had the first day of the new term Friday, and now we have Spring Break until Monday.  So naturally, half the school skipped on Friday.

I, unfortunately, was not one of those people.

My first hour, choir, didn’t change. Except we got a new song.  And it’s totally strange.  To start, it’s named “Las Amarillas.”  The Yellows? Here are the lyrics.  The song’s originally in Spanish, but this is a translation:

The yellow larks fly from their cactuses
No longer will the cardinals sing happily
na-na-na
and na-na-no

The trees on the hillside, since they haven’t revived
For this the larks sing, or the nest hold them down
na-na-na
and na-na-no

You are little and beautiful, and the way you are, I love you
You look like a little rose from the shores of Guerrero
with your na-na-na
and na-na-no

My father was a sparrowhawk and I was born to peck and peck
Where I place my beak, I’m like a trumpeter
na-na-na
and na-na-no

Everyone has their farewells, but none
is like this one. 

Four times five is twenty,
three times seven is twenty-one.

Yeah, you read that right.  Multiplication!  The last verse is multiplication tables!!  Oh, I don’t understand, either.  And you know how directors sometimes have notes along with the song to tell you how each bit is meant to be sung? This song has quite a few. And they’re all innuendos. They’re all things like “a little gentler now, but keep stoking the fire.“    Me and my friend, Hayley Joy, got a huge laugh out of that.

Second hour is Government.  Nothing too exciting there. Only eight or nine people were actually in it.  But there is good news; thanks to roll call, I found out that there are quite a few people I know (and like) in it that hadn’t shown up that day.

Third hour is still Algebra 3. sigh.  Only good thing about that class was we got an extra credit assignment, which I need.

Then came fourth hour.  I’ll miss my AP English class. That switched to Phys Ed.   Yeah. PE. I’ve ben dreading this class.  It’s a freshman class, but I’ve managed to put it off until this year. Anyway, I was heading down the hall towards it when I saw my ex-boyfriend (don’t worry, we’re still good friends. Only occasional awkward moments. However, I assume they’re bound to become more frequent now..).   I gave him a hug and asked what he had next. I flipped out when he said PE. 

He held out his hand to show me his class schedule, which had written on his palm (he has vocational classes in the morning for hours one and two, so he only had two classrooms written). I, in turn, pulled my sleeve up to show him mine (I only had to classrooms change, so that’s all I wrote).

Both apendages read 267, N. Gym.     
   “Wait a minute, are you in my Gov class, too??”
   ”What hour do you have it?”
I have it second, he has it third.  But still. Yet another person I can copy homework from call if I get stuck on homework.

At my school, the grading system starts everyone off at a 100% at the beginning of the term. My PE teacher believes in actually earning you grade up to an A rather than keeping it at one. So we start off with 0%.    So, with a perfect grade, I’ll still be at a 50% – failing – come the midpoint of the term! Not until the last week will it really be up to a A!       Gaaahhhhhh.

So yeah. Interesting new term.  One great thing about it is that I bought a new bathing suit for Gymn from Modcloth. It’s adorable!  See how it says, “sold out”?  Yeah, I got one of the last three!  =]     OMGANDGUESSWHATELSEIGOT.  The Sidecar Tour Dress I featured on here last month! I’m superexcited.

My personal notes to a potential suitor:

#1: Music is a huge part of my life. I will introduce you to my favorite artists. And I will be looking for some indication of what you think. If you love it, let me know. If you don’t, tell me why.

#2: Please dance with me. =] Goofily(?) and all other kinds of dancing. Don’t worry, I suck at it, too.

#3: A lack of respect towards me is a deal-breaker. No excuses.

#4: It’d be totally awesome if you would be all about holidays with me. Including National Get Over It Day. (March 9th)

#5: Please let me vent. And, if you disagree with me, please let me finish ranting before you say that you can see the other side. If you make an argument for the opposite side while I’m ranting, it’ll probably just start a fight.

#6: Please, please don’t close off. Especially during an argument. Let’s always talk, okay?

#7: Do not text me 24/7. Everyday? Sure, I’m down with that. But let me get to sleep at a reasonable hour. Let me go to school. And don’t freak if it takes me a little while to respond. I have a life.

#8: Be okay with no PDA. Holding hands is fine, but let’s not ever be attatched at the hip.

#9: Honesty is an absolute must. It’s a core value for me, so I hope it is for you, too. Don’t be the type to just tell me what you think I want to hear.

#10: Yes, I probably would prefer to buy the book as opposed to borrowing it from the library.

#11: Please don’t be one of those people who freak out about their picture being taken. I think you’re cute. And bad pictures happen to even the best of us. A picture is only embarrassing if you choose to be embarrassed by it. And you are not any picture of you. If necessary, and in those situations where you really don’t want your picture taken (I have those, too), please be mature about it and respond by saying something like, “honey, please not today. We’ll get pictures together some other time, okay?” as opposed to freaking out. Or you could suggest a compromise: Let me take a couple pictures in return for letting you pick the next movie we watch or having me pay for dinner sometime.

#12: On that note, if a compromise is to be made, let’s specify at the moment it is being suggested what the conditions are for each party. Don’t hold it over my head that I owe you something.

#13: One word: HYGIENE!

#14: Please don’t ever feed me. It’s so awkward. For me and everyone else.

#15: Drive me places, but I’d like to drive sometimes, too.

#16: I can pretty much guaruntee that I’ll try to imitate the way you talk. I do that. Please find amusement in it and don’t get offended. I don’t do it to mock you; I love linguistics.

#17: Please, no buzz-cuts.  Have hair.

#18: Please be a fellow musician. But if you are, don’t be critical or try to give me lessons unless I ask you for it.

#19: Be a real man – Love God.

#20: I would absolutely love it if you made “your face” jokes with me. =]  And if you remember that I like Chuck Norris jokes.

#21: If you interacct well with kids, I’ll melt.  =]

 (inspired by this)

So 2009 has started out as the best year of my life.  I have so many great things going on for me. Here’s a genera overview of my life in 2009:

1. I MADE MARIA IN MY SCHOOL’S PRODUCTION OF THE SOUND OF MUSIC!!!

2. I’m really making friends and loving meeting people in the play. I told one of my fellow choir girls, “I’m excited about acting wih my friends and making friends with the people I’m acting with.”

3. [Private]

4.  I don’t know if this is good or not, but I’m kind of adjusting to being an only child?  Yes, I still have those moments where I’m like, “Oh, I can’t wait to tell Deanna this!” or “I need her opinion on what to say to this guy ASAP!” and I can’t, but I’m kinda getting used to it.

5. For instance, she doesn’t know that I’m starting a music project with a guy I met at auditions for the musical. But she does now.  Because she’s read this.  ;]

7. I’ve really noticed an improvement in my singing, and especially my nerves. They’ve definitely curved. I still get nervous, but it’s pretty much my body flipping out; I can calm my mind pretty well.

8. The term is almost over. That means no more Chemistry after next Friday! And I get to start out fresh in AP History.

9. My goldfish still arent dead? I haven’t cleaned their tank since summer, probably, I feed them only once a day if I remember, they’re in my old room so I never see them. I’m the worst fish mama ever and they’re still alive. I bet it’s because they can’t help but love me so much.

10. I’ve recovered. Last year, I really had a “funk” going on. I was angry, constantly self-conscious, I had zero confidence (which was reflected in pretty much every part of my life), I had no friends at school, I freaked out over my grades (all A’s, but if it was an A- or a B, I would pretty much cry), I was depressed, my mom and I fought all the time.  I’m better! Like, 110%!  Like I said at the beginning of this post, this has started off being the best year of my life. I’ve been happy (when people ask how I am, I honestly answer “good”!) and confident, and I make friends all the time.   =]

11. I think I’ve figured out what I want to do with my life.  I really think musical theatre. I LOVE acting. I LOVE singing. So.. why not put them together?  All the other things on my list of possible career interests can be part time jobs, or jobs while I go around auditioning, or hobbies. 

12. Unfortunately, I have to leave for school now. Which means sitting through all my classes until rehearsal (after school). So school takes forever now, because I can’t wait to practice. 

What’s your 2009 been like so far?

I have had the best last few days.

Thursday night was my choir concert. We were called to show up way earlier than we needed to be there (four-o-clock call and the concert was at seven-thirty), but I was able to get to know the people in my show choir a lot better. Justin said I look like Doris Day, so that’s what he calls me now. =]

The all-girl show choir went before the senior show choir, the one that I’m in.   My group was hanging backstage manically dancing to the other group’s music.  Oh, it was so much fun! Even though I’m in show choir, I’m not one to just… dance.  But back stage, everyone just let loose and I think I might have actually been doing it right.

I will admit, I made more mistakes this concert than usual, but it was still fun.

I had some great people come see me, so that was pretty much amazing. A lot of alumni choir friends came to the concert, too, and that was really great to see them.

Friday night, I had dinner with my family and my sister’s boyfriend. That was pretty cool because I was able to geektalk with my nerdy dad and sister. 

After that was my show choir’s Christmas party.  My hair was great and I had a great outfit.   ;]  Near the end of things, we went caroling.   When we approached a house and rang the doorbell, everyone had a great idea to  start singing before they open the door.  So we just stood there, singing to a closed door. After caroling to three doors, the last house we tried actually had someone open their door for us. This nice old man came outside and he even asked for a second song! He told us to wait one minute and disappeared up the stairs.  I was half sure he was going to call the police or something on us teenagers running around the neighborhood after nine at night…. But he came back down and gave us each a dollar!  When we got back to the house where the party and our choir director were at, we rang the doorbell and caroled to her.  When “Carol of the Bells” was done, we poured the dollar coins into her hands for the choir fund!

Yesterday was the best yet. I finished my history project without much pain – I actually kind of enjoyed it. Then my friend Izzy and I went to see Twilight again, so we can mock it. When it came to the scenes that we always quote at school, we could hardly contain ourselves. 

That night, one of my best friends came over to watch The Dark Knight. (Great movie.)  He ended up coming in time to eat dinner with us, too. It ended up being a really relaxing night and definitely the best time I’ve had with him yet.

This morning, I went back to the church he goes to and I went to his college group.  The speaker was really amazing and I really got a lot out of it.

I hope my good days continue. At least through the Christmas/New Year season.  They better, they owe me for last year.

I love music. Choir is an extremely high priority for me.  My school’s choir has some really amazing songs this winter, so I thought I’d share them:

“There Will Be Rest“  -  Frank Ticheli
MSVMA Honor Choir performed this last year; that’s what the link in the name is to.  It’s gorgeous. The lyrics are one of the last poems written by Sara Teasdale. She committed suicide at the age of 48.

“There will be rest, and sure stars shining
           Over the roof-tops crowned with snow,
A reign of rest, serene forgetting,
           The music of stillness holy and low.

I will make this world of my devising,
           Out of a dream in my lonely mind,
I shall find the crystal of peace, – above me
           Stars I shall find.”

Another one we’re doing is “Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Evening“  The lyrics are a Robert Frost poem:

“Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.

My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.

He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound’s the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep.
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep. “
We’re also singing Carol of the Bells (Peter J. Wilhousky), There Is No Rose (Gary Garcia), The Sleigh (Kountz), The First Breath of Winter (Phyllis Wolfe-White), and a few others.  But I couldn’t find any videos of them, though.

However, while I was youtubing, I came across this.  I say you should watch it.  It’s hardcore.  Lol.

       Last night was my high school’s first choir concert of the year!  It was also my frst performance with show choir. As nervous as I was, I rocked the concert! Oh, it was so much fun!  I performed two songs with my show choir, one with a select ensemble, one with the women’s ensemble, and four with the whole of Chorale.

       The ending piece was a medly of songs from the Lion King. One of my few complaints with that one is that no body had any energy. That morning, we were told to be moving around a little and smiling.  I mean it’s Lion King for goodness sake! Anyway, I told my dad about that at the afterglow.

          “Well, I saw several people moving; most of them were in the back row.”
          “Yeah! Because we’re tall! There’s more of us!      Maximum capacity for awesome!”

       I had a bigger group of people that came and saw me than ever before to any of my performances ever.

       And today, I actually kind of understood my chemistry class. And I got a lot done in AP English. I’m writing an essay on The Glass Castle by Jeanette Walls.  If you haven’t read it yet, I highly reccomend it. Anyway, while we were in the computer lab, I recieved a carnation-gram for sweetest day!! ME.  I’ve never recieved a flower from anyone in my school!                     ……Okay, so it was from one of my good friends, but nevertheless, it made my day!  Besides, she’s kind of one of those people where I’m surprised that she chose to pay to have a flower sent to me of all people, me of all her other friends. (Yes, I know that sentence could have been executed much better, but I couldn’t figure out a better way to phrase it. I’m saving all my powers of perfect sentence structure for my essay)

Thing to smile about #16:  FINALLY getting the time, chance, and reason to write a real post again!

       So I did actually go to my school’s Home Coming dance! The theme this year was “Welcome to the Jungle.”  The class t-shirts have my school’s name printed with different animal prints for each year. There’s snakes, cheetahs, zebras, and giraffes. 

       Did you catch that error? Only one of the four animals depicted on our class t-shirts is correct! Cheetahs, zebras, and giraffes don’t live in a jungle! They live in the savanna! There’s a huge difference.

Savanna:

Jungle:

       Yeah, whoever is in leadership should be embarrassed.  Did none of them catch it?  Lol.

       But anyway, the dance was great and I had an awesome dress!  My only complaint is that my hair sucks and doesn’t hold a curl for more than two-ish hours. But I had so much fun.  Way more than freshman year (I didn’t go last year).  

       Ahh… Perhaps I should elaborate.  At that time, things between me and this guy were confusing. He “liked” me and I wasn’t sure if I liked him. My major excuse not to date him was that I am a Christian and he’s not. And I know it’s just high school fun, but I didn’t want to regret anything about my first boyfriend, you know?  Anyway, I spent all day primping and when I got to the dance, when the guy found me, he came up to me, held his hands out to his sides and said “Hey, look! I dressed the part!” NOTHING about me the entire night.  Now, I’m not conceited, I don’t even think I looked that great, but what kind of a clueless idiot doesn’t know to compliment the girl about something when you “go with” them to a dance?

       And he ignored me the entire night and I got swept up in drama, in a way. Because I was the only person who wasn’t involved in drama, so therefore, people all came running to me about their drama. Gr!  I ended up sitting out in the hall quite a bit until my date decided he didn’t want to be alone in front of everybody else for the first slow song, so he came and got me. He didn’t say a word, he just walked out into the hall and held out his hand, assuming I wouldn’t possibly reject him.

       ….I didn’t at the time, but I kinda wish I had. He was a jerk. And the next month to follow, he got even worse.  Ugh, I won’t explain all that here, though.

       But this year was so much better! I went with my best friend (other than my sister) and there was no pressure to dance at all, even though we did. Both slow and… regular(?).  It was a blast.

Thing to smile about #14:  Going to the Home Coming dance with a friend you’re 110% comfortable with, and know that there’s no pressure about anything.  =]

     Because I am not allowed to use my phone during school, I’ve been extremely Twitter deprived. And I came up with a solution, however, I feel pathetic for admitting this. 

     I labeled a page in my notebook “tweets,” and I wrote what I would tweet, had I access to my phone.  I don’t want to upload a billion tweets on Twitter because some of them are long, and there’s waaay too many to do at once.  Plus, they can also be viewed as my copping out and just blogging bullet highlights of my day.  So here goes:

- I think it’s amazing that some girls can sit and slouch and still be skinny and have a good figure.

-Great, my old, antique necklace is leaving gross dirt or something on my tank top.

-The girl who drives me CRAZY in my second and third our class got a mullet.

-I feel really dumb. I was just the last one to finish the pop quiz in Intro to Stats. I know I got something wrong. I looked at one I had a difficult time on off of some one else’s sheet (the teacher had stacked the papers together near my desk) and I totally messed up the order of operation.

-Self conscious. 

-Ugh. Chemistry is next.

-Note to self: bring food to eat in 3rd hour, especially Wednesdays, since we don’t have lunch. Heck, I could bring a whole mean and eat it in there.

-I like the name “Gina Lynn,” but I don’t want to use “Lynn” or “Marie” as middle names for my future kids because that’s so common.

-Chemistry is thankfully better than it was yesterday. I like my teacher better today, I actually understand what we’re doing, and it’s… almost enjoyable. My teacher seems much more happy and comfortable actually teaching, as opposed to lecturing and going over rules and such.

- I just lost the game (again).

-I love hot dogs.

-I forgot how beautiful some girls are at public school. Especially in my AP English class.

-Crazy girl asked to borrow my notes. I feel so smart!

-I’m going to prove my chem teacher wrong by getting great grades and sitting in the back.

-Because everyone talked and no one paid attention during Channel One announcements, my AP English teacher made everyone write a one-page (at least), single-spaced “journal entry” on everything they learned from watching Channel One.                                                                     Owned.

-I’m on a “your face” rampage today.

-The first song we learned in Show Choir is “Hakuna Matata.”

-I had  half a year-old chocolate bar for lunch.

-I think we should have late start + abbreviated classes everyday, not just Wednesday.

-”I can’t read the words on this map! The words are too tiny!”
  ”Well, I’m sorry the world is too big for your happiness and comfort.

-My water is smarter than your water. 

     In show choir, we all played the “ten fingers” game, where everyone puts up ten fingers, and one-by-one, around the circle, everyone says something they’ve never done. If anyone else in the circle has, they put one finger down. The goal is to get everyone else to have no fingers left.   One of the guys got down to negative eleven.

     So, the second day of school ended up really good. Even though I liked my hair better yesterday.  =]

Thing to smile about #5:  Driving past places that have their sprinklers going when it’s pouring down rain.

     I’m home after the first day of school! I’m back to public school full time. Again. It started off really well because, even though I had to wake up at 5:30, I had a stupid good hair day! Just to clarify, that means my hair looked so good, it was stupid. And I was on the radio while I was doing my make up! I called in and the topic was “what are you looking forward to about school, and what are you dreading about it?”

     My answer?  I’m looking forward to utilizing my new wardrobe! But I was dreading the fact that you don’t find out which lunch you have until third hour. I’m always so worried that I’ll go to my third hour class and it’ll be empty and locked. Okay, that’d mean that I have A lunch. So after that, I would go upstairs to lunch. By then, the lines would be horribly long and it’d take forever for me to get food. Then I’d stand on my toes in the cafeteria, looking very much like the first day of school, trying to find some one I know. By the time I do (if I do), I’ll have ten or fifteen minutes left. It’d all be downhill from there. Thankfully, that didn’t happen, but I’ll get to that later.

     My mom drove me to school this morning (not for moral support, but to save me the embarrassment of holding a giant poster for AP English for a while at the bus stop and having to carry and protect it around with me through bus conditions, of which I had no idea what to expect). We listened to Life Expectancy by Dean Koontz in the car on the way there.

     My first hour is Chorale, which was nice because I’ve been in it for two years now already and it was comfortable to start off with that. Hopefully this year will go by much more smoothly than last year. Before the first concert, (our first actual performance was a funeral because) a boy named Tim, a bass in choir, died. Our Winter concert was moved to a nearby middle school because of a bomb threat at the high school – we learned that they were shutting down the whole building AFTER we had set up the entire bake sale. The next concert was enjoyably interrupted by the fire alarm going haywire in the middle of one of our songs. The last concert was the only one that went as expected. 

     My choir director is big on making sure we understand rules. This year, my school is actually enforcing the cell phone and dress code policies (now they’re not just taking our phones for the day, they’re keeping them until the next Monday). She went through our handbooks and skimmed over and lectured about different things.

     One rule that she pointed out is “pornography or other inappropriate display may not be used to decorate the lockers.” After the initial giggling of the class, a sweet girl named Molly shouted out, “What!?”   Now, Molly is a really sweet girl. She’s adorable and naive and loves Disney, musicals, taking pictures, and the Jonas Brothers.   It. Was. Hilarious. When she reacted like that. Of course, she meant it as, “What? People actually do that?” But it sounded as if she was miffed because they don’t allow lockers to be decorated with porn, and everyone knew how she meant it and how it sounded. Believe me, it was a lot funnier if you were there and especially if you know Molly.

     Some time during passing time here, I remembered that, when my mother and I bought the pair of jeans I wore today, we got a size that didn’t quite fit and our plan was to take in the waistband. We had forgotten all about that and I walked around in elephant pants all day.

     Second hour was Intro to Statistics. I like my teacher. He’s energetic, young, comfortable to be with, and friendly. He’s totally OCD about the cleanliness of his classroom. He seems like he really, genuinely loves his job. When he brought up giving us an assignment, the cliche groans of the students sounded.

     “Oh, I love the moans! When my students moan, I just get fired up.”  That was awkward. “It usually makes me assign more.”  The initial reaction of the class was, of course, that of a typical high schooler: Not quite reacting at first, then smiling or laughing to themselves, then catching the eye of a friend to share the amusement with. That’s why they’re “groans.“

     Anyway, my third hour, Honors Chemistry came. I just went straight to my class room, hoping I didn’t find out the hard way that I had A lunch. I don’t, I actually have D. My teacher made us sit in backwards alphabetical order, with the “A” last names in the back row. He went off on a tangent about how “so many teachers make their students sit in alphabetical order and he doesn’t want to be usual.”   Great point, right? Because making your students sit in backwards alphabetical order is so out-of-the-box and totally goes against the main stream culture of teachers.

     I ended up in the second to last row. My teacher proceeded to go on and on about how people who sit in the back always get poor grades. About how, when he was stuck in the back in high school, his grades suffered, how the two students who failed the ACT test were ones that sat in the back, how, if we sit in the back, our grades “immediately go down at least a third of a grade,” yadda yadda yadda. “If you sit in the back, you suck and you’ll fail and it infallibly reflects your responsibility and character.”   Ugh.

     He’s also paranoid! I need a graphing calculator for Intro to Stats, but I can’t use it for chem. So I have to have two calculators with me, why? Because my chem teacher’s philosophy is that, because we are able to store answers on graphing calculators, it means we absolutely will save them (I don’t even know how!) and pass them out to our friends. Heck, maybe we’ll even sell them with the drugs and parking passes, hand grenades and spiked gatorade we all bring to school for our financial gain.

     The tests for that class are, from what I gathered (I don’t know for sure because I wasn’t paying attention because I was sitting in the back, being irresponsible while my IQ steadily declined every minute I sat there), usually are multiple choice, true/false, and matching things – all three have frequently saved my caboose in class. If you miss a test, you have to make it up, of course. But if you do have to do a make-up test, it’s all short answer. Yep, I’m having perfect attendance until, at least, second semester.

    Oh, there’s more. He’s not particularly aesthetically pleasing, and is kind of… just… weird. He, too, made sure we knew about the new rules in school (as did my teacher for Intro to Stats, but he didn’t make it weird, so I didn’t mention it). However, after glossing over the main things, he picked up a student handbook and read a dress code rule out loud. He savored every bit of it:

     “The showing of cleeeavage is inappropriate, and the wearing of provocative (enunciated sharply) clothing that exposes or highlights BREASTStststs and/or buuttawhcks (buttocks) is unacceptable.“

     AwkWAAARD. As if that wasn’t weird enough, he continued to go on saying that he’s a chemistry teacher, so he’s so used to saying words like “penis” and such. He told us that, while the school board covered this rule as they briefed the teachers and staff, he had raised his hand and asked if he can say “boobs,” too.   I….   Ugh. Class seemed to drag on forever because of my aching, gurgling stomach and the second hand looked like it was rotating around the face of the clock more slowly than usual.

    Lunch was uneventful, expensive, and annoyingly crowded. I found a choir friend (who I’ve known since freshman year and who I acted in Macbeth with this summer) to sit with, which was awesome.

     Finally, my last class came. AP English 11. So far, my favorite class this year. My teacher is great. She’s fifty-six, energetic, and kinda crazy. Her hair is short and modern and greying. By looking at her, you can tell that she’s the creative, artsy/writer type. When she told us about herself, she explained how she paints rocks. Odd at first, but she continued to say that, when she travels, she looks for rocks that some how resemble a heart. She paints them bright, happy colors with nail polish – several layers. That’s a lot of nail polish. She told us that at the end of the course, she brings in all the rocks and lets you pick out one for yourself!

     One of our assignments is to bring in ten pictures that “mean something to us” or describe us in some way. Clip art, cut out from “mazagines” (yes, she really says it like that), our own photography, anything. Extra credit if you bring in twenty. Once we have everyone’s pictures we’re decorating the bulletin boards in our room in a collage of “ourselves.” I am a photographer, so this is possibly my favorite school assignment ever! I asked if all of my pictures can be of my photography and she said yes. I’m so excited! I get to pick twenty of my favorite pictures I’ve ever taken and show them off! Every one will see them! Whether they like them or not, whether they stand out to them or not, they are pictures I took and created that they’ve never seen before. Ever! I get to show them a new image and viewpoint they’ve NEVER seen in their entire lives! Gah. I love this.  :D

     So that was my first day. All in all, very good.

Thing to smile about #4: Being way more confident about yourself than you have been in a long time.