Stressed and Depressed, but Still Well Dressed.

Week 14

This entry is a shoutout to my most dedicated readers.  About 5 months ago, I posted an entry at 2:10 in the morning.  This was around my second week of school, when not only was I not used to being back in school after three and half months of summer, I was not used to the hardships of junior year.  The terrifying thrills of being up until two in the morning on a fairly regular basis were very new to me and I was not coping very well.  Well, reader, with time and practice comes mastery, as I am sitting on my bed at 3:10 in the morning (an hour later than the post from 5 months ago) and I feel great!  In the blog from 5 months ago, I talked about the types of beverages I used to stay awake.  When I look back, I realize my mistake that night was to be drinking Coca-Cola.  Although it is a delicious and delightful drink, it does not provide the necessary caffeine to keep a high school student awake when doing homework.  Tonight, I learned from my juvenile mistakes, and I drank a bad cup of coffee.  Now, I emphasize that badness of this coffee, because it is the pure bitterness and disgust that keeps me more awake and alert.  It is not simply the caffeine that is necessary in keeping one up at the most ridiculous hours of the night, but the shock of a bitter, stale liquid hitting one’s lips whence taking a sip of the only hope of getting one’s homework done.  5 months ago, I attempted to enjoy being up so late, which I now realize is purely impossible.  I have learned a lot in these five months of my junior of high school, some of which I wish I had not learned.  This year has been an awakening.  My morals have been flipped inside-out, upside-down, and backwards.  I remember last year, I used to be a very happy, giddy person, and now I find I do not have the energy for that any more.  I am much more calm and mellow, and sometimes downright bitter.  I don’t like this feeling, reader.  I have grown up.  I am now faced with responsibility and as college approaches faster and faster, I am faced with actually having to think about my future.  I have always been the type of person that does not think more than ten minutes ahead in their life, and now I am faced with mapping out, at the very least, the next 5 years of my life.  I wonder where the time has gone.  I remember that night 5 months ago like it was yesterday.  I had my whole junior year ahead of me, which seemed like the worst possible thing, but if I could go back now I would.  I don’t think I would do anything differently, I would just like to have the time to do it all over again, but remind myself to enjoy the process.  

Even at the worst stages of your life, there is something to be happy about.  Reader, please remember this.  Even if it feels like nothing is going your way, find the one thing that is and hold onto it.  Life is too short to be unhappy.  Life is too short to not enjoy every second of it.  So even if it is 3:30 in the morning, or if you have your whole junior year ahead of you, or your whole life ahead of you, buckle down and enjoy the ride.  

’Til next week, reader.

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Week 13

Hello Reader!  Long time no talk.  To recap on my two weeks of sickness, I am much better now.  My immune system is my friend once again, but my heavy workload remains.  It appears as if the work has gotten harder and more abundant since I’ve been back from being so sick and I know exactly why that is: Trimester Finals.  

I believe I have said before in this blog that my school is run on a trimester system.  This means that we have finals right before Thanksgiving break and it also is the biggest hurdle before our glorious spring vacation which lasts just about the entire month of March.  The finals themselves are hard, but the weeks leading up to it is harder.  During these few weeks right before finals, teachers are trying to cram everything they should have taught us into the last few lessons we have.  Tests, projects, and essays are being handed out in every class and expectations are rising.  We are approaching the end of two-thirds of our school year, and for juniors that translates to being ready for senior year.  Especially with seniors getting their college acceptances and senior spring readily approaching, the junior teachers want to make sure we don’t have any false hope.  They want to make sure that we understand that senior year is difficult, and that if we want the college acceptances and senior spring we are seeing now, we have to work for it.  It’s a great notion and it is definitely important to understand, but living it is so much harder.  In every class, I have assignments piled up from regular homeworks, to projects to essays and tests.  It’s ‘hell-week’ as they call it in the show business, but I would say that’s an understatement.

A piece of advise to those of you going through the same thing: remain calm, it gets better.  This may be the hardest two weeks of your year, but in just 14 days it will be over and we’ll be relaxing on spring break (or going on college tours, which is probably more accurate).  Either way, these long hours of homework and busy days at school will come to an end eventually.  Just take a deep breath and you will get from point A to point B safely.  

Even past March Break, we are looking forward to spring which is always everyone’s favorite trimester.  The sun is finally shining, the snow melts away and everyone is much happier once again.  The work load usually lightens up because everyone is looking forward to summer, and at my school, we don’t need to worry about finals because that is replaced by a three week project period.  The incentive of getting through these next couple of weeks is strong, so, reader, if you’re in the same boat as I am, hold on.  We’re going to make it.

If motivating yourself doesn’t work, try this banana.  I think it will help.

’Til next week, reader.

Week 12

Reader, I’m still sick.  My fingers are fumbling to reach each key, I am supported in sitting up solely by the pile of pillows under my head, and I can feel myself slowly sinking into them as I fall into a deep sleep.  This has been life since Thursday.  I have been out sick, feeding on Chicken Noodle Soup and warm tea.  I am only functioning enough to watch Netflix (which is not something to complain about).  Honestly, I am surprised I’m functioning enough to write this.  With each key I press, I feel my fingers growing weaker, my eye lids growing heavier, and my head pounding harder.  But, reader, these are not the worst of my issues.  Although I constantly feel as if I could slip out of consciousness and to a deep, luxurious sleep, I am kept awake by the taunting pile of books and binders next to me bed.  These are supplemented with my growing inbox of emails from teachers that say “Get well soon! You have a test when you get back.”  Any work I attempt to do is only met with confusion and frustration.  I’m torn between going back to school, so I can stay caught up, and staying at home so I can recuperate my health.  It’s a constant debate, and at this point I’m not sure which is more important.  What I do know is that when I get back, I will have piles of work waiting for me, regardless of how many school days I miss.  

My problems continue to get larger as I am at the peak of my most intense athletic season.  I am a ski racer and have been for a number of years.  I race both interscholastically in a high school league and in a bigger league known as USSA.  Upcoming, I have a high school race on Wednesday and a USSA race next Sunday, but if I don’t have my work done I’m afraid I won’t be able to race.  I have practices everyday after school, and I wouldn’t want to take time off of them to finish work because in order to do well in the races, I have to practice.  And so I face the age-old predicament of what comes first: sports or school.  Although some high schoolers see themselves as predominantly academic or predominantly athletic, most high schoolers tend not to know which they want to prioritize.  

High School is about finding a balance; a balance of academics, athletics, extracurriculars, and friends.  There are so many aspects and components of an average high schoolers life, that it can be difficult to know when there’s too much of one thing and not enough of another.  The balance is hard to find, but it is essential in success as a high schooler.  

Right now I’m just hoping my body finds balance through homeostasis and I recover from whatever this bug is.  Balance is hard, my friend, but it is absolutely necessary.

’Til next week, reader.

Week 11

Have you ever seen that NyQuil commercial with the guy that walks into his toddler’s room and says “I’m really sorry, I’ve gotta take a sick day.”  And then the voiceover says “Dads can’t take sick days, that’s why you take NyQuil”  and it shows the guy sleeping his cold away.  That’s what high school is like, except without the sleeping.  Reader, I’m sick.  My head hurts, I’m stuffy, my whole body aches and all I want to do is to climb into bed with a cup of tea  and watch Netflix until I slowly fade into sleep then wake up when it is convenient for me.  But instead, I’ve spent the past hour calculating the velocity at which a feather is dropped from a building that is x feet high.  In High School, you don’t get sick days.  Missing one day of school feels like missing a month.  Classes move at such a fast pace that if you even dose off for ten seconds you’ve missed a crucial part of the lesson and are lost for the next hour.  Attention in high school is paramount, but being able to pay attention is a trait that the vast majority of us lack.

Despite the feeling of nausea and the utter fight to keep my eyes open, I continue to complete my homework because that’s what we high schoolers do.  Colleges don’t interpret a drop in grades as a “minor set back” or a “sick day.”  No of course not, because you know that kid from Palo Alto who’s taking 5 APs at a time isn’t taking a sick day.  And so we load up on the Advil and Tylenol, get a thermos full of tea and pop a couple of cough drops to get through the day.  It always seems like teachers add work when you’re sick too.  Like they see that you’re miserable and decide that they can help take your mind off of it by adding an essay and a test.  

Everything seems more stressful when you’re sick.  High Schoolers have such little internal motivation as it is, because most motivation is external (i.e. grades, teachers, parents, college), that when you’re sick any motivation that came from within is completely demolished.  High School is bad enough, adding a sickness, no matter to what degree, makes it that much harder.

The worst part is that because I go to a boarding school, everyone gets sick at the same time.  It’s like the plague broke out, and no one will go near each other because everyone knows just what being sick means: utter miserableness for 7-12 days.  You can try to run, but you can’t hide.  Unless you have the strongest immune system ever recored by man, you can’t avoid a campus-wide illness.  When there’s a virus floating around, classes are half empty, boxes of tissues are being replaced by the hour and a look of dread has overtaken everyone’s face.  It becomes an episode of the Walking Dead.

Well reader, wish me luck to this upcoming week of sneezing, coughing, and fighting to stay alive.

My Current Mood:

’Til next week, reader.

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Week 10

Happy New Years Reader! It certainly has been awhile since my last post.  I haven’t posted since last year!  I love that joke.  Well, New Years is the time to create new resolutions and redefine yourself as a person.  I usually disagree with this because I believe there really is no difference between December 31st of one year and January 1st of the next one.  The only thing that is changing is the earth’s position to the sun, and I don’t believe in astrology so that is not a valid reason.  Everything about your life is still going to be the same regardless of the year, although it is a sort of new beginning that can be an excuse to start changing the parts of your life that aren’t up to par with how awesome the rest of your life is.

This year, despite my cynical views on how a simple date change is not going to change your life, I am making a New Years resolution.  That resolution is absolutely going to take all year and then some.  Reader, my resolution is to get into college.  Although it may sound easy, the college process is a long, festering event that can break some hearts and make some dreams come true.  I have officially begun my college process and have a rough list of where I could see myself going when the time comes.  Though it is fun to picture myself on college campuses in places foreign to the luscious woods of New Hampshire, meeting people I never believed I would and enjoying experiences I never deemed possible, that is not the impossible task in this quest.  The being there is easy, the getting there is hard.  I have begun the college process and I am still not going to be in college for another 21 months.  I have 21 months to prove myself worthy to the colleges of my choice.  I have 21 months to work and learn in order to prepare for these colleges.  I have 21 months living in these deep, dark woods until I can set foot on the foreign land of college.  21 months.  

I have a very persistent personality, which can be quite difficult sometimes.  When I start something, I simply cannot just put it down or move onto something else.  Just today, I was at an event for children and I was supposed to being entertaining the kids, but I had picked up a coloring book and I couldn’t stop until I had finished coloring in Snoopy’s dog house.  I find that mentality with college as well.  I don’t like thinking that with all this mulling and preparation, at this time next year I may still not know where I will be going that following September.  I believe that many high school students feel this.  It is quite difficult to draw this process out to the extents at which it is.  It’s not a short attention span or the pettiest of needing to know now, but the excitement and anticipation that comes along with it.  It’s like picking up an amazing book and not wanting to put it down.  The college process is exciting, endearing, and slightly frightening.  And I am excited to see where it takes me.

’Til next week, reader.

Week 9

Reader, I would like to talk to you about making choices.  High school is all about making certain decisions.  What classes you’ll take, who your friends are, and what you want to do with your life are all decisions that have come up in these crazy four years.  Some of these choices may only affect you in the short term, but some can have lasting affects on your entire life.  I think the hardest part of growing up, is understanding that what you do now will affect your future.  Yes, it is possible to change route in life, and you most likely will not stick to one road for your entire life, but it’s the actions we take now that open those opportunities for the future.

A girl I went to school with for a couple of years is pregnant.  She is 16 years old and with child.  I remember being in school with her just a few years ago, when we were all so young and innocent.  None of us ever thought that would happen to one of us, but sometimes it’s simply an unfortunate turn of events.  This is going to have serious ramifications on the rest of her life.  She will be going into her senior year with a child.  This will affect her ability to study during her senior year, and seriously jeopardize her ability to go to college.  This is a defining moment in her life and will dictate what she is and isn’t able to do.  

High school defines us.  Whether it’s too the extremes of getting pregnant, or simply your GPA or SAT scores, it can dictate what we do for the rest of our lives.  The opportunities that are open to us later in life are opened by our choices made now.  We are required to prepare ourselves for what is to come, but the problem is that we have never actually experienced life.  We don’t know what it’s like to pay taxes, or work a job, or be responsible for another human being.  We are blindly searching for answers in life when we haven’t even had the chance to ask a question.  We are deciding, now, how our lives should turn out, but we are entirely unsure of what we want.  I see so many people stressing over where they want to go to college or what they want to major in, because we haven’t had any life experiences that would tell us what we want to do for the rest of our lives.  What I am quite unsure of is whether I believe the high school experience should have more real life experiences, or if they should let us hold onto our innocence for just awhile longer.  

Reader, I hope you make good choices, although I’m not really sure what that means. My only advice to you would be to live and learn and if a choice turns out to be a mistake, don’t make the same mistake again.  Although, I tend to struggle with that myself.

‘Til next week, Reader.

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Week 8

Well, reader, I survived the fall trimester.  My grades have been locked in and I have received my first, junior year GPA, which is slightly terrifying.  It’s finally settling in that this is what counts, these are the grades that colleges will look at.  What I do now can have serious ramifications on my entire future, and yet I still sit in my room and binge on Netflix.  

Reader, I would like to talk to you about a serious disease that I am suffering from too early in life.  It is a disease that many of us will struggle with at some point, but struggling with it too early can lead to serious problems.  This disease is called “senioritis.”  Senioritis causes students, usually seniors in high school, to reduce their efforts in their school work due to already being accepted to college.  This is something most students struggle with, but leaves everyone in a terrible situation.  Senioritis usually occurs between November 15th and January 15th of one’s senior year.  This is when early action and regular action applications are due.  Once a student submits their applications, their grades are locked in, thus the college will no longer see the progress the student is making.  With senioritis, students often begin to shirk their responsibilities once the applications have been submitted.  One senior described it as if every trimester up to his senior year had been a check point in which he has to maintain a certain GPA, but now in his senior year it was as if he could see the light at the end of the tunnel, which ultimately reduces the motivation to get there.  Seniors tend to believe that their grades no longer matter once they get accepted to college, but that could not be farther from the truth.  Colleges will continue to look at the progression of the students throughout the rest of their year.  Colleges continue to evaluate the students, and are able to revoke their acceptance if need be.  All in all, senioritis is very traumatic, especially if one catches it earlier in life, such as myself.  

Over the fall trimester, I had great motivation to do well in my classes and make Summa Cum Laude, despite my vigorous course load.  I had a tremendous scare as my AP Biology grade teetered at an 89 for the last two weeks of classes.  My teacher put in 15 grades at the end of the trimester and it rose my overall grade two points.  I felt more accomplished than I had ever felt before.  That feeling of accomplishment and success eventually turned into a feeling of completeness.  I now have returned to school, still feeling complete, but realizing I still have two-thirds of this school year remaining.  I have been struggling all week to remind myself that I am not a senior, I have a whole year before I even apply to college, and I absolutely cannot get senioritis.

Senioritis is a serious disease and can have serious ramifications.  If you or a loved one is experiencing symptoms of laziness, feelings of completeness, or over-joyfulness during the academic day, they might be suffering from senioritis.  Check for signs of Netflix bingeing, bragging about being accepted to certain colleges (often accompanied with terms such as “I’m done” or “I did it, it’s over”), or random calculations of the lowest grade one might need to get on an exam in order to not fail the course.  This is a serious disease and should be brought to an end. #FightforSenioritis

’Til next week, reader.

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Week 7

How to Survive Finals Week

Well, reader, it is officially finals week.  Because my school is set up on a trimester system, we are approaching my week of trimester exams and I am under a lot of stress.  I recently read a Times Magazine article entitled 6 Tips for Surviving Finals Week.  Although they propose some interesting points, I have some apposing points of view.

1. Times: Verify the details

Me: Don’t bother

Sure it’s important to know what’s going on.. but is it really?  Go with the flow, figure things out as the go on.  Hang out with your friends until you think you might have to be somewhere then figure it out.  Not knowing will help with the stress because you can’t stress over what you don’t know.  Ignorance is bliss.  Stay oblivious, my friend.

2. Times: Get some sleep

Me: Sleep is for the weak

Who needs sleep???  When you finally figure out that your final is first thing in the morning (because you followed my advice and chose to stay oblivious) and you haven’t studied yet, grab a Red Bull, make a cup of coffee and pull that all-nighter.  More studying=better grades, amirite?? Sleeping isn’t that important and won’t help you at all.  Cram, cram, cram all night long.

3. Times: Stay active

Me: Don’t move if you don’t have to

Stay in bed!  If you don’t have anywhere to be, why bother adding more stress by even getting out of bed.  Getting out of bed only means having to face the world.  Remember number 1 when we said we were going to stay oblivious?  If you feel the need to do something more than just lay in bed and stare at the ceiling, grab your laptop and watch some Netflix.  Netflix and chill, anyone?  Being active is only going to add more stress to your day, so do yourself a favor and don’t go outside.

4. Times: Eat well

Me: Sugar, sugar, sugar

Sugar is a comfort food, and you’re going to need as much comfort as you can get.  Load up on the chocolate, soda, and cookies because it’s going to be a long week.  Sugar will keep your endorphins up and will make finals week slightly more bearable.  But really, use any comfort food that works for you.  This could be McDonalds, Ramen or a favorite at my school, chicken finger subs from a local convenience store.  I also recommend Red Bull because if we refer back to number 2, sleep is for the weak and you’re going to need that in order to stay up for 72 hours.

5. Times: Experiment with different methods of studying

Me: Do whatever works

If a method of studying works for you, do it.  If it doesn’t work.. ehh, it’s whatever.  I find crying works sometimes.  If you’re really stressed out, grab some comfort food, cry for a bit, and reevaluate your life.  It helps.

6. Times: Silence your social media accounts

Me: Don’t disconnect

If there’s one thing that’s going to keep you sane, it’s social media.  Take a break from studying, pull up Instagram, snapchat your friends, and tweet about how frustrated you are.  Social media is kind of like a mass therapy session.  If you can see how flustered everyone else is, then you realize that we’re all in the same boat, and we will get through this together.

Finals week is one of the most stressful weeks of anyone’s high school or college career.  Good luck to anyone else going through this, and to anyone who is not, offer your support because it is a very difficult week.  Try out some of my strategies, or maybe some of Times Magazine’s if you are mainstream.  Whatever works for you!

’Til next week, reader.

Citation:

Witte, Brian. "6 Tips for Surviving Finals Week." Time. Time, 12 May 2015. Web. 15 Nov. 2015.

http://time.com/3854469/college-stress-exams-tips/

Week 6

If I could have anything more in the world it would be time.  I find that time is something so valuable, yet so wasted.  We wish away the hours until we’re out of class, the days until the weekend, and the years until we’re out of school.  People always seem to be in a rush to get somewhere.  No one ever takes the time to just sit and enjoy life in that moment; everyone is constantly focused on what’s next.  I’m entirely guilty of this myself.  I find myself counting the hours until I’m done with school and counting the days until my next vacation.  The problem is I’m always on the move.  I get out of class and usually have to go meet with a couple of teachers, then I have sports, then I have drivers ed, and by the time I’m done with that I have to start homework.  I find I don’t have 2 seconds to breath ever, and this often results in me counting the minutes until the next thing.  The scariest part of this is that I know I’m wishing away my life.

I saw a tweet once that had a few simple equations:

Sleep+Good Grades=No Social Life

Sleep+Social Life=Good Grades

Social Life+Good Grades=No Sleep

These three things are very important to teenagers, but it is impossible to achieve all three.  You can hang out with your friends and get lots of sleep, but you won’t have time to do your homework.  You can do your homework and get lots of sleep, but you won’t have time to hang out with your friends.  Or you could get good grades and hang out with your friends, but get no sleep.  This last option, unfortunately, has been the pattern in my life.  I refuse to give up my social life, because I believe it is the only thing that keeps me sane.  With all the schoolwork and homework I get, I need time for my brain to turn off.  I find this relaxation to be more helpful than sleep, although many people, including my doctor, may disagree.  My problem is that I feel like sleep is a waste of time.  If you are to get 8 hours of sleep per night, which is advised, you are sleeping one-third of your life away.  This brings me back to wanting more time.  It scares me that I could spend one-third of my life asleep.  I feel like there’s so much more I could be doing, so much more I could accomplish if I didn’t sleep.  Although this may not be the best solution to my problem, it helps me feel like I’m not wishing my entire life away.  

Time is a scary thing.  It feels as though it slipping through my fingers and I simply cannot grasp it.  But reader, please promise me, that no matter what, you will not wish your life away.  Life is too precious of a thing to not appreciate.  

’Til next week, reader.

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Week 5

Happy Halloween reader!  Although I couldn’t really say it is.  I saw this tweet the other day that said, “Scary Haunted House Idea: People pop out and ask you what you're doing after graduation.”  Evidently, I thought this was both hilarious and painfully true.  This year is the first year of my entire life that it simply does not feel like Halloween.  Needless to say, I haven’t gone trick-or-treating in 3 or 4 years, but there’s usually some sort of feeling of Halloween that I'm just not getting this year.  This could be because my school’s dress up day was a day early, and I really only used it as an excuse to be out of our “business-dress” dress code.

It could also be because I’ve officially grown up.  I think junior year has been kind of a wake up call.  Freshman year, we were treated like babies.  Our teachers rewarded us with stickers and lollipops for showing up on time and getting our work done, and although it felt ridiculous, in retrospect, it was so helpful.  Sophomore year we were given our freedom, but it was almost unnecessary because the work was so easy.  The underclassmen life is definitely something I miss.  This year, we are given the freedom, but have so much responsibility that comes along with it.  It’s this mixture of freedom and responsibility that indicates I have officially grown up.  We, as juniors, are required to make huge decisions that will forever change our lives, these decisions being college, classes, summer work, etc.  It’s crazy to think about how fast we have approached this point in our lives, but how endless this process seems.

I’m constantly in a state of either wanting to be 30 with a family, a job, and my life figured out or 6 and have my whole life ahead of me.  It’s this state of confusion that is so difficult for teenagers.  There are many times that we are not content with leaving a situation as is.  We want to find answers, and won’t stop until we do.  The problem with this is that we can’t find these answers.  We don’t need to know what we want to do in life, where we want to go, or how we want to live.  During, or even after, college this is entirely subject to change.  It is impossible to predict where our lives will go, but these moments right now are contributing to that development.  That’s probably what’s so scary about growing up; it’s that every step along the way will have major affects to the future.  The future is so vast and undefined, yet seems so close.  Being 30, most of these questions would be answered, although new ones would be arising, but being 6 the most important unknown is if you’re mom packed you a pudding cup in your lunch for dessert.

So wishing I was dressing up as one of those minions and begging people for candy tonight, but instead I got homework!

’Til next week reader.

Yet another week has passed, and junior year is well underway.  I’m still taking 3 APs, 2 sciences and have no free block.  The way my school is set up, this is a pretty intense schedule.  I recently looked into trying to somehow lighten up my schedule.  The only place I could see this happening, as I want to go into science and didn’t want to drop either of my science courses, was in my language course.  I’m currently in French III, and it is actually really difficult.  It’s rumored amongst the small population of French students in my school (as most students take Spanish) that French III is the hardest French class in the school because it is the last year of French that focuses on grammar and vocabulary.  Sacré Bleu!  The French IV class watches movies and French V consists of French-Canadians.  Naturally, I wanted out of French III.  Although I have met the minimum 2-year language requirement and could technically drop out, life just isn’t that simple.  College always gets in the way.  Although my school only looks for 2 years of a language, colleges typically like to see 3 to 4.  So here I am wondering what I should do.  I thought about switching to Spanish, because not only would it lighten my schedule but I have come to find that most of my friends are native Spanish speakers, and it would be nice to know what they’re saying… and if they’re talking about me.  I’ve also found the Spanish is a rising language in the US.  The issue I faced was that colleges tend to look for consistency and commitment in their applicants.  That being said, after taking 5 years of French, as I’ve been in French since 7th grade, colleges would think it’s very suspicious to be switching now.  I assume that many high school students face this same issue.  We are not only struggling to take classes and do things that interest us, but also what “looks good.”  No matter how much we say we’re not, we are always trying to impress the anonymous admissions office sitting in a round office, judging us from afar.  And we know that they want us to be ourselves and do what we love, and we want to do what we love, but there’s always that kid who’s passion is taking 11 APs, feeding the hungry and going to the Olympics all at the same time.  No matter what we do or how we approach the situation, we never feel adequate.  High School is a tough couple of years in which we are just trying our best to figure out what we want in life.  The struggle comes from the amount of outside forces that influence our decisions.  College, money, and jobs are all things that we think about, and it’s hard to balance the pressures of doing those while doing the things that we are passionate about.

Well, I never switch to Spanish because when I told one of my Mexican friends, who is almost trilingual, that I wanted to switch he said “So you’ll never be bilingual because you’re a quitter.”  And my competitive nature kicked in so I’m going to stay in French, that way I can say things to him that he won’t understand.  Then he’ll know how I feel when he speaks to me in Spanish.

Well, reader, I’m taking the PSATs next week.  Wish me luck!  I’ll let you know how it goes.

’Til next week.

Citation

Although this blog is designed to view the more negative, broadly relatable attributes of junior year, I wanted to use this post to focus on a more positive piece of advice regarding college that I was given.  

I was recently at a scholarship dinner with the man that funds my tuition, and is the reason I am able to attend my school.  I am very grateful for not only the money he gives, which in turn provides me with many opportunities, but I am grateful for the advice he passes onto his scholarship recipients.  He has lived a long and illustrious life with many great accomplishments.  He worked in several fields and had great success in all that he did.  Throughout his life he was faced with many options and obstacles that he had overcome to achieve what he did.  Because of these challenges, he has had much to tell us about choosing a path for our lives.

At the dinner, we had a question and answer session in which I asked him what he wanted to tell those of us that were starting to think about the next step of our lives, i.e. college.  He gave us a simple piece of advice: “do what you love.”  This is a very simple concept that goes so far.  There are so many people out there that don’t focus on what they love, they focus on the one evil in the world: money.  Too many people only go to college to get a job that provides a lot of money.  They have lost interest in what they’re passionate about and can only focus on the economics of their lives.  Money has taken over the world as we know it.

This man encouraged us to steer away from these modern ways of society.  Although it may sound counterintuitive coming from a very wealthy man, he truly meant what he said.  He started in jobs that paid well but were not interesting to him, and so he decided to throw it all away to pursue what he loves.  He pursued his dreams and still managed to find himself in a position of power, but even if that dream hadn’t taken him to the position he gained, he still would have appreciated what his life offered him.  

What I take away from this man and this advice is to start life by doing what you love and what interests you, and the rest will come.  It is better to have a full life in which you feel like you’re contributing to society through your passion than to be very wealthy but have no meaning to your work.  There’s a quote that says “Success is not the key to happiness. Happiness is the key to success. If you love what you are doing, you will be successful.”  

If there’s one thing that makes junior year and the rest of my high school experience worth it, it’s knowing that this will all pay off one day.  One day I’ll look back at this blog and remember the years of struggle, and the days of stress, that all led up to my great achievement in life: happiness.  

So this was little heavier than what I originally intended for this blog, but I believe there are some things that just can’t go unsaid.  And to any and all of my readers out there that are struggling through these years, remember the bigger picture.  Remember why you’re doing this and if you don’t know, then ask yourself.  And please, I beg of you, don’t let the answer be money.  

‘Til next week, reader.

Citation

It’s currently 2:10 in the morning and I am just finishing my homework.. the joys of junior year.  I have to get up for school in 4 hours, but I decided to take some time to explain why I am up at 2:10 am.  There is one reason that I assume many high school and college students can speak to.  It keeps me up both during the day and late night: caffeine.  I make sure I get to school in time for breakfast every morning.  It is not the breakfast I am concerned about, as much as the coffee.  Yes, I am 16 years old and already overly-dependent on coffee.  I justify this need by my extensive knowledge on the subject.  My older brother was a barista at a local coffee shop, so I learned a lot about what makes coffee good.  I don’t settle for Starbucks or even Dunkin Donuts, even though I am from New England.  I like my coffee expensive and freshly brewed.  I am fortunate enough that my school has 6 large thermoses of freshly brewed coffee every morning, and more waiting to be put out.  Obviously, I’m not the only one with a slight caffeine problem; coffee is a staple amongst high school students.  It is because of this caffeine that I’m not on a normal sleep schedule.  I’ve recently started to cut back on the amounts of caffeine I was intaking because there was one day this year (already) that I had three cups of coffee and two Redbulls, and I still almost fell asleep in class.  It was at this point that I decided it was becoming too much.  Although I have cut back, I have not cut off caffeine and still probably depend on it a little too much.  I usually have one cup of coffee in the morning, and I will have some form of caffeine at night, whether it be coffee, Redbull, or in tonight’s case: Vanilla Coca-Cola.  Now this helps with the homework, because I stay awake and focused, but when I finish the extensive amounts of homework, I’m still awake.  It is a never ending conundrum that only refreshes itself in the morning when I only get four hours of sleep and need a cup off coffee to wake me up.  I’ve tried to escape this vicious cycle, but it has sucked me in and there’s no way of getting back out.

I truly admire those who do not rely on caffeine.  There are some people that simply get up and go to class and feel fine all day.  Those people are also probably the people that have good time management and get their homework done before 2:10 in the morning.  Sadly, I am not one of those people and I do not see that happening in the near future.  For now, I will remain on this tiresome and slightly unhealthy system of living.