Bubbles and Middle School Girls.

Sooooooo, I spent my entire morning at a local university, playing with bubbles, surrounded by middle school girls. It was really entertaining!

But really.

Ever since last year, I've been volunteering at a local festival called the Julia Robinson Mathematics Festival. And honestly, it's really fun. Because I get to build shapes using Zometools, which are like K'nex or Legos for math professors, and dip them in bubble solution (with a touch of glycerin to keep the bubbles alive longer) and teach kids about minimal surfaces and Lagrange's equation without them knowing. And plus, UNC Charlotte has really tasty food.

Working with these middle school girls to build dodecahedrons, tetrahedrons, and other shapes kind of makes me want to do more events similar to the Julia Robinson Festival. I met some of my little brother's friends, and my old teachers who brought their students to the Festival, and it makes me feel happy that I'm contributing to the community that helped raise me.

Debating in Teyuhxas (aka Texas) and 3rd Quarter Drabble

My Public Forum debate partner and I qualified to the National Forensic League's tournament in Texas! I'm very excited--mostly because you have to finish top 2 in your event to qualify (which we technically didn't, because we were the alternates...) but close enough! It's still great! Especially since it means more experience for both me and my partner next year. And also because it was only our second tournament together.

On another note, this same PF (Pofo, Puff, Public Forum) partner and I are the alternates to representing North Carolina in the Catholic Forensic League national tournament, which I'm pretty excited about. I think we'll choose to go to the NFL tournament, though, because it's generally larger and a little more competitive from what I've heard. Either way, I'm really proud of how we did for these two tournaments, and really happy about how well we work together.

On another note, 3rd quarter is wrapping up now. Sleep is a luxury. My mathematics teacher is pregnant, and her due date is next week (I'm also the "godmother" of her unborn child). I have to learn all of Psychology for the upcoming AP Exam (!). I have to thoroughly read and analyze Dante's Inferno by next Wednesday (which I'm not complaining about-- I actually really enjoy the book, no matter how ironic that may be... The only thing I'm not so pleased about is that we have to set a time limit for digesting the book).

Only 10 weeks until summer break!

Pretty optimistic for someone who starts every week wishing it was the weekend.

Unicorns!

I visited the North Carolina School of Science and Math today, and took some aptitude tests in a process of application. It's basically a boarding school for juniors and seniors who have a strong interest in math and science. A self described "breeding ground for geeks". I thought I wouldn't like it. But after today, I am really debating between what I should do for next year... Should I stay at the school I am now, or should I take that risk and go to NCSSM?

I need to take a lot of things into consideration when thinking about my future. Wow, I sound crazily melodramatic, but I'm being completely serious: my future depends on what I do during high school! Because high school determines where I go to college, college determines what I do for a living, my living, quite appropriately, helps determine my life. My friend who goes to NCSSM has just gotten early acceptance into Yale, and won the Morehead scholarship to UNC Chapel Hill. But another from at the school I am attending now is a finalist in both the Benjamin N. Duke scholarship, Robinson scholarship (a dual scholarship to both UNC Chapel Hill and Duke), and to the full ride scholarship to Vanderbilt. Yes, I'm bragging on my friends. But they completely deserve it! It really inspires me to work hard, but at the same time, I can't help but be worried about what I should do...

But, note to self:
Things I don't like about NCSSM...
1) The mascot is a unicorn.
2) The cafeteria is built supposedly on top of a cemetery. Cooooooool.

Senior Exits.

I saw someone carrying a canvas larger than himself in the hallways.

Just screams of artsy senior exit presentations... Which leads me to think about how March really is the beginning of the end. To quote a friend, "I'm done with senior exits.. Which means I'm cruising through the rest of the year." For many of the seniors, I bet that their year is pretty much over. Many have been accepted into colleges, and are just vying for any scholarships left over. Some are taking gap years (my friend's older brother is hiking the ENTIRE Appalachian Mountains trail, and then going to somewhere-exotic-but-I-can't-remember to do-something-really-cool-like-build-a-library-or-something-similar).

I'm almost kind of sad, really. They'll be gone to college, and I'll still have two years of high school. When they're gone, all they can do is look back, and time still moves on...

I was always really raring to get independent, and be "grown up" (cliche, I know), but now that I think about it, once high school is gone... It's over and done with. And often times, high school can dictate the rest of your life--your continued education (for sure... Which is why all of the seniors were stressing out!), your interests.

On another note, I got my permit. Yay.

Boots.

So, as I'm studying for my Spanish midterm exam, I can't help but notice how much I rely on little mnemonic devices (which I learned about in Psychology, yay!) to learn and remember. And I also cannot help but notice how much these little tricks really get me off task.

Take, for example... Boots.

In conjugating Spanish verbs in certain tenses, there is a pattern among the yo, tu, el/ella/Ud, and ellos/ellas/Uds forms. Apparently it looks like a boot? But not really. I think it looks more like Louisiana, which I don't think looks like a boot at all... But whether I think it looks like a boot or not doesn't really matter, because Senora Ortiz says so. And whatever Senora Ortiz says, goes!

I personally think it looks more like a 'L'.

There are also sandal verbs, for el/ella/Ud, and ellos/ellas/Uds. Why are all these tenses named after shoes?! Anyway... I forgot what I was going to even say.

I guess mnemonic devices are useful on tests, but they can be kind of distracting if you think about them in depth.

I hope this doesn't go away...

I just have this burning desire to try my best at everything right now. It is kind of draining, but for some reason, this determination is just blasting through the boundaries that sleep usually sets up for me. I suppose it could be a sort of warped adrenaline rush as my midterm exams approach, in addition to the fact that it is a new year... But I hope it doesn't go away.

Lately, school's been difficult, and it's been even more difficult to motivate myself to keep on trying, to keep on working, to wake up when it's dark, do the things I enjoy doing outside of school, to come home to do homework, go to sleep for however many hours I can get, and wake up and do it all over again.

Though I somewhat enjoy this feeling of potential success (the best way I can describe it), I bet I'll feel some sort of relief after school's over and done again for the summer.

Phew.

And I am resolute.

I've decided that 2011 will be a great year for me.

Not just a great year, but a better year. I've made my resolutions, and I plan to stick to them... I probably said that last year too. But the fact that we have a new year, and a relatively clean, new slate (taking into account that I am 6 minutes away from 1/2/11 typing this post) gives me hope to try and make myself a better person.

But I guess that a New Year's resolution is something that goes in one year and out the other... (Pun completely and totally intended.)

But in the words of Edith Lovejoy Pierce: "We will open the book. Its pages are blank. We are going to put words on them ourselves. The book is called Opportunity and its first chapter is New Year's Day."

I'm looking forward to a new year.