The Clouds on a Sunny Day

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W2h0KOQLsW4 (Watch this! it's the song I talk about in the beginning, or don't watch it just, listen! I couldn't figure out how to get the video link thing to work on the blog, sorry!)

So I’m currently listening to the acoustic version of the song The Ocean by Sunny Day Real Estate, a band I had never heard of, nor have I yet to find anyone else who’s heard of it, since my friend told me he was going to their concert. Now this is particularly relevant, or should be, because I ‘m about to go meet him at this concert on Wednesday night, all the way in DC. This is really fascinating to me, because I have no idea why I’m going. Basically right now it’s because I want to do something that really makes absolutely no sense. These are the reasons that I should not go to this concert (and the very few reasons why I should go):

Con #1: Map quest says the journey will take four hours and forty-five minutes. My chemistry professor just went to some big science conference this weekend in Washington and she said it took her eight hours to get there because of all the traffic. I’m hoping she was deeper into the city than I am going and that was her main problem. I’m going to the 9:30 Club, a venue that holds a maximum capacity of 1200 people, just in case you were wondering. And this venue is supposed to be on the western side of the city, which hopefully means I won’t have to go through the city. In any case the concert starts at 7:00PM or at least that’s when the doors open, and if it takes five hours to get there, then I would have to leave at 2:00PM on Wednesday.

Con #2: I want to see my friends. And if I’m driving all the way out here for one concert of a band that I just started listening to yesterday, I should probably give myself sometime to see them. But I have yet to know when they are supposed to arrive in the city. It’s supposed to take them seven hours to get there from Columbus, Ohio. If they say they’re going to get there at five, then I will want to be there at five, which is, I know, dumb of me. This would consequently mean that I would be skipping both my English (this class) and my Biology class for that day.

Sub-con, 2a: I will miss an English in class writing assignment, thus losing points, and I would be ditching a class, well for this now known reason, which I kind of think is rude, especially since our class is so small.

Sub-con, 2b: I will miss biology, now nothing that I heard in seminar helped me on the test that I just took, but because of that it’s currently the class that I’m struggling most in. Especially since I naively believed that if I did the homework, read the chapter, and looked through lecture notes, I’d be set for the test, WRONG, by the way. Also in this class our professor, Professor Bikimeh (this is not the correct spelling), issues random attendance quizzes (because our class has around three hundred kids in it, so daily attendance would be a disaster), which can count up to ten percent of my grade, and I need that ten percent to be as high as it freakn’ can.

Con #3: The last time I talked to them they wanted to turn around and drive home immediately after the concert was over, because Ian, one of my friends, has classes on Thursday morning at 9:00AM. Now it’s one thing for them to turn around and drive back, because they have each other, there’s two of them, but I other hand will be driving solo. Which is completely starting to scare me, and might scare me out of doing it. I’m completely used to driving long distances, last month I drove the seven hours home from our Canadian family reunion, but I had my parents in the car the entire time, and it was all during the day. Wednesday night the concert will probably be over at 12:00AM or 1:00AM, and so I would be driving home until 5:30AMish or probably later.

Sub con, 3a: THIS IS PROBABLY REALLY DANGEROUS.

Pro #1: I don’t have class until 6:00PM on Thursday, and it’s my chemistry recitation.

Con #4: Wednesday night is the time of my chemistry class homework help session, which I have religiously gone to since the beginning of time, i.e. five weeks ago.

Pro #2: There is tutoring/homework help in the CLC (Chemistry Learning Center) from 12:00PM to 4:00PM everyday. So if and when I don’t understand a homework problem I can go to someone there.

Con #5: They go over every homework problem, practically step by step, in homework help session.

Pro #3: Maybe for the first time I will actually have to try and learn how to do the homework by myself, instead of just waiting for the help session and using my notes to walk myself through it.

Con #6: I will not my parents of my excursion. For obvious reasons they would do anything but approve of this plan. If it was the weekend and I was going to stay the night somewhere and come back, they wouldn’t care, but the whole driving home on the same night, on a school night, would totally not go over well. If for some reason something happens to me, I don’t want to look like an idiot, because this is clearly an idiot trip. And my parents would be incredibly angry and disappointed that I decided this was an okay idea.

Pro (more like advantage) #4: My car is my best friend and the best car in the entire world. It’s a manual, diesel, Volkswagen, Jetta, in cherry red. It’s my baby fire engine of a car, the engine sounds like a man (or a semi), because of its diesel engine, but it looks like a little bubble of big red. His name is Jerry, yep, Jerry the Jetta, and I love to drive him. He also just got 41 miles to the gallon on this past tank of gas; I just filled up this afternoon and calculated it. Which is out of this world. And also incredibly efficient for the 273 mile trip (each way) I have ahead of me, which is about six gallons of gas/diesel, which is currently priced at $2.50, an entire tank costing $28.00-the fourteen gallons would be able to get me there and back. So moral of this story, I wouldn’t be burning a ton of cash/gas.

Con #6: As previously mentioned, I don’t know the band! Except the more I’ve listened to them, I’m on about song four right now on a playlist I found on YouTube, the more I’m starting to really like them. My two friends on the other hand are obsessed! Hence them driving seven hours for one night to go see them. And everyone else ho goes this concert is probably equally as in love with them. This is the reunion tour, the bands been broken up for about four years,and they’re finally back together, so anyone who instantly got tickets has been stalking their existence. So I could feel a little, or a lot, out of place when I know maybe two songs, which I had to shove into my brain.

Pro #5 (the conclusion): I really like music and I love my two friends. They were my two favorite people back home. And I think once I’ve done it, it will be a cool, funny thing to look back on and say I did. Once my Dad drove from Nevada to North Carolina in like some crazy short amount of time (I completely don’t remember) and got three speeding tickets on the way. I want to be able to tell my family or just be able to remember crazy little things like this that no one in their right mind, or I in my right mind, would do. I want to do something spontaneous, just for the heck of it. Who knows I might have some life epiphany sometime during the ten or more hours I’ll be in the car alone. Plus I love music, and I’m seriously considering changing my major, so I can do some kind of something with music, whether it’s journalism or management, I haven’t quite thought it through yet. And this experience might open me up to whether I think this is a good career option, and something I’m completely passionate about.

So if I’m not in class on Wednesday, I completely and sincerely apologize, because I have no valid excuse, but I really want to go, against my better judgment. If someone seriously thinks I shouldn’t go, haha, please try to persuade me not to! You can be my “neo-parents”! <3

Growing up in a private school bubble…

This weekend I was “sexiled”. This isn’t a word that I can take credit for creating, but I heard it and it’s perfect. My roommate’s boyfriend came in town. And trust me I wanted to be out of our dorm this weekend as much as she wanted me gone. There was no way I was going to be the eternal third wheel from Thursday to Sunday. So I left. Orginally I wanted to just drive home, but my parents, of all people, dissuaded me. I guess they didn’t want me home that badly after all… Well according to them they were nervous about the five and a half hour trek through the mountains I would have to make in my car, by myself. So I couldn’t make the journey all the way back to Columbus, Ohio.

I ended up seeking shelter at my classmate’s dorm at Elon University, near Greensboro, North Carolina. Amanda and I had been friends from before high school and the drive was only about three hours, so it was the perfect escape. I wish it would have been a little bit closer, but she was my closest victim. It was really nice to see a familiar face for the first time in a month. Not one person I’ve ever met goes to Virginia Tech, so I’d been floating around. I’ve met a lot of cool people and I totally have a group of friends that I love to hang out with, but I miss being around people that I can share connections with. It’s kind of sad when I can’t turn to someone and be like, “Oh my gosh! This is the Virginia Tech version of Mr. Rabe,” which any of my classmates would have understood last year.

The question I’ve gotten asked most, once people know a little bit about me is if I enjoyed going to a small private school. If and when I was asked this question in eighth and ninth grade I would have rolled my eyes and groaned about how much I hated it, but now I realize how special it was. I started going to school at Wellington when I was in first grade, and stayed in the same building, with the same fifty-ish kids. There were only 800 kids in my school age PreK through 12^th. Some of my classmates left to go play football (a sport Wellington didn’t have) or any other sport that they were good at. Other students were added, usually because they had just moved to Columbus, or their parents thought Wellington could correct some attitude problems.

There are three other private schools in the Columbus area that weren’t religiously affiliated. There was an all girls school, CSG, an all guys school, Saint Charles, and the school that bred military school equivalent students, Columbus Academy. Wellington was the sloppy, happy, small version of all of these schools. It lacked funding, old money, and a good administration, but some how it molded great people. All the private schools were in competition to see who was smarter, and we would probably lose if we were tested analytically. Our ACT/SAT score averages looked like the other private schools’ PSAT scores.

We weren’t stupid or unintelligent we were just taught and tested on material in a very literary way. We always wrote papers, we nearly never took tests, and if we did take tests they were short answer. So this whole idea about not getting partial credit and there being only one right answer is startling for me. The introduction to scan-trons was a little intimidating, to say the least. But, instead of acing the SAT, something that most Wellington students seem to struggle with, we can carry on a conversation with any stranger we met. Definitions are scarier than length requirements. If it’s one thing that I learned which I can put to use here, it’s my ability to type like there’s no tomorrow. We were required to write a one-hundred twenty page novel, in my AP English class, last year, as an on-going background assignment, with other papers, projects, and books layered on top of it.

Most of us participated in community service like it was our job. We enjoyed helping out anyone with anything we could. Since we were in the same building as preschoolers, with their parents, our manners and awareness of the people around us, is out of control. We tried to get involved in as many things as we could, especially since we were able to (there were no try-outs for sports teams and tons of roles to fill in the school plays). And we could gain the respect and trust of any adult, sometimes like we were their own age. I was good friends, (and now Facebook friends) with a lot of my teachers. My eighth grade Spanish teacher text each other weekly. The school was great at creating strong bonds amongst us.

Wellington’s favorite thing to say was “we our a family and a community.” When I was little I didn’t believe or understand this, I just laughed at the idea condescendingly with the rest of my middle school peers to be cool, but now I seriously agree. The other day one of my classmates needed a place to stay at Virginia Tech, texted me at 4:30PM asking if he could spend the night, and by 9:00PM he was in my dorm with a pillow. We weren’t even close friends back at home, but we have a sibling relationship, without the bickering. If I ever needed anything at anytime in my life I wouldn’t feel uncomfortable asking someone who went to Wellington, no matter if we liked each other or not. There’s a mutual understanding and respect that we all share for each other.

The other thing it demanded of us, even if we weren’t aware of it, was to respect any type of person. We were around nerdy people, flirty people, gamers, chess club freaks, book worms, athletes, artists, and anime lovers. There were so few of us in our grade we had to be friends with all of them. We couldn’t just decide that we didn’t like any one type of person, because it would instantly cut out five people we could hang out with. Our options were limited. Because of this though we learned to appreciate any and every type of person. We now give everyone a chance, because we know from experience that we were friends with people that on paper we shouldn’t have been.

There are a few disadvantages I have found so far, now that I’m out of the “bubble”, as we liked to call it. One of them is the whole analytical testing problem, which I mentioned earlier. Another one is typically being completely judged as a rich snob or a preppy nerd, anytime you mention to people you went to private school. And for some reason Wellington was really bad at teaching handwriting and spelling, which are now both common skills I am inept in. Overall though it hasn’t hindered me as much as I thought it would. I was completely convinced that I would go into anaphylactic shock as soon as I was placed in a class size that was more than five times the size of my entire school. I was also under the impression that I would not be able to make friends with people that I didn’t grow up with or be able to trust anyone.

So far, I’ve kind of loved the total anonymity I had on campus the first few weeks here. I could do absolutely anything I wanted and I could completely start over, with no prior strings to my old life. That had the potential to be really awesome, if I wasn’t too lazy to create a new identity. Since being here I’ve just been searching for people who share characteristics of me and my friends back home. I can’t decide if this is a good thing or not…. I don’t know if I should take advantage of this opportunity to look for a different type of person in case I could get a long with them, or if I should stay true to my old identity.

I loved going to school at a small private school, even though it has to be clarified that it wasn’t a learning boot camp. We were inspired so much that we legitimately loved to learn and now have relationships that will completely last my entire life. I learned how to live my academic life a different way then is typically taught, and if that means I have to work a little harder now to get adapted to the “real educational world”, I’m completely okay with that. I adore the school bubble I was brought up in!

Here! send your kids to Wellington! move to Columbus, Ohio! look at the sweet website:

http://www.wellington.org/web/default.aspx

The Power of a Written Letter

~~~~From my own experience!!!~~~~

When I was scanning the news for some inspiration about something to blog about I noticed an article about a prison guard who had been smuggling letters out of jail for some of the inmates. And this reminded me about how much I love to write letters and send them to people via the US Postal Service, instead of email. This has jogged my memory about the letters I’ve written, my older English assignments, and the effects they have on people. And so here I go on the issue of talking with hard copies of words instead of just being another piece in someone’s inbox.

When David Myers, my best friend moved to Colorado my junior year of high school for rehab, I began writing him letters. He was only allowed to have one fifteen-minute phone call home every other week, which usually went to his parents-it was like we were going cold turkey. I used to talk to him for hours everyday and in an entire year I spoke to him for no more than forty-five minutes. I had to figure out someway to talk to him, so I wrote him letters.

At first the letters were more selfishly driven and not originally for him. They began as an online diary, where I mostly reported significant events that happened that week. I imagined that I was venting to him in an effort to make me feel like he was still here, like talking to an imaginary friend. But the more I wrote, the more personalized they were for David, and soon they became long letters. I explained events that related some how to us, whether it was something we used to think with funny that was still occurring here or something that reminded me of him. Once I had written about fifteen letters, one or two every month, he had come back to visit. I put each in its very own envelope, addressed them simply, and placed them all in a nice portfolio. I included in the portfolio an essay I had written about him last year for my English class and another essay from a different class that he had wanted to read. The day he was leaving to go back to Colorado I presented them to him. I never heard from him until it was my turn to receive the fifteen minute phone call, which he explained how thoughtful they were. I gushed about how poorly they were written and usually were just rants about myself, but he insisted that they were one of the best presents he has ever gotten. They were a record of all the instances and reasons I missed him, which reflected how important he was to me.

These were the first letters I had ever given someone, besides simple thank you cards, birthday wishes, or letters to Santa Claus. But then last year in my AP English class we were given the Gift to the World assignment. My crazy, ostentatious, English teacher had gotten the idea off of Oprah, and now insisted that we all participate, threatening us all with a pass/fail grade. The idea is that for a Christmas present you wrote a simple letter to the people who don’t know how much you appreciate them and explain to them why they are a “gift to the world”. Oprah (and therefore my English teacher as well) swore that they would cherish it more than the most expensive gift you could buy them.

I was not at all touched by the assignment. I was angry that we were forced to admit our feelings to someone and that they would be passed around for peer reviews. Plus there was no way I could get out of it. We were supposed to bring our three different letters, addressed and stamped, to class where he collected them to send out in our school mail. Except I did find a way to get out of it, I wrote three crappy letters, that had no real emotions expressed, passed them around the class for peer review, and addressed them all to a different member of my family. I then captured all the letters before my family could read them and find out I had cheated the system.

Then my conscience over ruled my timid feelings. I felt guilty that all my classmates’ significant members would know how special they were during Christmas, so I manned up and sent one to a new friend that always knew how to make me smile in school, like no one else had been able to since David left. I sent another one to my eighth grade Spanish teacher who had become my very good friend, as I grew older. And then lastly I sent one to David.

Mrs. Noviski sent me a text message, late the night she received it, saying she was almost crying while smiling, at the simple one page letter. Jack Ludlum, my friend who made me laugh, reacted similarly leaving me a voicemail saying that it was literally and sincerely the nicest thing anyone had ever given him. He also added that his mom had found it on the kitchen counter and gotten tears as she read it, she never understood what her son was like at school, and that he could affect someone so much-she was so proud of him. And the one I gave to David was a little lighter because he was used to the notes I had given him, but he was honored once again that out of all the people I could have chosen to write my third letter to I chose him.

I had no idea that I would get such emotional and nice reactions to these simple letters, but now I know how much people appreciate you taking time to recognize them. They also love hearing about what they’ve done specifically that makes you happy or specific memories that they wouldn’t have remembered else wise. When you take the time to sit down and record your feelings for someone on a sheet of paper they can always refer back to it. Even though verbally telling someone how much you care for them is incredibly special, the words you used get washed away. Also, letters can’t accidentally get deleted from an inbox on an email or be erased from your text messages. Since letters are now becoming a lost art people appreciate them so much more. So I guess Oprah was right!

I highly recommend at least writing one letter to a significant person in your life. As my English teacher said it can be anyone from a role model to the lady who makes your Starbucks every morning. It doesn’t have to be long and complicated, just simply delivering your feelings reminds people why they do the nice things they do, and allows them to know that someone is noticing. It’s a reward for being an excellent person, which all excellent people deserve. J

Why aren't we allowed to have food fights?

There has always been that one epic episode in every Disney or Nickelodeon series we watched when we were young that depicts a food fight. When I watched those specific episodes I remember literally being jealous of the actors, because they actually got to participate in the combat, even if they were supposed to be acting. Since then I have always wanted to be a player in one of these horribly messy battles. This didn’t end when I was young either, even last year, during my senior year, I daydreamed about how awesome it would be to have a food fight in our cafeteria on our last day of school.

Spaghetti would be the ideal meal, kind of like that book, “Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs.” The noodles would have elasticity and could be flung completely satisfyingly. The red sauce would stain and stick, making it look like a war zone reenactment. There would be yelling, screaming, laughing, and surprise. There wouldn’t be anything like chicken wings that would be disgusting and potentially painful. There would be soggy garlic toast, grapes used as squishy bullets, and milk cartons that would create blowholes of white water when they landed. The little buds that compose broccoli heads would make everyone green and speckled. And finally the pudding for desert would have incredible slinging capacity and velocity, and would land with a “slop”. It would be a perfectly balanced meal.

It would be completely spontaneous, there would be no permission slip needed, no thesis paper submitted to describe the emotional necessity. We would clean it up, or at least I would, it would be completely worth it. Just to have ten minutes where our childish habits could be completely freed without time to consider our actions, for once in our lives we would just do something for the kicks.

But people are too afraid to get messy and our teachers are too afraid of letting us get messy. The faculty, and some of the “mature” students would also take our perishable mess as a personal attack to both them and the school. We would get spoken to about how we represent the school and our community and this was against the posted morals. They would get disgusted and deeply offended, like we called their religion dumb or their lifestyle unmotivated. They would try to look at us in disgrace, but what they forget is that they, and the world around us, are human. We only have one life to live, so why not have a food fight? Who cares if we make a little mess that requires some Clorox, rags, and water? We’ll never have an opportunity to have one after we’re gone.

My dream would be that people who read this go out and do things which are against the “law”; whether it’s family law, school law, friend code, diet plan, or reading list. I understand if you’re afraid of heights and don’t want to sky dive, because I don’t either, or if you’re too ticklish to get a back massage. I’m not necessarily talking about utilizing the world and everything it has to offer, but I think you should do things you instinctively want to do. Even if you can’t find a reason you should do it, don’t try to debate whether it’s appropriate. In exchange, the outsiders who don’t believe in spontaneous joy, should not judge others who jump into a pool with their clothes on.

There are several things in our generation that are judged because they break social laws. You no longer should touch anything unhealthy at all; you shouldn’t eat ice cream for dinner because it’s not a balanced meal. You shouldn’t drink diet coke after you work out (I don’t even know why, people always just tell me that). Basically you should never ever be unproductive or even worse counterproductive. You should never sleep in until noon, or spend the whole day on the couch. It seems like now everything you want has to be justified; that’s why we fake sick. You would lose lots of respect from your boss or you coworkers, just because you wanted to stay home one day instead of bettering the company. Even if some people knew in the back of their heads that you weren’t coming to work because you didn’t want to come, it makes everyone feel better if you say you’re sick.

The reason that I chose to blog about this idea of pointless fun was because of this picture I came across this morning while looking at “The News in Pictures” at Yahoo.com. It’s one of my favorite things to do, and I highly recommend randomly going to it when you’re bored. It’s the picture book version of the news and then some. They always have pictures of the wacky fun things going on in the world, that don’t even make a sentence in the news broadcasts, because they aren’t important enough apparently. But, I believe this news event is plenty important enough. I wish there would have been videos of this all over CNN and Fox News just to show people that it’s okay to have fun sometimes.

It’s the world’s largest tomato fight! It’s been happening annually for 64 years in Bunyol Spain. People are not really sure exactly how this enormous red fight began, but the story says that when two rich men were going through the poor city on horses, some young boys pick up tomatoes off a stand and chucked them at the men. Apparently the boys came back on the same day a year later, the third Sunday in August, and started another tomato fight with their own basket of tomatoes. Now more than 20,000 people participate every year and they travel from afar to participate.

For La Tomatina the city ships in truck loads of the weapon; there are over 150,000 tomatoes, which is about 90,000 pounds! The tomatoes are specifically grown for the festival, they have no good taste, nor is there a lot of money spent on their supplies. The local stores and residence board up their homes and the fight is nationally televised throughout Spain. There is a week long festival that proceeds the fight, to bring the town together. The fun can officially start once an attendee can make it up a greased pole to retrieve the ham, which is tied to the top. Once the ham hits the ground, the festivities begin. The fight actually begins after the crowd is drenched with water from water cannons and then ends after sixty minutes, which is marked by more showering from the water cannons.

The rules are: You can’t rip opponents’ clothing, you can’t bring in bottles or cups which could easily injure others, and you should crush tomatoes in your hands first before throwing them so they aren’t painful. After the fight is over fire trucks sweep the town and direct all the water into the old aqueducts, and viola! The city is clean! When asked why they kept celebrating the holiday Spain replied, “There is no political or religious significance to La Tomatina, it's just good, messy fun.”

Resources:

*http://www.spanish-fiestas.com/spanish-festivals/la-tomatina-tomato-battle-bunyol.htm

*http://news.yahoo.com/nphotos/Spain-hosts-64th-annual-Tomatina-festival/ss/events/lf/082609tomatina/im:/090826/ids_photos_wl/r2341503942.jpg/#photoViewer=/090826/ids_photos_wl/r1536500472.jpg

*http://www.donquijote.org/culture/spain/fiestas/tomatina.asp