Not worth asking.

IT'S THE LAST DAY OF MARCH.

I think I might cry if I weren't entirely too busy.
I can't afford to waste time like that.

Where is my life going?
Did I ever have one in the first place, or have I been working like this forever?
What I'm doing has absolutely no significance, yet it takes me countless hours and results in some illusion of "academic perfection," which really means nothing, not to me or to anyone else.

Why do I do this?
I think it's because I know everyone else is doing it, and one thing that DOES carry some weight with me is competition.

This isn't what life should be.
I guess it really isn't my choice.
I could choose to rebel, to not buy into the system, but I've realized that that's even more pointless than doing the work in the first place.
Either way, I come out the loser.

Who wins?
And more importantly, how can I get in on that?

Speech impediment.

Is it weird that all I do when I have free time is sleep?
I mean, every so often I hang out with my friends or family, but most of the time I miss their calls/texts because I'm sleeping. Whenever (and I mean whenever) I'm not working (for school/job/internship/etc.), I'm sleeping. Take this weekend, for example. On Friday, I came home from school and slept for seven straight hours, ignoring six texts and a few calls in the process. Yesterday, I slept all DAY (literally; I woke up at 4:30 pm), but went out to dinner/watched a movie with friends in the night. Today, I went to my cousin's early church for an hour, came home, fell asleep, and woke up at 5 pm to do homework.

Oh, man. I've got to find a hobby.

I've also got to start studying for HOSA state. I'm competing in Pathophysiology (knowledge test), Medical Terminology, and Job Seeking Skills. I'm only doing that last one because I suck at interviewing, so I'm taking any chance I get to practice.
I definitely have the best chance of placing in Med Terms, like last year. If I don't place (top 3), I'll be seriously humiliated, and my teacher will be seriously disappointed--I placed 2nd at state and made the top ten at nationals last year, so I'd better make nationals again or I'll have to hide under a rock or something. Terminology isn't that difficult, though, and the knowledge of Latin roots I've acquired through competing has been invaluable, so I should be okay. I think.

More than anything, I want to learn to speak.
I'm kind of verbally inarticulate, which seriously sucks. I get self-conscious when I talk in front of a group, so I keep my public words short and sometimes painfully unexplained. I know people who can talk things out and come to an intelligent conclusion in front of a group, and I can't think of a skill I want more. All I can think when I start talking are things to this effect: "No one wants to listen to you speak. You're going on for too long. You aren't using intelligent words. Cut it short. People are losing interest." This totally consumes my train of thought, which just makes what I say more confusing and unintelligible. I hate it. I'm looking to take a speech class or something during the summer so I can come across well in college, but I haven't found anything yet.

Summer goals:
Join a research lab.
Spend all possible time in the library (knowledge gained through reading > school).
(Read Machiavelli's The Prince for the class I'm taking on it)
Learn to speak.
Learn shorthand (Gregg Millennium style); it's awesome.

Those shouldn't be too hard to accomplish, right?

Repressed?

Sometimes, I just want to scream
ASKMETOSENIORBALL
at this kid I know.
But then I realize that might come across as a little bit desperate.
So I keep it in.

Muffled.

Last night, all I remember is flopping onto the LoveSac in my room and falling asleep before I hit the pink, fluffy (I spelled that word 'fluffly' three times before I remembered there was only one L) fabric. Weird. Then, I woke up sometime during the night because my contacts were bugging me. I'm always worried that my contacts might suck out all the moisture from my eyes during the night and scratch my corneas. Gross.

I walked in from the garage after my internship today to meet one dozen red roses and a huge, wonderfully garish balloon bouquet (Timpview colors...haha) from various extended family members, congratulating me on my recognition (which is technically not supposed to be made public until April 30, but who can honestly wait that long?? Not me. I think I made it a total of ten minutes). I love my family.

There are accreditors at my school this week, and it's really funny to watch all the teachers freak out around them. They (the teachers) are all wearing formal clothes and nametags, and the laughably cliche mission statement has been posted EVERYWHERE. It's kind of pathetic that it takes the fear of public, professional humiliation to stimulate someone to actually clean the girls' bathrooms, but whatever. I'm not complaining.

I got some really nice compliments today, which made me happy because my hair looked horrible. I think I used too much conditioner or something, because it's strangely limp and way too smooth. Maybe I'll go conditioner-less tomorrow in protest...though I think that would just end up backfiring on me. And I doubt those sweatshop children in Malaysia would reduce their hair product production volume due to my insignificant boycott efforts. Oh, well. It worked out nicely in my mind.

Besides, I have to look cute. It's Russian Night tomorrow night. We're celebrating the Russian holiday of Maslenitsa (I probably killed that spelling...Slavic is not my language-family of choice), which represents the coming of spring or something of that nature. For the Russians, it's apparently (from a badly translated website) "A chance to muffle yourself in a fur coat and drink vodka with a bear." Well, minus the vodka and the bears (the fur coat is definitely still an option, as is the 'muffling'), tomorrow night you'll find me at the BYU International Cinema with whoever we can get to come with us.

Anyway, I should start my homework soon. I have to memorize metabolically regulated gene sequencing for AP Bio. I love that class.

Normal distribution.

It's been an infinitesimally exhausting day.

I officially sent in my first scholarship acceptance, compiled and turned in a final portfolio that was finished as of four AM today (25 typed pages!! AUGH), and mailed yet another fat manila application to Texas (why is it always Texas?), which happened to include a current senior picture as a requirement. I don't get my real senior pictures taken until Saturday, so I was forced to send in my ugly forgotitwaspicturedayhairinaponytail one with the blotchy blue school background. Eww. If I win, I will be so embarrassed.

*EDIT (May): I did win! $2000! And, after asking nicely, I was thankfully allowed to send another picture.

I miss someone.

I should be writing an essay for AP World, but thanks to my current war with scholarship applications (don't try to fight this one; they can't feel pain and never seem to die), I am absolutely, totally, entirely fed up with writing.
Okay, this kind of writing doesn't count. It doesn't take organization or, well, even conscious thought, to be honest. All I need is my aesthetically pleasing MacBook, free Internet access and the tendons in my wrists. Did you know your fingers don't have any muscles in them? Nope. It's all crisscrossing tendons, which originate from the wrist and palm to facilitate phalangeal mobility. Haha. I love medical words.
SPHENOPALATINEGANGLIONEURALGIA.
Bam.

Lately, I've been realizing that I like my stereotype.
All my life, I've been associated with only one adjective. This always used to bother me, but I've learned to embrace it. It's not like it was a bad thing in the first place; I was just frustrated because there are many people that couldn't seem to see past it, no matter what I did. These days, I know that people who aren't intelligent enough to discern more aren't people I care about being around, anyway. I like being around people who know how to think. That's why it bugs me so badly when a class (even an honors or AP class) is split up into work groups and they always try and "distribute us evenly." Wouldn't we be more productive (and come to a more sophisticated understanding of the topic) in a group all together, where we can bounce off of each others' ideas and explore new and intelligent ground instead of spending the whole period reteaching those who don't understand?

Just a thought.
As usual.

Paroxysms of joy.

AS OF THIS MOMENT, I AM MADLY, IRRATIONALLY EXCITED.

I have just accepted an exciting scholarship comprised of national prestige, a bit of money and peripherally related sweetness like you wouldn't believe.
!!!!!
OH MAN.
THIS IS INTENSE.

My zeal has been sufficiently renewed.
I AM capable of success! Yes!

Lately, I've been scared about college:
What if by some stretch of the imagination I am not academically up to par and I don't make friends and my professors don't care about me and aren't willing to help me out with research and I get bad grades in entry level chem because it's crazy hard so my GPA gets ruined and I don't get into med school but instead end up a hobo like the guy by the gas station who carries 50 blankets on his back all the time???

BUT only a handful of HS seniors get this scholarship, and almost everyone tries.
YAY! THIS MEANS I'M STILL COMPETITIVE!
HOPE FOR MY LIFE/CAREER IS STILL ALIVE AND WELL!

I'm off to write more scholarship essays, in hopes of achieving another moment like unto this one.
BECAUSE IT'S WORTH IT.

Dissection.

The term's finally over, and I'm pretty sure I've turned everything in.

I've liked senior year because I haven't had any stress about my grades. Up until now, there's always been that one class that I'd worry might kill my average, but this year (though my schedule's more rigorous), I'm a lot more comfortable. I guess my APs are manageable; Stats is incredibly simple, World History's beautifully unstructured, and Biology and English take some time but aren't what I'd call difficult.

I love my classes, and I've found that I usually learn more from talking with the people around me than I do from the course material. That's definitely a new concept for me. Talking to intelligent people is my favorite activity. There's nothing I like better than bouncing ridiculous ideas around, explicating different theories in literature, science or math-- arguing and listening and reasoning together in the essence of higher-level conversation.

I hope this is what college is like.

Yesterday, I held someone's face in my hands. The container said her name was Alice, but to me she looked like a man; her hair was buzzed and her mouth hung half open. The loose endothelium of her carotid artery dangled from her severed neck, sliced exactly down the middle. The skin and fat encasing her skull felt like mine. My palms distorted the skin of her face while I poked her brainstem, tracing across to the cerebellum's delicate shoots of arbor vitae with one gloved fingertip.

It was intense.

I think I'll elect to be dissected in a cadaver lab when I die.
I want the students who cut me open to have fun. The main rule in any lab is not to make fun of the cadavers (we should respect their gift to science, etc.), but I think I'll leave a note to my dissectors saying they're free to laugh at me as much as they want to. It wouldn't be disrespectful; it'd be like they were laughing for me, the way an interpreter talks for a deaf person. Let's face it: cutting dead people open can be downright hilarious. I think the students who slice through the wall of my abdomen should be able to giggle at the sight of my internal organs. Heaven knows I would if I were there.

I'm finished.

I HATE WAITING.
AND, BY ASSOCIATION, I HATE YOU FOR MAKING ME WAIT.

For months, I've been suspended in this thick, disgusting state of perpetual anticipation.
AND I'M SICK OF IT.

Why not just TELL ME whether I'm good enough or not?!?
I CAN TAKE IT. I JUST DON'T WANT TO WAIT ANY LONGER, BECAUSE IF I DO, I MAY VERY WELL UNDERGO SPONTANEOUS COMBUSTION.
I'm finished compulsively checking my mailbox and e-mail, waiting for the day when I know I'll see your correspondence.
STOP playing with me.
I'm not your puppet, and you are not the Supreme, All-Encompassing Power you think you are just because you can dangle the possibility of success over my head.
I'M SEVENTEEN, FOR GOODNESS' SAKE.
AND I'VE HAD IT.

DO YOU FEEL GOOD ABOUT YOURSELF?
DO YOU GET SOME TWISTED PLEASURE WATCHING ME EXHAUST MYSELF LIKE THIS?

Whatever.
You know what?
I'm finished.
Though I may not have your approval, you aren't going to take my dignity (or sanity, for that matter).
I won't humiliate myself jumping through hoops for you.
Not anymore.

Incapacitation.

I don't understand you, but at the same time, I don't think I'm meant to.
I don't understand why you are the way you are.
Every day, I watch you do the opposite of whatever I expect you to do, situational irony incarnate. I watch your mood swings in a state of perpetual surprise: your outrageous bursts of laughter contrasting your sullen fits of vindictive sarcasm. This observation's like nothing I've ever tried before--all I can do is wonder just what in this world you are thinking, because it's apparent that we are entirely opposite--I would never say anything like that, not in a million years.
You're absolutely invulnerable.

This year (for the first time), I've been met with things I just can't understand.
It's a feeling that's totally new to me, and I'm just learning how to deal with it.
Heart of Darkness blew my mind. I could not for the life of me comprehend that there was a piece of literature like this out there--a book I could read over and over again and never fully grasp. I was absolutely appalled that no one had ever shown me anything like it before--that I'd been left in the dark for so long. The meaning came to me in bits and pieces, as a glow emerges from a haze, and I triumphed over every tiny connection I found myself able to make. Never in my life have I spent so much time with one text before--honestly, I must have read it five times, cover to cover, making extensive notes, writing in every margin and drawing crazy arrows to and from matching quotes.

Congratulations. You're the same way.
Quite honestly, I cannot figure you out.
I am physically incapable of your analysis, and this is absolutely new for me.
I've been rendered to a state of total incapacitation. Me, of all people.
And you-- you just ARE.

Impermanence.

Professional.
Capable.
Ambitious.
Confident.
Mature.
Loyal.
Sharp.
Practical.
Bitingly intelligent.
Sweet (but only to me).
[Today, somebody asked me what I wanted my husband to be like.]

I'm coming to realize that the most significant truth I've learned from high school is my newfound familiarity with impermanence.
Before high school, everything in your life is pretty much constant. It's only when things start irreparably dissolving that you truly start to appreciate the fact that they existed in the first place. This sounds like a simple realization, but it's more than that on so many different levels, and I've learned the hard way that it can only be dealt with through raw experience:
Some things can never be regained, no matter how hard you (c)ry.

Superficially, there is a natural intolerance lost; I'm now entirely indifferent to major underage substance abuse on infinitely many levels.

I have said and done things that will live with me for the rest of my life.

There have been things said to me that have incurred a pain I'll never forget.

There are relationships that have been damaged permanently, and no matter how hard I try, things will never go back to the way they were.

And then there are some people I will honestly never see again after May 29.
Ever.

I'm standing at the edge of the void.
I'm scared.

Mutation.

Dr. Seuss was brilliant, I believe.
"Don't cry because it's over. Smile because it happened."
Trite as it is, I'll have to remember that one.

Apparently, as a species, people are considered to be inherently social.
I guess there was some kind of a mutation in that part of my collective unconscious.
Don't get me wrong: I love my friends; I just don't have an insatiable need to be around people all the time.
I truly and honestly love being alone. I like just sitting, writing, thinking or reading by myself, in beautiful silence with no one around to disturb me.
It's what I'm doing right now.
Yes, it's 10:00 on a Saturday night, and I've rejected three separate invitations to hang out.
Why?
My family's out of the house, and I want to enjoy my rare moment of delicious solitude.
Is that so weird?

Plus, I don't like dances.
(That's where two of the three invites have been.)
I think I'd like them if someone I liked asked me to one, but that's never happened. I mean, I've gone to more than a few, but it's always been the "safe" invite, you know? I've concluded that either no one likes me like that, or no one who does feels comfortable asking me out. Both situations are problematic and unlikely to change, but it'd be nice to at least know which one it is.

But whatever. For now, I'm happy to be alone.

Intentional delusion.

Today was a good day.
In all probability, I most likely ate more sushi this afternoon than I have in the entirety of my life to date.
At least, it felt like it.
I love sushi.

This week, I've personally validated an AP English truth:
It is a devotion to efficiency that saves us (Conrad).

When I'm working on something that devours all of my time (ex: the blood drive), I feel this artificial kind of fulfillment. Though I know what I'm doing probably doesn't matter, the sheer volume of work allows me to tap into this semi-psychotic state where I delude myself into the belief that I'm accomplishing something. It's fake, but it's something to hold on to. For example, last night I found it strangely rewarding to spend five hours inscribing every single name on my list onto 150 appointment cards and organizing them alphabetically by teacher, regionally by area of school, and numerically by room number to facilitate delivery.

The tedious repetition of the work saves me from thinking about the other things, the things that eat away at all my defenses and leave me vulnerable.

Like college.
Or that boy.
Or the perpetual fear that maybe no matter how much of my work ethic I pour into something I really wish to achieve, I'm going to be found wanting, and in the end none of what I've "accomplished" will mean anything.
What if I'm just not good enough?
Maybe I can't break mediocrity.
That's the scary truth I can't let myself realize, so I hide behind my immaculate grades and countless homework hours, persuading myself that it actually matters.

Atop a white baby grand.

I always think of the perfect thing to say...after the fact.
It's pretty much the bane of my existence.
If you want better answers from me, ask me questions multiple times, after I've had time to think.
I'm quite serious.

Today, I had the opportunity to do something that would have proved interesting on many levels.
Unfortunately, I didn't think of it until after the fact.
This is quite literally getting on my nerves.

MEMO TO SYNAPSES:
STIMULATE FASTER. GET THOSE NEUROTRANSMITTERS MOVING!

It's especially bad around the Boy I Like.
Physiologically, I wonder why this is.
Any ideas?

I'm at work.
I like work. It's a slow day. Usually I'm sticking electrodes on people, teaching old people to work the TV remotes, or studying, but today I have time to just play on the computer. My only homework is to study poetry terms, which I know pretty well already. Life is good.

Today, I went into my old Creative Writing teacher's classroom to promote the blood drive I'm in charge of on Friday. He brought out the poetry portfolio I'd made for him last year. It's pretty much the only form of artistic expression of which I am capable (I wrote "I'm capable of," but I've recently become aware of my habit of ending sentences with prepositions, so I changed it--shut up, it's progress!). Anyway, it's in this tiny, three-inch-square notebook, and all the poems are typed onto backgrounds that match their meanings. He then proceeded to read an identity poem I'd written in front of the entire class. Oh, man. I mean, I didn't know anyone in the class (it was 11th grade English), but now they all know a little bit about me. They even clapped for me.

It was embarrassing, and yet strangely liberating.

Careful, now.

Hello, world:
I have a tangible attention span.
Eleven hours of reading this weekend has made it manifest itself in the natural world as a separate entity.

FEAR ME (and it).

The end.