News

1. I am officially a student at FCS for the summer. I sent in all my materials and got my student ID number and everything. Now, all that remains is for me to convince my parents to let me fly there on my own.

2. I have lots of tests tomorrow, but then I'm pretty much done until spring break, which starts next Friday. Knock on wood, of course.

3. I got to spend over an hour today mixing together solutions and making colorful precipitates. Next week, I will hopefully have some more salts of transition metals to play with so I can make even prettier colors.

4. Report cards for second trimester were mailed today. The only grade I'm sad about is in chemistry, and I should be able to get a high average third trimester so my grade for the year will be an A.

5. I got an honorable mention award at GWU Model UN.

Less than a week until SAT scores are released. I'm hoping that my confidence after the test translates into high scores.

You know you go to nerd school when...

You have a snow day, and all everyone is talking about on facebook is how they now have time to write their IB Lit papers.

And then you talk about meeting to study for chemistry on the snow day with a friend.

I love my school.

I'm still a nerd.

I watched the beginning of this movie, which shows a guy enriching plutonium for a nuclear weapon, and all I could think about were the zillions of inaccuracies.

• The plutonium was a lime-green LIQUID.
• They bombarded the plutonium with electrons. Whaaaattt??????
• Enough static electricity was created in the air to make visible sparks between fingers and metal objects.
• There was a magnet involved??
• There was a laser involved--even now, laser techniques for enrichment aren't viable.
• Nitrogen triiodide would have made a bigger boom and been more red, less blue.

Sigh.

January

January is a pretty big month for me. My History Day paper is due at the end of the month, I have a IB Lit practice comparison to write, plus eventually the actual IB paper, and there's a Model UN Conference starting on the twenty-ninth. Plus I take my driving test on Friday.

So I have all this stuff to do.

One thing that I find helps me to get stuff done is having a to-do list. It's odd, because I always have in my head what I need to get done anyway, but having the physical list, ordered by priority, doesn't give me a chance to wander around the house indecisive about what comes first.

Here are my goals for today:

1) Write at least two paragraphs of the Lit paper. In theory, this should not be difficult, because I already have a very detailed outline to work from. I've always found, though, that writing the paper takes longer than I expect it to.

2) Write one of the briefs for my Model UN committee. I'm on the Supreme Court. A friend, for Christmas, gave me Chemerinsky's Con Law tome. So my research consists of looking up the relevant sections in his book, skimming the Federalist Paper that deals with the issue, and reading the statue that applies. Notice that reading the actual Constitution isn't really part of that.

3) Try to figure out my focus for the History Day paper is going to be.

4) LEARN TO PARALLEL PARK.

If I focus, this should be doable. If I spend two hours reading the New York Times like I did last night at one a.m., I won't even come close to finishing.

The non-required things I want to do at some point, not necessarily today or tomorrow:

1) Read more Ibsen. I read Ghosts and A Doll's House while I was away. I want to reread Ghosts and possibly read the other plays in the book I have. Ibsen is a really cool writer. His characters are as dysfunctional as real people.

2) Finish Much Ado About Nothing. So far, it's not as funny as, say, Twelfth Night, but it is funny.

3) Catch up on The New Yorker? I'm two weeks behind, as usual.

I have a feeling that I'll be able to finish the Shakespeare this weekend, but I'm not sure about the others.

And by the way, people? I checked my analytics and I have at least twice as many visitors as I have commenters. Which kind of creeps me out.

I am such a nerd.

The visitor trending graph on my Analytics account looks like a parabola. My first thought: I wonder what its equation is..."

Countdown

Two days left of sophomore year.

Four days until SAT scores come out.

Five or six days until my cousins come back from their college tours.

Eight days until I set foot in Yankee Stadium for the last time.

Twenty days until I leave for vacation.

Sixty-four days until official tennis practice starts.

One hundred five days until the beginning of junior year.

Life is very depressing when you think in terms of a countdown. I don't recommend it.

You just made my day.

I can't decide whether I love or hate that one comment on gchat can make me feel better about myself:

Friend: being in the same situation as the great postscript makes me feel better

me: the "great" postscript?

Friend: come on, you got a 4.0 last year

that was darn impressive

me: you mean the overworked, overtired, burnt-out kid?

Friend:: you don't even want to know what my GPA was last year

absolutely hideous

me: who reads books about the supreme court FOR FUN??

you don't want to be me lol

Friend: the great postscript lol*

Thank you for cheering me up for my "omg I might have TWO A-minuses" mood.

Other good news that came today: my math teacher rounds up!!

________
*After this, he said that he plans to live in the bookstore of his summer program's university and read econ books all summer. I love the nerdiness of my school. It makes me feel normal.

Uh-oh

The engineering project has an animation of the working product, which I put onto youtube and embedded into the webpage. But our school computers don't have flash installed! How is that possible???

I might wait until tomorrow, when I have class, and then get my teacher to fix it. Or, I might just do the lazy thing and stick a link onto the webpage so I can click through to youtube when I make my presentation.

Oh, and I'm failing miserably at math review problems.

The bright side:
I took the chem test! And it was easy, easy, easy! Having that off my back is such a huge relief. Now I have math on Friday, two presentations on Tuesday (not hard. I can give presentations in my sleep at this point), and a Bio Common Assessment on Monday.

I think the only issue is that I may spend all day Saturday in Connecticut at my grandma's. I can probably put in some study time for Bio then (this test, by the way, has not officially been announced yet and I have no clue what it's on, because our last test was two classes ago). Plus, for both presentations, I have at least one person working with me. In Lit, my partner is even more of a perfectionist than I am, so (I hate to admit it) I don't have to do all that much. It's a nice change from the rest of my classes.

I chose this?

Magnet schools are crazy. The concept is something like this: "Let's put a whole lot of really smart and competitive kids and force them to be together for NINE FREAKING HOURS a day and them give them some crappy teachers* who don't like to, you know, follow the curriculum, so that when they have to take common assessments, they're screwed! Great idea!"


*To my teachers' credit, only one of them is really a bad teacher. Two or three are awesome, and the rest try really hard but I just don't learn much (or at all). And yes, nine hours. 7:15 when the buses get there to 4:10 when classes end. My god.

Comparing Teachers

A long, long, time ago I wrote a pretty incoherent post about how kids coming from middle school (aka annoying frosh) have totally different criteria for evaluating and describing their teachers than I now do. (In a nutshell: they want the nice teachers who will be easy, I want the teachers who will make me laugh, teach me a lot, but probably not be 'nice')

Over the past couple of days, I've been thinking about two teachers. They both started at my school this fall, and came from public schools in cities (one from Newark, one from NYC). A note: the one from NYC taught at Bronx Science, not some inner-city school that has 50% of its students drop out. I think my arguments will still be true.

Both of them, at the beginning of the year, were clearly not used to my school (MS, for magnet school, from now on) and its hyper-competitive, fairly affluent environment.

One of them, Ms. B, was my teacher for an required interdisciplinary project first trimester. When she heard our conversations about how we needed this grade in that class to get an A, she was shocked. She told us that in Newark where she had last taught, she would never get kids who had B's coming to her begging for A's. rather, the kids who were failing would approach her and try to get her to at least give them D's so they would pass.

My math teacher, Mr. C, last taught at Bronx Science. What I've noticed about him is that he seems to have been trained to an essentially "us vs. them" attitude.

I finished a test about ten minutes early one day, and I immediately started to pack up my stuff so I would have a couple of extra minutes before my next class to decomp from the test. He looked at me and said "What are you doing?"

I was completely taken aback. I said something along the lines of "I'm not allowed to leave?!?" and sat back down. He came over to me and started lecturing me about how he would get sued if I a) did something dumb or b) did something clumsy while I was technically supposed to be in his class, under his supervision. I told him what another teacher had told me last year, that since we have oodles of free time and are unsupervised during that time, it's not as much of a liability issue as it is at schools where the hallways are deserted during classes. He shook his head. I sat at stared at the clock, going back and overthinking all the test questions.

I wrote this post intending to show the difference between city teachers, who are used to dealing with problem kids, and everyone else. Now that I think of it, though, there are three real classifications. I like writing about this, though, so I may (or may not) add to the thought tomorrow.

Speaking of tomorrow, wish me luck!

14 Hours

SATs tomorrow.

Wish me luck.

I already have all my stuff ready.

I know what I'm doing. I can do well on this.

I even have low expectations, so I can exceed them easily. I like that.

CollegeBoard

Thank you SO MUCH for sending me a reminder that on Saturday I will take the first SAT that actually counts. I just love having additional stress!

SAT-IIs are killing me

I'm taking the Math II Subject Test in less than a week. My scores are not boosting my confidence.

Diagnostic: 650
Test 1: 680
Test 2: 720! Yes!
Test 3: 670. What happened?
Computer Test 1: 660. ????

My rational side is reminding myself that Barron's is famously more difficult than the actual test, but 650? 660? That's crazy!

I think I'm going to sit down and take a practice test that was actually given a few years ago. My math teacher gave it to me. My biggest fear is that I'll do worse. Wish me luck.

Ugh

I'm sitting in class listening to a pointed lecture about how I NEED to be an engineer.

Kill me now.

The Clinton Campaign and What It Means

Bitch Ph.D. has a post up ( about an article in the New York Times) that pretty much sums up the frustration I feel whenever I talk about politics with any of my Obama-manic friends, or listen to the less-than-serious comments about politics that get made by the guys at my school.

The article really is a good one. The author asks whether Senator Clinton's campaign is showing America that we really have reached equality, or showing that we still have so, so, so far to go. I think it's the latter.

Senator Clinton held a rally at my school back in January, about a week before Super Tuesday. The next day, I walked into my math class, and most of my classmates were telling jokes about how Clinton should have stayed in the kitchen where she belongs. My teacher (who is male) stood there and listened, but didn't say anything.

I figured that the comments would stop once I got out of math, which has a pretty crazy group of kids, but then I went to engineering and it was the same thing. Lots of guys making lots of stupid "jokes". Lit was better, thanks to the female majority, but chem was the same thing. One of my friends, J., who I know would never, ever, make a joke like that himself, was cracking up, as were most of the other guys in the class (and some of the girls, sadly enough). My chem teacher, a woman, made them stop.

Neither of my afternoon classes were ones where any comments of the sort could be made. In the hallways for the entire day, though, there lots of littles jokes being told. None of the people telling the jokes meant to offend anyone. They knew that women could do anything that men could. I would guess that nearly all of them could name one woman--at the very least--who they have truly looked up to and respected.

But they kept telling their stupid little jokes and making their stupid little comments anyway. Because people were laughing. Teachers walking down the hallway didn't stop them. Girls near them didn't tell them to shut up and think about what they were saying. The guys themselves didn't stop and think. They didn't realize that what they were saying was that their mothers, their sisters, their teachers should only aspire to a life at home, catering to the needs of someone else.

If the situation were reversed, what would have been different about that situation? Say the younger and beloved candidate, the one that everyone looked up to and revered, was a woman. Say that the older candidate, the one with firm Washington ties and a household name, was black. Not one of those guys would have made fun of the black candidate's race. Never. And if they had, teachers would have told them to stop. Maybe they would have been sent to the office. None of their friends would have laughed, or sympathized with them when they got in trouble. It would have been totally different.

Why is that okay? Why is it acceptable for people to make fun of women? I'm not saying that racist comments should be okay, but why is there a difference? The whole idea behind affirmative action and education programs about Dr. King is that we want to correct wrongs that have been made. Well, women were denied the right to VOTE until 1920! We're now in the "post-feminist" period! And it's still okay for stupid kids to laugh at me because I'm offended? It's okay for them to tell me, a student at one of the best high schools in the freaking country, that the woman who I support and--and that point--hope will become the President belongs in the kitchen? And they can say that with no repercussions? They laugh and I tell them to stop and they laugh some more? Is that a sign of all the so-called progress we've made?

I don't see it.

That week, I wrote a post about how frustrated I was about the people who would cop out of any serious discussion by making some joke. I would end up angry and annoyed and feeling like an idiot when everyone around me laughed. That week was miserable for me. It was (I think) the busiest week of the year. I had two extracurriculars that I had major commitments for, plus all the usual tests and essays and projects. The last thing I needed was to be reminded that there are actually some people in this country who would never want me to have a career and be independent.

Progress towards equality is something that, as per the American Dream, we are all theoretically reaching for. But we seem to have reached a plateau. And I can't see how we're going to start moving up again. Check out the comments on the post. Someone pointed out that if women stand up for themselves, they get labeled as a "whiny woman", and, sadly, there aren't a whole lot of men at the national level who are going to stand up for us.

I don't really know what to say. There are so many things that bother me about the way women are treated today. I don't know if that stems from my status as one of seven girls in my engineering program, or if it's something I would notice and an all-girls' prep school. I just wish it were different. I hope it will be someday.

Not the best day in the world...

Today I woke up, ate leftover spaghetti for breakfast, then went for a run. I ran 1.84 miles (thank you GoogleEarth) and was reminded that I haven't ran more than a mile in about ten months. Running 3.1 miles next weekend is going to be SO FUN. I chilled and studied for the SAT Math for awhile. There was this one problem that I did like ten times and kept getting it wrong. The really sad part was that it was a really really simple problem: (x-(1+i))(x-(1-i))(x+1). I mean, I literally did this problem about twenty times. I made different mistakes each time too. It was very depressing, especially considering that I have less than three weeks to figure this out.

I then went to tennis. I played someone way out of my league and lost 7-0 (the timer saved me). My serve was off. My legs felt like they were made of lead. I couldn't hit a forehand without the ball going out. It was a very long and painful match.

Now I'm home and my sister has three of her loudest friends over. Fun fun fun.

Some thoughts

I'm too disorganized to write full-ish posts about these:

1. Half days: I lovelovelove half days. But they have absolutely no point. And I end up eating four meals because I eat at ten am when I would normally have lunch, plus eat lunch again at 1:30 when I get home.
   
2. Courses: You'd think I would have learned by now that I shouldn't take too many courses and end up stressing too much. But no. I'm signing up for IB Lit, IB History, AP Math BC, and AP Chem.
   
3. My future: I really, really, like chemistry. And I'm really good at physics. But I love history and debate. I just love how my interests combine so nicely.
4. SATs: June 7th is the date of the SAT-II Math 2. We're having houseguests the night before. It took me way too long to get my parents to realize that kicking me out of my room the night before the SAT was a dumb idea. I mean, waaaaayyyy too long. Like, I had to explain that THIS IS IMPORTANT about ten times. ("But Aunt So-and-so needs a room...")
   
5. SATs again: who on earth came up with the idea that the best way to determine a students' potential is by making them sit for one really really long test early in the morning. Even normal teachers realize that we all have our off days when we barely know how to add 1+1.
6. Tests: I should be studying right now.

A realization

Even if I don't get my 95.4 average in math, and end up with an A-minus, the A's in my other 3474598073 classes will effectively cancel it out.

You know your school is too intense when...

1. You can't carry your backpack
2. You consider carrying your backpack down a flight of stairs exercise.
3. You never know the weather because you don't have time to go outside.
4. Every day is one of "those days"
5. ALL your schoolmates' away messages say "working" or "way too much work to do"
6. You have dreams about sleeping (sad, but it's happened)
7. You don't have time to do work for the classes you like, but know you have an A in
8. Every single assignment makes you want to cry
9. You have tried to do homework while crying/eating/sleeping/showering (once I needed to memorize something so I tape-recorded it and played it in the shower)
10. You spend weekends doing homework
11. You can't remember the last time you went out on a weeknight
12. The idea of having to go out on a weeknight makes you want to fall asleep
13. You have fallen asleep while standing up/eating/showering/etc.

I'm too tired to think of any more.

High Achievers

I go to a magnet school. Evey chance he gets, our principal is telling us (and observers from school districts from places like Singapore and Taiwan) that we are the smartest, hardest working, best group of kids around. Right.

Here's how I (along with most of my classmates) do my current events for biology. We're required to write one paragraph summary and one paragraph reaction, and fill up a page.

• Double space.
  
• Use full MLA heading (four line plus the title).
• Write out numbers rather than using numerals. (i.e. nineteen twenties rather than 1920's)
  
• Always include the FULL TITLE of anyone you mention (i.e. "Professor of pediatric neurology at University College London and Great Ormond Street Hospital, and the principal investigator on the study") rather than little title, like "Dr. XXX, a professor".
• Include at least one quote.
• Mention every institution named. So, if it's about people at Oxford, also mention the names of supporting institutions as well as the names of anyone associated with them.

Here's what our summaries look like: "I think that this research should be continued, as it contributes to scientific knowledge...filler filler filler".

Since our teacher only skims them, it doesn't matter to us.

Other habits of high achieving students:

• Writing papers no sooner than two days before they're due.
• Writing down the bare minimum for physics homework and then claiming we didn't know how to do it.
• Missing over two weeks worth of class each year because of trips and competitions.
• Facebook.

I just reread through this post and it really does make us sound like a bunch of lazy slackers. But we're not, trust me. We don't slack off when we're not completely overwhelmed. Maybe I'll post again after I finish up that lab that's due tomorrow.