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.

The worst thing about my school

All my friends live in towns scattered around the county.

It can take up to an hour to get to some people's houses. And my parents HATE HATE HATE driving.

Hey, at least I've become an expert in getting rides from people.

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.

Paging

One day in February, my dad mentioned to me that if I wanted to become a page in Congress, I should look into it now. I did, and have since sent in my applications to three different congressional offices: both New Jersey Senators, and Rep. Jim Saxton.

There are basically four different programs, one for each party in each chamber. I applied to one GOP in the House, Saxton, and two Democratic Senators.

The House program, for either party, is really organized and straightforward. Congressmen are invited to nominate an applicant. The applications of their nominees are forwarded to either the Speaker's office or the Minority Leader's office. The Speaker/Minority Leader then decides which 72 of the 250+ nominees will get to serve as pages for each session.

In the Senate, each office can pick their most qualified candidates, but then they basically just push for their candidates in a free-for-all. One staffer I spoke to told me that's the reason that seniority is so important (yay Senator Lautenberg!).

There are four possible sessions to serve as a page: two semester-long school-year sessions, and two summer sessions, one in June and one in July.

My school is weird, and getting on my nerves. No transfer credits are accepted. So, if I went to one of the school-year sessions, I would have to go back to my town high school afterwards. That would suck. So, I only applied for the summer. Now, since I live in New Jersey, I don't actually get out of school until June 24-ish. So that left me with one session to apply to.

Granted, I didn't even know there were summer sessions, so I thought that there was no way I would be able to serve at all. But it still kind of sucks that I can't do the full semester program, which everyone online seems to agree is a better experience.

My applications were sent in on time (barely) for the April 1 deadline that most of the offices have. Rep. Saxton's office told me that the deadline for forwarding their nomination to the Minority Leader was April 14. I spoke to them after that date and was told that they had already forwarded the nomination but weren't going to tell me whether I had been nominated.

On Friday, I read on a message board for prospective and former pages that the Democrats in the House had already made their selections. Their deadline for nominations was April 9. So, in theory, I could know whether I was accepted into the house program THIS WEEK. Which, oddly, is actually what the staffer in Saxton's office told me.

The Senate staffer I spoke to said that the Senate would probably make their decisions by early to mid-May, since Summer I starts in early June.

All of a sudden, possible disappointment looms.

mmm.

They are over. The midterms are done with. The grades are in. I have time to sit, to reflect, and to simply do nothing, let the mind wander.

I'm thrilled with one. Happy with one. Oh-so-slightly disappointed with two. And still left waiting for the sole grade remaining. I expect it to be solid.

And now, with all the time I have to reflect, I shall.

The tests were meant as a tool, both for us and for the teachers. We were promised that discrepancies between teachers and classes and other factors beyond our control would not be allowed to hurt us. The teachers complained, the administration cackled behind closed doors, and those caught in the middle resigned themselves to sarcasm.

As students, we had no choice. Realistically, there was no other way to do it. But the idealist that sits inside my head protests. A vote! she cries. Democracy! The realism takes over though, and I have almost--but not completely--convinced myself that these tests did have some value to them.

Cumulative knowledge is good. Long-term memory is good. It wasn't the tests themselves that bothered me, it was the indignity of the way they were administered.

But for now, I'm just trying to actually learn the material covered in class, rather than shoving facts into my brain for ten seconds.

At least, I can try to relax.

Reaching and reaching.

As everyone who has and will read this knows, I attend a competitive public magnet school. I chose my school because I knew that the academics would be awesome and I would learn a lot. Additionally, I thought that the school would actually challenge me, something my middle school miserably failed to do. I never anticipated, though, that the challenges could prove to be overwhelming to the point of tears and panic attacks.

For the past week or so (ever since mid-trimester reports came out, incidentally), I've been feeling like I can't do it. My brain tells me, You can! Keep going! Go! but my heart and body want me to stop. They want me to relax, get a good night's sleep, and take time out of my life to think. I had no idea which plan is going to win out.

This evening the two ideas finally clashed enough that there was a battle (read: I cried and tried to make it all go away and hoped my dad would make it better.). My heart was telling me that it wouldn't matter if I stopped, but my brain was telling me to go anyway. The combination of the two ideas led to an odd, unexpected, and unwelcome thought. Maybe I really can't do it. Maybe I'm just not an "A" student in math (which I hate) and chemistry (which I love). Maybe it's okay to enjoy something while not excelling at it. And maybe I shouldn't worry about it and just let things happen.

I started to write a conclusion for this post and realized that I have no conclusion yet. My dad suggested a math tutor. It sounds like it might work. I know for a fact that's I'm going to see my chemistry teacher tomorrow and figure out why (after a high test grade) I'm only in the "lower part of the A range". Beyond that, though, I have no idea. For now, at least, I'm going to bed early.

My remarkable lack of artistic ability.

I'm a sophomore. My friends and I have a whole set of teachers that we had last year who (of course) still love us. A few months ago, a bunch of my friends and I went to our favorite former teacher's class and played "Vocab Challenge" with his frosh. We sophomores ended up winning (of course), but playing the game only served to remind me that the amount of time I had left before the SATs was getting smaller and smaller. And, oddly enough, I missed doing vocab each week.

Afew few weeks later, two other friends and I went back to his class and listened to him read part of a story by David Sedaris to his class. Afterwards, as we complained about our current teachers, he offered to provide us with some vocab words we could study from.

We said yes.

Don't get me wrong, I still think learning new words is cool. And most of the time I'm able to look more into the future, and remember that these words will come in handy. But I still find myself resisting when I dutifully sit down at my desk and open up my dictionary. I tell myself You don't have to do this! Why are you??? But then I remember the SATs. I remember reading articles so full of big words that they may as well be in Greek. And then, after a few cards, I start to think.

This isn't so bad, I say to myself. Besides, it'll help me a lot in the long run. And that's about when it usually hits me. Just because I don't enjoy doing something doesn't necessarily mean I want to do it. Just because it seems unimportant doesn't mean it won't help me or others in the long term. And finally, I realize that maybe the real purpose of the vocab cards wasn't to teach me the words. It was to get me to realize these things.

Always Learning, indeed.

P.S. I hid a vocab word from last year in the blog post!

No, I don't like math. Or science.

I'm in an engineering program at my school. Considering the title of this post, I can see why some might find this hard to believe. I mean, people change? And an eighth-grader might not know what they want to do with their life? GASP. Come on, get real. It's not like I don't take history or Lit. I just also happen take Intro to Engineering Design and Principles of Engineering. And I'm not very good at them. My strength is history. I'm known as that random engineering kid who wants virtually nothing to do with math. So I think it makes sense that I might not want to be defined by a choice of major that I made on a whim as an eighth-grader.

Naturally, some people don't realize that there are kids like me in engineering. I would say that about thirty to forty percent of kids at my school don't want to go into the area that they're enrolled in. I guess we tend to fly under the radar though, because today my Lit teacher made one of those statements that I get ALL THE TIME. At home and outside of school, that is. Because typically, teachers recognize that kids like me exist, but outsiders think that since I go to a "nerd school", I must fit the stereotype of an engineering geek. I am so sick of that attitude. At this point, I just want it to stop. It's not necessary, it's not true, and it hurts.

A Locker

Unless you go to my school, you probably have not heard about the locker issues we've been having. In the past students have been able to choose their lockers outright, and then used a computer system to register themselves. After years of alleged problems with lockers, this year the administration has decided that they do not want to deal with students choosing their own. Of course, they know that assigning lockers randomly would cause a rebellion, and so we all received stickers with our name and homeroom printed on them. Each person received only one sticker. Said stickers were then placed on sign-up sheets with twelve spaces available on them. We finally received our lockers today, after a full week of lugging around all our textbooks, notebooks, and binders. Of course, some people lost the stickers. I'm hardly surprised--they were small, and probably got lost among all the books were carrying.

I recognize that the administration probably thinks that this system works better than the old one. However, not getting a locker until today was pretty annoying. We were told our locker numbers in homeroom, after I had already put my tennis bag in the locker room, with my only lock used to secure it. This morning, I had four classes in a row, with no free time until 11:40, so I still had to carry around my books for a good chunk of the day.

Now, of course, I get to reap the benefits associated with having a locker. For instance, my tennis bag is in there. It sort of fits. My water bottle is too tall for the shelf on top. It's on the bottom instead. And I doubt my laptop is going to fit. I haven't tried yet. If it does, it will only be diagonally, which could make it fairly annoying to fit other books in around it. But looking on the positive side, it's near where I planned to choose my locker. And it's not next to the hallway that now serves as our cafeteria.

Hopefully, next year they will decide that assigning lockers causes too many problems.