Grades, School, Bleh.

We got our math progress reports back today.  Mine wasn’t too bad.  An overall 97.2 average (not too bad, still a lot of room for improvement.)  Does that sound a bit whiny?  Probably.  I think I rant too much about my failures a bit too much and it’s starting to tick off the people in my class.  I hate how I sound and I hate most of the things that come out of mouth, or my fingers.  See, more whining right here.  Great.
Moving on to my original point of this post.

I showed it to my dad, hoping for a “pretty good Lavina, maybe try for the extra 2.8 to make it a 100?”  Or something positive.  Instead he points out the only B on sheet, an 85%.
Dad: “Which one was that one?  The one you messed up on?”
Me: “Yeah…  It was word problems though.”
Then he starts talking about how I need to study that more and related topics and whatnot.   I pointed out that the extra credit points I got on the past few quizzes and how that would make the test grade a 91 instead of 85.  I got a “That’s not something to be proud of.”
Fanfu*****tastic.

To add onto that, I was supposed to go on an all day band field trip on Thursday (12 hours of band!) and I was so excited.  The teacher mentioned that the music should be easy, so I might be able to play it well!  Of course, my lovely teachers decide to have three tests on Friday.  Unsure of what to do, I brought it up with my parents and got a “schoolwork first” minirant/lecture thing.  Lovely.

Although, now that I’ve calmed down a little bit, I do see where my dad was coming from about the B (I understand their concerns about schoolwork.) It’s not the grade that really matters, it’s the skills I have to take with me to my next class and into the future and all that stuff.  I do understand that school is extremely important, but band is the reason I’m not seeing a shrink and I’m a relatively happy person.  Not that I’m a depressed person, I can’t deal with a lot of stress or pressure.  Or deal with it well at least.

Well, if you read this, thank you.  Leave a comment maybe?  No?  Oh well.  Good night then.

~’Vina

ONE!

One day left!  I head off to CTY in less than twenty four hours!
For those who don’t know what CTY is, CTY stands for Center for Talented Youth.  It’s a three week program that takes place in various colleges across the country and in a few other countries.  To get it, you have to take the SATs or ACTs and receive a certain score.  There are about seven hours of class every day, morning, afternoon and study hall at night.
CTY isn’t just about learning though.  There are activities in the afternoon, dances during the weekend and breaks throughout the day.

Unfortunately for me, I awoke with an upset stomach.  It’s probably because of a) the chicken from Taco Bell yesterday b) too much watermelon or c) the heat.  The day before CTY.  But I think it’s getting better.  The rumbly feelings stopped!

Anyway, this is probably my last post for a while.  I have to finish packing.  I’ll update in three weeks with lots of randomness.

~ ‘Vina

FOUR DAYS

I’m counting the days until I reach home~  Well, CTY that is.  I get to go home for three weeks of the year, the rest of it I’m homesick.  Wah…

But yeah, I FOUR DAYS UNTIL CTY.  It’s going to be awesome.  Pure awesomness, ON A STICK.  How much better can it get?

I’m still in the process of packing; most of my clothing is all packed away but the rest of the stuff is still scattered around the house.  I don’t really know if I want to finish packing early, because then I’d have luggage sitting around, and a LOT of waiting to do.  So yeah…  There’s my CTY rant for the day.

I recently aquired a box of wasabi green peas to bring to CTY, and I must say, they’re REALLY addicting.  Overly spicy, but addicting all the same.  My mom says I have to slow down, or else I’m going to give myself a sore throat.  She also asked me if I was really going to finish that many in three weeks.  Here’s how the conversation went:

Her: Are you really going to finish the whole box at CTY?
Me: Of course.
Her:  You’re eating the WHOLE thing?
Me: Probably not.  Ammunition!
Her: FIVE DOLLARS ON AMMUNITION?!

I love these kinds of conversations.

I’m trying to finish a whole bunch of mini projects before I leave, but it’s not going to well.  My panda hat looks reeeaaaalllyy wierd (even though I’m still in the process of making it) so I’m a little bit unsure of how to proceed with it. :\

I’m also unsure of how to attach pokeballs to a belt.  How’s that gonna work?

Anyway, that’s my update for today.

~Vina

Almost There…

I’m three weeks into summer vacation and I still haven’t done anything useful. At all. I sleep at one in the morning and wake up at eleven. I read, draw and watch anime. @.@

BUT! I’m gonna start doing something useful. Mainly because CTY is soon. LESS THAN TWO WEEKS! For Halloween (at CTY) I’m planning to dress up as a Pokemon trainer/ panda girl. I need to make panda hat, duct tape belt and I need to buy a black cargo shorts (and possibly ) and find my old pokeballs. I’m so excited. I WANNA SCREAM!

Oh, in one of the earlier posts, I was spazzing out about the SAT Biology subject tests. Well, I got 740! I was only aiming for something over 600.

I wanna write/draw a mini comic. I don’t know about what though. :\ Ah well. Oh, speaking of comics, visit this:
She’s awesome. SPREAD THE WORD.

- ‘Vina

Summer

It’s finally summer break! Well, the second day.

I love summer vacation. Usually, it means camp (CTY!), vacation, plenty of sleep, nothing school-related, getting together with friends and seeing my cousins.

It feels so weird, knowing that I’m not going to have to wake up at the crack of dawn to rush to the school bus but doing that anyway. When I woke up yesterday, my first thought was, “el nivel de mar” (’sea level’ in Spanish.) I hung out with one of my friends yesterday and we spend a half hour talking about Fedrick Griffith (smooth is deadly, rough is safe), codons (the expiration date on the soda bottle was AUG [the start codon]), anticodons and the works. I finished Chinese school a week ago (give a take a few days) but I spent some amount of time teaching traditional characters to my friend. And I had FUN doing all of this school-related stuff. I guess I really do enjoy learning when there’s no pressure to get straight A’s.

I really want Time to speed up so I can go to CTY already, but I also want Time to slow down because I know it’s going to be my last year at CTY. My parents keep complaining about how CTY is too expensive (well, $3,000 – $5,000 [depending on your age] is a lot of money for three weeks) and the only reason I get to go back this year is because I managed to get straight A’s for the second and third marking periods. If I tried really, really hard, I might be able to convince them to let me go next year too, but I’d feel guilty. I suppose the only solution to this is to enjoy the three weeks to its fullest; no more holding back, being overly shy so I don’t really get to know people until the last week etc.

And that’s my rant for today… ^^;;

- Lazuri

Almost There

Finally taking time to blog some more.  It’s fun, blogging.  I really should do it more often, but it takes up so much time, thinking of what to say and how to say it.  One of my goals is to stop putting so many, “I”s in my writing.  It’s really hard for me. ><

School is almost out.  There’s tomorrow (Friday) and then one week left.  Not even a week though.  Four of five days next week are half days for finals.  I really should be cramming and whatnot, but it hasn’t quite hit me yet.  School seems like it’s going to last forever but end quickly at the same time and finals seem an eternity away.  I did some studying for history and math (taking them next Thursday) but not so much for Biology (taking it on Tuesday.)  Otherwise, I haven’t done too much.

I’ve finished my Spanish oral/writing part (probably bombed the writing, but I did fine on the speaking) and the writing for English.  I probably bombed that too, but I don’t care too much right now.  My mind has been plagued with end-of-school-itis.  Sucks for me.

In the past summers, for most of my life, my parents have sent me to every camp they could fit into my summers and set aside a week or two for a family vacation.  This year I’m only going to CTY (super luff <3), possibly a week of band camp, and we’re spending a week in Disney.  This leaves a lot of free time on my hands.  And I can’t wait.  I’m hoping to get a lot done this summer and I’ve already started making a mental list of everything I want to do.  So far I have: experiment with acrylic and/or watercolor paints, sew a few more hats, start drawing new and/or different poses in my pictures, write more, and relearn all my piano songs so I can fit them into a CD.  And I’m still not done.

Wish me luck~
- Lazuri

AHHHHHH. 1 DAY TO D-DAY D:

1 DAY TILL D-DAY. Well, not even. Less than twenty-four hours.

At times like this, I wonder why I even signed up for this.
My biology teacher told us that because we were an honors class, everyone who got an A or B in the class would be able to do well on the Bio SAT. Of course, the class is focused mainly on molecular biology and a few concepts of bio while the effin SATs are more focused on organisms… Honestly, who cares about slime molds? And I digress. Anyway, my point is that I blame my bio teacher for suggesting this awful test in the first place. Oh well, at least it doesn’t have to get sent in.

I let myself back on deviantArt though. It’s relaxing to just look at other people’s art. I must admit, he last few weeks have been rather taxing on me. All this stuff is putting a lot of pressure on me and I don’t deal too well with pressure. It got so bad that I actually got a bit hysterical on the bus today and broke down, but I’m okay now. Oh, and I started actually enjoying studying for during the past two days (which is definitely a sign the pressure is getting to me.) Luckily, the school year is almost over.   The thought of that and CTY keeps me sane.

School

I hate heartily dislike school. Very much. And SATs too.

My work load is mounting up, higher and higher. It’s going grow so high that it falls and drowns me eventually. Even though school ends in two weeks, I have more to do now then I did at anytime during the rest of the year.

The last week of school consists of half days and finals which means I have a LOT of cramming and studying to do. Teachers are cramming in everything and anything that they haven’t taught yet so we can be prepared. The Biology SAT date is coming closer and closer and I’m not getting any studying done. (My practice test scores were 400 and 500. Out of 800. So they’re not even average.) As I said yesterday, my biology teacher decides to dump a 230 point project on us to make up for all the bad ones we got. My history teacher (who can’t teach and hasn’t taught us anything) decides to make us do all the chapter questions we can possibly handle (and more) so we can ‘learn’ from them to make up for her lack of teaching. (Oh, did I mention that she was ‘misinformed’ about a project worth 50% of our final exam grade? And that because of her incompetence, she gave us the wrong due date? And that she made us cram it into two class periods? Oh, did I forget to mention that it’s worth FIFTY EFFIN PERCENT OF OUR FINAL EXAM GRADE?!) My math teacher decided to cram two chapters worth of work into less than two weeks (when it usually takes one and a half to two weeks) so she’s giving us four nights’ worth of homework in one. There’s a computer science test on sorts in Java (which I do not understand.) Anything I learned in Spanish has leaked out of what’s left of my brain and there’s a To Kill A Mocking Bird test on Wednesday.

Pure fun.

Now that I have wasted twenty minutes of life on this post and various other (pretty much pointless) activities, I should return to my schoolwork. Which I really do despise.

-Lazuri

First Post!

As the title suggests, this is my first post.  Yay me!  Erm…  Anyway!  Whenever I chance upon something new, whether it be a gaming site, blogging site, even an email site, I have to try it out. Just for the fun of it. It might also be because I’ve banned myself from deviantArt, Gaiaonline, FaceBook, and now, possibly, fanfiction.net.

So now, I’m going insane. I have nothing, absolutely nothing, to procrastinate with. I know I should be studying for the SAT Bio test that happens to be this Saturday (which is also the reason I have banned myself from my favorite websites), or researching for my bio project due Monday (which happens to be worth two hundred thirty points), but I can’t help it. Shame on me.

I’ll probably see if I can upload my art, fanfiction and stories here. Maybe. If I’m not too lazy.
- Lazuri