Over and out
As clichéd as it feels, this is my last blog entry, so I feel obligated to discuss at some length my reflections on this school year.
The segue between freshman and sophomore year gave me the feeling similar to the one I got between watching “The Matrix Reloaded” and “The Matrix Revolutions.” More modern example: the feeling between the second “Pirates of the Caribbean” movie and the third one (which, incidentally, looks awesome). In words that the other 90 percent of my audience will understand, there wasn’t much difference between the two years; one stopped abruptly, and things picked right up where they left off a good while later.
Case in point: Just like last year, this year I ate lunch in the same place at the same time; I had math in the morning in Room 206, and science in the morning on the third floor. I did the same sports in PE (with the tragic inclusion of pickleball) and had a similar English curriculum (read a book, talk about it, write about it, perhaps do a group presentation, repeat). In history class, despite prevailing lethargy (you try sitting in a warm, dark room right after lunch or fitness) I learned a lot of truly interesting material and got used to spending the better part of the night every two weeks steadily absorbing pages of flowcharts into my brain.
I had a lot of fun in Japanese, with an endless parade of inside jokes, including (in general order from least to most “inside”): the tribulations of filling out workbook pages by listening to the supplemental CD; the textbook’s jaw-dropping attempts to explain the derivations of kanji; the importance of okurigana; and the elusive definition of “ashita.”
I had eighth hour free, and oscillated between hanging around until the end of the day to finish homework in a more productivity-conducive environment and getting home to take my mind off schoolwork as fast as humanly possible.
The only really noteworthy difference was that I signed up for journalism. As I had more or less expected, it was one of the most demanding parts of my courseload, but there’s certainly a feeling of accomplishment now that I look back. Writing on this page once a week has been fun, and it was always kind of neat to see my work get published. I’d also like to think that I’ve partially overcome my fear of letting my opinions become visible to anyone with an Internet connection.
In any event, I expect next year will be rather different: I’ll have a new floor to call home, I’ll have several new teachers, and for the first time, I’ll be sitting alongside a pretty high proportion of non-Class-of-2009 people, what with the combined junior-senior PE and English classes and the two fine arts classes I’ve registered for. And I can’t wait for the monstrous load of junior-year homework that I’ve been promised.
Until then, I’m going to have myself a great summer. I’m going to be heretical by waking up early (sorry, I never really liked the feeling of stumbling out of bed at noon unless it meant I wasn’t going back to school for a few days). I’m going to whittle away many a happy hour on my XBox 360. I’m going to strive to get in at least five miles of running and/or biking every day that I’m not off on vacation. There are tons of movies coming out this year that have caught my eye, not to mention some new albums, especially the new offering from the White Stripes, which I’ll be earnestly and amateurishly playing along to after I’ve had a few listens and a few tab searches. I imagine I’ll also do a fair amount of reading.
One more item of business. As of late, as anyone who’s come within 10 feet of my locker recently will note, I’ve become borderline obsessed with xkcd. The first time I saw it was on the day that Ben Fu posted a link to the webcomic in his comment to an entry on this very blog about the merits of owning a cat. The last time I saw it was about 10 minutes before I started working on this blog. The author is surely one of the most clever, insightful and clear-minded people I could name, so I thought I’d conclude my illustrious Gargoyle blogging career with one of my favorite installments.
And that is the proverbial “it.” (“Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” plagiarism!)
P.S. Hey, all of you ersatz copyright police who noticed that comic above: Try not to get too excited. The author permits all kinds of not-for-profit redistribution and, indeed, many forms of for-profit redistribution. To console you, I offer this.
P.P.S. Yes! I’ve been trying to find a good place to use the word “ersatz” for months now.
P.P.P.S. If that strikes you as rather odd, this is my defense.
P.P.P.P.S. Yes, this is definitely one too many postscripts.
— Andrew Lovdahl