The End of an Era

(Via BrilliantNext)

Wow.

It has been a long yet short school year, and this blog has accompanied me the whole entire journey.  Ever since I began this blog in October of 2015, I knew this day would come.  The day I would write my last blog post.

Let's take a trip down memory lane.  My blogging journey began at the beginning of the school year in 2015.  This year was my first year in high school -- I'm a freshman.  I remember I was excited for my freshman year.  I was particularly excited for my English class, and on top of that I was mostly excited to create a blog.  I had heard about them from older students and I was eager to create my own.  In the beginning, we had to come up with a theme and a blog title and all of that fun stuff.  Originally, the way I would write my posts would be by categorizing it into 1 of 3 genres: rants, opinions, and obsessions. I talked a little bit about this in my introduction post. 

In the beginning, I thought my idea was great.  But pretty much when I went on to writing my second blog post, I ditched the idea entirely.  To be honest, I tried too hard to have a perfectly organized blog and it almost took the fun out of writing the actual posts.  So from then on, my blog began to transform into a "band blog".  Basically, I would say 75% of my posts were about my favorite bands.  Occasionally, I'd have a few ranting blog posts or blog posts about completely arbitrary things such as memes or 35 year old men.  But by now, by the end, it's strayed away from the theme of a "band blog" and has just become a place for me to write whatever I want.  I let go of the labels I tried to put on my blog.

Because of this blog, I have grown in many ways.  For instance, as I touched on above, I've given up trying to make everything perfect.  Why bother doing something a certain way if you'd enjoy doing it a different way?  On top of that, I've also grown by coming to love writing blog posts.  It's a type of therapy in a way.  I know not many people read this, so it allowed me to express myself in whatever way I wanted.  Whether it was ranting about some tough times I've had at school, or if I wanted to rave about a cat video-game that nobody else would give me the time of day to talk about, I could do it all here without any problems.  So because of this, I think I'll really miss writing these blog posts.

By writing these blog posts, I've also learned a lot about myself.  Most of the time, you're just sitting in your own body, not really aware of who you truly are. Often times, people just don't take the time to get to know themselves, as weird as it sounds.  But when writing these posts, and reading it back to yourself, you learn some things that you might have subconsciously been ignoring or just completely unaware of.  If I hadn't invested eight months into this blog, I don't know if I would have learned some of the things I now know about myself today.

The final thing I need to touch on is where I am today.  It's late at night on a Wednesday.  Im tired, a little stressed, along with a touch of anger and sadness.  I'm a little worried for my AP Geography test this upcoming Friday, but it is what it is.  But in the end, I know I'll be okay.  In fact, just writing this blog post has made me feel better.

Writing this blog post has been bittersweet.  On one hand, I'm ecstatic to be nearing the end of my freshman year and the end of updating this blog.  Yet on the other hand, I know I'll miss all of the memories I've made this school year and I'll miss writing these blog posts.  Of course, I could always continue to update this blog next year.  Hell, I could continue it my entire high school career.  But, there are some things that should just stay where they are.  This blog has been a key part of my ninth grade career.  Even though I never specifically talked about it, you could still witness my growth and how things have changed in my life.  

With that, I should keep this blog as a time capsule of my ninth grade year. It basically contains little anecdotes from my freshman career and who I was at the time. This blog contains all the things a time capsule should have.  So because I've finished this blog, or rather I've finished putting everything in the time capsule, it is time to bury it for the future.  Maybe next year as a sophomore I'll check back on it and laugh.  Or maybe three years down the line, as a senior, I'll look back at this post and remember writing it as I am right now. Maybe I'll be close to graduating and I'll realize how simple it was as a freshman, and I'll laugh again.  Or better yet, maybe I'll check on this blog while I'm in college.  I'll look back at myself, and smile because of how far I've come. No matter the circumstance, I think it's time to finish this blog and close this chapter in my life, as fun as it's been.

So thanks for accompanying me during this journey, blog.  I'll never forget it.

What Goes Around Comes Around

(Via Leon Karssen)

Vacations should be one of the most relaxing things ever.

I guess my luck wasn't in my favor this week.

This week, which is the first week of May, is the week my family decided to take me out of school to go on vacation in California.  Don't get me wrong - I enjoy school and going to my classes and all.  But it has been a long year.  Even with the amount of breaks we've had, it's really nice to get an extra bonus week off.

So when the school week ended last Friday, I was totally checked out.  I was ready to leave.  I was exited to go to the beach, spend time at the pool, and eat a lot of good food.  Overall, I just wanted to relax.

But, late afternoon on Sunday when we arrived at our hotel, I felt something in my throat. Not only did my throat hurt, but I felt unusually cold.  I ignored it, I figured I did something to it while we were driving down to California.  But as the day progressed, my throat began to hurt more and my body temperature kept spontaneously fluctuating.  I was going to stay in denial, but deep down I knew. I knew I was becoming sick.

Well hey, maybe if I slept through it I would feel better when I woke up, right? I was wrong.  That night, I couldn't sleep well at all.  I would get extremely hot to the point where I couldn't sleep under my covers, and once I changed that, I got too cold which forced me to go back under them again.  So I guess you could say I had a pretty restless night.  I woke up around 6 am, which is extremely early for me when I have the option to sleep in.  And when I woke up, I felt absolutely terrible.  My throat hurt, my t-shirt was drenched with sweat (even though I felt cold), and I felt extremely dizzy.  I then realized I had the fever, and I became extremely sad.

(Via Smudgem)

I wasn't going to let my fever stop my day's plans.  My family and I were planning on eating some Korean food that day.  Where I live has some nice places to eat, but California definitely tops it.  So I had been looking forward to this meal for awhile.  We bought a bunch of food and it was all looked delicious. I made a plate full of food.  But when I actually started to eat it, I wanted to throw up. It's not that the food was bad, it's just that I actually couldn't stomach anything because of my fever.  But I tried to fight through it.  I ate small portions very slowly.  It was sad I didn't get to eat as much as I would have wanted to, but some food is better than no food.

Getting sick on vacation was one of the last things I could have wished for.  But at least by now I've started to feel better.  Maybe this is karma for something I did awhile ago.  Maybe this is karma for missing school. Or maybe this is karma for that one time I stole a toy tiger from my friend's house when I was four. Either way, this was payback for something.  But for the time being, I think I'll continue to stay in denial and try to enjoy my trip.

Sucking At Something Is The First Step To Being Sorta Good At Something

For a teenager, I don't really care about driving.

My 15th birthday was back in September.  I didn't get my driver's permit until this new year in January.  I pretty much put it off for four months out of sheer laziness.  And since then, I've barely used it.  When I first got it, I drove up and down my street a couple of times.  But my parents and even I didn't trust myself doing anything beyond that.

Visual representation of me driving.

So my driver's permit has basically been sitting in the corner of my room for the past two months.  Although, I've started to use it recently.  Almost everyday after my track and field practice, my mom would pick me up and she'd pull over once we got off of Kearns Boulevard and turned onto a calmer road that I believe is called Old Highway 40.  I would drive from there and pull over in the Home Depot parking lot and my mother would take back over from there.  The first few times I pretty much sucked.  I kept accidentally swerving into the other lane, driving too fast or too slow for the speed limit, and making extremely sharp turns which almost lead me to drive off of the road and in a ditch.  But eventually after a week or so, I pretty much got the hang of driving on the country road.

A couple of days ago, there was a change of plans.  My mother pulled over in the same spot and I proceeded to drive on the same road I had been practicing on for a couple of weeks.  Except this time, instead of pulling over at Home Depot, she told me to continue past it.  She wanted me to continue driving and pick up my little brother at his friend's house.  I was anxious, but I knew I couldn't drive the same road forever.  So I drove past Home Depot.  Right after it, there was a roundabout that was generally pretty busy.  Luckily for me, it was relatively quiet and there was only one other car in the roundabout before me.  So I awkwardly drove in, accidentally driving exactly in the middle rather than staying to the left.  From there on, I drove on an overpass above the highway, and continued on Highland Drive.  

From there, I was doing okay. Except there was this pissy car behind me.  I, an amateur driver, drove very poorly.  I kept forgetting the speed limit, and when I realized I wasn't at the speed I needed to be, I'd abruptly accelerate or decelerate.  This caused the driver of the car behind me to start honking.  I didn't have to look back for me to know that the driver was ready to flip a table because of me.  Eventually, when I turned into the driveway of my brother's friend's house, the car was able to pass me.  The driver gave me a couple of good honks just to let me know how much I sucked for the final time.  One of the worst parts is that the driver probably got a look at my face and observed two things about me: I'm asian and a woman.  Unfortunately, I was living up to two stereotypes I'm strongly against.  I also felt bad because I was probably close to giving my mother a heart attack.  But hey, I probably didn't do that bad considering that was my first time driving for that long.

Overall, it's kind of sad that I started driving so late.  If I actually cared and got my permit on my birthday like most kids my age, I would probably be a lot better than I am now.  So because of the skill level I'm at now, I probably won't get my actual license when I turn 16, which is a bummer.  I guess that means I'll have to work hard to make it happen.  And sure, random driver behind me, I know I suck at driving.  But as Jake the Dog would say, sucking at something is the first step to being sorta good at something, right?

(Via Sadmoment)

Blogger Has A Lot Of Problems (Like Me)

A visual representation of sarcasm.

Blogger has a lot of flaws.

Over the course of a couple days, I had been working hard on a blog post about a different rant.  I read and reread it several times, making sure it was perfect and ready to post. I found one solid high quality photo to go with it as well. Everything was sorted out flawlessly and I was proud I had completed another blog assignment.  Wow, it looked as if my life was finally coming together.

Haha, I guess not.

When I knew the post was good to go, I clicked the publish button.  No results. So me, being an impatient teenager, started to click the publish button dozens of times in the span of just a couple of seconds.  And yet again, the post would still not publish.  So after spamming the save button just to be sure it saved, I clicked the refresh button so maybe I could submit it the next time around.

bUT BOY WAS I WRONG.

By refreshing the page, I lost all of my work.  Every single sentence I worked hard on was gone.  Every period, comma, and semi colon I placed systematically had vanished.  I was so frustrated.  I should have known better too, this happened to me with another old blog post except last time it only deleted half of the post.  But I suppose my naïvety got the better of me.

So after the fact settled in that I'd have to redo my assignment and I lost at least three days worth of work, I pretty much lied on the floor while listening to music and stared at the ceiling for a solid twenty minutes.  At that point, I was just done with everything.  It is finals week and the last week of the semester after all, so losing all of my hard work only brought me more stress (check out this post to see me elaborate on this more).  Maybe if I were a better student and I got all of these assignments done earlier, I wouldn't be as stressed or reckless.  But I don't see that happening any time soon, unfortunately.  So instead of using the time I took to rant about a rant blog post that backfired, I could have been doing some other homework.  Also, I could of spent three hours doing more homework if I didn't decide to draw.  I drew a person with three eyes.  Three of them.  My life truly is a wreck right now.

Basically, Blogger has as many problems as I do.

I Wanna Throw Myself At The Sun But What's New

Before I even start with this rant, I just want to address that this will be one of many rants on probably the same topic, that topic being school. :-)))

Me on the outside :-)
*but is internally screaming and stressing*
 (Via Tumblr)

I know, this is what I get; I deserve it.  I knew this was how it was going to go down when I signed up for all of these classes.  And, because I'm taking all honors and AP classes, I should be able to handle this. But bOY WAS I WRONG HAHA.

The amount of homework I have is ridiculous.  And yeah, this is a thing every student has complained about.  I honestly know nobody who hasn't complained about it either.  I know I'm gonna sound like a broken record, but I need to address this. (Just let me complain here.)

It might not sound like a lot when I type it out, but it sure feels like a lot and it takes a toll on my mental and physical health.  Tuesday night, for instance, was kinda rough.  The night before that I probably went to bed around 11:00 finishing a project.  Then, I woke up at 5:30 in the morning so I had enough time to get ready for school, resulting in me only getting a little over six hours of sleep.  Then, I went to school for about seven hours.  After that, I had basketball practice for two hours, making me get home around 4:30.  Because Tuesday was my little brother's birthday, we were going out to dinner to celebrate at 6:00.  So, I did as much homework as I could in that time frame and I took a shower on top of that.  So we went out to dinner and got home around 8:00.  Just in time for me to get some sleep! Wrong.  I still had two finals to study for. (I won't single any class out haha.)  By the time it was 11:30, I had only finished studying for one final.  I was so tired, I had a mental breakdown and I couldn't finish studying for my second final.  I mean, I was going all day, I didn't have time to stop and sit down at all, I'm not kidding.  So yesterday morning, when I woke up after a rough night, I looked like I crawled out of some deep pit of hell.  I had major bags under my eyes and it was hard for me to stay awake all day.  I also had to run to the bus stop in the morning because I somehow still didn't have enough time.  I think it's safe to say that has been the worst day this quarter.

My point is, the work load is too much to handle, for me at least.  I feel like a student should be able to spend time with their family, participate in extracurricular activities, and honestly have at least an hour to sit on the couch and just chill out after school.  I understand homework is important and each teacher has their own assignments they want us to complete, but some of it is just too much.  I highly doubt I'm going to use the multiplicative inverse of matrices everyday in my future, so I'd rather spend the time doing that homework on something else useful, like re-watching The Office for the second time.

(Via Jglovier Gifs)

There's nothing I can do about this problem, but I just needed to let off some steam and complete this assignment that I ended up writing at 10:30 pm. (I'm so healthy and I get enough sleep every night!)

So I guess this concludes my school rant for now.  Be prepared for many others in the future!