Testing Season

As you move outside of your comfort zone, what was once the unknown and frightening becomes your new normal.

Robin S. Sharma

April 26, 2015 

-9:14pm
Forcing oneself to change is part of the process, and especially when the occasion is felt for it. Especially since I have "big dreams".
My dreams have been running low on fuel, as if they were stopping in pit stops, taking their time out of the night lane, and staying there for the rest of the, it has been a few weeks now, hasn't it? Sleeping in their cars rather than in my head, then telling me all about their experience. It flops a perspective to think that the occasional vision occurs when my mind is not digging the piles of books out of the to-do pile. So, I wonder how that can be seen as, in terms of a character and person.
The month of April has been action packed from the head to even beyond the feet, a few feet into the ground of May. Lately my planner's been full of studying, and hardly do I see the relaxing degree below the high bars of responsibilities nor the cover of my sketch book, my journal, even my weekend, and I have not spent that as wisely as I should have! So, one test is bound to be over this Tuesday. Already it creeps up as though it were not Tuesday, but in eleven hours. Ay, I spend the hours going over my obligations and sometimes a bit more than that. These days, the time goes by faster. Weeks are three long days. Hours are fifteen minutes. And before, as I was once a small child eager for the school to be vacant, that same hypothetical dream is from such a different person who thought of it. Will the same be thought of, ten years, or even half of that ahead?
Tomorrow will know.

May 2nd, 2015

-7:15pm
This is the final week of the, I don't believe madness is the right word to use in this context, as it would imply the circumstance boiling the curriculums were out of hand, but meanwhile, there is a friction between the required hours of study or homework with the time available in the last full month of my junior year. Lately, I've devoted a fraction of my active week to find an alternative as a catalyst to getting the full output of learning and homework in another, more beneficial manner. The shortcut across the back alley to get the jobs done, without sacrificing detail. One of those methods I found was reading at a faster rate. With one out of the five tests down, my studying habits are flooding to the point of infiltrating other important devotions. My AP Calculus BC exam, for example, has occupied what could have been chapter homework for my second C++ class, or for my rewrites for my essays, or for my AP Chemistry exam that is actually before the calc test and is tomorrow.
 With these preoccupations, the forgetting calmness of the final weeks is trifle now. Imagining what I would do in the meantime is a cloud away. Mother's Day is a week away, and I haven't begun scratching the canvas yet. Also, the end of the year edition of my school's newspaper, Polar Prints is coming, and I've been putting off the comics for this special reason. The mounds of borrowed books collect dust. Pockets empty, too. But for now, I will focus on what matters most, and that is dependent on the future ahead. The standards of success must prevail. Princeton, here I come.

May 12th, 2015

-17:35
I'd say I'm a bibliomaniac in some ways. Often I read dictionaries to learn new words for my bafflegab in journals like this. The frabjous time spent in preparations for what would become my permanent mark on a draw for free money is, well, worthy and a juggle to balance. The final three important hours of AP are tomorrow. Hmm, in hindsight, this wrongful child should not have been written, and instead would have been useful time in study. But that idea is defenestrated from my thoughts. All time not spent well is not wasted. It itself is a lesson learned. And social life is as important as *the curriculum between the stops.

*Written after the date on the 16th

May 16th, 2015

-8:56pm
I feel a surge of wisdom, but not necessarily of words, or of the sudden mind, it's a peace that I finally have made with mind and soul, as I have pushed the button that I said I would about the ten percent of my wholesomeness that I have held inside and kept it there. Could this have been since the sixth grade? Is that what I was referring to for the five years since? Is this the explanation for the not teary, not sad either, and not down, but the longing, of an honest mind to be imagining the relief of the duct tape over its wonderful staged in faint outline speeches? The moment was on a Friday afternoon, some time after the suckers lab in AP Chemistry. I was idle, surveying the classroom as I default to doing and is not a manner of absorbing their posterity, but a study. Waiting, I decided to work on the comics for Polar Prints, and that's when part one began. My classmate behind, with the same name almost, wondered what I was doing and I told her. I then added that this sketchpad was also used for my other art.
Even at the experimental paintings, I felt as though these were the amused children huddling at my feet to get to touch the interesting Eagle I had at arm. It was then that the person whom I saw and competed with in grades came up to me and asked me a question. It wasn't the first spoken sentence, however. "I'm going into computer science as well." "What? Oh, computer science! So what college are you applying for?" "Hopefully I'll go into one of the elite schools." "Like Harvard?" "No, something like Princeton. I keep getting letters from them." "Oh, Princeton! I'm thinking about applying there as well." A pause. "The best thing I could draw was in Studio Art II (Drawing), and it was this hand that was in the shape of a cave. ("Cool!") It wasn't very accurate and it is the best thing I will ever draw in my life." I wanted to reassure her that with practice, makes perfect, but, the conversation receded as the bell rang us apart. Then I ran downstairs into Advance American Literature B.
The class began with an odd number as the David Foster Wallace speech was re-represented by the teacher, only this time he was live and in person and not behind a beard and a camera. This was one for a graduating class, but all the same, it applied to us as well, as that day is no longer sitting on the horizon. After it was done, I was captured by it again. I felt a nobility surge, as though I were standing inside my own body. This was the time to push that button of yours, my subconscious rang. Mr. Krueger looked around to find my crawling hand inching upward. "I liked how you just crawled your hand upward, slowly inching it!" Go ahead, he tells me. So I did.
"I find that each of us can take bits out of this speech and apply it into our lives." "How so?" "I find it that in the world we live in we all are a little judgmental. By applying ourselves with allowing the mind to be open, I feel we all can, um, lower our stress of responsibilities and obligations, and we would be more accepting of the life we have." "Nice."
As I spoke this, I quaked, but only my body did. As I was packing my binder, I hear the silence rising to a halt. I looked over to hear what he had to say. "You should talk more. Whenever you speak you have interesting things to say." And then he continues. " I mean, I don't want you to  force everything out, but it would be nice for you to share what goes on in your mind more often." "Thanks."
My summer began at that moment. Of all the opportunities I had, this was the one that was long overdue. "So I'm writing a book over the summer. It's called... Sketches. And originally it was supposed to be a sci-fi/fantasy, but I changed that to be more of a fiction, ("mm-hmm") a realistic fiction." The last sentence was asked like a question. I went on. "The second book I'm writing is called Thirty Percent of Ninety and what the title signifies is that thirty percent is what is told about myself (even though I meant anyone in general) and sixty percent is hidden. The extra ten percent is how people should live, one hundred percent of their life." He did complement me, and I did go away. I did have another prompt to ask, and thought, he will be here until those three remaining weeks are over. Help me lower the clouds of my dreams, Mr. Krueger, the same ones that were raised by Mrs. Schreiber, and are still high, beaming brightly against the whiteness, and have them no longer be an incredible stretch of hand anymore, but a revitalization of that kick I have always stowed away.