Everything I Need to Know I Learned in IB Language & Literature Year 2

You know Ms.G, I honestly am currently blaming your class for all of the nostalgia lately and reading the blog post now has officially cemented you at the top of teachers who are making me really bummed to be leaving high school. I have a feeling this blog post is about to be kinda long and probably not coherent (Yay for having 8 hours of work starting at 10 the day after prom) so buckle up.

I've recently been thinking a lot about middle school for a couple of different reasons. Although it all started with the striking and weird parallels between Magellan and Hailsham (I probably am a clone tbh) although it's pretty common for me to get annoyingly introspective during endings. 

Missing my Magellan friends right about now but 2 of the 3 are going to UNC with me so that's pretty cool. 

This whole nostalgia thing isn't good for focusing cause it leads to me getting side tracked really easily (I accidentally spent 30 minutes on Facebook while locating that picture). But I think it has to do a lot with the idea of I was. I've been really bad at looking at old yearbooks and watching old videos from Magellan recently although it has been nice to see what life really was like back then, especially since it has changed so much.

The best example of this was when I went through every old journal I could find. This was prompted by Mortified Nation (it's on netflix and pretty entertaining, you guys should check it out). Here's a trailer I'd recommend watching so this next part makes sense:

So, I've decided, if I'm supposed to be talking about I was, the best way to do that is to use old diaries/journals. Here goes:

First I found one was from 2004 and most of it is completely incoherent. At one I wrote "I have a little trobul with sppelling" (I bet you can tell). Throughout that entry the words I mispelled include wright (write), frainds (friends), cusuf (cursive), sleppy (sleepy), akdamly (academically-this one's especially ironic because I was talking about how I was in the AG program and yet I spelled that one wrong), chans (chance), Hollwen (Halloween), chear (cheer), and tomoro (tomorrow). So: I was bad at spelling. 

A scintillating entry from August 7th, 2006 reads:

"Dear Dary (Diary),

My tamagaty (tamagatchi) evoled (evolved). Can't talk right now! :'("

Which I thought was strange because why on earth would I take the time to just write that down and then I continuted reading and realized that this was when I was really trying to keep a daily journal. For instance, the next two entries go: "Dear Dariy (Diary), I just woke up! Talk to you later" and "Dear Diary, gotta run!". So: I was really bad at trying to make new habits.

There's some great lists of cool IM terms including how to make Santa out of punctuation *<:)

I found this great one in a more journal like thing that I had. There's some writing at the beginning followed by a bunch of empty pages and then, out of nowhere, at the top of the page I wrote "The past is sad". Nothing else. That was it. I have no idea why or when but I found that pretty entertaining. 

Next I found a journal where I had written poems that I had found and liked. The most important one is probably Hope is the Thing with Feathers by Emily Dickenson. I had these poetry books when I was a kid and I read that poem so many times I ended up memorizing it.

Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul
And sings the tune without the words,
And never stops at all
And sweetest in the gale is heard;
And sore must be the storm
that could abash the little bird
That kept so many warm.
I've heard it in the chillest land,
And on the strangest sea;
Yet, never, in extremity
It asked a crumb of me.

So: I was totally an English nerd.

I found a journal from 7th grade and I would like to take a mini pause from this blog post and just apologize to everyone who knew me in 7th grade. There aren't really any interesting parts to that journal, it's mostly just complaining. It is weird though because I'm reading about me watching the first part of the Deathly Hallows which is so strange to me now? Like Harry Potter was such an integral part of my childhood and it's just weird to think about a time when I still didn't know what happened and still hadn't watched all the movies?

To preface this, in most of middle school I switched between wanting to be an author or a lawyer. This entry is from March 11, 2010:

I love writing. I love pouring a part of my soul out into something that might get me somewhere. That way I will know I've acomplished something. I also really badly want to be an English major at UNC.

And here is the part that really got me the first time I read through this:

If my life was a dream I would go to UNC.

Because in a little less than four months, at least according to 7th grade me, I'll be living my dream. So: I really was totally an English nerd and a huge Carolina fan.

Then the journal jumped forward a year so now it's 8th grade. This entry is from April 26, 2011 (almost exactly 4 years ago):
29 days of school left. Two weeks till EOGs and EOCs. I'm almost a high schooler! Quite frankly, I can't wait to get out of Magellan
I think by the end of that 5th year with the same 67 people, I was ready for a change.

Then I take a break from complaining about Magellan relating things and switch over to my brother which allowed this great phrase to happen "Ty is a total donkey".

And I have finally reached high school in these journals! This one is from the first day of school:

I have so many things to tell you! First of all, I am officially a high schooler! It's so crazy!

Also quick shout out to Sophie who was one of the first non-Magellan friends I had at Millbrook. This is starting to get really weird to read now? Now that it's out of Magellan and into Millbrook I'm starting to become acutely aware of graduation.

I just found my 9th grade English notebook that had all of our journaling prompts. They aren't particularly interesting over all. I did find that 3 years ago today the prompt was Spring Break and I wrote about my family's Easter tea. Here's a picture from Easter that year:


One of the last prompts from freshman English was the Last Day and here was my response:

I hate endings. They are the worst part of everyone's life. We have almost finished 9th grade! We're almost sophomores. And that doesn't sound like much. Sophomores. So what. We have three whole years ahead of us. But what's really scaring me is how quickly this year has passed. Sure, each individual school day felt like a prison sentence and yes I did count down the minutes till class was done, but I think back and it doesn't feel like that long ago I was walking into Coach East's civics classroom, only knowing 7 people and missing my friends from middle school. During middle school you could just walk in the doors  is particularly applicable to right now. Each teacher had their own individual countdown on the board. 

 And, almost 3 years later, the end of high school is almost here. We're so close. Right now all of my homework is intensely focused on exams and that's not been easy to get myself to concentrate on. So thank you Ms. Genesky for allowing me to spend the past couple of hours going through some old memories.

I've been liking ending my blog posts with something unrelated to the post itself and I figure that should continue:
Here's a vine to watch if you ever need something adorable to cheer up: https://vine.co/v/O9aQz6B0nhw 

And here is a song that has been making me really sentimental lately. For those of you who watch Parks this song is from (spoiler alert if you haven't watched some of the later seasons) when Ann and Chris are moving away and it's playing in the background at the end of that episode. (end spoiler alert) Either way, I think this song will be something that's helpful to listen to as this chapter of our lives comes to a close.

So thank you again Ms. Genesky for making senior year awesome and I would also like to add a little disclaimer again that this was written in the middle of the night after prom and 8 hours of work and very little sleep. Or, to quote Jose, "Yeah I sound really tired because I'm sick and it's like 10 o'clock at night. I dunno. It's late. Bye."