Midyear Report

So I'm supposed to be filling out an official Midyear Report for UChicago, but I'm shirking my admitted student duty. On the other hand, I did submit an original prompt to possibly torture next year's UChicago applicants with. (zomgGrammarAlert: split infinitive AND ending sentence with preposition.) The essay that's supposed to result from that prompt will probably be sacrificed for Spectrum/Idiosync/Acadec writing instead. Pathetic times.

Notice how none of the above work is school-related. And guess why? Second semester senior. I'm excited for second semester even though first semester sucked in pretty much every single way possible. Honestly, junior year -- that proverbial year from hell -- has been infinitely better than senior year so far. Second semester has a lot of work to do for senior to catch up to junior. (This is possibly because senior has a mass, and thus inertia, far greater than that of junior, making acceleration difficult. Once it gets rolling however, senior can beat out any puny low-inertia junior -- hopefully.)

I've noticed how rarely I write about events in my life here. Partly, it's because I have no idea who reads, and I've realized people are ridiculously sensitive to what or how other people write. And then there is psychoanalysis bit: I'm loathe to record negative events (embarrassingly frequent), and I don't think I can write about events authentically. "Words, words, words"--such artifices of human thinking. This echoes something said in English today. So how has senior year been?

A Midyear Report:

Academics: Grade-wise, neither great nor terrible. Probably won't help my regular action apps, but I don't think they will really make a difference either. Class/teacher-wise, best ofmy high school experience. The quality and enthusiasm on the part of teachers are pretty consistent, though unfortunately I can't say the same about my own enthusiasm. Green is a flippin' exciting and understanding teacher, but I just don't find myself engrossed in the subject. Physics is made awesome by lab and McClung's cutesy-dutesy labs. Leavitt invests so much in her class I feel guilty everyday for my own slackoff-ness in French. Noeth's jokes can get tiresome but his occasional cluelessness is endearing so calc is bearable. English is actually rather inconsistent, dependent largely on Crick's mood.

ECs: This is starting to feel like a college app. For some reason, Idiosync and Spectrum aren't as fun as last year. I feel like my dedication to everything have somewhat deteriorated, which probably just speaks to my own laziness. Acadec is gearing up now, and I do want a free (not in economic terms though) trip to Hawaii, so I will muster my last defenses against laziness. Tutoring is fairly blah, and I think neither of us are too excited about bonding over math.

Movieland: What an abysmal showing this year. I really haven't seen or written anything except for a college-related essay about Brazil. The basement is currently too cold for prolonged periods of inhabitation, but come spring/summer, Netflix and projection will be more frequent companions. A couple more trips to the theater are also in order. I also haven't followed the Oscars at all this year. But...I found a recording of "Rescue Me" sung by Gael Garcia Bernal from the soundtrack of The Science of Sleep that has me incredibly excited. What's more exciting is that it's a rewrite of The Velvet Underground song "After Hours." I listened to it way too many times yesterday. "If you rescue me...I'll be your friend forever...."

Driving: Aren't I supposed to have a license by now? I haven't driven in 1.5 months and I think I drive worse than I did in the summer. iSuck.

RIP Spam 1.0. unRIP college apps.

Be-Lear-Guered

I have only a counterargument and conclusion left to write,
which means I might actually finish before midnight.

Look, I just wrote a poem. How productive am I.
Now I must write an essay. How unproductive am I.

Sigh. I must contrive to amuse myself. Funny they say AP English is hard; all that class has taught me to do is procrastinate and slack.

Matter Over Mind

Have you ever tried to think about nothing? That elusive Zen-like state of calmness. It never works because then you concentrate on not concentrating. But today, I stopped thinking. My mind literally went blank. Nothing. Nada. It stopped functioning. Just like that. My cold has sapped all energy out of me. I go around with a glazed look and gaze at things without recognition. Blargh. My eyes are glazing right now.

I look Superquiz today, which despite its intimidating name, went surprisingly well, resulting in an usually high score : study time ratio. (As opposed to English, whose score:study time ratio is depressingly low.) After literally zero study, I realized it was the least-prepared I've ever been for a test; I hadn't even made an attempt to study nor had I touched the packet since November. Strangely, I think I did better this time than on the first round. Pfft. This actually establishes a terrible precedent: any motivation to study for future tests is gone. (Not that there was much motivation before.)

My zoned-outness extended into Acadec as well:
Jyoti/Yi: Number 19 doesn't make sense. Was that the question thrown out?
Crick: Yea, 19 is a terrible question. It's just screwed up. (Okay, maybe he was more articulate , but my mind isn't recording on such high cognitive levels.)
Me: What's wrong with number 19? It makes perfect sense!!! OF COURSE WINTER SOLSTICE IS CLOSEST TO THE END OF WINTER. GEEZ!
So in King Lear, the most foolish person is actually the wisest. Maybe that's the case here? And no one else realizes my brilliant logic? Yea right. Sigh. And then I tried to make Sue correct my test even though she hadn't taken Superquiz yet.

I need sleep. Good luck getting any this weekend. The next 7 days will be hellish.

To Do for Weekend of January 20

• 2 days of Calc - in my supreme ditizness, I didn't realize there was a back to the assignment sheet
• 2 days of physics
• Catapult
• French Project: write and finish art, memorize presentation
• King Lear recitation
  
• KING LEAR PAPER.
  
• 1 week worth of Euro homework
• Senior Sem advertisement
• Figure something out about Yale
• FAFSA, CSS profile, taxes and crap
  
• Angela's Ashes
  

To <3 or Not to <3

Despite that message at the end of the last post, I still haven't touched math. Procrastination is a way of life.

During math class today, I half-listened to Noeth while cramming Chinese music for Acadec. I know a little of both subjects and not enough of either. Alas, the period afterwards, I sojourned all the way to the red wing to seek out Crick for the music test. He was chatting with former students (yet again), and I got plaintively waved off to somewhere "quiet," which suited me perfectly fine.

I skimmed through the music test while skimming through my daily internet perusals: email and Slate in the computer lab. (Evidently, Chinese music is too boring to occupy my entire brain.) Steff walks in and starts doodling differentials onto my test. As we assess the aesthetic appeal of various terrorists and actresses, I remember I have to turn in the test to Crick next period and get back to work on it. There, I see Steff has scrawled, "I <3 CRICK."

Sigh. I <3 Steff.

Paris. Berlin. Mexico City.

Hunkered down with Youtube and DVD for some lovely and romanticized traveling this weekend.

First destination was Paris via Youtube. Upon learning that the long-anticipated portmanteau film Paris je t'aime was bootlegged on youtube, my hot little criminal hands sought then out immediately. So yes, watching a 5 in screen surrounded by white space and ads is not the optimal viewing experience, but shame on US distributors for not putting it out in theaters or DVD. (Especially when this French movie has so many American directors and stars.) I haven't gotten around to watching them all -- it seems 6 years of French study has been for naught -- though I have been so far duly amused and touched.
Maybe it's just my short attention span, but I adore short films and short stories. It is a difficult art to capture something momentous in only a few minutes or a few pages. Brevity is the soul of wit, no? When done well, a short film is the perfect capsule of a sentiment. When done badly, it just seems very pedestrian. From the segments I've seen so far, Paris je t'aime is a mix of both. My favorite are by Tom Twyker and Alexander Payne (not, interestingly, my favorites directors at all): Fauborg Saint-Denis and 14e arrondissement. Least favorites are by Christopher Doyle and Wes Craven, the former tries unsuccessfully for Chinese-French punnage and the latter is just unsuccessful despite invoking the spirit of Oscar Wilde.

Sunday night, I turned my gaze eastward and backwards in time to 1980s Berlin. Wings of Desire was recommended to me by my UChicago interviewer, and since I recently received a nice email from her, I decided I needed to watch it now. But Wings of Desire is not an urgent movie. It languishes, it longs, it lingers. From its soaring aerial views to the cool black and white , it's a poetic meditation. I actually liked it quite a lot, but I need to rewatch it in a less detached frame of mind. I love the title Wings of Desire because it's haunting, and the same can be said about the film, but I need to let it "haunt" me more. The ending however, just totally lost me; I thought it was terrible and stopped listening.
By the way, on top of sharpening my French, I need to learn German too. The angels in Wings of Desire hear snippets of thoughts that are never translated in the subtitles--how infuriating! The opening lines of the film are echoing in my mind right now. Whoever said German was an angry language never heard enough German.

After a hemisphere change, I found myself in a rambunctious Mexico City. Sólo con tu parejga is a exuberant sex farce that manages to take on a rather serious topic: AIDs. Tomas (Daniel Gimenez Cacho -- creepy priest of Bad Education!) is a serial womanizer who gets a bitter pill when one of his conquests decides to take revenge. I adore the cover art - inventive, loopy, and rife with phallic symbols - sums up the film perfectly.

Now I am off to the utterly unlovely and unromantic Mathland.