Another Quick Update

Hey guys, I know these updates are short and usually seem like pointless tirades, but hey, you’re the ones reading this (though most of you aren’t) and if you aren’t interested, that’s not my problem. Actually, it probably is my fault for being so boring, and a teenager at the same time, can you believe that?

So I guess this post will be me mostly psychoanalyzing myself and my personality quirks, kind of like a thinking out loud exercise (which I do often and it sometimes annoy people). I realized after taking quite a few psych tests from seniors that I know (I hope you know I’m referring to the grade not old people), I am actually pretty normal in many ways. Sure I can be emotional and bubbly or dark and moody, but by most counts I am normal, which is a nice place to be at. But if I were to describe myself, I would probably definitely emphasize my whole self-esteem issue, where I am pretty smart by most measures, but for the most part I don’t feel smart. That also plays a role in me not taking criticism well (I pretty hate all teachers who do that to me), and also it bugs me when people don’t like me. I like to fancy myself as loved by all, but that’s definitely not true.

So that’s a brief, kind-of-accurate view of me psychologically, though most psychiatrist probably don’t want people to psychoanalyze themselves (supposedly I guess it’s not accurate, though I think they just want money).

PS. Why is this post so pointless, and if you read it right, actually cheery, well it’s because I aced my Biology test and had a good day for the most part, when I started the day thinking I will have a terrible one (and a stressful one). Shows you how much I know (hey I’m stupid, remember?)

Must Study Bio

I realize that I have a full blown case of procrastination. Maybe it’s being a teenager and maybe it’s a personality thing called being lazy. Anyways, I’m drowning in the make-up work necessary for my five AP’s (I signed-up for them out of end of sophomore-year stupidity) like the Bio test tomorrow I really should be doing instead of blogging.

However I do find ranting on my blog relaxing and de-stressing so I will continue for a bit more. Pretty much my life right now is a terrible mess, everything is not going according to plan and my grades are not exactly stellar and already it’s mid-term.

On a bright note, I got into the musical and pretending to be a Russian Jew/Soldier is pretty fun, though time consuming, which is a major problem. I wish I don’t need sleep and never feel tired, so I can just work around the clock, because I pretty much need to do that to keep up.

Mixed Emotions

So, school is starting up soon (September 5th to be exact), and I am full of mixed emotions. The upside to school is that I’ll be seeing a lot of my friends again, but obviously the downside is the re-emergence of the stress of schoolwork and extracurricular as everyone comes back to the tracks of the rat race to a good college. I wish I could enjoy the summer a little bit longer, not out of laziness, but more out of melancholy and regret, knowing how ephemeral this fleet, breezing spell of de-stressing was. I realize it’s not healthy for me to be so stressed, but with pressures from parents to do well both academically and beyond, how can I not be? I guess the good part of this blog has been its purpose as a medium to allow me to release some of the pent-up tensions inside me.

Also, while friends are definitely the upside to school, they also provide an example of improvement, in that there is always that one kid who can do better or seem perfect, and despite your best conscious decisions of not being competitive and waste time and energy on improving beyond necessity, you subconsciously do it anyways. And when you fail at achieving perfection, you feel miserable about yourself, if only when you are alone (for I wouldn’t dare expressing doubt in front of others, because I don’t want to be labeled as a perfectionist). I realize that I’m not being very clear about my emotions, but when are we really clear? You can’t psychoanalyze every last random thought, much less our opinions of something that we love and hate at the same time like school. I guess everyone does hold true to doublethink, from 1984 by George Orwell (it was my summer reading for English), in that I do hold conflicting ideas about the same thing, yet find nothing strange about it. That’s the magic of humanity and human relations, without it, we would be stuck with the flash judgments we relegate to people when we first meet them. There wouldn’t be an opportunity for doubt or those gray areas that define us (though in the book there aren’t gray areas as much as an extreme division into black-and-white).

I guess, deep down I do look forward to the hubbub of life and its eventfulness of school, but at the same time I also am afraid of losing the quiet, uneventful life of summer, where days could pass without much to show for it except for a few fond memories of happier times.

Mega-Update

So, I haven’t blogged in a very long time, as you’ve probably realized. I have found it difficult to write a post everyday, more out of inertia than anything else, because I have never been the diary type. Now school is starting up again on September 5th, so summer is quickly ending for me, and I feel it is appropriate to write down the important experiences this summer before I forget too much.

First off, I loved my internship at the law firm. It was a small law firm in Boston focused on eminent domain, but that also meant that I got a lot of personal attention. I even had my own office! (I doubt many interns get that!) Yes, I did have to get coffee once, but that was it. No, I had a great time, because the lawyer I was shadowing allowed me a lot of freedom to do what I wanted, including my hours. I was able to go to court with him, to see how it works first hand, but for the most part, I stayed in the office. There, I did a lot of organization and scanning, which might seem like menial labor, but I’m sort of an organization freak (not that my room is clean) so I actually enjoyed it, or at least wasn’t too bored (no more bored than any class I would be taking in school) I was able to see how a case was assembled from the beginning research to discovery to pleadings and court orders and correspondence and all the way to the final memorandum of decision. I was also even allowed to draft some pleadings, like a Pre-Trial Memorandum once, which was exciting. I have definitely gained invaluable insights into the workings of law through this, but nonetheless it hasn’t convinced me to become a lawyer. There is a lot of work, and besides paper there isn’t a lot to show for it. I guess that’s true of most white-collar jobs, so I shouldn’t be complaining. I realize that I probably will never be the type that gets the spontaneous and exciting careers in entertainment, because despite my rebelling and desire for independence, I do value stability too much and I’m not that ambitious. I have wished to become the President when I was little, but in truth, I know I will never be. I can piss off certain people too easily, and I definitely won’t be happy being the lap dog of special interest groups. There should be clean campaign finance laws on the federal level, but that’s a completely different topic, one which I will hopefully address in the future. As for the present, my parents are planning on inviting the lawyer I was shadowing over and his wife (through her and her connection to my dad, I was able to get the internship), and since he is only 30, he’s very young and relate-able (apparently relatable isn’t a word according to Mozilla Firefox spell check) to me.

Now to the other big topic, driving. Yes, now that I’m sixteen, I can drive! I’m actually doing driver’s education (in Massachusetts, I need 30 hours of classroom time) this week. The teacher is incredibly egotistical, and I do want to say incompetent or is he just senile? I’m not trying to insult him, but I just don’t take people seriously when they yell, even if it is about a valid point like how not paying attention in class could get us killed on the roads. With each excessive decibel, his credibility in my eyes drop as much, and after two days, he’s coming off as a crazy lunatic 60 year-old, who is way too obsessed with his motorcycle (he lecture’s us on motorcycle safety more than car safety, because he doesn’t want us to hurt old, crazy motorcycle riders like him). I do hope, I’ll never turn out to be like him. The bright part of the class is that many of the kids are actually in my grade at the public high school, so I know them, and I actually convinced a really close friend to go to the class with me, so I’m not totally bored. As for a somewhat good part is the corny driving videos that we watch that are from the 90’s. Ahh the 90’s, when times were good, and the government and General Motors actually had spare change laying around and spending it on safe driving videos for teenagers.

Also on a related note, my dad took me out to a parking lot today, and it was both exciting and frightening to be in the driver’s seat for the first time. I practiced my turns and loops, but not with too much speed, only stepping on the gas pedal occasionally (it is so sensitive!) and always hovering near the brakes. However as the hour of practice came to a close, I became more confident in my handling and was actually able to make quite a few tight turns , albeit at very low speeds. The greatest part of this experience was that my dad wasn’t yelling at me the whole time, and actually exuded encouragements and a little bit of pride in my ability to learn so quickly. I do hope this continues, because what I had feared most about my dad being in the car with me, was constant criticism, which I wouldn’t have been able too stand (I don’t take criticism well due to low self-esteem and would get very impatient after a constant barrage of it and yell at my dad which would definitely make it worse).

Wow, I’m really enjoying this format, in that it allows to write down my musings and experience and not be a crazy person by supposedly thinking aloud (I talk to myself a lot, and it bothers a lot of people). Now that I’ve rediscovered my interest with blogs, I’ll definitely try to do it more!

Hillary Clinton

Hillary Clinton Campaign Song

I realized that I promised to write a super-blog on my college visits but that won’t be today. Considering that I’ll only be a junior in the fall, I’m not in a rush to decide on which colleges to apply to yet, but it will help me a lot if I do write (or blog about) the visits so I can remember what I liked about each college. I visited Dartmouth today, and I do have to say that I like it a lot, except the main con is that Hanover, NH is such a small town compared to living in a suburb of Boston, MA.

Anyways, you probably realized from the title of this entry that it’s about Hillary Clinton. While many people have mocked her for doing the song thing when there is a lot of greater problems in this world ranging from Iraq to avian flu, I think it’s a brilliant idea. It lets potential voter feel like they can exert an influence on the way she runs her campaign by giving them the red herring of power in choosing her campaign song. It’s brilliant marketing, especially if you subscribe to the all press is good press idea (The introductory video is one of the most popular of youtube today). While I personally don’t like the Celine Dion song she picked, probably due to the abundance of Celine Dion French songs we have heard in French class this year, it is still a great idea in promotion. I also actually like the whole Sopranos spoof and letting Bill Clinton appear in the video (I even found the video somewhat funny). I realize that it is cheesy, and Hillary’s face looks way too botoxed for her age, but that’s how we want them to look according to infinite number of study groups each campaign runs. At least, their seems to be comradely between the couple and willingness to poke fun at themselves and their family. I guess you can tell that it’s not just a wedding or relationship of convenience like that of Royal and Hollande of France (I know that I’m a total dork in following French politics).

To wrap myself up, this is my first pseudo-political blog I’ve done, but be prepared to see more as politics is a major interest of mine.

Last.fm

JZang21’s Music Profile – Users at Last.fm

I just discovered Last.fm, and I think it is awesome. I posted the link to my profile. I’m still trying to figure out how everything works, so it’s going to take a while before all my music tastes are reflected. I haven’t really figured out how the playlist function works, but I’m sure I will. I like the artist quilt widget and so I added it to my sidebar. (Doesn’t it look cool?)

Before this, I’ve been using Pandora, but that hasn’t worked out very well, considering it’s not really playing songs I like. I was just giving the thumbs down to every song it was playing, so it was getting pointless.

Please friend me on Last.fm, because I don’t have any right now.

If you don’t have an account yet, click on the icon below and sign up on their website and download their software, it’s awesome.

In other news, I signed up for the Joost newsletter, which hopefully means that I’ll get an invite soon. Yeah, school’s out which means I have more time to spend on these entertainment peripherals.

Also I’ve been visiting colleges, it’s a long story, and I’ll probably post a super-blog on that when I have more time, and my parents aren’t bugging me to turn off the computer to prepare to wake up early to go to Dartmouth tomorrow.

Award Ceremony & Navasse

I attended the annual underclassmen award ceremony last night, and I guess I’m happy to say I got the Sophomore History Award. I was surprised considering the falling out I had with my history teacher over the whole project grade deduction conflict. The award was a book named The Chinese: An Insider’s Look at the Issues which Affect and Shape China Today by an American journalist in China, Jasper Becker. I read about 5 chapters last night, since I couldn’t sleep and was really annoyed by the book. First, it has a pretentious title by calling itself “an insider’s look”, when it’s really written by a Western journalist who have mostly only interviewed and experienced the life of the coastal cities of China. For full disclosure, I am Chinese and was born and raised until the age of 8 when I immigrated to America with my family. He exaggerates certain problems facing China and makes a lot of comparisons to the West. While in certain fields, the West does exceed China in, that doesn’t mean it’s the perfect model. America and Europe have their own problems and in no way are they really that much worse than those facing China. They’re just different. China has had stunning growth in recent years and has saved the lives of millions from starvation with the implementation of better agriculture techniques. While there is a class divide present in China, that doesn’t mean a democracy will solve it. In the US, CEOs are paid extraordinarily higher than the average worker. Also, Chinese history and culture is really misinterpreted. He seems to mock throughout the book the cyclical fashion that Chinese history has run and imposes a bias of the superiority of Western values on the Chinese culture. While these criticisms may seem vague, it’s only because my time to write is limited. This book is targeted towards Americans who still hold the Orient in mystery, but for someone like me who knows first hand through living in China and the struggles of the majority of my relatives there, this book seems biased and false.

On a lighter note, I was on Navasse, my nation state today and I got this issue (note the bold):

Click on picture for a better, zoomed in view

Yeah my national motto is: “We tried, but then we failed. So now we try to fail.” It is still funny that it is the rallying cry of a fascist though.

School Council: Sometimes You Have to Make Nice

I had a school council meeting today, and I guess it was a lot better than last time. So we pretty much just edited the school improvement plan for next year. The whole issue that was brought up last time was pretty much just skirted around, and everyone was nice enough to allude to it but not actually bring it up explicitly.

So what happened last time was that according to our Faculty Senate, it was “standard procedure” to vote on a substantive issue in school council and then bring back the results to the separate constituencies and then vote again as a final vote of approval or disapproval. It hadn’t been followed since 1998, and in more recent years, there was always only one vote. So apparently one student handbook change involving changing the language of a policy involving allowing students to reschedule tests if they have three or more in one day didn’t satisfy many teachers, who thought that this would infringe on their freedoms to teach. Therefore, the faculty representatives brought back this issue and using this loophole of “standard procedure,” bypassed the original vote passing it and voted in a way that would have the change undergo “review,” which in terms of school administration, it’s dead. This brought a lot of tension between the 3 student representatives present that day, including me, and the 5 faculty representatives. We were of course out-voted by sheer majority, but not happy.

So today’s meeting essentially skirted around this issue today by talking about improving the lines of communication as a goal for the next school year and also clarifying governance procedures, so we won’t be caught off-guard again. We didn’t really want to end this year on a bad note, but there was definitely tension in that meeting room today. I guess that teaches you can’t always trust that adults play nice, and sometimes you have to pretend to be satisfied and accept defeat, so you can live to fight another day.

Update

Wow, it’s been while since my last update, so here’s a brief summary of what’s happened in my life since.

My history teacher decided to deduct 10 points off my project (I convinced him out of 20) even though that’s still in blatant violation of the student handbook. According to the faculty advisers of Student Congress, I should bring this up with the school principal, but I really don’t want this to get out of hand, so I won’t.

Now for good news, I got my internship! Yeah! It’s at a small law firm in Boston that deals with mostly eminent domain and labor issues, both of which are very interesting. I had my interview and met everyone that I would be working with, and they all seem very nice and wouldn’t mind helping me if I had questions. I am not completely sure that I want to become a lawyer, but this gives me a taste of what it would be like. Also it would give me some experience with working in an office environment, which I most likely will be doing when I grow up. I also love the turn of century (19th-20th century) building that the office is at. If you have ever been to Boston, it’s right next to Copley Square on Beacon St. I’ll start on June 3rd and work (unpaid) until end of July, so expect updates during this time about my experience there.

Now for bad news, I totally bombed my SAT Chemistry. I had 12 questions unanswered when time was up, so I decided to cancel my grade. I could have done better, because even that morning, I woke up at 5:30 and did a practice test and scored a 780, but by waking up so early, that meant I was too tired during the actual test taking. Also I was suffering from a cold. I felt miserable about this last Saturday. Now I’ve learned to deal with it, and I am planning on taking Math and Chemistry again in October and just learn to time myself better. The SAT’s are so much harder than AP’s, because there are 85 questions, which you have to answer in 1 hour, rather than 50 questions in 1 hour. It’s not like, I didn’t know the answers, it just took me 10 seconds too long to get each one. Oh well. I guess CollegeBoard beat me this time around. On account of feeling mad at myself, I skipped going laser tagging with my Chem class. It was supposedly a lot of fun, and I’ve never been laser tagging before, so I really looked forward to it.

Now to end this very long post (so much for brief summaries) I am having more MCAS tomorrow! So I get to miss more class for an experimental Chemistry section. Ha! Experimental, like that’s definitely going to get kids to actually try, by telling them that it doesn’t really count for anything.

On a side note, I got this great extension from Firefox called Smiley Xtra 4 that let’s me embed emoticons in my posts, if you find that annoying and immature, please comment and tell me. Thanks!

MCAS, School, and Sailing. Also I Hate Sarcastic People

So I took the MCAS today, woohoo, I get to miss two classes.

The other good thing today was that I got to sail at States and I actually did really well, placing 3, 4, or 5th every race, so that’s great. The only bad thing was that I fell into the water at dock and hurt my fingernail, which peeled off, but oh well it’s band-aided now so hopefully no permanent damage. Also our town didn’t really get any trophies or awards because of a clerical error but that won’t be corrected and that’s annoying.

What’s also annoying is the fact my History teacher is as stubborn as a mule and refuses to take back my 20 point deduction for being late, but I haven’t permanently given up hope on it yet. Also he refuses to acknowledge an error on his part during this review game and we lost even though we had the correct answer. So that means no extra points added on to our test grade, but oh well, I have legitimately given up on that class a month ago, and could really care less what he does to me. I know I am sounding biased and complaining here, so here’s the full story with the review game.

The question was on the Italian economy under Mussolini and we said it was different than communism but the government still does have a lot of control, etc. But he only saw the word communism and didn’t finish reading the rest of our response, so we were supposedly wrong.

Now the worst part of the day was with our History department head when I went to talk to her about my teacher taking points off my project grade for being late even though I was absent on the due date and gave it to him when I came back. She did that annoying, I’m going to insult you and tell you that you are an idiot for thinking that the teacher can possibly be wrong thing. That’s not the worst part, I mean I could less if she agrees with my own teacher, but then when I asked her for a pass, she said “NO!” but with a wonderfully fake, sarcastic smile. I, of course, had to respond with an equally fake “Goodbye!” with a smile and pretend to not care, but her fake smile bothered me so much. I hate sarcasm, especially vicious sarcasm, it hurts. I just wish this entire History problem would just go away, but instead it’s snowballing and now I have angered two teachers. But, I don’t really care anymore, they don’t deserve my caring and respect if one is a stubborn mule and the other is a sarcastic “bitch” (I usually don’t swear, but that’s my opinion of her).