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!

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).

School, Rant, & Sailing

Well today was a decent day, at least it ended that way. I was able to sail actually at States at CBI even though it was with Mercuries, but hey it beats no sailing. I was in a boat with another kid from St. John’s Prep, who was pretty cool, and a decent skipper. We didn’t place that well, mainly because we weren’t used to the Mercury after sailing 420’s all season, and used the tiller way too much, especially considering how non-sensitive it was. Anyways, even if we didn’t place well, I still had lots of fun, and we were sailing against experienced people, so we didn’t do that bad.

Now to the less than pleasant stuff. The day started off good with a free in the morning considering independent study Latin is over, and also because my History teacher decided not to check our textbook notes, which I forgot to do, so that’s good. But he is also bad, considering according to my progress report he marked my WWII project as late, even though it blatantly wasn’t, and he will have hell if he is taking 20 points off for this fake “late” project.

The worst part of the day was that I bombed my English reading quiz, because I didn’t finish the reading, and I know that I really shouldn’t complain because it is my fault, but that doesn’t make myself feel better. Also I screwed up on my math test, because I forgot about geometric series for the last problem. So these two things kind of made my day suck.

Now for the rant of the day: Why is it in English “I” and singular “you” is treated as plural with regards to “I do” instead of “I does” or “You think” instead of “You thinks”. The second way makes much more sense and would simplify the language for new speakers, so reflect and maybe comment about that. Thanks. 🙂

First Blog & Nation States

Hi! This is my first time blogging.

So I was on my Nation States Country, Navasse, today, and for my issues I got this:

Of course, this only happened because my national animal is the hitler and stalin, but it’s still funny nevertheless. Now the big question is, which decision to choose, they all seem equally funny. What do you think?

Just so you know, I am easily amused by small things like this, and this is especially true considering I am trying to wind down from taking 2 AP’s (Chemistry and Latin: Vergil) last week before needing to start working hard again for SAT II’s (Chemistry again and Math maybe) and also finals which are coming up fast. Just delightful, especially considering I’m being really unproductive and procrastinating by blogging at 12:00 at night when I should be doing homework.

So if there are any veteran bloggers out there reading this, please comment and give me suggestions and advice on what I can do better, thanks. 🙂

Also, if you are on Nation States also, then feel free to send to send a telegram to Navasse and join the region that my friends and I are in, called The Matrix. Cool 🙂