Induction Ceremony

Hey there. This post was supposed to be made a few nights ago, but I forgot. 

So, August 24th was the day of the official induction ceremony of the Student Council. And so that was the main event for the day. 

For the ceremony, as the Vice-President of the Executive Student Council, my role was to read out the names of all the members of each class board. The main thing I focused on was not pronouncing any names incorrectly, so I made sure to practice the extra tricky ones beforehand. And, it worked. I pronounced every name perfectly. However, because I gathered all of my attention on the pronunciation, I didn't notice that the names and roles of some of the council members were mixed up. Basically, for each grade, the treasurer was announced as the secretary and the secretary as the treasurer. It was written as so on the script I was given, so I didn't pay any mind to if it was correct or not. I guess I'll have to check the info myself next time to ensure that there won't be any errors. 

In any case, it was pretty much a success. Hopefully, it'll only get better

double selection

It's 10:30, but I already slept for 30 minutes. I kinda set up alarms in 10-minute intervals so I didn't enter deep sleep and miss my alarms. It's painful, but I do feel a bit less tired. Anyway, here we go. 

Chemistry was just going over more molar mass problems, nothing fun there.

Spanish, the grades for the quizzes hasn't come out yet, so we just spent the class working on the project which we'll present probably next week. 

OH YES, so I'm not sure if you remember, but in my quick recap, I mentioned that I took an Olympic math selection test Saturday morning. Well guess what, I GOT SELECTED BABY.  

I ended up getting into both teams too, for both the IBERO and CENTRO. For the CENTRO one, the date and place are still undecided which means it could end up becoming virtual again, but, the IBERO one is set. It's going to be in Bogota, Colombia, with an accent on the a of Bogota, and the trip will last from September 25th till October 1st. That's 7 days, which means I'll miss a full week of school. DAMNNN. I'm kinda worried about all the catchup work I'll have to do, however, at the same time, it's also pretty cool that I'm getting a free trip to another country LOL. Everything is paid for too, hotel, food, the tickets, etc. 

Oh, so back to school. APUSH consisted of doing a couple of worksheets and doing a quick review for the quiz tomorrow on Unit 1. Since Unit 1 is just some context for the actual material, we're passing it by pretty quickly. 

For Bio, we learned how to draw molecules and also constructed some of them using these biomolecule building sets that the teacher gave us. 

Lastly, in Calc, we just did a progress check in AP Central and that about wraps up the day. 

dreadful quiz

Ello. 

Woke up at 6 to try and get in some last-minute studying before the Spanish quiz since it's the second period and I won't have another break in between to study once I got to school. The way I studied was mainly to understand the relationship each couple had with each other, the type of love it was, and the overall gist of the story. Since there were so many, just trying to remember the basic plot of each story was quite difficult. 

AP Chem was my first block before Spanish. During the teacher's explanation of molar mass and what it was, I had my computer in front of me open to the study guide to glance at it in between problems. The chemistry content still hasn't started yet, and according to the teacher, we're still in the review stage of our course. That being said, she DID assign a ton of homework problems for us to do. Tedious ones too at that. I spent pretty much all of my free period working on that and I still couldn't get it done completely LOL. 

Right after Chem is the dreaded Spanish quiz. The problem with this quiz was that the questions were WAYYYY too specific. At least I didn't remember which pair was separated in Brussels. ALSO, some of the descriptions seemed like they could've been applied to more than one couple in the book, so I had a hard time figuring out which was which. Not to mention that you COULD repeat couples which made the whole thing even more of a pain. 

Ah right, so I fell asleep right after I wrote this^^

I don't really have the energy to fill in what happened for the rest of yesterday, but it wasn't anything too exciting. I did have volleyball practice though. 

 quick recap

Yo, I'm back again. 

This weekend has been pretty crazy. 

On Saturday I had an OMPR selection test which started at 9 AM and lasted until 1:30 PM. Shortly after, I had to hurry to the Convention Center for the first volleyball tournament of the season. The first game was supposed to start at 3 but it got delayed like 2 hours. We had three games in total that day, won 2 lost 1. The final match ended at like 11 PM and I slept pretty late. 

Then, today, I took my Chinese class with grandma in the morning till 11 and then laid back a bit before leaving the house again for the second and final day of the tournament. We made it to the Top 8 yesterday, so we'd have to win 3 matches in a row to take the crown. Unfortunately for us, we met a formidable opponent and lost in 2 sets. It was quite a bleak sight since we were aiming for the top spot, we came in second last year after all. 

I did some APUSH and Calc homework when I got back, but the main task was to study for the Spanish quiz tomorrow. It's on the summer reading book of dark love I mentioned a few days back, and since there are so many couples, I'm kinda struggling to remember the specific stories and the context behind each one. So yup, that's what I'm working on right now and I'll continue until I'm ready for tomorrow.

I'll see you tomorrow. 

#15

I've got to keep it short today because I need to wake up real early for volleyball practice at 6 AM.

Life was nice today. AP Chem, just familiarizing ourselves with some glassware. 

APUSH was answering some questions on this packet the teacher printed out for us in groups. I was with Fox and Dex today. Yesterday I was with Toro and Psi and I think I forgot to mention that. 

Biology consisted of us watching a lab safety video and splitting off into groups again for another challenge. As I said before, I'm with Dex and Mint for this month, and the groups will switch up monthly. The challenge was just recognizing the names of the lab equipment at each table and describing their functions. 

AP Calc was just doing problems. 

AP Lit was mostly just a discussion on what archetypes are. There wasn't anything to write though, but I'm glad she didn't assign any homework either. 

And that's it. I had salmon for lunch. Free block to top it off. 

Lastly, I had Science Bowl practice after school and the coach gave us our uniforms. I'm #15 this year. 

dark love

It's only the third day back, but it's beginning to feel normal now. 

Chemistry is still going slow, we're basically not going to cover any actual material for this first week since today was dedicated to dimensional analysis and tomorrow is going to be used for recognizing different lab equipment. I'll probably have to start studying ahead by myself at this rate. 

Oh, and we finally did start that Spanish project today. It's a project on the summer reading book which was mandatory for Honors Spanish students. The book's name is Pasiones, and it's a compendium of roughly 20 "reportajes historicos" or historical reports on couples/lovers who had an effect on history. However, please don't read this book expecting love stories of rainbows and happiness because it was anything but that. It can better be described as tragedies rather than love stories. Pretty much every single one of these stories had somewhat of a dark ending to it. For this project, I'm partnering with Fox. Essentially, each group chooses two pairs of lovers from the book and has to answer a series of questions for each one. We got started in class but we're nowhere close to being finished yet. 

Ah, and then we had the welcome-back-to-school assembly. I thought I was going to have a say a few words as the executive vice president, but it turns out all I needed to do was to stand up when they called me, wave, and look pretty. After the head of school, principal, and dean of students finished speaking though, the Outreach Program got the stage. As a member, I also talked for about a minute or so about the importance of having such a program in school and ended with a simple call to action. 

After the presentation, most of the grades were dismissed, but the 11th and 12th graders stayed behind. The college counselors had prepared to give us a talk about some college preparation stuff. Nothing too exciting. This did, however, take up all of our supposedly "free time" for the day and so we had to head off to our next class immediately. 

This brings us to AP Lit. In a similar manner as last class, the central question for today was "Why study literature?". Firstly, the class had a quick discussion about the topic before individually writing 2 paragraphs responding to the question. I'll copy-paste mine here for you:

Why study literature

Literature allows one to step into the shoes of someone else, whether it be from another country, another continent, or perhaps a whole other world. It changes the perspective of the reader by immersing them into this newly formed universe that exists within the paper and the words. If literature did not exist, and there were no written records of the past, then society would simply not advance. Even if, by some marvelous chance that it does, it would only crawl forward at a mere fraction of the speed it is going at today. Each person lives only once, so if literature were not recorded and passed down, mankind would not get very far in terms of technological, scientific, and societal advancement. 

Through written works and literature, one is able to experience countless events and encounters, and learn invaluable lessons that they would have otherwise never come across. Reading makes one wiser and improves a person by having them broaden their horizons and open their eyes to various ways to view the world. Human life is ephemeral compared to the centuries and millennia of years that have come before it. Literature makes it possible for a person to live beyond their age, undergo a myriad of experiences that may trigger their own metamorphosis, improve their skills and, of course, obtain novel knowledge and vocabulary. Literature is an indispensable part of human progress, and to study it is to understand and familiarize oneself with the very force that pushes forward the human race.

The last class of the day was APUSH. There was a class discussion about the reading that was assigned yesterday, the homework was checked by the teacher, and then an additional worksheet was handed out to everyone. We were told to divide up into groups of 3 or 4 and fill out the worksheet using the notes we took yesterday or the book itself. Upon completion, the whole class went over all of it completely, and that marked the end of class. 

After school, I just read a bit of the book that we're supposed to finish next week for AP Lit. Then at 4:30, I had volleyball practice. Today's the official "tryout", but in reality, we've already been training for the last two weeks, so it was just to get it over with formally. The first tournament is this upcoming weekend, so we're taking a break tomorrow and hitting a slightly less intensive practice session on Friday. 

That's all for tonight, bonne nuit. 

Cornell

Hey there. Second day of school. 

Today I took my APUSH class for the first time, but of course, the first class is always more of an orientation than an actual class (except spanish cough cough). Anyway, the teacher had us write on index cards: name, pronouns, expectations, one fun fact about ourselves, and the score of any previous AP history courses we took if any. Honestly, for fun fact, I bet I could've come up with something more original and creative, but I wasn't really going to spend too much effort on that part and basically, everyone in my class knows me already. On that note, I simply wrote that I'm trilingual and listed out the languages. She did assign homework on the first day though. A reading of 11 pages, and she has us take these Cornell notes which is a special kind of way to take notes?

Looks like this: 

I spent my entire free block finishing this. 

Oh yes, so for Chemistry, our teacher's original plan was to have us come in early every day we had her class due to the fact that we had her first period every time. This entails that we would arrive at 8 AM instead of 8:30, the regular starting time. This was said yesterday, or Monday, so it was in effect today. Yet, I'm the Vice-President of the Student Council and we have our weekly student council meeting on Tuesday mornings from 7:45 till 8:20ish, so that became a conflict. The teacher deemed it to be unfair for us to miss out on material due to official meetings that we are required to attend, so she said we'd be returning back the regular starting time until further notice and a better solution is formulated. 

I'll skip talking about Spanish for today since it was mostly just the teacher going off-topic and the class ended without us doing any actual work. 

As for Biology, the groups were decided today and I'm with Dex and another person who I shall name Mint. Just so you know, sometimes even I forget why I name them what I do. But I assure you, at the time of naming, there was definitely some thinking involved. ALSO, THERE WAS SOMETHING INSANE THAT HAPPENED. Right before the groups were chosen randomly, I made a prediction of who I'd end up with. AND I GOT BOTH OF THEM RIGHT. The odds on that are so extremely low, that I just had to include that here today. So we divide up into groups and we're given a test. This was one of the "challenges" which would count towards the bonus points that I talked about yesterday. You might be thinking, how in the world are we supposed to take a test if we haven't even learned anything in class yet? Well, there was a biology textbook on each table that you were allowed to use, but only one, and you could also only write on one test. Oh, and in my class, there are 3 groups of 3. It wasn't the best test, but I think we have a shot at first place for this one. It's not entirely impossible is my point. 

Lastly, we have calculus. Basically, the class is split into two halves. 4 people on each side, so 8 students in total for the class. On one side, you have 4 seniors. On the other side, you have Rama, Fox, me, and a 10th grader who skipped 2 grades ahead in math. Essentially, on my side, all of us were in the same class last year as well, and so we move along the material extremely fast. Last year, we finished everything there was to cover 2 months before the school year ended. So the thing is, this year, with the seniors, the pace of the class will probably be decreased to some extent. We'll see how it goes though. 

So that's all the classes for today. Tomorrow, there's a back-to-school assembly where I'll have to speak a little bit as a member of the Outreach program to introduce the club and emphasize its importance. I wrote the script for that tonight, after volleyball practice, and practiced it a couple times to make sure I won't freeze up on stage haha. Alright, thanks for reading, and have a good night!!

 First day back

Hello there. Today was the first day of school. I'm a junior now, eleventh grade. 

This is my schedule^^

6 APs, 2 Honors, and 1 free block. 

Technically, I could have chosen another elective... however none of the choices available for that specific period seemed particularly appealing to me. In reality, there was one elective that I was planning on taking, there was a nanotechnology and modern physics class which was split between two semesters that I wanted, but it conflicted with my AP Calc BC class so I had to let it go. 

For AP Chem, we have a teacher who's new to my school, but she's already taught for over 20 years at another school so she isn't lacking in the experience department LOL. 

I got the same Spanish teacher as last year, so we already know each other. Good or bad? I've yet to determine that. 

Free block right after, I still gotta discover what kind of stuff I should work on in that time. For today though, I just chilled in the AP Physics class for a bit before going to the classroom where Biology (my next class) would take place. The teacher had a free period too so we talked for a bit about the class and some expectations. She said she was gonna make the first test extremely difficult in order to filter out some students to leave her with only the students who really wanted to do well. 

Speaking of Biology, this was probably the most interesting class in terms of structure. Essentially, the teacher would have the students divide up into random groups every month and those groups would compete in challenges. The winning group of these challenges would, of course, receive a prize. This prize would come in the form of bonus points which can directly be applied to increase your grade on anything you didn't get a perfect in. This kind of class would give a more competitive atmosphere when compared to others, so I think it'd be pretty fun. We didn't have enough time to choose the groups today though. 

For Calculus we just enrolled in AP Classroom and Khan Academy, that's about it.

Lastly, AP Lit was pretty standard. Went over the syllabus, and talked about what literature was. Gave a little assignment, search up definitions of literature, come up with your own, and submit. 

That's all for today folks.