School: Life at Math and Science

General Life Update

I’ve been having a lot of fun at my new school. It really is a very different experience living with your best friends. I go outside of my hallway and there are all of my classmates, just chillin’. At the same time, I’m working on completely eliminating, or at least lowering, my stress levels. The courses are rigorous and really require you to think and study. At my old school I barely ever studied and got straight A’s. Different story at SSM.

My Favorite Class

Japanese. Because I can just make up creative/weird stories in my head all day and it counts as work or something.

Example: The adjective dangerous in Japanese is ‘abunai.’

I picture Aladdin and Abu during the night in the sandy and egyptian-esque background. Abu running to go into a pyramid while Aladdin shouts “Abu! Abu! It’s dangerous at night!”

Plus, I’m interested in moving to Japan one day so that helps. At first I was failing the class, hardcore. I probably had a like a 7%. Suwa sensei, my teacher, teaches the class in entirely japanese. Eh, me no comphrende. So, erm, that means I didn’t understand directions and I didn’t know when there were tests. Err, what was homework again? After a couple of weeks I got over the learning curve, caught up with the class, and learned the common phrases and vocabulary my teacher uses. Now, I’m doing really well in the course. The grade is an ‘A’ though I feel like Japanese is a living, breathing thing, not something to grade. Who cares if you ace a language course if you can’t actually apply it? Someone may be able to conjugate verbs on paper but forget what they’ve learned and sound like an unnatural robot in front of a native speaker. But I think most of my classmates don’t plan on applying it anyway…

Dorms

Unlike some halls, mine is super close. I love everybody on greynolds. I visited my old highschool yesterday and it didn’t evoke a good emotional response. I kinda just started thinking about all of the people and somewhat traumatizing memories there. I also realized that I didn’t joke around nearly as much as I do at my new school. There are many less social inhibitions at my new school so I’m perpetually acting like a spazz. And the great thing is, people join me there! And accept me. I just got weird looks at my old highschool. It’s wonderful being a part of a close knit community.

Food

I’m much less picky about what I eat, now that I live in a dormitory. But, I do generally eat as healthily as I can. I snack and eat conventional junky foods when I bum off of my friends. We all share food on my hall. I’m the type of student who eats organic ramen with kimchi and seaweed… I also eat a lot of fruit if I’ve stocked up. For lunch and dinner I’ll usually go to the PFM (cafeteria). Their food is usually a hit or a miss, it’s not too bad, especially for free food.

Skin

About a month in I realized that the lack of sleep and stress was really taking a toll on my skin. At home I could get away with just splashing my face with lukewarm water in the morning. I ordered an organic facial scrub and moisturizer. I also make sure to cleanse my face with a towel and hot water in the morning to get off any oil and dirt that accumulated during the night. Just adding these couple of things made a huge difference.

Time

It’s very valuable. My days can sometimes be filled to the brim with activities and homework. In my free time I often take naps, or release. My school is also known as zombieland because of how little people sleep there. I’ve heard that some people regularly pull all nighters… icky. I haven’t done that yet… I’ve already had trouble keeping up and I have easy schedule if you were compare mine to a genius senior’s. They always go easy on juniors during the first trimester… Oh, and yes, my school goes by trimesters, not semesters. Just another way for us to complete more intense work in a shorter time period.

But I also feel like the school expects us to stay up really late and doesn’t make it any easier for us to go to sleep earlier. You can’t sleep any earlier than 10:30 pm unless you go to the lobby and sign early check. Check is when students sign a sheet on hall to basically tell the school hey I’m here.

Only 1/3 of applicants get in… I know some former classmates of mine who were really crushed when they weren’t accepted. I’ve read accounts of hopefuls who list all of their accomplishments and ask people what their chances are of getting in. The school is not all butterflies, rainbows, and unicorns as it may seem. People drop out at the beginning and throughout the year because they don’t feel it’s for them. Sometimes students are downright miserable from the workload. The school also does expel a good number of students… in my opinion, sometimes unfairly.

All in all, I’m glad I’ve had this opportunity and I love my friends. The adults aren’t watching us like hawks and I have a lot of fun adventures.

Oh yeah, and radical turtle will look the same for a while actually..