So, how have I been doing lately? how have I been?

I don’t even know what to say. This school has been the most intense experience I have ever taken under my wing. I practically live in a bubble. There’s this culture here that you can’t really find anywhere else which is why it’s difficult to explain to people. There aren’t any methods of comparison. Whenever I go out to the “real world”, it feels so weird. That there are these other living breathing people who aren’t enrolled in my classes, who have very different lives of their own. When you try to explain things about the school you make so many references to SSM specific things that you have to stop and explain the little parts. I almost forget that the world isn’t made up of very weird, interesting, hardworking, and good looking teenagers.

The best thing about the school is definitely the abundant amount of opportunities. Relationships, classes, language seminars, clubs, etc. It’s interesting to see what you end up manifesting in the school.

So yeah, I just felt like writing a random update. Maybe I’ll do it more often. maybe.

Not that I paid much attention to the news before, but I hear even less about the world now. Sometimes it’s easy to forget that the world doesn’t consist of 4 large buildings, teenagers, and a few supervising adults because that’s all I see on a daily basis. There are people who don’t understand the school/campus/teacher oriented references or use the fad words. So, yes it was nice hitting up the haunted farm full of their local middle school kids. Breaking routine. We all made  an agreement not to talk about schoolwork while we were there.

Pokemon

A couple of days ago I dressed up as Pikachu, and ran around the school during happy half while my friend was dressed as Ash, throwing pokeballs at me. There was also the theme song playing in the background. I kept my hood on the whole time so I couldn’t see, but apparently there was a crowd of people chasing me at some point. People kept grabbing me and I’d run into some random dude’s arms because they were trying to catch me.

Ahhh, now it’s the weekend. I’ll study, relax, and grab some chai tea off campus with my friends later. How are you guys doing? I hope you’re having a fabulous weekend!

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..

It’s always nice to tell the story behind the dress.

Changes

I no longer have the time nor the energy to churn out blog posts… Okay, the time-thing is an excuse, it always is. What I mean is, radicalturtle is no longer one of my top priorities… I’m trying to balance the three S’s of SSM (school of science and math).

• Sleeping
• Socializing
• Studying

So, my posts will be much more casual, maybe just a musing from the day, or whatever I feel like. I might start writing about different aspects about the school, my day, my grades, whatevs you know.

School

I got my grades back yesterday… Somehow, I don’t care about numbers as much as I used to. It’s probably because barely anyone in this school actually gets straight A’s even when we did in our home highschool. This school doesn’t rank students, or have a valedictorian either.

Somewhere along the line I forgot that education is actually supposed to educate and teach us.  We can make connections between subjects to better understand the world as a whole. If you’re just cramming, not enjoying yourself, and doing everything for the sake of grades, when you look back, what was the point?

Week 1:

It’s time to PARRRTAYYY!

Then, classes start.

What the hell are people saying? Where is everything?

Our school has a special language of TLAs – three letter acronyms. It’s not a cafeteria, no, it’s the PFM (professional food management). Let’s go down to the PEC (physical education center).

Argh argh argh I’m so lost. Argh argh argh, I slept through a class. Hur hur hur (cry-i noises) so many classes at so many different times everyday. HOW DO I DISPENSE SOAP?

Dawwww, thank you senior brother for the gift.

Fun Fact: My school was an abandoned hospital. What does that mean? The school is built a little oddly and we have lots of spooky ghost stories. Plus, I live in the morgue. The most infamous of the ghost stories? A nurse went through the underground Hill tunnel and was never seen again. Apparently, you can still hear her heels clicking at night. It was featured on some ghost stories type tv show.

Week 2:

EARTHQUAKE

Then FIRE – (lol, my roommate set a toaster oven on fire in the mini kitchen of a hall above us. we were all chillin, just making omelets…)

HURRICANNNE

All the teachers are actually giving us work now… Bonding with my hallmates. Man, I love my hallmates.

Fun Fact: Every Sunday – Thursday night we have “Happy Half.” A good chunk of students congregate in the middle of the school, near the swings (which 2 of my hallmates got it to stop squeaking! so appreciative) to talk and have fun from 10 pm- 10:25 pm. At 10:30 we have ‘check’ where we have to be on hall and sign in.

Week 3:

TORNADO

MORE SCHOOL WORK

I turn my bed, a bottom bunk, into a cozy enclave since my roommate stays up studying. Man, I so… tired… Look! I have free time. Must take…. a nap…. zzz….

I have no food left! I must rely on the PFM for my nutritional needs.

Extended weekend – time to visit home! Eh, I sleep and do practically nothing with my time. I buy lots of food too.

Fun Fact: My school mascot is a unicorn.

Week 4:

Picture day! More hall activities. More fun with all of my friends. More work. More Chemistry, Intermediate Japanese, American Studies, and Precalculus. College Eve, wherein I sign up for the airforce with a ‘pen name’ for a snowcone.  My senior convinces me to leave campus without signing out.

Fun Fact: My school is composed of only juniors and seniors. That means that each class only knows each other for one year. This makes it harder to keep up certain SSM culture/clubs and make long term changes.

Me, a junior, would call someone who has just graduated the past school year a “grand senior.” The “grand senior” was my senior’s senior (while they were a junior). Get it? Some who graduated 2 years ago would be a “grand grand senior.” This is how we refer to past generations.

Junior (me) –> Senior –> Grand Senior –> Grand Grand Senior –> etc…

Week 5 (current):

I go on a carb free diet with 3 of my hallmates. I feel much cleaner and lighter. Good BMs. There’s a cookout tonight! for my building. Not to mention, it’s friday friday gotta get down on friday….

Fun Fact: People would think my school is entirely comprised of nerds, which it is to an extent, but our school also excels in athletics. The boys soccer team is went to Nationals last year. The girls tennis team wins state championship.

Also, the people here are kind with interesting back stories.  Scattered among us are some superstar geniuses.

The school is somewhat like a college yet retains some odd highschool-y points since we’re still minors. I live on a closed campus so to get into any building in the school I have to have a fob. It’s a plastic thingy majiger that you have to swipe to open doors. We call it a fob, but no, it doesn’t mean FOB. I received a plain, navy blue fob without a design from a previous student so I painted it with nail polish. If it already has a design, you just paint over it. I wear my fob as a necklace.

Generally, school is very fun and busy. When I smile at people and say hi in the hallway, a warm euphoria spreads on my face and through my chest because I’m genuinely happy to see them =)

That’s the key, I think. No, not to feel bad. To delve deeper, question, and explore. To be able to feel what we honestly feel without lying to ourselves and others. It’s okay if something ‘bad’ (what is good? what is bad?) doesn’t solicit an emotional reaction. We feel guilty because we want to show others “look at how bad I feel, I’m a good person.” The guilt is there because it wants to protect you. It pretends to. But, like smoke house mirrors, it’s only an illusion. Does guilt help you or anyone else? Let go of guilt and allow yourself to be free.

Convocation

I’m attending a state boarding school and on the first day of classes we have something called “convocation.” An alumni and current Google employee came to give the annual convocation speech. From what I’ve heard, people say this is the best convocation they’ve had so far. It was an incredibly interesting speech filled with humor, insightful words, and relevance.

Deciding between Google or Harvard

Matt, the speaker, graduated from this school about 20 years ago. He went on the college and majored in programming. Google offered him a job in 2002 when they were just another risky search engine company, an area that did not fare well for others. He turned the job down and now reminisces that if he had taken the stocks they had offered him, he’d be flying to an island on a private jet to sip margaritas after the speech. He eventually became a Harvard professor and scored himself a permanent position, meaning they wouldn’t let him go or fire him unless he slept with the wrong student or something (his words). He had a pretty cushy position; teach a few classes in the morning, take home a stable paycheck. His mom was happy.

The position allows professors to go on sabbaticals every five years to explore other interests. He decided to work for Google for a year and then return afterwards. After working with Google, he decided “This is where I want to be. This is what I’m happy doing — coding. Working with people who are smarter than me.” So he decided to quit. Quit Harvard. “This was kinda big deal because they had just given me the position to work at Harvard for life. Why would you leave?”

“As a professor, I was normally the smartest in the room. I realized that to grow you have to surround yourself with people smarter than you. Despite me discouraging Mark from following his dreams, he still did it and look at what has happened today. It’s revolutionized networking and how I communicate with my friends. I’ve reconnected with my fellow alumni from this school.”

The Path to Dreams

Ok, so I realize that I don’t know how much his professor’s words actually discouraged, or possibly encouraged him. I just know that on the path to his dreams, he had someone who told him not to do it. Not to take the risk, to go on his safe and prestigious path. Other people probably told him to do the same thing. He, who now looks so successful and rich, had obstacles to get to where he is today.

What will you do?

*I have paraphrased what I remembered from the speech.

Ladies and Gents, What would you like to see on Radicalturtle?