Looking Up

So, it's been a while since I've updated. I thought when I first got this blog that I would update every day, but life continues to get in the way.

Not that I mind! My life has several recurring perks that I am quite enjoying at the moment, so I am not really complaining. I have a great boyfriend (who gave me jewelry for Valentine's Day! What could be better than that?) and we're doing quite well. We're at just over 10 months now, and still going strong...it's the longest relationship I've been in yet, and I'm going to be very excited when we reach 1 year in April. This picture is of us, in May 2006. for my junior prom. It's a bad picture, but I don't have the latest photos of us from New Year's up on my computer yet and I'm being lazy.

I'm doing well in school, although it's not that interesting to me anymore. That may also be attributed to my situation as a Second Semester Senior, to whom high school is now something that I'm just working on until the college of my dreams accepts me and offers me mucho dinero to go there because I'm such a fabulous and amazing student. (No, really.) I'm not that arrogant. But I do desperately need a merit scholarship to go pretty much anywhere out of state, or to any private school (which 8 out of 10 places I've applied to are). Which is why I have to go to no less than THREE separate scholarship interview weekends this month. This weekend, next weekend, and three days in the middle of the week of the week after that. What college has a scholarship interview invitational on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday? It's ridiculous!! I both enjoy missing school and don't...considering there's work I'll have to make up. But hey, I won't be in school! So, things are looking up a bit.

I guess the only drawback to taking 3 APs is the homework. And that's not so bad, except for the part where I get less than 6 hours of sleep a night, and more regularly only about 4.5 to 5 hours. So that part's a little unfortunate, but I try to remedy it each weekend. I'm not necessarily sure if that's as healthy, but it's the best I can do. And I know it is only going to get worse this semester. Then I should have a full summer to laze about and do interesting things, before heading off to college. Hooray for upcoming life-changing experiences!

Down with the Sickness!

Okay, so I'm not intending to copy off the name of a song and album title from the metal band Disturbed (which I used to like, but isn't really my thing anymore), but I figured that those four words carry the best description of my feelings right now.

I am sick. Sick as a dog. Better yet, I've been to the doctor and we pretty much only know that it is NOT pneumonia (small comfort, eh?). I'm feverish off and on, feeling weak and aching all the time, and I have a runny nose. That's leaving out my principal complaint--the coughing. Not a light, delicate little ladylike cough. I mean, a deep, chest-congestion, holy-crap-I'm-hacking-my-lungs-out cough. I can't take a deep breath or try to laugh without sounding like my trachea and lungs are trying to force themselves out of my mouth. Did I mention that it's distinctly unpleasant? (Understatement of the century...)

So now I'm on amoxicillin...not that it'll help much, but whatever. Maybe, psychosomatically, my illness will go, "Oh no! An antibiotic! Not that! Eeeuuuuuuuurgh!" And shrivel up and die. Which is exactly what it needs to do. There is no reason I should feel this crappy during a month as busy as this one. I hate it when my body betrays me, right when I'm depending on it to be in its usual state.

I decided to take this small break from being ill to put down a few thoughts about our bodies and minds. Has anyone else ever felt that their body was too confining, too limiting, and that there's some essential energy within that just wants to break free and be immaterial? I feel like my body is grossly inadequate for everything my internal spirit wants to do, like fly. At the same time, many people say that the brain is the key for everything, and I recognize that, but is the brain nothing more than a manifestation of the mind in reality? I strongly believe that the mind is an immaterial thing, that happens to inhabit a body while on the material plane. Still, I can't help but wonder if we honestly need the brain to have a mind--and what ramifications this has for what happens after death? We're so limited to what we can perceive through our senses and our brains...there ought to be more.

To conclude, I like my mind. A lot. But I hate my body, because it never cooperates. Blargh! Please, pray with me that I'll get better...this is very painful and unpleasant, and I'm doing everything I can to make it go away (because I have better things to do with my time than be sick!). Don't feel like you have to pray, though...it's just an impassioned request. Anyway, I hope you, whoever you are, are well. I don't wish this illness on anyone.

So-Called Productivity

It might help to establish that I am writing this post while at school. I'm in a class where I spend time as a sort of teaching aide, helping out the teacher with the minimal work (the bitchwork) and the students as well--students who are in my own grade! I might add that I elected to take this class, and I am not getting paid for my time.

While I'm not complaining about a class which doesn't require any real homework or time spent out of class, I thought I might take a moment while in school to ponder about the state of our public school system. I try to keep politics out of this blog as much as possible, and I really don't know politically how I'm supposed to stand on this question, so don't accuse me of being one way or the other here.

I have seen the educational system both fail and succeed, from experience and from hearsay. My elementary school in West Virginia had wretched computers with outdated programs on which I excelled--I had completed the entirety of the 5th grade curriculum programs when I was barely halfway through 4th grade! When I moved to Georgia, I moved into a much more affluent area by comparison, and my elementary school showed it--much bigger, shinier, with new and fast computers. And I can't help but think, weren't these kids in my new elementary school getting a better quality of education than the ones in my old one? Not that computer quality necessarily dictates educational quality! I might say that the quality of the teachers in my old elementary school was far superior to that of the ones in the new. In my high school (which I will be SO glad to be leaving soon--just a few months!), there's an interesting mix of great equipment and crappy, ancient equipment, and fantastic teachers and really horrible teachers. However, I've visited the southern portion of my county, which is far less affluent, and the schools there are overcrowded, underfunded, and full of kids who are just falling through the cracks. Does anyone really deserve this? In our country, where having a job that makes adequate amounts of money basically requires education, is it fair to get students off to a bad start? I'm not even talking about college here--it's what comes before college that affects students more, in my opinion.

I have been hearing a lot recently about proposals for vouchers for the parents of children in poorly-performing schools to send them to private schools. While I can see where these people are coming from, I'm not sure I agree, because private schools have the ability to determine their own curricula and do not necessarily have to comply with what public schools have to teach. Sending a child to a private school on the taxpayer's check means the state supports what the child is learning, and if the child is learning something directly contradicting the curricula established by the state, i.e. creation science as opposed to evolution, that is considered the state's tacit approval of what is being taught, is it not? And what about the doctrination of students in the religion of the private school? I am a spiritual person--perhaps in some blog post I'll be able to expound my spiritual views and ideas about God and the universe--but I don't think the state should be supporting religious education. It makes me extremely uncomfortable because religious issues are for the religious organizations and the individuals...not the government. I love my spiritual beliefs, but I don't want anyone teaching them in a school run by the government and the taxpayers' money. They're between me and God. Does this view make me drastically different from anyone else?

Anyway, I have simply no idea how people should even begin to approach the inequality between schools in different areas. One side starts accusing the other of discrimination, and then there's yelling about "just throwing money at" the problem, and all the while I'm just wanting to remind people that there are young livelihoods at stake. Go work at a school and volunteer with the kids--and not in the rich, stuck-up neighborhoods. I mean, take a look at how the rest of the population lives. I've mentored kids in a school that was in a really bad neighborhood, and there was so much that they had been lacking. It was very saddening. If you are a smart person with the time, please consider devoting yourself to helping a student at a disadvantaged school. I've been lucky. But I know there are thousands of students who have not been.