School

It’s been so long since I’ve written anything. I’ve been busy with school. Turns out my first semester, which was supposed to be easy breezy and full of party time / fun time / do nothing time… isn’t. The elective courses I took actually have work, and by that I mean those darn essays. I’ve already handed in two in exactly two weeks of school, and have another one due next week.

I’m moving to a new house this Friday, so my life has sort of been in a state of disarray. I’ve had to print assignments at the library (at $.10 a page!!) because my printer is packed in some cardboard box in the multitude of congruent cardboard boxes sitting in my living room. I’m not happy about moving, but I’m certainly excited. New neighbors, new paint colors, new surroundings… though I love my current neighbors, I couldn’t ask for better people.

Can’t wait for the Grey’s Anatomy and Criminal Minds season premieres this week!

Even though it feels more like spring, with all the rain rain rain around here, summer break is inevitable. I finish my last exam next Monday, but unlike all my other friends with plans and schedules and dates to remember, I have nothing.

Two months of no plans. Not that I’ve never gone through this before, but I don’t want to spend another summer lazing around doing nothing. I’ll probably spend summer hopping around from organization to organization, trying to complete my required volunteer hours and maybe obtain some so-called “leadership experience” so I won’t have to bullshit my way again through that section on all those forms for various programs I apply for.

What really annoys me is that a good 75% of my friends are spending their time this summer doing “camp” related things. Whether it be camping, or actual camps… That could be working as a counselor, counselor training, whatever the hell “leadership camp” is… What is with the Canadian obsession with camp?

Oh well. I’m going to have fun this summer, maybe a get a job so I can have fun doing things that require money, which is usually easier. And they can spend it cleaning horse sables (I’m not joking, my friend is actually doing that).

I’m going to take lots of pictures.

But before that I must finish my exams. Which involves studying. Which involves looking over Julius Caesar one more time. Which we all know equals pain.

It’s only been one week since March Break ended and I’m already feeling the boringness of school again. School has never been particularly interesting, but it’s worse than usual right now. My schedule for this semester is not interesting at all.

We’ve been reading Julius Caesar in English. I’ll admit, I like Shakespeare. I have Sonnet 116 memorized. I think that A Midsummer Night’s Dream is amazing. But tragedies aren’t really my thing. We spend all class reading aloud the play. Listening to a bunch of high school students stumbling over old English in not-at-all iambic pentameter for 75 minutes? Drives me crazy.

I’ve noticed lately how little social interaction I have during the day. It concerns me. I rarely talk to people on my way to or back from school, as I take a bus route that only about five other people in the school take. I don’t really talk to people during class, because most of my seating arrangements are around people that don’t talk much (or aren’t willing to talk to me). It’s hard to talk during a lecture anyway. As for lunch and in between classes… I’m not in my best state in a noisy hallway or cafeteria. I eat lunch in a group, but I’ll admit I don’t contribute much to conversations.

However, during the last ten minutes of lunch I hang out under the staircase (where it’s quiet) with this super happy girl I made friends with this year. She is optimistic and cheerful and amazing, though surprisingly dating a guy who I find is to be the completely opposite this. Anyway, I hang out with her and her positive energy keeps me in pretty good spirits for the first ten minutes of math. The boring math lectures sucks up that mood after that though.

I’ve been so tired lately that I haven’t even gone out this entire week, evenings or after school. No movies, coffees, lunch, shopping… I’ve been having difficulty not falling asleep on the bus ride home. All this tiredness and emotionlessness isn’t good. I’m going to Vancouver for a band trip in about three weeks and I am not excited for it at all. I think I should be excited, but I’m not quite sure.

I’ve been telling myself that next week, I’m going to be less anti-social. I don’t want to be the anti-social girl. Once upon a time, they called me the happy, energetic one.

At the beginning of the year when I first got my schedule, I was partially disappointed and partially excited to have the bitchy French teacher. After semester one, she decided to take a three month vacation, or so the story goes. Instead, we have a three month substitute.

I don’t love the new teacher or anything, but she is an interesting woman, to say the least.

She is always happy. I don’t know how she does it. The woman is eternally smiling, even when she’s angry. Furthermore, nobody particularly likes French, save a few. Being the first class of the day, everyone is usually tired and in a rather dreary mood. But this teacher is always very cheery, or fake cheery. I would say it’s usually the latter because the former would be impossible considering how much I think it would suck to teach french to nonchalant teenagers. But I don’t know, perhaps it’s maybe kind of enjoyable.

She is scary. She’s not strict scary. You know those people with fixed on fake smiles and high voices? Like they’re planning something evil? Something like that.

She is a socialist. This isn’t a conclusion I have come to after hearing her voice her socialist ideas on us. No, no, no. Yesterday, in the middle of one of her frequent rants about world injustice, she uncannily casually declared, “That is why I am a socialist. Because capitalism doesn’t work.” Canada is supposed to be the socialist of North America, but a teacher declaring herself a socialist in this capitalist democratic society is… extreme. Ironically, right after this radical statement, she went on about how limiting the school boards are in allowing teachers to teach what they want.

She hates the authority. Who is the authority, one may ask? Everyone. She complains about the government, world superpowers, the school board… even the French department at school. One of her earlier hopes in life was to change the world, but she realized she wouldn’t be able to do that. She became a teacher, only to find that the education system has too many barriers to effectively teach “critical thinking skills” that encourage the next generation to question the status quo.

The socialist French teacher is leaving after Spring Break. I’ll miss her.