Study Session Two

Estoy: Lethargic
Currently Reading: Pagan’s Crusade, by Catherine Jinks. YA adventure. 5/5 for the witty narrator!

Well, finals week is half over, and I only have one final left to take. Sadly, though, I have two days left of school. Sort of. As you may recall from my previous post *coughcoughhinthint, * tomorrow we have 4^th period finals (which for me is Spanish II), then 1^st period finals¹ and then make-ups. My only final starts at 8:30 and ends at 10:10, so I have the rest of the day off. Which means I get to come home and just chill out and laze around for the rest of the day! Then, on Thursday, we have 25-minute classes. That means early release. And then, of course, Friday we have off. Geez, I wish you’d remember these things²!
Thankfully, all of my hard finals³ are over. Or, well, I think they are. On Monday, we started out with the Health final, and that was fun. The owner of a dance studio in town came in and taught us hip-hop⁴. And although I felt like I was just stomping around the gym, (hey, it was part of the dance….) I apparently did it in style and looked like I was dancing. And I didn’t think I could dance! The only downside to that one is that I’m still sore. After that, science. I’d heard from the upperclassmen that the teacher I have⁵ didn’t really prepare you for the final, but I did fine. See, another teacher in the department writes it, and that teacher does everything from the books. In contrast, my class doesn’t have books⁶. But we had a review sheet, and I think that helped. And I’m sure I passed. I needed like, a 9% on that final to maintain an A, anyhow. Last on Monday was band…and boy, was that fun. Most of the time, we just rehearsed, but every final has to have a written part, too. So we were quizzed. The questions ranged from music terminology to whom it was exactly that Rocky fought in movies three and four⁷. Thankfully, it was graded on effort. Otherwise, I might have failed. I mean, Rocky? C’mon. That is so a boy thing! Then today, I started off the day with Global Studies. My teacher had told us that this was gonna be a reeeaaally hard test…in fact, I almost studied for this one…but it wasn’t. I finished it with like, an hour to spare. In fact, everyone finished it early, and we started watching Shrek. Good times…. I’m gonna miss that class! Second was geometry. I think I did okay on that one, too. I even double-checked my work! Plus, we were allowed a note card. In geometry, if our semester final grade is higher than one of our test grades for the semester, that test will be brought up to equal our final grade. If that makes sense. See, I find that sort of funny, since my lowest semester test grade in that class was a 93. So I’m just hoping I did that well on the final, too. Last was English. I thought this test was gonna be really hard—our teacher is notorious for being extremely picky⁸ and picking trivial questions—but it was fine. We had an easy reading/writing assessment, and then the rest was just a compilation of all the tests we’ve taken before. I mean, lazy much? The least he could do would be to pick different questions. Not that I’m complaining. Easy tests are always good.
Well, that brings you up to speed on my finals week. I hope all of you with other, normal schedules are surviving as well. This is the part of the year I like to call the “doldrums⁹.” It just seems to fit! Until next time…
xxx
Caryn

¹ Aka those good ol’ 7:30 classes that I don’t have.
² Kudos to you if you did! Oh, and in classic Caryn style…2 points.
³ Hard being a relative term, of course.
⁴ Which I’ve always wanted to learn, coincidentally.
⁵ Whose name shall remain strictly confidential,
⁶ What with our school being the poor dump it is and all…
⁷ We had for some reason discussed that earlier in the period….
⁸ If you remember the book talk fiasco and all,
⁹ A bit of weather terminology for you there…it just means “slow” in the context I’m using it in.

The Joys of School

Estoy: Psyched/mad
Currently reading: Every Crooked Pot, by Renee Rosen—YA realistic fiction—4/5
The Book Thief, by Markus Zusak—YA adventure—5/5
Well, I’m getting back into the swing of things at school. Yesterday, I gave my book report, and it didn’t go too bad…I just had to cut a bit out to get it under five minutes. When I first got it written, I was really excited…I was sure everyone was going to want to read my book. Unfortunately, it clocked in at 13 minutes—8 minutes too long. Therefore, I had to cut out all of the fun parts as well as some essentials. Eventually, I couldn’t take anything else out, so I had to hope that I talked fast. Well, it worked a bit, but I did have to cut short my “Why I liked (and adored, revered and reread [] multiple times) this book” section. So I knew I’d be marked down for that. I thought I had pulled it off though, I really did. But apparently, my teacher is REALLY DEAF because I know I explained in a lot of detail the main character, and you’d think that saying “this book is the first in the FANTASY/ADVENTURE series…” would count as telling him the genre. And yet, he marked me down for “not doing” those things. In addition, he randomly took 4 points off my conflict and climax portions of the report (all you perverted people out there who are chuckling, knock it off) for no apparent reason. So tomorrow after class…yeah, we’re gonna have a bit of discussion about that. Because I don’t get bad grades, and I’m gonna be so mad if he messes up my GPA. Ugh! Well, that rant has pretty much expired now…(or should I say, “retired?” Haha.) What’s that? You want to know what grade I got? Uh-uh, I am sooo not telling.
Hey, guess what? We’re now dancing in gym class. I know, fun fun, eh? And for those of you who think I should like dancing…yeah, you come visit my class someday and see how you like it. Very few boys in my class can actually dance. Actually, there’s only about two: One of them is Crew (no surprises there, though) and the other one is Sam. That one actually did surprise me a bit. Those of you who know him, you probably know what I mean. Those of you who don’t…well, it’s not like he’s a horrible person, but he just doesn’t seem like the dancing type. I’ll just leave it at that. Some of the guys, however, are really fun to talk to…while they walk around in a close approximation of the dance pattern. But there is this guy in my class who, y’know, wants to know me a bit better than I want to know him. So I kinda dislike dancing with him (I didn’t have to today!), if you know what I mean. Not that I dislike him…but I just don’t like him “like that.”
Oh, and here’s a note to any guys who may be reading this: You all need to learn where a girl’s waist is! Some of you put your hands way too high, which is a bit too close to the boobs for comfort. And sometimes either gravity or hormones drags your hand down to the butt area. Waist, men, WAIST! That’s where it goes in around our stomachs! All of you girls probably know what I’m saying. You guys need to get it, now! Well, on that pleasant note, I’ll be leaving you again, so, until next time…
xxx
Caryn

Swimming!

currently reading: nothing. I can't be arsed.
current mood: okay-ish?

First period class: Gym. And I am one of the lucky people who happens to be in the middle of their swimming unit at the moment. Actually, not even the middle. We just started it on Friday. Of course, swimming in gym class is just loads of fun. Especially since all the popular¹ guys are in my class. I know, lucky me, right? Wrong.
Today, all we did the whole time was work on our strokes and kicks separately, since most of my class apparently put them together yet, and it's absolute hell. The strokes, I'm very good at. I've been taking swimming lessons for the past, oh, eight years, so my skills have definitely had enough time to develop themselves. But when we do the kicking? Not fun. It's so tiring for me! Yeah I may be a bit our of shape, but still…hated it!
When we were working on our backstroke kick (which is just doing the flutter kick on our backs), enough water went up my nose to drown me. My nose has been hurting ever since. And when we were working on our front crawl stroke with floaties taking place of the kicking, I swallowed half of the pool. Not being able to do it all together really gets my timing off, let me tell you. I seriously hope you can't die from a chlorine overdose.
On the bright side, when you swim in gym class, you get plenty of time to shower off and get dressed. And the showers are very warm. On the not-so-bright side, I have gym class first thing in the morning, so all day… Ugh. It's hard to do your hair in a gym locker room, and I'm sure I'd feel the same way about makeup if I wore that as well. As it is, my hair now looks like absolute shit!
And I've just gotta mention, if you haven't done it already (and you're a Potter fan), check out James Potter and the Hall of Elder's Crossing. And I'll probably be nagging you about this for the next…what is it? 18 days. Well, enjoy, until next time…
xxx
Caryn

¹ read: obnoxious and annoying