Look who’s still alive?!
It took me a while to get this back up and for most of the time I was debating whether or not I wanted to, or if I should just give up. But then in the past week or two I realized how much I hated not having this. Of course, me taking so long to decide what to do resulted in a $5.90 late fee on the domain (which I didn’t know they gave late fees?) but, whatever.
A lot has really happened since, what, March?
I got my ACTs back, and the final score is a thirty. I was sitting in my hotel room in Wisconsin Dells for the SkillsUSA competition when I got the email and looked it up and just about screamed. My guidance counselor told me that I would get a twenty-seven, maybe a twenty-eight if I tried really hard. … Cause I totally tried. Haha. Either way, I’m really pleased. I could retake it but I’m not going to. I am, however, tempted to go into my guidance counselor’s office and scream “HAHA! EAT THAT, BITCH, I GOT A THIRTY” but I think it would result in me getting like, I don’t know, expelled or something. Not good.
Skills competition…
Since my last blog, Skills has become the most important thing to me. That organization, it was amazing. The competition was just… agghh. I don’t know if any of you have been to the Dells (please tell me you at least know what the Dells is) but my competition — Photography — was in the big bubble, which I don’t know how else to explain it. It was the Dells Center though. And it was amazing. For the competition we had to submit two 8 x 10 photographs. One had to be a silhouette and the other could be whatever we wanted. These I had exposed, printed and mounted prior to the competition. The morning of was a Tuesday, and I had only first hour that day. Everything was just so hectic, trying to make sure everyone had everything that… I forgot the camera. Yeah. I’m a moron. By some miracle I decided to bring my camera (not an SLR, like I was going to borrow from the school, but it is a camera) and my adviser said that would work.
I took the entire two hour drive to the Dells to tell him though. I was trying not to puke. I thought I had totally screwed up (and really, I had but…). The pre-contest briefing on Tuesday was, for my competition, taking a multiple choice test. I was iffy on how I did on that but I went back to the hotel in a fairly good mood. Wednesday was the actual competition at eight in the morning. We had to bring and submit the two photos taken earlier. We had to design a digital scrapbook page using photographs provided. We had to shoot and prepare nine photographs of the other contests in the Dells Center. We had to have two interviews — one on our camera, one on our two submitted photographs.
When everyone was finished with all their contests, we went to a mall and wandered around.
We ate.
We went to the closing ceremony, where the contest winners were announced.
The stuff beforehand was very long. Then all the contests were long. Photography was toward the end. Before my contest was called, my school found that we are sending a person to nationals in screen-printing, two people (a team) to nationals in promotional billboard. One silver. One bronze. Then it was photography.
I placed third, bronze. I’m not going to nationals. It took a while, until the drive home and I saw how completely and totally ecstatic my one adviser was, for me to realize this and actually be proud. It took my adviser to point out that I beat around twenty other people, twenty other people who had more than six weeks to prepare, most of whom had better cameras and better computers. And I beat them with sucky equipment and six weeks preparation.
No, I’m not going to nationals. But I did kick some serious butt. And I am so ready for next year.
I dragged my medal around with me for probably pushing a week after we got back. Haha. A copy of my pictures are going to end up on the wall of the graphics/photography room at school. Our last meeting is on Wednesday — and this fact really depresses me. I fell in love with that organization and I only have a year left to do anything in it.
But I’m still so happy.
Besides that, I took my AP European History semester exam. I took my AP European History, AP Biology and AP Language AP exams, and I will find out those results by mid-July. In Biology we’ve begun dissecting the cat. The first day was… extremely hard, but now I’m not so bothered. I’ve just taught myself not to look at it’s face and to not breath out of my nose (formaldehyde is going to make me vomit). We have probably about a month left of school, including exams. Next week Saturday, the 22nd, I am going to Illinois to the open house at the college I am seriously considering.
Also, my desktop pretty much died. Ran out of harddrive space — excluding the fact that there really was nothing on it to take up space that wasn’t on it two years ago. My mom’s laptop, the little pink 7″ netbook, was ticking me off. So I was finally able to get a new computer. I now have an Asus with a 500GB space, duo core processor and 4 GB RAM. I also now owe my dad my paychecks for a while, haha.
Anyway, I think this is long enough. I’m so glad to be back, and watch for a new layout (you knew it was coming). Auf Wiedersehen!
