I, like the next person, get really excited for storms.

What, you don’t?

Well, I do. Even though thunderstorms have the potential to generate floods, power outages, and tornadoes, I still get super hyped when I see one coming up in the weather forecast.

Actually, right now, we’re supposed to get a big one with decently-sized hail in about an hour. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t like hail, but isn’t it exciting…

The sky’s darkening already. Was that thunder I heard?

I think I’m most excited and elevated right before the storm unleashes. When it’s really, REALLY dark outside, thunder is booming, lightning’s flashing, and it’s right before- or in the midst of- pouring rain. That’s when I’m most excited.

Whenever the rain doesn’t deliver, or the weather report lied, I get really disappointed. That’s justifiable right?! I’m just looking to feel cozy and safe inside my house while a storm rages outside, don’t disappoint me like that!!

Everybody knows that thunderstorms leave as quick as they come, so afterwards, when the rain’s all gone, my excitement fades. But, there’s no denying the adrenaline I get when I hear of a storm approaching. Of course, I also occasionally get a bit nervous and worried during particularly raging storms, when the lights flicker or there’s a tornado siren going off.

Anyways, the sky is getting darker and darker, and it’s not just because it’s close to sundown 🙂 Exciting, isn’t it? I predict the thunder’ll start any minute now…

Have you been to the Ballwin Pointe, before? It’s a gym facility right off of Manchester, and it’s the site of my first job EVER 🙂

I’m going to be a camp counselor! As you can probably tell, I’m excited- but also a little nervous. I love kids. They’re really cute and fun to be around, and don’t judge you like fake people at Marquette do.

On the flip side, there are 1000-something kids at this camp, and while I’m only in charge of one group at a time, that is still a LOT of kids, the oldest being 13 and the youngest being 2. 13 is when they start getting bratty, and 2 is when they can’t really comprehend your grown-up words.

I’m lucky enough to have been assigned to a 5-6 year old group, which is perfect. I love kindergartners because they’re sweet and listen to most everything you say, because they actually look up to you. It’s lost on me why you would look down on someone older than you if your senior is a reasonable, good person, but I’m not a sh*tty thirteen year old, go ask them why they act brattier than the six year olds.

The Pointe’s summer camp is split into several camps, including the main one- Day Camp, the one situated at the North Pointe- Aqua Camp, and a bunch of Variety Camps, such as Harry Potter camp and Art Camp. (Are those supposed to be capitalized?)

I’m serving on Day Camp for now, and Day Camp always has a theme for the summer- when I attended (the same!) camp years ago, the themes were things like space, animals, and such. This year, the theme is Nation Games, sort of like the Olympics. Each week of summer will revolve around a different country.

And I’m hyped! I REALLY love the different countries and cultures of the world, so I loved this year’s theme even better than, say, a space theme. This year, the camp directors did their best to pick field trip destinations that matched with that week’s country. For example, next week’s country is Germany, and the place they picked was Rockin’ Jump.

Er… don’t ask me why. I don’t get how trampolines connect with Germany, but am I complaining?

HELL NO! I haven’t let loose on a trampoline in so long, I’m super excited to go with the kids and bounce my heart out 🙂

My main concern for the summer is… swimming. Don’t get me wrong, I know how to swim. I actually swim fairly well. But, ladies, you’ll know what I’m talking about… As for the guys, you’ll understand the other problem I have with swimming- the sun. A powerful star it is, really. I don’t get sunburned easily, but I don’t have skin of steel, either. If I forget to put on my sunscreen, I will get sunburnt. Which isn’t very fun if you ask me. :p

Still, I’m very excited to be a camp counselor at a camp I once attended! 🙂 It’ll be really cool to get behind the scenes and see what my old counselors once got to experience. I think the greatest benefit to doing this job is just seeing the kids run up to you with a giant smile on their face, saying, “What are we doing today?”

🙂 It’s going to be a long, hot, fun-filled summer!

Hey everybody. It’s May 23rd, the last day of school, hallelujah.

I… am very conflicted. On one hand, I don’t want to leave my school routine and my friends. On the other hand, I got a job as a camp counselor this summer and I’m excited to spend time with 200+ kids 😉 Come visit me sometime! I’ll be a counselor at the Ballwin Pointe, and I’d love to see you.

Still… with all that waiting for me, I don’t want to leave Marquette, even for two months. I have lots of classmates and teachers I’m going to miss, some more than others, but I’ll miss them all the same. Some shoutouts: Emma, Christine, Madison, Julia, I hope we can get together sometime over the summer! Callie, thanks for being a great math buddy and giving me hints to the math tests! Kathleen, sometimes you alarm me but you’re super fun to be around all the same, government class was quite interesting with you and Lucy. Victoria, you were a great help in Psychology class! Kaitlyn, you should really get out and exercise more instead of gaming… Jack and Ryan, thanks for always remembering to do your group questions 😉 Bella, Creative Writing wouldn’t have been the same without you, keep being awesome and have a great time in college! Joseph, we had a great year together, I’ll miss you 🙂

Now it’s onto my classes…

Creative Writing: This class was amazing. I had been wanting to get it on my schedule since freshman year, and it definitely lived up to my expectations. I loved all the assignments (well, except *one*… bet you can’t figure out which one :)) and I really really could express myself in this class. Mr. Durham, I know you get this a lot, but, I appreciate your humor, and your style of teaching 🙂 Thank you for having the patience to calm me down before the Poetry Slam, and thank you for taking into consideration my shyness whenever I had to go up and present. (Especially for the stand-up comedy, going second really helped me to not overthink anything and just have fun! Your class really helped me be more animated and outgoing on stage.) Creative Writing was the class I could rely on almost every morning to get me relaxed and focused for the day ahead. The people in the class were great as well, there were funnies all around and the overall mood was laid back and casual. Great class! I’ve been recommending it to tons of people, but with the Poetry Slam part left out 😉

Honors Algebra II: As the name of the class suggests, this was a hard class. A HARD class. I did okay in Honors Geometry, which was why I decided to take the plunge and do Honors Alg. II, but it was definitely a tricky course to navigate. Ms. Dauster, I think you were an amazing teacher, really patient and considerate. Thank you for always helping me with some idiotic question I had! The class definitely stressed me out a lot, and I do feel that I could’ve studied more for each of the tests, but I heard Pre Calc is much easier, so… yay? When you’re a non-math person like me, you’ll take any small win at this point. 🙂

AP Biology: … Where do I even begin. I regret this class the most. Regret taking it? Nope. I regret not studying enough for it and not being smart enough to realize that until too late in the year. AP Bio is heralded as a hard course overall… but that depended on which teacher you got. Now, I’m not going to say which teachers are preferred, but I will say that I could’ve helped myself a lot more in this class than I actually did. See, I didn’t spend too much time studying for tests, and that really hit me hard towards the end of the year. So, when I finally decided to buck up and study hard for the final (yes, I… I did take the AP exam…), guess what? I got an A on the final exam. And that was when I realized my stupid a** could’ve studied a little bit harder for each test in the year and could’ve avoided having to take the final. The biggest feeling of regret hit me just then. Overall, AP Bio was somewhat enjoyable, the people in the class made it better- I feel very lucky! If I were to take the class again, I’d definitely study MUCH harder than I did the first time.

Psychology: This class was easy-breezy. (Is that a phrase?) Mr. Ostrowski, you were a great teacher and I really liked how easygoing you were. Super relaxed class, I could slack off whenever and you didn’t care as long as I got my work done, which I always did. I’m actually taking AP Psychology senior year, and I’m really excited about that. Lots of note-taking, I heard, but I’ve learned my lesson with procrastination this year.

Personal Finance: I am considering majoring in accounting, so this class was a great help to me. I’m taking Accounting next year, but Personal Finance definitely gave me a good intro to the business world. Ms. Armstrong, you were a nice teacher, but… how come you never smiled back at me?! Whenever I walked out the door after class, I said “thank you” with a smile, but you just stared back- or you said “bye” to another student. What did I ever do to you…

AP Government: Easy and hard at the same time. I constantly found it difficult to strike a balance between studying and, well… not studying, in this class, but I ended with a decent grade, so I’m good. Group questions were always easy points and something to look forward too, although if you weren’t the one speaking it would be pretty boring. Note taking was frenetic but also soothing at the same time, don’t know how that’s possible, but if you’re curious you should take the class! Ms. Sullenger, you always found time to give me a smile, so thank you 🙂 Also, your kids are REALLY cute, tell them I said hi!

AP Language: I feel like I need to give a shoutout to this class for being so amusing and energetic all the time. Great people, great teacher, this class was super fun even though I barely contributed to any conversation. Ms. Scherder, I found it impressive that you were able to deal with such a chaotic and overall oddball group. I know I didn’t talk much, but know that I was always listening and always paying attention. I’m taking AP Literature next year, everyone wish me luck!

Spanish III: Ms. Gray, good luck to you with your baby, you will be missed while you are gone! Everybody here thinks you’re the best Spanish teacher, and I bet if you taught Spanish IV a lot more people would take the class 🙂 Now, I’m going to be honest here, I’m still a little bummed Rockwood doesn’t offer a Chinese language class, but I figured Spanish was the next best thing. As for this year, I’m REALLY relieved I didn’t get this class for any blocked days- this is my seventh hour! Blocked Spanish likely would’ve drained me of my emotion and sanity, but Standard Spanish is just fine and dandy. Hopefully I don’t end up with you-know-who next year for Spanish IV!

WHEW.

Now, onto the future of this blog.

I’m going to keep posting 🙂 (Stop cheering, you’re making me blush). Every time I post on this blog, I feel my stress melting away and my relief at my thoughts finally being put onto a page. You know, what’s funny is, I actually discovered this blog a few days BEFORE I was introduced to it in Creative Writing. A few days before, I had suddenly felt like starting a blog, and I settled on WordPress to be my medium. Imagine my surprise a few days later when I found myself in class on the same website!

Anywho, I will keep blogging, even if nobody really reads it anymore. I hope that those who do read it, enjoy reading it 🙂

Ah… that was a long post. Am I ambitious or what? 😀

I hope everybody has an AMAZING summer. XD Hope everybody gets to go somewhere fun or do something fun, be productive, get lots of sand and surf and is ready to go for the next school year. Whaaaat? You can’t come after me for thinking about the next school year on the last day of school!

Junior year was a fun, stressful one 🙂 Can senior year top it?

Only one way to find out.

This blog isn’t about anything particular. It might actually sound like my last blog post of the year, but I don’t think it will be.

Hope everybody’s last few days of school have been going swimmingly. Seniors, I’ll miss you lot (not really but I will miss some of you so consider yourselves lucky :)), have the best times of your life in college.

Juniors, hopefully we don’t f*ck up next year. I have faith in us actually not really but at this point who cares?

Sophomores, y’all are a pretty sorry bunch this year. Not to be mean, of course. But I just kinda hate all of you. Annoying little yappy things. A select few of you I like but toodles to the rest of ya.

Freshmen. You lot were fresh-faced and excited for high school this year. I can already tell you guys are going to be the class that will freak if you’re parted with your darling phones for 45 minutes. Take a chill pill, nobody has time for your sh*t.

Teachers! Have a great summer 🙂

Fellow students! Have a great summer, but know that if I spot you at the pool and I don’t like you I will chuck my pina colada at you and run. Wait, where did I get that pina colada from?

So it’s that time of year again. May. The month of hell, no? I’ll make this short, because biology isn’t going to study itself.

May is the month of AP tests, of finals, and of racing to raise your GPA before another year ends.

AP TESTS, FINALS, AND GPA.

OMG.

Ah… excuse me. I usually don’t use such crude words.

I only have three AP tests this year. For those of you who have four or more, kudos to you, I hope you didn’t ruin your life by choosing to take all AP classes. Still, though, any AP test is a stressful test. And AP Biology is kicking my butt.

Finals ain’t so bad. (aren’t, sorry!!) I get to exempt a bunch and that leaves me with more time to study for the ones I do have to take. But, finals study guides are terrible, yea?

GPA. I am so stressed about my GPA. That’s all I have to say.

But, May isn’t the month of hell for those reasons alone.

May is also a bad month for me because I know another year is ending. And if you’re like me and you enjoy every school year, well… May can be a little depressing for you. Sure, summer is coming up fast, but I’m going to miss my school routine (especially with the new routine they’re implementing next year) and I’m going to miss my friends and teachers. I look forward to after high school, but I know I’m going to miss it all the same.

Well, that’s it for today. I’m probably going to come out with an “end of the school year” post soon, but that’s probably going to be for after AP tests and finals. For all of you who know the struggle, stay strong!! May photosynthesis and trig identities be with you!

SERIOUSLY?

I mean come ON St. Louis! Why do you keep giving us 60 degree weather in May?! May- hell, April– should have temps at least up to 70 or above! But noooooo, we have to be stuck in 50/60 degree weather. Shut. Up. This is so unfair… The next month is literally June. JUNE. SUMMER. SIXTY DEGREES IN SUMMER I DON’T THINK SO.

Don’t get me wrong, I love the rain coming with April and May. But the temperature? Give me a break. I want it to be 85 degrees out already!!

So let’s say I pose you this question: What is a quire?

“Quire” means: Two dozen sheets of paper.

Okay. Simple enough.

What would you say if I then asked you, “What is paper?”

Well, paper means the thin sheet of fibrous material that one can write on.

But THEN I ask: What does “one” mean?

Are you kidding Sarah what planet are you from?

You would probably say, “One is the lowest whole number before zero and the negatives.”

I would reply, with a stupid look on my face: Sooooo… what does “and” mean?

Stumped you yet? If someone asked me what the word “and” meant, I’d probably stare at them for a loooong while.

I’ve just always found it funny how, if you really think about it, you could technically ask for the definition of the easiest, most commonly used words (like the word “the”) and you wouldn’t get a straight answer.

Because people don’t know! It’s hilarious, isn’t it? We use these words in everyday life and yet if somebody were to ask YOU what “the” meant, you wouldn’t be able to tell them, would you?

hahahahahhahahhahahhahahhahahahhahahahahaha

Does your brain hurt yet? 🙂

Who’s seen it?!

Actually, I don’t really care.

🙂 I’ve never watched a single movie in the Avengers franchise. Avengers? Marvel? DC? Justice League? I run the risk of sounding stupid by including all the names of superhero franchises that I don’t know anything about. Are Avengers part of Marvel? Is the Justice League part of DC? DC and Marvel and two completely different worlds right? I get so confused trying to figure it all out. If I had to guess, I know more of the DC superheroes. Batman and Superman and Wonder Woman, right? I know them. I know barely any Marvel superheroes. I once saw a video on YouTube from Jimmy Kimmel, where he went out on the street and asked passerby if they could name more Avengers or US presidents.

*sigh* Most people named more Avengers, some people named Avengers as presidents, and others couldn’t recall any Avengers nor any presidents.

Now, not to brag, but I learned the presidents song in kindergarten (shout-out to Ms. Hulcer!!!) and I still remember most of it today. So, I’m pretty confident I could name at least half the presidents, probably more. And I’m also confident that I’m definitely not going to name more than five Avengers. It’ll be like a hit-and-run, of me guessing random superheroes and if they’re an Avenger, great! If not, oh well, call me an uncultured swine.

I honestly don’t care about Marvel. So you can guess how excited I was on Friday, when Avengers: Endgame came out. The thing was so hyped up, and everybody around me was talking about it. I have a good friend who loves his superheroes. I find it adorably amusing when he tries to school me on them, because 1. He’s not going to get anywhere and 2. I’m really not interested, Joey, but I’ll keep smiling because your enthusiasm is infectious.

🙂

I actually find it really funny how I’m so ignorant to superheroes. People’s jaws fall to the ground when I tell them I really don’t care about the new movie, or the gazillion movies preceding it.

With that being said, I hope the movie was good enough to waste three hours in the movie theater for ^_^ As for me, I’ll pass, because I wouldn’t know what was going on 100% of the time, anyway.

Many seniors and some juniors bailed today, right before the spring assembly. It’s commonplace, I’ve seen it all three years I’ve been at Marquette. Maybe I’ll bail next year.

But probably not.

I… somewhat… enjoy… assemblies.

*gasp*

Can you even fathom?!

Okay, maybe “enjoy” isn’t the best word. I’m definitely not giddy to go to them. But I think I tolerate Marquette assemblies much better than my peers do. They always complain extensively before and after the actual thing, but I don’t. Maybe I’ll tell a friend or two that I don’t want to go, but that’s just me trying to fit in and trying to look normal by hating assemblies.

Honestly speaking, I like the energy. I like how I can goof off with my friends for a part of the school day. And even though I don’t like most the music they play, when they do play good music or music I like, I get very energetic and stimulated.

But, I think the biggest reason I like assemblies is the fact that if I don’t, who will?

Everybody else around me seems bored, skeptical, or downright apathetic towards these kinds of schoolwide events. And I find it very, very old. Guys, I know going to a pep rally maybe isn’t your thing. Hot, loud kids packed into a gym or the bleachers is close to a nightmare. But I don’t understand how you could pull a long face and stick your tongue out at the administration or student council or whatever groups pulled together to organize the event. For their sake, I always cheer loudly at assemblies. I clap, I shout, and I try to show support and enthusiasm towards whoever organized the event.

I’d hate to see people annoyed they have to go to an event I organized. It borders on rude, really. If you’re there, you might as well have fun, right?

With all that being said, I really enjoyed the spring assembly this year! Good job to the sophomore volleyball team, you had some really nice saves out there! And shout-out to my buddy Max, who was peer pressured into doing both the ice cream eating contest and tug of war with the teachers! Y’all were very entertaining! Goodnight!

One of my biggest goals as a writer is to concoct a good mystery novel. I’ve already mentioned, and stressed, that I love figuring people out, and secrets are like the holy grail for me. Psychology and sociology are right up my lane, and criminal justice is, too. (If anybody has any good careers in criminal justice, hit me up!! I’ve been considering it for a very long time now!)

I want to create a suspenseful, page-turning mystery novel. I want to create characters that are not as they seem. I want the reader to hang onto my every word and try and figure out the mystery themselves- but to no avail. I want there to be leads, red herrings, dead ends, that make the reader think they’ve got it figured out. I want the reader cheering for the good guys, but also admiring how ingenious and deceitful the bad guys are. I want my characters to have secrets to hide. I want them to play along with me, the author, in the game of tricking the readers.

Would murder be too cliche? Kidnapping, too. But theft isn’t that exciting, and neither is scam. But, what about a novel revolving around a theft that lead to a murder? Or maybe a murder that precipitated a kidnapping? All good ideas, I think. There’s got to be a dark streak to the story, too, dark, disturbing aspects that need to really scare the reader.

Alas, right now I think writing such a novel is far beyond my reach. I don’t know if it will ever be in my reach. To truly write a good, suspenseful mystery novel is a skill not a lot of writers have. Do you think you’ve got what it takes?