faire de la plongée sous-marine
:D
first off
One thing I accomplished this week (while awake at 3:30am struggling to exist thanks to a Weird Illness that my home tests insisted was not COVID) was that I ordered a copy of my high school transcript. This process has gone digital in the, uh, double-digit years since I’ve needed one, so all I had to do was fill out a short form with my school’s third-party transcript provider, and one business day later, a PDF appeared in my inbox.
I remember my overall high school experience as a series of decisions based on “god, I guess I’ll do this if it’ll make me look slightly better on college apps.” Your standard four years of English (two in AP classes) with a side of three years of French (my school didn’t offer a fourth year), but also four years of science and five years of math (I took Algebra I in middle school). Was I particularly good at school? Did I like these subjects? Well, when you were completing classes in service of getting into UCs and out-of-state private schools, it didn’t matter. High school was about delivering an impressive transcript to people I’d never meet, not about me or my happiness! :D
Some highlights:
For some reason this transcript only goes through my junior year. My lowest grade listed here came in sophomore biology (C), but I’m sure my senior year produced more of those.
I don’t remember exactly how I got a B+ in my first semester of French, but I do remember having a weird time transitioning from learning practical French by being around French speakers to memorizing phrases I’ll never use, like “faire de la plongée sous-marine” (to go scuba diving), in order to do well on tests.
I had an A+ in every semester of band except one, where I got an A. I vaguely remember some conflict I had where I had to miss(?) something(?) and made it up later by writing a paper. Maybe I only got 97% instead of 100% because of this?
This thing lists my first set of SAT scores as well as my California high school exit exam results (we took this as sophomores and it doesn’t exist anymore). Despite liking English and disliking math, in both of these I earned higher scores in math than in English. The short explanation here is that despite learning to read absurdly early and getting attention from adults for this growing up, I didn’t know I had reading comprehension issues until adulthood!
I was still in the top 15% of my class. Go figure.
TL;DR - my god, be nicer to teenagers. Some of them hate everything and themselves and are just putting themselves through all this to get to pick from a larger stack of colleges.
one rec
“My Cool Friend Michelle” is a beautiful, moving piece by Mara Wilson about growing up with Michelle Trachtenberg. “But as soon as we were introduced, she gave me a huge, warm smile, then looked at my dress and said ‘Eurokids, right? I love that store!’ I nodded and felt a surge of joy. I shopped where the cool girl shopped!” (archive link)
wholesome scroll
A quick list of books that have lived on my TBR for a while and why I haven’t read them yet:
The Empathy Exams by Leslie Jamison
I was so thoroughly wrecked by the titular essay when I read it for a scicomm class years ago that I knew I needed to read the entire collection eventually, but when would I be emotionally ready for that?No Filter: The Inside Story of Instagram by Sarah Frier
I love books about the history of the 2000s/2010s internet and social media, but none of these apps appeared in a vacuum, and I’m hesitant to dive into a book that is promoted as being just about Instagram. I’m sure I’ll like it when I get to it, though.Loving Sports When They Don't Love You Back: Dilemmas of the Modern Fan by Jessica Luther and Kavitha Davidson
The struggle of knowing of an important book that you know you’ll want to spend an important amount of time with so you can have important reflections, but god, it’s going to be a tough read.Sunrise on the Reaping by Suzanne Collins
Because it just came out today and I am literally starting it right now!!! Goodbye!!!