When the students are fed to sharks

There seems to be a popular myth that at Stuyvesant high school (you know, the math/science one in new york city) the marine science department maintains a shark tank that they drop B-students into. yeah, so that... doesn't happen. obviously i'm speaking metaphorically, but the point remains the same: yes it's intense, but no, they do not kill you if you fail a physics test. The SHP people do that. No, still kidding.
I don't go to stuy, but I know people who do and they wholeheartedly maintain that they do have stupid friends at their school and they are actually friends with these friends (just in case I had to clarify that). It is true that math team is a class there, they send the most students of any high school in the country to MIT (I think), and ~30 people get into Harvard each year-- not all of them seniors though. yeah, this kid in my cosmology class @ SHP said he has a classmate who finished the whole math and science curriculum (including AP calc BC) before he started high school. said student was kind of bored by sophomore year (he was taking advanced math courses at nearby NYU at this point) so he just decided to go to harvard. it's not every day taht you hear about someone who "just decided to go to harvard" the way people like me "just decide to have pancakes for breakfast." people like him are the reason why stuy got its scary reputation.
i don't know the math team captain, but i do know the science olympiads team captain and he's a nice, normal guy. he was the guy who finally told our cosmology teacher what everyone else was thinking: "I have no freaking idea what you're talking about." So, thank you, person-who-I-consider-a-friend-and-see-in-random-subway-stations-but-whose-name-I-do-not-know. I look forward to staring awkardly at you again on the Number 2 train until I remember where I know you from.
Ok, maybe Stuy is intense. I downplay this too much. But still, if there were ANY school where they fed students to sharks, it would be thomas jefferson in alexandria, VA. They have a freaking supercomputer. they had THIRTY physics olympiad semifinalists. that's more semifinalists than my school has physics students! (Of the AP Physics C variety, that is.)

By the way, I may a little behind the times, but I just saw the Adam Lambert music video for that song "what do you want from me" (<- sorry I didn't glorify that title with "fo shizzled" random consonants and missing syllables) and I always thought he was hispanic. he's an albino emo dude? really? i'm albino. that's not cool on mopey pop stars.
one last thought: american education standards may be falling elsewhere, but I swear they're getting more shark-likehere.

Channeling Emily Post on facebook

I'm not exactly the socially savvy cool person, but I do make an effort to follow social convention when possible. That can be troublesome.. because I don't always know what kind of response a situation calls for. I've got the whole ex-boyfriend-of-my-best-friend-who-pets-my-head-in-bio-class thing down, but there are certain situations (occupational hazards of being nerdy) that don't come with a manual.
What do you say to the kid who's the arch enemy (?) of someone from your school (who used to be a friend of yours, but is now extremely conceited, also your "boss" at the school paper). It's not over a girl.. or a sports rivalry.. It's a science competition thing-- and not a petty one. Red head from the other school was top 5 nationally in Intel and the one from your school won 2nd place psychology award @ international science & engineering fair... and they had a "showdown" at a local science fair. They hate one another passionately, but, uh, I had to see both of them every week last year. separately, but still, don't shoot the messenger!
Anyway, now that school is over I'm spending a lot of time on facebook until i start doing something useful and I've noticed that I"m bypassing a lot of birthdays because I don't know if it's appropriate for me to "care." And everytime I'm invited to a party I sort of wonder if I should rsvp, because what if they invited me by accident? (I've done that before.. those buttons press themselves, i swear!) Can I like that person's status? It's funny, but I don't talk to them-- wouldn't want to be a creeper!
It's nice, in a way, that fb offers a little window into the social life of people I normally wouldn't know anything about. It's interesting, it gives me the illusion taht I actually know them. Of course, sometimes I forget that it's really not a "substitute" for actually knowing them. That becomes painfully obvious when I talk to them and realize.. oh. they never told me that. i should probably pretend i don't know where they live. i can do things on fb that aren't acceptable in real life and vice versa, but no one offered a social guide to facebook that outlines the specific instances in which this is true. sometimes privacy settings take care of that for me, which is a relief, but then there's the whole fb chat thing-- is it really creepy to talk to people that way? I use it all the time.. mostly because I don't want people to talk to me.
Oh, well, I guess that sort of defeats the purpose then....

In Loving Hatred

When someone repeatedly walks into a wall, it's generally called "stupidity."
Repeatedly get hit in the head with a spherical object, however, and it's called "sports."
I do not know why I am so spectacularly uncoordinated, or, more importantly, why I insist on trying anyway. I knew it would end badly, and yet I tried to join the volleyball team. Then I served overhand and ended up hitting the net, which bounced the ball at the back of my teammate's head. woops.
it's not only sports, though. i tend to love what other people hate, hate what other people love, fail miserably at what most people do easily, and generally cause a lot of raised eyebrows when i try to perform mundane, everyday tasks.
Earth Science? Loved it. Physics? My best friend. Geometry? :D:D Research essays? BRing it on! Beaches? .... D: the horror!
I don't mean to seem like a nerdy hermit (though, admittedly, I am to some extent). I just find hard tests easy and easy tests hard. I do things backwards and generally fall forwards.
I am almost never heading in the "right" direction, but I like where I end up anyway.

Smart People do very, VERY stupid things

It never ceases to amaze me how the smartest people I know routinely do the dumbest things. In the countdown to the seniors' last day, today was day -1, and yet there were still a few holdouts there: Kenneth, the school's quiet, unofficial head math genius; Eric, the programming prodigy; and-- oh, yeah-- A.D., the valedictorian and captain of math team/ science olympiads team/ science bowl team/ school foreign language publication/etc./etc...etc. He, uh, forgot to hand in some of his homework (not that he ever does it anyway). woops. Same for managing editor of the school paper (heading to UPenn) and editor-in-chief of the paper (heading to Yale). I know they don't have to, like, comb their mustaches or anything for hours before prom (mostly because they don't have mustaches or any facial hair to speak of) but this isn't the first time these few have done stupid stuff.
Exhibit A: we're ("we" meaning basically all of the aforementioned people, plus a few others, including myself and another sophomore) taking the subway from Penn station to Columbia University, and, as usual, running late. Their genius idea to explain to our respective professors why we're especially late? "It was snowing, so the subway wasn't running on time."
A few seconds later..
Me: "Um, guys... the subway is underground. That implies that it's somehow snowing in the subway."
Oh, yeahh!
And then when we went out for lunch after class... No one can decide how to pay the bill. These people won 1st place nationally in the American Regional Mathematics League Div. B, and they can't split a bill or figure the tip. I have this theory that the cumulative IQ at the table is proportional to the amount of time it takes to pay the bill. These people also like to cross when the light is green and a school bus is barreling toward them. We were bored once on the subway and mathematically defined ditching. The future of humanity lies at least partially in their hands.
Lord help us.

sweet sixteen

I was going to start this on my 16th birthday, but that has admittedly come and gone and I am more than a week late now. But to tell the truth, I was just so busy with not preparing for the SAT subject tests and procrastinating in general that I had virtually no time. Now, alas, i have only a few regents to worry about (and a final or two).
The seniors had their last day today, which is really a shame because I was first starting to like/figure some of them out. I saw a senior named Charlie riding his bike to school today-- a rarity in this suburban land-of-fat-children. Charlie actually looks like a larger version of a toddler, complete with blue eyes, pudding-bowl blonde hair, and general baby-fat-ness, so seeing him riding a bike really just re-inforced that image of him riding a tricycle that I have permanently etched in my mind. THe funny part, though, is that he's actually highly intelligent and cynical. He was an Intel semifinalist and will be going to Columbia next year. *Gasp* The thought of Charlie, the giant toddler, all alone in the big city..
well, i traveled to columbia every saturday with him and several other students from my school for the science honors program (yay! free science classes!) and he hasn't gotten killed yet...