one moment your life is a stone in you; the next, a star
So: SATs. Mostly good, I think: again, I had the weird sensation of half enjoying them, although it wasn't as fun this time because I spent half the test trying to calm myself down and let go of the fact that I did not finish my twenty-five minute essay. (This is partly my fault -- I am nothing if not long-winded -- and partly the teacher's fault, because we had no clock in the room, and he didn't give us a time-is-almost-up warning.) So... that happened. Though I must say, the attire of the students at my town's high school definitely trumped that of the one in Punxatawney, where not one person showed up not in a hoodie. The majority were still unpleasantly clad, but a few people seemed to have dressed with their eyes open, and some were even quite nicely clad. (That, and one of them was burningstarsxe, who is always dressed with aplomb.) Of course I ignored my own advice and wore my favourite black lace skirt and bright Willow blouse and teal schoolgirl sweater and witchy Oxford heels, but they were more comfortable than the only pair of trousers I had clean. (Also, goddessreason is right: heels sound fantastic on the floors of that high school. I felt kind of epic, walking from room to room.)
In the middle of the test, it started to snow, which was really quite beautiful -- although I was dreading having to walk home in it for a while. (The high school at which the test was being held? Somehow managed to be the high school a few blocks from my house.) Eventually I just plunged out, blaring music to keep me warm, with my gigantically long warm woolen Ravenclaw scarf knit by barefoottomboy wrapped around me, and it was gorgeous -- warm, for a snowy afternoon, and very bright and sharp, with snowflakes settling on my nose and clouding over my coat and scarf.
I got home, threw my satchel and coat and scarf onto the bed, looked out the window, and... a horse-drawn carriage was clattering down the street in front of my house. A horse-drawn carriage. Covered in bells and crimson bows. It was magical. Sometimes I really love this world we live in.
* * *
Now that the SATs are finished with, I... need to work on actual college applications. Which... is making me panic a bit. A lot of the panic is justified, but some of it is pure, black, blind irrational terror: because this is the next four years of my life and what if I make a mistake and what if I'm doing it wrong, how am I supposed to know what I want, and even if it is what I want it's still this giant commitment and massive, every-level upheaval of every single thing of which my life has been composed until now. And what if nobody accepts me? I'm getting so used to rejection or being forgotten and ignored that I almost don't believe I can get into college. Logic tells me that one of the two somewhat experimental, liberal-arts, creativity-centred colleges I've fallen in love with is sure to want me, but... I don't know. Maybe part of me feels that not having tried yet is safer than the seemingly inevitable rejection: because I've got something to look forward to, because my plans theoretically still work up till the moment I'm forcibly told that I can't go through with them by a flat little rejection envelope. Except, self, that is incredibly stupid.
I am sort of relieved, however, by the apparent importance attached to the application essay, especially because I imagine I look dreadfully boring as a statistic (homeschooled! no grades! small town! the occasional cool stuff I get to do is difficult to quantify, and there's a lot of cool stuff I would do if I had the remotest opportunity, which I don't!). I've always been a little afraid of essays, but if it's a personal essay about something I really, honestly feel, then I think I can write the plague out of it. (Research papers? These are terrible. Especially if I have no personal interest in the thing I am researching. I list a lot of facts and can't find a spark in it.) And I know what I want to write about, because there really is only one thing that I can write about, at least for this purpose, because it is why I want to study, and what for, and pulls all of my philosophies and loves into one glorious whole: Story.
The problem being, of course, that I have too much to say and don't know how to craft it into something hard-hitting and lyrical and cohesive -- and which part of the great whole I want to narrow it down to. Perhaps what I want to do with Story, why I want to study various kinds of storytelling and become a librarian? My Future Librarian's Manifesto? Why I need to tell stories, and what stories mean to all of us, and how it is important and necessary to give everyone the room to tell their story -- because everyone has got a story, or a specific part of a story, that they need to tell, and a story, perhaps another story altogether, that they desperately need to hear -- and also how it is important to listen to someone else's story. And Neil Gaiman's quote in the foreword to Fragile Things about how "we owe it to each other to tell stories". And the epiphany I had when reading the articles and personal testimonies about race and fiction stemming from Racefail '09: the power of a single story: how a story can either alienate or validate you. (I'd always vaguely known this, but I had never understood it quite so clearly or realised how important it was until recently.)
Those of you who have successfully lived through the college application process -- ideas, advice, halp? Also, your favourite articles/memoirs/books/posts/poems/novels about the importance and weight of Story?, because I want to have a wealth of things to draw on, even if the essay itself is short -- they're not supposed to be very long -- and also because this is my Manifesto, this is an essay that needs me to write it and to understand it at some point even were I not applying to anyplace. (Read Reading Lolita in Tehran recently: oh my, that was powerful. How Story sustains us, how we can see ourselves in the strangest of places, how we can put ourselves into a story, willingly cling to it our need. It vindicated me from the memory of a so-so YA historical novel in which the heroine would not stop whinging about how none of the books in the world related to her in her specific small town and her very specific problems, which were pretty average, universal problems -- she was a middle-class white girl, for heaven's sake, surrounded by mundane-minded people who Didn't Understand Her -- these are valid issues, of course -- I am a middle-class white girl in a rotten small town frequently surrounded by people who Don't Understand Me -- but she whinged about how special her problems were and how all of these stupid high-minded authors Didn't Get It and none of them knew what it was like -- and it just made her seem as though she bore an incredible lack of compassion and imagination.)
Also, please tell me that the Common Application is less terrifying than it looks? Right? It is, yes? I will live through it? IT DOES NOT FEEL ADHD FRIENDLY. MY MIND SPLINTERS INTO A HUNDRED DIFFERENT DIRECTIONS. Panic panic panic. Oh rot.
In the middle of the test, it started to snow, which was really quite beautiful -- although I was dreading having to walk home in it for a while. (The high school at which the test was being held? Somehow managed to be the high school a few blocks from my house.) Eventually I just plunged out, blaring music to keep me warm, with my gigantically long warm woolen Ravenclaw scarf knit by barefoottomboy wrapped around me, and it was gorgeous -- warm, for a snowy afternoon, and very bright and sharp, with snowflakes settling on my nose and clouding over my coat and scarf.
I got home, threw my satchel and coat and scarf onto the bed, looked out the window, and... a horse-drawn carriage was clattering down the street in front of my house. A horse-drawn carriage. Covered in bells and crimson bows. It was magical. Sometimes I really love this world we live in.
* * *
Now that the SATs are finished with, I... need to work on actual college applications. Which... is making me panic a bit. A lot of the panic is justified, but some of it is pure, black, blind irrational terror: because this is the next four years of my life and what if I make a mistake and what if I'm doing it wrong, how am I supposed to know what I want, and even if it is what I want it's still this giant commitment and massive, every-level upheaval of every single thing of which my life has been composed until now. And what if nobody accepts me? I'm getting so used to rejection or being forgotten and ignored that I almost don't believe I can get into college. Logic tells me that one of the two somewhat experimental, liberal-arts, creativity-centred colleges I've fallen in love with is sure to want me, but... I don't know. Maybe part of me feels that not having tried yet is safer than the seemingly inevitable rejection: because I've got something to look forward to, because my plans theoretically still work up till the moment I'm forcibly told that I can't go through with them by a flat little rejection envelope. Except, self, that is incredibly stupid.
I am sort of relieved, however, by the apparent importance attached to the application essay, especially because I imagine I look dreadfully boring as a statistic (homeschooled! no grades! small town! the occasional cool stuff I get to do is difficult to quantify, and there's a lot of cool stuff I would do if I had the remotest opportunity, which I don't!). I've always been a little afraid of essays, but if it's a personal essay about something I really, honestly feel, then I think I can write the plague out of it. (Research papers? These are terrible. Especially if I have no personal interest in the thing I am researching. I list a lot of facts and can't find a spark in it.) And I know what I want to write about, because there really is only one thing that I can write about, at least for this purpose, because it is why I want to study, and what for, and pulls all of my philosophies and loves into one glorious whole: Story.
The problem being, of course, that I have too much to say and don't know how to craft it into something hard-hitting and lyrical and cohesive -- and which part of the great whole I want to narrow it down to. Perhaps what I want to do with Story, why I want to study various kinds of storytelling and become a librarian? My Future Librarian's Manifesto? Why I need to tell stories, and what stories mean to all of us, and how it is important and necessary to give everyone the room to tell their story -- because everyone has got a story, or a specific part of a story, that they need to tell, and a story, perhaps another story altogether, that they desperately need to hear -- and also how it is important to listen to someone else's story. And Neil Gaiman's quote in the foreword to Fragile Things about how "we owe it to each other to tell stories". And the epiphany I had when reading the articles and personal testimonies about race and fiction stemming from Racefail '09: the power of a single story: how a story can either alienate or validate you. (I'd always vaguely known this, but I had never understood it quite so clearly or realised how important it was until recently.)
Those of you who have successfully lived through the college application process -- ideas, advice, halp? Also, your favourite articles/memoirs/books/posts/poems/novels about the importance and weight of Story?, because I want to have a wealth of things to draw on, even if the essay itself is short -- they're not supposed to be very long -- and also because this is my Manifesto, this is an essay that needs me to write it and to understand it at some point even were I not applying to anyplace. (Read Reading Lolita in Tehran recently: oh my, that was powerful. How Story sustains us, how we can see ourselves in the strangest of places, how we can put ourselves into a story, willingly cling to it our need. It vindicated me from the memory of a so-so YA historical novel in which the heroine would not stop whinging about how none of the books in the world related to her in her specific small town and her very specific problems, which were pretty average, universal problems -- she was a middle-class white girl, for heaven's sake, surrounded by mundane-minded people who Didn't Understand Her -- these are valid issues, of course -- I am a middle-class white girl in a rotten small town frequently surrounded by people who Don't Understand Me -- but she whinged about how special her problems were and how all of these stupid high-minded authors Didn't Get It and none of them knew what it was like -- and it just made her seem as though she bore an incredible lack of compassion and imagination.)
Also, please tell me that the Common Application is less terrifying than it looks? Right? It is, yes? I will live through it? IT DOES NOT FEEL ADHD FRIENDLY. MY MIND SPLINTERS INTO A HUNDRED DIFFERENT DIRECTIONS. Panic panic panic. Oh rot.