2008
I like the number 2008. It's very pleasant sounding. So I'm hoping for a good year. Or else the number will have decieved me.
I wrote that on January 1, 2008. Now almost an entire year has passed since then. I think it's been a good year, but this is coming from the person that has above-average days about 75% of the time (yeah, explain to me how that one works.)
So obviously, a bunch of things have changed over the last year. I go to college. I turned 18. I've directed a musical. I am a mac person now.
And of course, some things have stayed the same. My hair is still ridiculous. I'm still pretty nerdy. I think about boys way too much.
So, here's my year, in a bunch of convenient categories.
School
Um so yeah, I graduated high school. I liked Fox Lane and all, but oh man it was time to leave. I was getting way too old. I got into 7 colleges and felt really guilty that I had to tell 6 of them no.
But now I go to Princeton. It is pretty awesome. I like it a lot here. Everyone is super nice. It's funny, because a bunch of people have asked me if it's true that Princeton is full of a bunch of preppy stuck-up rich pretty kids. The answer to that is uh no. I mean you find each of those adjectives somewhere here, but rarely all in one person, and certainly not in everyone. Most people here are just really nice people. Except everyone is really pretty. It's slightly annoying, actually. Sometimes I like to feel pretty by comparison. That doesn't really happen here. I mean I guess I hold my own, but anyway, this is getting irrelevant.
So the one thing about going to an ivy league school is that everyone is ridiculously smart. I go to class and I'm like "crap I don't get any of this" and then I look around and see people that are just nodding along and asking questions and I'm like NOT FAIR. But at the same time, I'm doing awesomely in physics (yeah... so what if I already took mechanics last year and it's all the same material? shhh) It always feels good to look around and see a bunch of sleeping kids. That way I know that when I do fall asleep, I'm not the only one. Something else I learned: math is hard. Math never used to be hard. College math is hard. I work so hard in that class and am still doing one of the worst. It really doesn't help to have the kid with the giant head siting in front of you shouting out all the answers half a second after the question is asked so I never have time to think about anything. But I survived. That's all I wanted in that class- to survive through it (well, technically, I haven't survived yet because we still have the final which counts for a ridiculous amount of our grade, but hopefully I'll do all right.) I also learned about jazz from my writing seminar. Yay!
Activities
Well, I was in Peter Pan. I had to wear a butt pad. I learned the difference between a butt pad and a hip roll, because I had to wear a hip roll in Pride & Prejudice. It was nice to have a semi-lead role in a show.
Um I directed a musical this year. It was intense. We had no boys. We had no choreographer. Our cast was about half the size it should have been. I had to be in it. So, obviously it didn't turn out as great as it could have. But, considering all our setbacks, we really pulled through to have a pretty decent show. And honestly, I really wanted to be in it, so it worked out nicely for me there. Hair is such an awesome show, and directing was such a cool experience, and it was something I wanted to do for a long time.
At Princeton, I didn't get into any shows or a cappella groups at first, but I got into Glee Club! I'm so happy I decided to do it, because my voice and musical ability are just improving so much. The people in Glee Club are sooo incredibly talented and they're so nice too! (And we're going to Argentina in less than a month! Yessss.) Even though I really wanted to do a cappella music, it is really nice to be singing classical. Being in a chorus has been part of my life for the last 10 years or so, and it would definitely be weird to stop.
Theater-wise, I have done some fun things, but no big productions yet. I directed a play in the 24-hour play festival, which was such a nifty experience. Within the span of 24 hours, six short plays were written, rehearsed, and performed. This includes memorization and props and costumes and stuff. There were also some awesome constraints for the directors- we had to somehow work in a bunch of bananas, a roll of tinfoil, and a miscellaneous prop of our choosing from the prop room. I won best use of the special constraints for the play I directed. I was glad we won that award- we ended up using 17 bananas instead of the 4 or 5 we were given, and we probably spent a solid half hour making knives out of tinfoil. Another cool thing about doing this was that I was directing two seniors and a junior. The junior and one of the seniors both had a ton of theater experience and were really good, whereas the other senior had never acted at all before. The two main characters in the show were the junior girl and the senior boy, so I had to balance giving him a nice introduction to theater and giving her some more advanced direction. I'm pretty sure I succeeded, and I got some nice compliments from my cast about my ability.
Friends
Well, I have friends. Unfortunately, none of my best friends at Princeton are friends with each other, so I haven't had many good group experiences (except for outdoor action which was SO MUCH FUN). But I really like my friends and still have an awesome time with them individually.
I realized today that one of the main differences between my friends at home and my friends at school is my ability to make plans with my friends at school. If I want to do something with one of my friends at school, I just call one of them up and together we figure out what we feel like doing and when and where and all that stuff. Or, I'll get a call or text from someone else and have the exact same process. There's also a lot of spontaneous hanging-out which is only really possible in a college environment. But when I come back home, if I want to hang out with somebody , I basically have to do everything myself. (Note: there are exceptions. This never happens with Rebecca, and this only happens most of the time with everyone else- not all the time.) I am the one that has to approach them at first. I have to figure out what we're doing, where we're going, what time works. If I ask someone else for input, they usually don't care. And I'll admit, I do that a lot too, but I think it is to a lesser extent than some of my other friends here. That's why I haven't really been hanging out with people this break. I don't have a huge desire to come up with every step of what we're doing, and neither does anybody else. It's just so annoying to basically have to tell someone else what they're doing, instead of having it be a mutual thing. That's why I haven't been making a huge effort to try to make plans. I know that I'll be the one putting in all the effort.
Now this is not to say that I don't love my friends at home. They're great. It's just hard to maintain a friendship when I'm at school, but then I get used to not really talking to these people, so it doesn't feel that weird when I come home and still don't see them. Being friends with people at my school is just more convenient.
I could talk for much longer about the friend situation at school, but I feel like moving on to other things.
Family
Everyone is pretty much the same. My grandma is still hilarious. She IMs me at 3 in the morning every so often. When I'm home we talk about boys. This category wasn't really needed, but I figured this lj post would be incomplete unless it mentioned my grandmother somehow.
Boys
I can't make an entry without this category. I guess things have changed slightly. I think I started out the year a lot more boy-obsessed than I am now, but I still do like them. I haven't had too much going on except for me having crushes on people and them not reciprocating. There was some interesting boy drama at mathcamp, but I'm not gonna go there. But yeah. I feel like I have gotten better at meeting guys over the year though. Just being able to go talk to someone I don't know yet is actually quite a feat. I know before I used to always just pick out boys to look at, but this year I did a lot more introducing of myself. So I'm improving I guess. Next year will be better. If it's not, then there's a problem.
I can't think of any other categories I need to cover. Overall I think this past year was decent for me. It was excellent in terms of accomplishments, but I'd say a little bland in overall quality of life and mood stuff. I feel like next year is going to be even better than this one. How's that for optimism?
Until next year,
Dana
I wrote that on January 1, 2008. Now almost an entire year has passed since then. I think it's been a good year, but this is coming from the person that has above-average days about 75% of the time (yeah, explain to me how that one works.)
So obviously, a bunch of things have changed over the last year. I go to college. I turned 18. I've directed a musical. I am a mac person now.
And of course, some things have stayed the same. My hair is still ridiculous. I'm still pretty nerdy. I think about boys way too much.
So, here's my year, in a bunch of convenient categories.
School
Um so yeah, I graduated high school. I liked Fox Lane and all, but oh man it was time to leave. I was getting way too old. I got into 7 colleges and felt really guilty that I had to tell 6 of them no.
But now I go to Princeton. It is pretty awesome. I like it a lot here. Everyone is super nice. It's funny, because a bunch of people have asked me if it's true that Princeton is full of a bunch of preppy stuck-up rich pretty kids. The answer to that is uh no. I mean you find each of those adjectives somewhere here, but rarely all in one person, and certainly not in everyone. Most people here are just really nice people. Except everyone is really pretty. It's slightly annoying, actually. Sometimes I like to feel pretty by comparison. That doesn't really happen here. I mean I guess I hold my own, but anyway, this is getting irrelevant.
So the one thing about going to an ivy league school is that everyone is ridiculously smart. I go to class and I'm like "crap I don't get any of this" and then I look around and see people that are just nodding along and asking questions and I'm like NOT FAIR. But at the same time, I'm doing awesomely in physics (yeah... so what if I already took mechanics last year and it's all the same material? shhh) It always feels good to look around and see a bunch of sleeping kids. That way I know that when I do fall asleep, I'm not the only one. Something else I learned: math is hard. Math never used to be hard. College math is hard. I work so hard in that class and am still doing one of the worst. It really doesn't help to have the kid with the giant head siting in front of you shouting out all the answers half a second after the question is asked so I never have time to think about anything. But I survived. That's all I wanted in that class- to survive through it (well, technically, I haven't survived yet because we still have the final which counts for a ridiculous amount of our grade, but hopefully I'll do all right.) I also learned about jazz from my writing seminar. Yay!
Activities
Well, I was in Peter Pan. I had to wear a butt pad. I learned the difference between a butt pad and a hip roll, because I had to wear a hip roll in Pride & Prejudice. It was nice to have a semi-lead role in a show.
Um I directed a musical this year. It was intense. We had no boys. We had no choreographer. Our cast was about half the size it should have been. I had to be in it. So, obviously it didn't turn out as great as it could have. But, considering all our setbacks, we really pulled through to have a pretty decent show. And honestly, I really wanted to be in it, so it worked out nicely for me there. Hair is such an awesome show, and directing was such a cool experience, and it was something I wanted to do for a long time.
At Princeton, I didn't get into any shows or a cappella groups at first, but I got into Glee Club! I'm so happy I decided to do it, because my voice and musical ability are just improving so much. The people in Glee Club are sooo incredibly talented and they're so nice too! (And we're going to Argentina in less than a month! Yessss.) Even though I really wanted to do a cappella music, it is really nice to be singing classical. Being in a chorus has been part of my life for the last 10 years or so, and it would definitely be weird to stop.
Theater-wise, I have done some fun things, but no big productions yet. I directed a play in the 24-hour play festival, which was such a nifty experience. Within the span of 24 hours, six short plays were written, rehearsed, and performed. This includes memorization and props and costumes and stuff. There were also some awesome constraints for the directors- we had to somehow work in a bunch of bananas, a roll of tinfoil, and a miscellaneous prop of our choosing from the prop room. I won best use of the special constraints for the play I directed. I was glad we won that award- we ended up using 17 bananas instead of the 4 or 5 we were given, and we probably spent a solid half hour making knives out of tinfoil. Another cool thing about doing this was that I was directing two seniors and a junior. The junior and one of the seniors both had a ton of theater experience and were really good, whereas the other senior had never acted at all before. The two main characters in the show were the junior girl and the senior boy, so I had to balance giving him a nice introduction to theater and giving her some more advanced direction. I'm pretty sure I succeeded, and I got some nice compliments from my cast about my ability.
Friends
Well, I have friends. Unfortunately, none of my best friends at Princeton are friends with each other, so I haven't had many good group experiences (except for outdoor action which was SO MUCH FUN). But I really like my friends and still have an awesome time with them individually.
I realized today that one of the main differences between my friends at home and my friends at school is my ability to make plans with my friends at school. If I want to do something with one of my friends at school, I just call one of them up and together we figure out what we feel like doing and when and where and all that stuff. Or, I'll get a call or text from someone else and have the exact same process. There's also a lot of spontaneous hanging-out which is only really possible in a college environment. But when I come back home, if I want to hang out with somebody , I basically have to do everything myself. (Note: there are exceptions. This never happens with Rebecca, and this only happens most of the time with everyone else- not all the time.) I am the one that has to approach them at first. I have to figure out what we're doing, where we're going, what time works. If I ask someone else for input, they usually don't care. And I'll admit, I do that a lot too, but I think it is to a lesser extent than some of my other friends here. That's why I haven't really been hanging out with people this break. I don't have a huge desire to come up with every step of what we're doing, and neither does anybody else. It's just so annoying to basically have to tell someone else what they're doing, instead of having it be a mutual thing. That's why I haven't been making a huge effort to try to make plans. I know that I'll be the one putting in all the effort.
Now this is not to say that I don't love my friends at home. They're great. It's just hard to maintain a friendship when I'm at school, but then I get used to not really talking to these people, so it doesn't feel that weird when I come home and still don't see them. Being friends with people at my school is just more convenient.
I could talk for much longer about the friend situation at school, but I feel like moving on to other things.
Family
Everyone is pretty much the same. My grandma is still hilarious. She IMs me at 3 in the morning every so often. When I'm home we talk about boys. This category wasn't really needed, but I figured this lj post would be incomplete unless it mentioned my grandmother somehow.
Boys
I can't make an entry without this category. I guess things have changed slightly. I think I started out the year a lot more boy-obsessed than I am now, but I still do like them. I haven't had too much going on except for me having crushes on people and them not reciprocating. There was some interesting boy drama at mathcamp, but I'm not gonna go there. But yeah. I feel like I have gotten better at meeting guys over the year though. Just being able to go talk to someone I don't know yet is actually quite a feat. I know before I used to always just pick out boys to look at, but this year I did a lot more introducing of myself. So I'm improving I guess. Next year will be better. If it's not, then there's a problem.
I can't think of any other categories I need to cover. Overall I think this past year was decent for me. It was excellent in terms of accomplishments, but I'd say a little bland in overall quality of life and mood stuff. I feel like next year is going to be even better than this one. How's that for optimism?
Until next year,
Dana