The Six Page Research Paper I'm going to have to write one way or another:The Proposal

For all of you brave souls taking AP Lang, hi. Welcome. Get ready for a miserable quarter of trying to write a decent essay in six pages, albeit one worth 40% of your grade. Don't worry, I'm doing it to.
If you're not, you lucky bastards. Also, hi.
Now, I have to choose a topic for this grand essay.
Yesterday, I came into class thinking that "Maybe I should write about apathy and Syria or something."
The next day, I left class thinking "Maybe I should write about Sailor Moon or something." I've obviously matured through the years.
I have to spell out three ideas on my proposal due next week. Here are my ideas as of write now:

a) Yes, I'm really thinking about writing a six page paper on a children's anime. To be fair, this ridiculous anime was my favorite thing in the entire world (aside from books) until I was ten, so that makes it okay? But there's a lot to hate, especially if you're a very logical person. The story makes no sense, the main characters are ridiculously caricatured to the point where their uniform colors match pretty well with their personality, the villains are stupid and have bad fashion sense. But I used to love this show in all of its stupidity and lack of coherency. I don't know why. And the funny thing is, I'm smiling to myself as I write this condemning paragraph. I guess that's why I want to write about it. There's so much to make fun of, but there's a lot to love, and I guess there has to be a reason why its so popular.

Also, can someone explain how the heck these 8th graders look like super models, and how a relatively attractive college guy fell for one of them? (Guess which one. Hint, Its the chick with the helicopter-wing hair)

b) Tumblr vs the Real World. People on Tumblr act very differently than they do in real life. I can't quite explain it in one paragraph, but there is definitely something different about how people joke around and socialize and have fun on Tumblr compared to reality. Tumblr has its own culture with its own inside references and things of obsession and faults and etc. I'm really interested in comparing the real world with Tumblr world, and trying to figure out why Tumblr culture is the way it is.
c) ...I don't know yet. But I will tell you when I think of it :)

If ya'll have any preferences for the topics listed, or just have some commentary, you can comment below or tweet at me. I probably won't take offense. (Its probably my fault for thinking of these crazy ideas in the first place haha)

Characters (This post is weird: warning)

Usually, I know what I'm doing when I write these, but having spent over an hour and a half writing this, I'm not sure with this one. Beware: Not alot makes sense.
When it comes to fiction, I will admit that I am a sadist. Persay, I don't enjoy the pain characters suffer, but I love the dynamics it causes.
From a writer's perspective, this is an all too common joke. The author is a sadist because she/he kills off that wonderful, hot character that we all grew attached to, ruining our lives along with those of the characters; the author is a sadist because she killed off the character we grew attached to. That's not what I really mean.
When I say a author can be a sadist, I mean when the author has a genuinely good and brave person go through miserable and undeniable hell for the sake of a plot arc.
Nobody would read a book about Susy Sunshine getting everything she wants in life by wishing for it. We want things to go wrong. We want fiction to mirror our own lives in that things go wrong and the people we love do us wrong and the bad guys are stronger than we'd like to admit. We want the stakes to be high so that it can mimic our perception of reality.
We want the main characters to go through hell because that's what we think qualifies one for success. And we're sorta right in that the best things in life require the most struggle, but if we keep working at it, we can get what we want. In our own lives, we go through ages and ages of miserable hell for no reason at all sometimes, and often times don't get what we want. Things aren't clear from the outset, there is no one true goal driving us that can be read on the back cover of our lives. There is no simplified hero's journey where our loved ones get kidnapped and we are drowned into a whole new world where things are different but we are powerful. That's not how the world works.  But it's how we like to read it.
Here is a general rule of fanfiction: The bigger the fan base, the shittier the fanfiction. Nobody will write about the characters accurately because that's not how they see it. People see themselves in their favorite characters, and thus, will write pieces of themselves into their fanfiction. The more appealing the character, the less accurate the reader's interpretation of them will be.
That's why all good characters are well-rounded, flawed people. If they weren't, they would be caricatures, easily forgotten in the large scheme of our minds and memories and plastered in along with the stereotypes at the back of our minds.
We put our characters through hell to make them human. To give them something to struggle against and to define them. To help us see them as more than effacing plot-roles and as people we would care about if they really did exist.
This post makes no sense. To be fair, it's 2:00 in the morning.
If you want my opinion, the best struggles in a narrative are when the main character's greatest struggle is to keep themselves whole while fighting towards their goal as the world (and villains) threatens to rip them apart with disease or loss or overwhelming odds or losing battles or whatever great things that  make up the fabric of who they are. That's more interesting than some empire. (And ultimately, what the empire as an idea is meant to symbolize)
I didn't mind in the Hunger Games (Spoilers for Mockingjay) when Peeta got hijacked. I wanted to see him fight against it, I wanted to see the real Peeta fight against what threatened to destroy his sanity and the girl he loved most after having murdered his entire family. I wanted to see him manage to hold himself together long enough to be fixed at the broken places, and to keep holding on to the values and things he holds most sacred despite the world and his own body trying to convince him not to. It's so much more interesting to watch a good and decent human being fight miserably against that inmesurable force. When you're fighting an 'empire' or a demon for your soul, you earn my sympathy.

All these clear cut struggles from novels mirror our own inner battles, the ones that take place over the span of years during Chem class and those boring lunches that make you want to poke your eyeball out and the back of your mind during those lonely times.
I should sleep.

.

My mom's uncle was shot in Syria by a sniper. A video of his corpse was uploaded on Youtube, and showed on Al-Jazeera. My mom shared the video on Facebook along with a status in Arabic.
That may sound gregarious and improper, but for the Syrian community, Facebook isn't for screwing around and posting statuses. It's about talking about the kids and uploading memes that relate to Islam. Then the Revolutions began.
Facebook became a haven for those who wanted to know more about it, a local news source. People posted videos along with du'aa* and impassioned statements that one day the "President" will fall.
Today, my mom came home, and told me not to get angry. And then she told me what had happened. No details, but I hear her talking about him in Arabic behind me with a relative, her voice a little wobbly. I don't know Arabic well enough to decipher it all.
Actually, I just heard something. "God damn them."
I didn't know him. I saw his corpse online on a Youtube video, with a little gut spilling out of a hole at the side of his chest, but I didn't know him. I don't pretend to. My mom did.

I have nothing more to add than my Facebook status:

"That's my mom's uncle's body. He was shot in the street by a sniper in Syria. I'm not posting this to get your sympathy, I'm posting it in the hopes that someone will pull their head out of the sand and pay a little attention to what the hell is going on. This isn't politics; this is murder."

*du'aa are memorized prayers in Arabic, each used for their own purpose.

Thoughts

So after that rather dramatic last post, I have arisen from the ashes. JK, but I'm okay now. I figured it out, or at least I'm trying to and getting somewhere, so that's good.
I guess you're wondering what happened, but there's really no explaining it in cold, logical terms. I gave that up on this blog after the third post. I guess what happened was that things built up and I didn't trust anyone to let them out to and anxiety built and then bam-a stupid comment unravels my the pounding insecurity. So yeah.
I don't know what to say, and I'm not going to make this deep or anything. I just thought you would like to know that things are sorta getting better now. I don't know though, but I think they are.
I'm more honest with my friends now and I'm trying not to give a shit about what I don't have and just establish what I do have and all that shnazz. That's more important in the end.
(The ironic moment when one of my favorite people makes a video about friendship the day I make this post)
I should talk about books, but I feel like that's a safe topic. It's easy to talk about books and films and school all day without knowing a person really well. I think I learned that the hard way.
That's the weird thing about this blog. It's easy for me to spill out what took me ages in in real life to hint at, let alone say out loud. Maybe I'm too socially awkward, but writing this is alot more bleeding than actual "coming up with ideas and writing about it." I don't know, I'm weird, but I'm sort of glad I found this in the first place. Too bad I have shitty grammar.
By the way, I need new music. Soon.

(Also, my friend unironically sent me the following on Facebook while this was all happening. It was more interesting than I thought, but I've heard this message before, so I mean not alot new. Still worth watching.

Strength

(NOTE: I AM NOT TALKING ABOUT SELF-HARM. DON'T MAKE THAT ASSUMPTION)

Ha. Ha. I don't have it. Not right now. I want to punch a wall.
It's easy to dress up language in comforting metaphor and clever syntax, but the fact is that plain and simple I'm hurting, and I have been for a long time. I don't know what to do about it without seeming pathetic. This has been a long time coming, but nobody was expecting it. Shocker. I can usually control myself, and I almost had it, but then one stupid comment made me lose it. Just for a few broken sobs and I was out of the bathroom, confident as I walked into Solstice, and away from the prying eyes of my sister and friends.
I've dissappointed my mom and my siblings by not telling them what's going on after they heard about the little incident, but what am I supposed to do, give in? I can't. I've got another year and a half, and then I'm free. From expectation, from everything. I get a new start, where I can be as confident as I want to be.
I'm sick of not knowing what I'm writing. Hell, if I could control what I wrote, I would have written short stories and insightful posts about real life things and something more than the jumbled mess of my screwed up mind, but no, you're stuck with a teenager that cannot muster a metaphor to her non-fiction screwed up feels. My diction is lacking too. No Honors Sem material here.
Don't worry, in real life I'm smiling and funny and make stupid comments in class. Some of you know that. Most of you don't.
If you don't know me well, you're freaked out by this. If you do know me, this should be disturbing. I've hardly been so open in real life, let alone on a blog. If you wanted to see the real screwed up me, here I am. Wonder what you think.

Of Expectations

I worked really hard this semester, and got most of the grades I wanted. Granted, not everything was straight A's, but that was mostly because of screwing up opportunities first quarter. I did well on my finals, achieving my big three goals, and hitting that coveted GPA that I've been aiming for this semester. I freaked and excitement, fistpumping in AP Lang when Mr. F put up my grade for the semester. I got it. I won. I should be happy, right?
When I got home, I read a tweet hashtagged with #IGoToASchoolWhere that said, I quote "no matter how hard you work, you will never be at top. because that's central and I've never seen this competition before." I didn't doubt the validity of this quote so much as blow it off, thinking about how hard I worked and how that made me on the same level as my peers that were just finishing their NHS applications. Because now I was above and beyond the GPA required for that club, when last year I wasn't. So that was pride enough for me. Then I went to ACT prep.
In that class are two East Asian (Being Arab, I am West Asian/Middle Eastern), rather intelligent students that I have seen around in a few of my classes. Having no real friends in ACT prep, and curious, I sat behind them. During our designated breaks, they talked. I tried to join in, but I was mostly put off to the side. So, as I stumbled through the Science guidance questions, I listened to their conversation. They brought up the ACT, and scores. That's when the trouble began.
"Oh, I did so terrible, I got a 30 on my first try!" The other girl hissed, reciprocating her feelings. "The Science part was so hard, I got like a 28 in that section!" Behind her, my metaphorical jaw dropped, but I kept listening. They started talking about NHS applications and how they needed to finish the Leadership piece and there was more talk about Physics Honors grades and all that stuff, and my head started swimming with the realization that  I was so, so behind compared to my peers. I was going to be in all AP and honors classes next year (with the possible exception of Economics) and taking Early Bird as a likely possibility, but it still wouldn't be enough. To these people, I still didn't mean anything until I was equal to them completely. I'll always be nothing until I'm something. I just don't know when the race ends and I can finally declare myself a winner in their eyes.
I don't know what to say really, except that my victory is still a victory, but that tweet was righter than I gave it credit for. Thank God, sincerely and honestly, for helping me the most during my finals when I really needed to do well as being the tipping point for the big grades I needed, but now I feel like I should be dissatisfied with what I have and fight even more viciously for more, just to keep level with my peers. I'm already significantly behind, my gut tells me, and I have alot to do before they'll ever consider me their equal, or their friend.
Just something to think about the day of the second semester.

Bring Him Home

Warning: This post wasn't supposed to be so rambly. I wrote this last night, and saved it with the intention of editing it. But adding all my thoughts would be way too much, so I'm publishing it as it is. Enjoy, and yes, there will be a short story today. I promised.
When I saw the musical, I thought the song "Bring Him Home" was about Jan Valjean, and how he wanted to return to God after having lived through so much, pleading for heavenly interception. Only after I looked up Les Miserables on wikipedia today did I discover that the song was about Marius. Jan Valjean wanted Marius to return home. It isn't about Valjean wanting peace, it's him pleading God to protect Marius, a boy who is "young and afraid."
Which reminds me of "I Dream a Dream" when Fantine says "When I was young, and unafraid..." Fantaine wasn't afraid when she was young, and that makes me think that Fantine was this brave, strong, almost goal-getting in her good old days, before "the foul dust" of her dreams forced her ambition back, and despite what she might think, she still holds her pride however indignantly. You could call it her hamartia, or the only remaining factor of her former self. It gives her the audacity or the courage (whatever you could call it) to refuse to acquiesce to her peers desires in the factory, to deny the foreman the right to screw around with her, to claw a potential customer's face when they want to screw her, etc etc. The only times she sacrifices these things is for her daughter, Cosette. You could argue that Cossette is the reason she is so humiliated and downtrodden, forced to sell her hair and teeth and body for treatment that isn't even ncessary. Supposedly, if it weren't for Cossette, the letter that caused all the drama in the first place wouldn't have existed. Materially, she would have been free. What makes Fantine so tragic, especially in "I Dream A Dream" is that she still holds her pride, that despite it all, she refuses to accept the state she's in. She sings in sadness and anger of what has life has done to herself. For Fantaine, the worst thing life did to her was shorten her ambition, force her to cut back on herself and be complacent to the shitty circumstances surrounding her. Each time she refuses, society punishes her, ununderstanding. It's only till Valjean can see past that (Fontaine essentially spits in his face after recognizing what he did to her) that someone is lenient and forgiving towards her. For her, she dies quickly after regardless, but if "I Dreamed A Dream" was about the cruelties God had done her again and again (in her mind), what came after was forgiveness and redemption. (through John Valjean)
Marius, at least in the musical, is just a kid. Well, not technically (the adorable Eddie Redmayne from the great movie My Week With Marilyn) , but he hasn't been jaded and stomped on like Fontaine has. Those who have been end up protecting him in order to prevent the same thing from happening to him. (Valjean and Eponine come to mind immediately) In Les Miserables, every action affects the other. Mercy begets mercy, life begets life, etc etc. There's a whole sense of responsibility, of debt of one person being returned to another and rippling outwards.
It's those who are loyal to something other than love that suffer the most, you could say. Javert, because of his core loyalty to the law, is torn apart because his humanity interferes with his enforcement of his own strict moral code. It's said during one of those songs that he was born in a jail, raised with "scum like you."
Javert genuinely believes, as was proved every day in his childhood, that justice is right, and one must follow the law. The law is supreme, and Javert's job is to enact it. In this case, due to the complexity of the situation, the law is wrong. Javert can't live with that, as that was the one thing he always counted on as his constant. Without the law, nothing makes sense, and thus, Javert falls.

This is rambly. Hmph.

Goals

I want to write more. More nonfiction and more fictionfiction. I want to write fiction stories and get my novel on the road, and I want to write articles about things I'm interested in.
I want to exercise more, become fast and strong and undeniably, skinnier. I want to be one of those girls who can walk around in their body without feeling inadequate or bad about themselves, to be able to run without gasping for air. I want to be able to demand my body to do things I never would have done before. I want to be physically strong.
I want to read more, and of alot of different things. Last year was a year of YA fiction, of reading what was in front of me at the library and returning alot of books unread, of keeping up with loved series instead of finding new things to read. This year is going to be different. I'm going to read more non-fiction, but also only reading things I want to read instead of reading things I think I should read. My interests never solely revolved around the books people talked the most about. I should have known better.
I want to know more. About the world and my peers, and how it all works. I want to be able to keep exploring instead of staying in my comfortable little bubble, typing away as I waste my days obsessing over grades and the like.
I want to do more, do more with my friends and make friends. I want to have more of those friendships where you really know someone, where you can trust them with an idea without worrying about tarnishing the image of yourself in their head. I want to practice more, be able to do things more.
I want to BE someone, I want to love and love deeply. I don't want to waste my time and days watching things in order to satisfy that hungry drive in me. I love Tumblr, but it, along with a combination of other factors during sophomore year, really inhibited my talented and ambition. I won't let that happen anymore. Tumblr and Twitter are the places for expression, not placacy. I should have learned that awhile ago, Tumblr is most boring when used that way. I would know.
I want to be myself, without anything stopping me anymore. That's going to be the hardest one. I know that now, as typing those words make me anxious when I can't really envision myself doing that. What will that mean? What kind of person will I seem to be? What really am I? I'm fairly good at disgusing myself, playing roles that aren't really me in public. I wonder what I'll become. What I'll make myself be when I finally stop hiding. I have no idea, but the idea scares the crap out of me, but I suppose that's good. Being scared means you're doing something uncomfortable, and being uncomfortable pushes you in directions you've never been before. Hopefully, I'm in the right direction. I hope my anxiety is wrong.
Sayanora guys.

The Bands I Love and Why I Love Them

Paramore
It would be unfair to start with any other band, as they were my first love band-wise and still, my favorite one. With they're new single coming out Monday, (!!!!) I can't help but feel a little pumped about them. The first thing I'm going to admit is that Brand New Eyes is my favorite, and their first isn't so much. Their songs were there for me from freshman year until now, and hearing that their new album is coming out this April is pretty damn exciting because I want to hear them and go back to them again and again, like I have in the past. Their early songs are rock, power and depiction without being, well, too imposing and epic. Their newest albums are subtle, each different in their own right but deeply tied to one another thematically.
Personally, I like the songs that I can relate too, and are told the way I like to hear them.
Several examples:
The pride of someone who's been betrayed
The lost feeling of knowing there's wrongness but not know ing another other than leaving it behind
Hope for the future even when the odds for happiness have not been in your favor
That desperate, almost happily determined defiance against apathy.
I like them the most, because I can relate to them the most. Not just because of the lyrics (although they are a pretty potent factor, and we're not even mentioning Hayley William's great voice) but their guitar riffs and beat and all those little music things add to the theme of the lyrics rather than detract. On a really bad day, you can really sinkself into one of their song, and when it ends, you feel right because it feels like your feelings went into listening. Those emotions in your head aren't gone, but your gut resonated with the music, enough that you sinking into the music is easy and worth it, a recognition of yourself when you don't have time to break down. You could play one of their songs, and the world will get it, even if they don't like it. That's what I would like to think.

Panic! At The Disco
They were my first, even when I didn't realize it. (Nokia ExpressMusic's phones came with, ironically, either a Paramore song or Panic at the Disco song downloaded on the phone on purchase. Seventh-grade me ended up with Panic, having no clue what I was listening to, but still loving the song anyways.) Comes freshman year, and I know a little more about band thanks to Paramore, so I google these guys up and find that they are quite a strange back. Their first album was emo pop laden with innuendos and insidious language, their second album was a Beatles-esque homage to wistful metaphor and clever beat. Their third album was set to come out in March 2011, and flashfoward, I loved it.
It's filled with homages to being left behind and lost and love disguised underneath songs about the pride of losing these things. It's an album about losing what you care about, but still pretending to be nonchalant and fine with the game being played, even with signs of desperation and sadness leaking through. Fittingly, their most recent album is titled "Vices and Virtues". As fits the moralistic tone of the title, the songs explore the sins we make while trying to be good. And if you know me, personally, I'm a sucker for that stuff. (Maybe because of this album O.o)

Imagine Dragons
Unlike the bands prior mentioned, they are a new love. They happened after I watched The Perks of Being A Wallflower trailer again and again, and slowly came to adore the song that was featured during the end of the trailer. It was "It's Time" and then when I finally listened to it, it was so much better than I thought it was going to be.  Downloaded on iTunes, and I waited anxiously for Night Visions to come out. When it did, I henceforth got all the songs I could find, and found out that this is not their first album. They released three EPs in the past, but this is the first one that's been broadly distributed. That, of course, is broadly reflected in their songs. Dan Reynold's doesn't belt out as often as Hayley, but when it does, you know what he's belting honest and important. Their songs are about working and working towards that goal you want, of waiting and losing and failing and how we fix ourselves in the broken places after. But they've also written other songs, exploring their genre, but I speak of their most-known music, the stuff that's made them famous. There's a reason why, you know.

I, of course, have other songs that I love so much, and sometimes several of them are from the same band, but these are the three that I can listen to their albums entirely without wanting to skip or getting bored.
What about you? I'm always looking more music.

The Name of This Blog

You all are probably wondering where I got my fabulous slightly pretentious blog name from. That's easy. Shakespeare.
Okay, it's a little more complicated than that. Flashback to Labor Day Weekend, and I'm in a hotel lobby. I'm waiting for my mom and dad to figure out what's going on with the reservations, and I'm on my phone. I don't remember EXACTLY how I ended up clicking this url (I think it was Austin Kleon's great Tumblr/Twitter account referencing something Shakespearean) but I was bored, rolling through the gprose without understanding a clue of what was going on, not really paying attention, when I found this:

Through tatter'd clothes small vices do appear; 
Robes and furr'd gowns hide all. Plate sin with gold,
And the strong lance of justice hurtless breaks: 
Arm it in rags, a pigmy's straw does pierce it.

I really, really liked the sound of that line, and I like the meaning of the quote. More often than not, this passage is used to discuss the judicial system and how it falls to the metaphor in the last two lines, but for me, thost first two lines win it over for me.
The way we display ourselves, personality and confidence wise, hide our flaws so much more than people whose insecurities shine out of their behavior. And plating sin with gold is our way of feeling better about the things we do, our way of assuring ourselves or making ourselves feel better about the bad things. It's how we cope with pain and
I thought that described what I'm doing with this blog and my life sometimes, so I started using it alot. I had also started to grow annoyed of my previous pseudonym, abrainyoreo, because I, as a Interneter, don't want to stumble around with a nickname I came up with in 7th grade for my AIM.
So yeah, when making this blog, I chose that username. It's a reminder, I guess. I don't know exactly what of, but its important to me.

Control (Warning: This Will Be Rambly)

This is a post I've been wanting to make for a very, very long time, but I never found the real gut of the message until now.
We practice control. We need control. We need control over how the rest of our lives pan out because if we don't, we're letting our lives go wherever, and often times that means no where. We study on our finals to get the futures we want, and workworkwork in order to get grades, ignoring our fun distractions in pursuit of that A and acceptance letter.
If you knew me in AP Euro, you will remember that I was one of those kids. The bright, seemingly always funny and talkative members of the class, a true class participant to say the least. The teacher would make fun of me, as he did to all his favorite students, and I would do stupid things (mostly by accident) like say "cat" during a free association game when the prompt was "door" and be typecast as the crazy/out there roles during our projects, those little things. But I don't think anyone in my class noticed this, but the more outlandish and self-deprecating I was, the more tolerant I was of people making fun of me, the worse my grades were.
Not in AP Euro, but in general. For me, sophomore year was a time of trying to be happy, living in the moment or whatever. It was my happiest year with my worst grades. I didn't care because it didn't feel that important, college felt so distant and irrelevent, and why the heck should I care? It doesn't make a difference, right? There was little innovation that year, no great and sudden changes or creations, not like now or anything. I had no real commitments to anything. All my friends except for three were fleeting, people who only talked to me when we had the same lunch or class period. I was fine with it, because I thought things were okay. When my grades got bad, I distracted myself by being the class jester in the few classes that the teachers did encourage that kind of behavior, the teachers that didn't mind poking fun of what was strange or unfamiliar because it was strange and unfamiliar to them. I hated it, but tolerated it. Most people from those classes still think I'm smart, that I'm funny and bright and interesting. It's really not that simple.
We want control because, in the end, it's what we don't really have given to us. Every decision is unconscious or unaware of the implications, unaware of what we really want because we can't see past what's in front of us or can't see in that direction at all. We have control, more power than we're ever aware of, but most of us don't know how to fully harness it. We don't know how to do exactly the things we need to do to get the things we want, or to realize when we're working for something that we don't really want that thing at all. It's hard to realize, especially when you feel like you're drowning in a sandpit and you just have to keep going, going and going because one day this semester will end and everything will make sense. That's what I thought, and believed. I wish things were different. I wish I could be like the peers in my two AP classes that work hardhard because they know what they want, and they're constantly creating and acting to make it happen, already knee deep in what they want to do or make with their lives whether it be journalism or acting or writing. I wish I was like that.
I'm supposed to be studying for Physics, but my teacher's website isn't working when it needs to work, and it has everything on it so I can't practice and review until it works. I'm staying up until it does.
It makes me sad though, that I'm not really like other people in that matter. I can't just wish to do well in a class or know exactly how to study for a class I don't really understand. I wish I could control myself, so I could get the things I want out of myself. Like when you squeeze a orange or lemon or whatever, and all the lemon juice tripples out. You know what squeezing the lemon will do, so you do it because you want to see the consequences for yourself.
Life is weird. Maybe things will be different one day. I'll be friends with the cool people I want to be friends with and all that shnazz. Maybe. I can't tell.
***
After Finals: Books to Read

The Mysterious Theft of Mona Lisa
The False Prince
The Storytelling Animal: How Stories Make Us Human.

Somebody I used to know

Disclaimer: If any of you went to middle school with me, you might know who I'm talking about. One of you specifically knows exactly who I'm talking about, while I think there might be two people familiar with the person, but never actually friends. I won't mention by name, since that's mean and pointless. But something interesting happened recently, and I wanted to blog about it. I'm not friends with this person, and haven't been for almost three years, so she won't read this blog. 

So, with that in mind, here we go.

A former friend of mine dropped out of high school. Not at HC, where I go. I haven't seen her since 8th grade graduation, but according to several of the comments after one of her more lengthy, dramatic FB posts, she has dropped out. I don't know why, although I have a guess. 

She just turned seventeen.

What.

Yeah, I'm not making this up. 

I'm not one of those people that likes to constantly display my gratitude, or rather, I like to avoid it in public. Today is an exception.

All I'm going to say was that in a time I had no friends, I met her, and joined her during quiet lunch. I thought of her as my best friend, and then found out she thought of me as a parasite. I still stuck to her until the end of that year, until when we graduated, going to different high schools. 

I'm not here to reminisce about the shaded past. That's not the point of this post. 

The point of this post is that even though sometimes I get overwhelmed by the pressures in my life and lonely and sad and sometimes ungrateful, I'm really happy about where I am right now. Yeah, I have alot of pressure from myself, my parents, and my peers to be the best person I can be, and that does cause alot of emotional turbulence and what not, but I'm not being left up to fate or my hormones to determine the course of my future. At least, in the span of three years, the seeds I've sowed and now are reaping aren't totally bad ones. They're ones filled with opportunity and hope and maybe even success. 

Of course, I'm biased. My life has been easy in that I have great parents and a great education system and supportive friends who listen and stay with me even when I'm annoying and insecure. I'm not sure she has had the same thing. Maybe that's her fault or maybe it's because of the whole seed/reaping thing. I don't know. But I know I'm really grateful not to be in her shoes right now. 

(I really hope she doesn't end up finding this. This isn't exactly a flattering post)

Damn it I'm writing an actual post

I genuinely honest to god wasn't going to write anything more for the day, but then I saw something.
Now, maybe I'm overreacting or maybe this has been building up for awhile, but someone recently (I don't want ya'll stalking my FB and finding out who this is) did a Truth Is...and there reply for me wasn't "Oh, you're a good friend" or "Oh, I love being in class together". No. It was "You love reading, and that's pretty coool. You always have a book to reccommend. Tomorrow will be our last day together" (I'm paraphrasing. She probably didn't have any malevolent intention and probably does think well of me, but this set me off)
Holy shit, if something ever happens to me and all I'm ever remembered for is reading alot, then screw it.
What the hell is so special about me reading alot? More like, why the hell don't people read more often, or TRY to read more often? What the hell makes me reading so special that most people have to comment on it? I like reading. It's my right as an American citizen. Yes, I devote much more time to studying than reading, much more than I used to, but that doesn't mean I don't fracking try.
During AP Lang on Thursday, our teacher told our class to bring an SSR book (independent reading book) to class for Friday, as we might finish ahead of schedule. That happened. As our class happens to be in another teacher's Senior Lit classroom, there is a bookshelf on the wall solely for fun, independent reading books. I even borrowed one and brought it out of the classroom (Last Christmas by Kate Brian, don't judge) last week and returned it there, even though I was already reading something else at the time. But on Friday, when our teacher announced that it was SSR time, every freaking kid walked up to that bookshelf and plucked a random book off the shelf. One kid even asked me to lend him a book! (I did. It was Prince Caspian by C.S Lewis, and I haven't had time to get into it yet. Yes, I had two books on me at one time. Don't judge) I even said, out loud and not even joking, "Does nobody read this days?"
It pisses me off, so much, that the people who used to read all the time in middle school now can't be bothered to pick up something for fun unless its about to become a major motion picture. They're honors students, they don't have time, yadda yadda yadda. Then I say this. If you have time for Facebook and Tumblr and Twitter or whatever, you have fracking time to pick up a book and read. In twenty years, you will have gained so much more from reading than you would have from texting your friends or Tweeting. I'm biased and angry and ranting. And now its 11:43 and I really have to go to sleep.

Somethings to Note

Today is my sister's 18th birthday. My Jane Austen loving, fangirl with as many flaws as great attributes sister is eighteen today. Woah. Of course, there is no celebrating on finals week (Thanks Central) but there were donuts.
I have to go to sleep soon, because I have to get up at 6:00 for an AP US review session, but one more thing.
From now, every sunday is Short Story Sunday. I'm going to wing a short story in a day and publish it on here. That way, I have to get things done and I'll have an incentive. Yay. Not today though. Cuz of finals and stuff. (Procrostination, alter ego says)
This isn't exactly a very thoughtful post, but hey, I have to write often in order to make sure I don't go blaaaaaah on the keyboard when I actually need to write, hence the practice and all.
I think I'm going to wake up super duper early and be all organized, the way my brain doesn't want to be as the darkness/night/blackness of the world progresses. So I think I'll get up.
I'm thankful, though. Its during these kind of hard, stressing times that I think "Well, thank God I even have this to worry about" because having something to worry about means that you have something good that you want to keep, and that's always reason to be thankful. I think. (I don't have time to be politically correct, its 11:26 PM and I need to read some Quran and go to sleep.)
Night, and good luck on your finals, whenever you have them.
Also, I didn't get into Honors Sem. Didn't know why that was important to share, but you know, details add up. Somebody had to be paying attention to that post I think I made a week ago about novel-writing. So maybe I'll have more time to write next year after all. (Even at the expense of, you know, Honors Sem.)
P.S That was alot more than one more thing...Silly me.

Trust-My own Response

I wasn't going to make a Blog post today because of finals and whatever, but then I read this blog post, and decided "Why not?"
Okay.
I trust too much, for the precise reasons that shouldbesatisfied can't. This isn't a noble or courageous thing, its actually pretty cowardly. I trust that my friends care about me and aren't so annoyed by me that they secretly hate me and think I'm a decent person and all that type of thing. I can't afford to be cynical because I don't have an alternative. Either I maintain my friendships with people in the trust that they aren't acting every time they talk to me, or I hyperanalyze everything they do towards me and everything I do towards them and start acting weird and desperate.
I do believe in people's inherent goodness, (despite all our misunderstood or malicious attempts to hide and masque our own insecurities) but I don't believe in their selflessness or their tolerance towards others with visible flaws, especially not towards me. I believe that when people are annoyed or bothered by somebody, they will not care how that other person feels until they after they get rid of that annoying person. If they tolerate that person, its only to make a nice face to not seem bitchy in public, or they'll wait until said person is gone and rip them apart behind their back. People only care about others when its not at their own expense. I've seen some of my best friends do it to other people and other people do it to me. That's the truth.

Music is there for you (Except if God doesn't will it)

That's what I feel like every time I play a song on my iPod now, especially if its one I like. The songs I choose to listen to resonate with my feelings, my buried thoughts and emotions allowed voice as they insist, now more than ever, to get out. Sometimes a song that I used to play is ignored for a month, that emotion untapped and unneeded until the day crashes and I need to hear it. Music provides comfort, it makes us feel like we belong even when we don't. It gives fancy to our desires. It makes you feel at home.

Playlist for lately:
Dead Hearts by Stars
The Last Time by Taylor Swift feat. Gary Lightbody
Viva Primadonna (A remix of Primadonna and Viva La Vida together)
How To Break A Heart by Marina and the Diamonds
Demons by Imagine Dragons
Fallen by Imagine Dragons
The Last Goodbye by Ke$ha
Dirty Love by Ke$ha
Lose Yourself by Eminem
Hear Me by Imagine Dragons
Wild Ones by Flo Rida

(Oddly, no Paramore or Panic on this list. This will most likely change as my mood does, and when Paramore's new album comes out in April OMGYAY)

A Fact

I am not popular.
You can say I'm outgoing, loud, annoying, empathetic, loved, and ambitious, but you can't say I'm popular.
Today, I realized this. Really realized it. It's been coming for a long time, and I know for a fact that I was never as in-touch with school gossip as my peers, but it's been dawning on me for some time how much I've been missing out.
This, for some reason, pisses me off today in ways that haven't bothered me in years.
***
During lunch today, a sophomore friend of mine brought up the subject of middle school, and I joked "I was such a b***ch in middle school."
"Why would you call yourself a b***tch?"
I'm smiling, because I believe it. "Because I was."
She asks, "Were you a bully?"  Confused, I answer no.
"Than you weren't a b****. Only bullies are b****ches in middle school." She says, laughing, good-intentioned.
 And then I laughed, adding without even thinking "I wish I was one."
She was the one who was confused now. "Why would you want to be a b****?"
I had an answer on the tip of my tongue, but her other friend, as usual, inturupted our conversation as she started talking about Wisconsin or something, and then they got offtrack. I still have the answer, but I am still hesitant to say it.
***
It takes guts to be a b***tch. People admire guts, and strength. I don't think I have that, not when it comes to being clever or social or a good friend. I wish I was a good friend.
I hate sounding like this, needy. I hate depending on people to feel good about myself, or to feel good about anything. I want to be someone people admire, not someone they ignore or don't pay attention to. The fact that I publicly display that need on my blog is a good enough reason why I don't have it. It's probably why most people don't really like me, or even know about me. Terrific.

Rich Kid Books

You know the ones I'm talking about.
Clique. Private. The A-List.
We're all familiar with them, or at least their trope.
A bunch of rich, beautiful people go to an esteemed private school. This private school is esteemed, destined to lead its attendees to the Ivy League and into a glamorous life. The main character is estranged, having arrived at this school out of sheer coincidence or scholarship, and finds herself enchanted and horrified by her peers, particularly THE Group.
There all always variations of this group, but their members always embody these characteristics: Wealthy, gorgeous, ambitious, and smart. The alpha (There is always one) is the epitome of these traits to her peers; to them, she is unstoppable and superior. Nobody can top her. The main character inevitably finds herself wanting to be a part of this group. She wants to prove to them that however badly they might regard or treat her, she is not inferior. Eventually, with persistence and manuevering, they get in, as the plot goes.
I hate these books.
But I still read them.
I have a long history with reading these kinds of books. (The Clique series comes to mind easily) but for a long time, I'd abandoned these almost-political books in high school. That was when I started reading about real people with real lives, and if not, then those about urban fantasies. That changed this year, mostly by accident.
I had owned a copy of The A-List for some time now, but I hadn't actually read it until I was perusing through my bookshelf in winterbreak, bored and wanting something completely new to read. I noticed it, and with a chuckle, I started reading it. I found myself sucked in, not in admiration, but out of sheer disgust at what these people are.
They are wealthy and self-assured in their wealth and beauty through expensive cosmetics and lucky birth. They are arrogant because their wealth and status has assured them that they are important. They are ambitious and ruthless to keep it that way. These people have no qualms about doing whatever it takes to maintain the status quo.
It's easy for people born into these high-society bubbles to forget about the world around them. After all, it's undeniably hard to notice and act on the flaws of a society when its serving you well. At least for these people, the only thing standing in the way of their ambition and desires is their peers, not the faults in their stars. A Roman noble can easily say "The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars but in ourselves, that we are underlings," because the stars of his birth have not faulted him the way they fault so many others through disease and death and poverty.
There will always be an avid audience for these books because there will always be people who want to be like these people, however wrong and shaded they may be. Or rather, there will always be people who want what these people, despite their many faults, can hold on to.
Pride, and an ability to maintain it.
***This is my shaded way of highly highly recommending The Disreputable History of Frankie-Laudau Bank as a great book to read that intelligently subverts this trope with a highly-intelligent, ambitious girl turned renegade that ends up fighting against these ideals through clever pranks.

Two Quotes

These aren't my favorite quotes, but these are the ones that have stuck with me for a long time. I suggest you look up where they belong. (I claim no copyright to the following quotes, they belong to their respective authors) 

"Listen to me," He said. "Let me tell you the truth about the world to which you so desperately want to return. It is a place of pain and suffering and grief. When you left it, cities were being blasted to pieces from planes flown by men with wives and children of their own. People are being dragged from their house and shot in the street. Your world is tearing itself apart, and the most amusing thing of all is that it was little better before the war started. War merely gives people an excuse to indulge themselves further, to murder with impunity. There were wars before it, and there will be wars after it, and in between people will still fight one another and hurt one another and maim one another and betray one another, because that is what they have always done.

And even if you do avoid warfare and violent death, little boy, what else do you think life has in store for you? It took your mother from you, drained her of health and beauty, and then cast her aside like the withered, rotten husk of a fruit. It will take others from you too, mark me. Those whom you care about-lovers, children-will fall by the wayside, and your love will not be enough to save them. Your health will fail you. You will become old and sick. Your limbs will ache, your eyesight will fade, and your skin will become lined and aged. There will be pains deep within that no doctor will be able to cure. Diseases will find a warm, moist place inside you and there they will breed, spreading through your system, corrupting it cell by cell until you pray for the doctors to let you die, to put you out of your misery, but they will not. Instead you will linger on, with no one to hold your hand or soothe your brow, as Death ones and beckons you into his darkness. The life you left behind is no life at all. Here , you can be king, and I will allow you to age with dignity and without pain, and when the time comes for you do die, I will send you gently to sleep and you will awake in the paradise of your choosing, for each man dreams his own heaven. All I ask in return is that you name the child in your house to me, that you may have company in this plan. Name him! Name him now before it's too late."

And 

"When adults say, "Teenagers think they are invincible" with that sly, stupid smile on their faces, they don't know how right they are. We need never be hopeless, because we can never be irreparably broken. We think that we are invincible because we are. We cannot be born, and we cannot die. Like all energy, we can only change shapes and sizes and manifestations. They forget that when they get old. They get scared of losing and failing. But that part of us greater than the sum of our parts cannot begin and cannot end, and so it cannot fail."

They are from two very different contexts and books, but I thought they paralleled pretty well. 

Writing a novel

Writing a novel is annoyingly hard, not because its hard to write, but its hard to write what you want to write.
Cliche, stupid things bore me. Most first drafts are made up of stupid, cliche things. Therefore, my first draft is filled with cliche, stupid things, and maybe that's why I'm bored with it.
(This is implying that I have a real first draft, that somewhere on my computer there is a 50,000 word sucky narrative. That's not the case. What is the case is that I have 50,000 words of scenes that I wanted to write and did even though in retrospect, they all suck. Plot-wise, 99% of it is useless, and rightly so.)
I still want to write a novel. I still want to write about those characters (albeit the very few) that have survived these tumultuous last few months and are actually complex and interesting. I still have those vivid ideas that pushed me to the keyboard in the first place, the ones brimming with possibility even now.
But I don't have a story. I realize this now as I sit down on Blogger and try to figure it out. Maybe I haven't done enough universe building, and that costs me. I hate outlines, but I suck at coming up with things as I go that are also funny and intelligent. (Another reason I can't do improv) I have to universe-build. I know I'm not going to have time to write in the next year or two though  (and probably weeks as soon as break is over) because of finals and school and ACT and doing-well-enough-to-go-to-a-good-college. I might have a legit excuse not to write fiction if I get in Honors Seminar in Non-Fiction Writing.
But I like fiction. I like making up a world that makes sense to me even in its wrongness and writing about things that are meaningful to me and the reader. I like making up and writing about characters that are complex but cool, crafting something out of the weird mess that is my life. I like making sense of my life through fiction. I'm just very bad at it.

Thoughts on the ACT

It's such a weird test.
Not because of the content or the prep or anything, but because how much time we put into it.
I'm realizing this more and more as I go through the Kaptest shpeal online that the test doesn't favor so much the naturally intelligent as those who willingly spend tons of time on the test. The test rewards those who spend hours prepping for it with exam books and practice tests and online courses and all that stuff, which is great for some people, but terrible for others.
Say you're from a low-income family in the city, and you're the oldest daughter with three siblings.How much time are you able to afford to studying for such a test when you have to do the laundry and make lunch and drop off your brother at school and do your homework (well)? And even if you do manage to squeeze a little time per week to study, you still would have to compete with upper-middle class kids taking a 500$ Exam Prep class that have few responsibilities except for Do Well In School and Become a Doctor/Lawyer/Professional Rich Person. That's a hell of a leap between points, and that's not mentioning the cost of the test itself ($35.50 without the Writing portion, $55.50 with the Writing Section) which to most people is pretty affordable, but probably isn't for lower-income families. And that's for one time. Many really ambitious kids retake the test once, twice, thrice, and I've heard of someone having done it a total of five times just to get the right score (and failed to do so). How many times could a family afford to do that for their child's education? And how many times will they be willing to do it?
Just some thoughts as I study for the test. Thankfully, I'm not in any of the situations above, but it still bothers me in a way; that somebody's ambition or their dreams could so easily be snuffed because of their family. As is the paradox of love and all that.
See ya.

A Youtube Education

It's easy to admit you're a book nerd.
Particularly at HCHS where reading books is encouraged through an annual reading marathon, (which I am bombing this year thanks to my mom not taking me to the public library and quitting too early on my books) I don't mind admitting that I read with far more appetite than many of my peers.
But admitting I love Youtube is another thing entirely. When people hear the word Youtube, they think of Gangam style and Rebecca Black and maybe a famous Youtuber or two. When I think of Youtube, I think of the vlogbrothers and danisnotonfire and Crashcourse and Booksandquills and Shane Dawson and so many other names and channels that nobody's heard of. And there are quite a few channels that I love that the general public would either think are a. really weird/creepy (Shane, I'm looking at you) b. boring or c. just plain uninteresting. Here's my argument:
I'm going to start where I started with when I first started on Youtube: The Vlogbrothers. This may sound a little presumptuous, but John and Hank Green have taught me quite alot about life and selflessness and being a good person than most of the people in my life (this doesn't include family, obviously). Even though I've never met them, I owe them much more than I owe my acquaintances or even a few of my worse teachers. I love them (not creepily, but I mean in general) not because they're funny (they are) but because they each have their own insight and opinions about the world that they share through videos, some of which that range from the Syrian Revolution and the metaphorical resonance of roadtrips to jokes about goat sex. And in a way, they're also responsible my getting me into other Youtubers because then I had to get a Youtube account to keep up with all these cool people they kept referencing, and then I got addicted to those Youtubers and then I found more on my own and etc etc.
Youtube is weird in that it's more than you often do more than just sit and watch content. It's a place that fosters communities that build pond filters in Bangladesh and write fanfiction about two flatmates in London and fangirl about a vlog-style adaption of Pride and Prejudice and all sorts of crazy things. In that sense, it's a weird place compared to most of the world.
And lately, it's a place for education instead of time-wasting. There are literally videos on Youtube that cover an entire course of AP Bio in the span of fifty videos that still are funny and clever despite their heavy content. There are videos about particle physics and why shades of pink are all actually the color red. There's a whole world out there on Youtube, and alot of people are missing out. Hell, there's even a yearly convention for Youtube video making. (One day I'll go, once I can actually get to California)
So maybe Youtube is an easy way to escape the monotony of day-to-day life and laugh away at the bloopers of 30 House Rock or Ouran High School Host Club. I'm not going to deny that, I use Youtube for that all the time too. And yet, it's also a way to engage more deeply into things that are actually important or whatever, to actually participate more in reality than you would have sitting on Facebook or tweeting about how boring your winter vacation is.
So I dunno, maybe I sound like a total lazy butt when I say that watching Youtube videos is a pastime of mine. But I don't regret it.

***If you're just getting started and looking for channels to look at, here are some great ones:
http://www.youtube.com/user/vlogbrothers (There's no debating the greatness of this channel. They introduced me to Youtube for bugger's sake)
http://www.youtube.com/user/danisnotonfire (Just one awesome, hilarious guy who is just yeah, great. Love him)
http://www.youtube.com/user/crashcourse (Really great educational videos about World History, AP Bio. They're covering Literature and Ecology right now, though I've heard that Chemistry is up for grabs in the next few months. Definitely worth the time investment if you're into learning)
http://www.youtube.com/user/booksandquills (If you love books, you'll love her. She reviews books and talks about books and is just generally amazing. I wish I had that much time to read)
http://www.youtube.com/user/lizziebennet (A modern vlog-style adaptation of Pride and Prejudice. Really. Check it out. Videos twice a week)
http://www.youtube.com/user/vsauce (If you're into interesting sciency videos, vsauce is for you. I also recommend Scishow)
http://www.youtube.com/user/xperpetualmotion (If you love graphic design, you'll love Karen)
http://www.youtube.com/user/charlieissocoollike (Charlieissocoollike is cool. There is no debate about this.)

Loneliness

I think I really realized why I write these posts. Why I'm drawn here even though most of my peers only write posts every couple of days.
I feel lonely.
I'm separated from the rest of the world, even though thats not true considering the laptop in my hands and my sister in the room next door. I shouldn't be alone. But I feel like it.
I feel like there's a whole world going on there, and tons of things I should be doing that I'm not, so I'm wasting my time sitting around her not making the most out of anything. That's not to say I'm not thankful for the comfortable upper-middle class life I have or for the lack of drama (for the most part) in my life, but its hours like these that I feel separate. Not good enough.
I'm bitching and whining, I know. But I'm always wasting something that I don't know how to use or don't feel like using.
I wish I could be insightful and talk about hopeful things and how the world is great, but alas, no.
Maybe one day I'll have made something of myself or have finished my novel or get accepted to a great school or god forbid, actually be able to talk to people who want to be friends with me without getting anxious and ruining it all. Maybe one day people will actually like the stuff I make instead of me just spewing out into an empty void, unheard.
Maybe one day. That's all I can hope for.
EDIT: Blablabla, typical self-obsessed crap. Gosh, I sure must like talking about myself.

Ambition

I'm obsessed with ambition.
I spend my days wondering how I can improve in one thing or another by devouring books and emulating them, watching things I judge to be worth my time, and hell, I even made a second Tumblr account so I could follow content-creators instead being stuck with a dashboard constantly flooded with random gifs that just bore you after awhile. I randomly decided yesterday, not even for New Year's or anything, to have "be able to run a mile in ten minutes without stopping" as a goal.
I scare myself sometimes. But what scares me more is that I'm going to screw up and not get what I want because I underestimated something or screwed up or something that I definitely 100% could have done and didn't do.
I'm not tensed up with anxiety like I used to be about the whole thing. But it does scare me, not failing persay, but the idea of not getting what I want when I want it.
In other news, I found these little gems: One is terrifying and one is inspiring.

How I spent New Year's

That's relatively simple.
Chatting all night with my best friend.
That really doesn't SOUND like a great Near Year's Eve plan, and we didn't plan on it, but that's what we did.
She was working on her 8-page comic submission to the Scholastic Contest that day, and I was working on my writing. She sent me a text, affectionate as usual, with the message Go on gm. I go on Gmail to find her agonizing over how she does the face. I spend the next hour and a half critiquing it and making her experiment with eye sizes before we actually had any real conversation. Then we started talking.
First, as will happen with most high schoolers, about college. We both have different types of worries. Hers: CalArts accepts only 53 students a year for character animation. She wants to be one of those people next year. She's working hard to make sure she is, but she's not sure if she'll be good enough on time.
Mine: I had shitty grades from freshman-sophomore year. Didn't care. Went to U of C Open House. Cares alot. Now: Working hard for good grades, but worries its not enough. Also, trying to write more and more (like thorugh this blog) but not producing tangible results (for example: I've only finished one short story this year)
So we shared our worries, drawing our conversation out from college stress to middle school memories (Spoiler: Most of them are bad) to our hometowns. Or rather, our homecountries.
My best friend is Indian. She moved to Illinois when she was in 3rd or 4th grade, but she remembers.
I'm Syrian, but I've never lived there for more than two months at a time during the summers of my childhood. This is because my parents got the hell out of there when they could, but they still loved their family back there. So all my mom's siblings (Three out of her four siblings) and their kids went to my grandmas' house every year to hang out for a couple of months.
She told me about how her cousins pranked her by dropping a rubber spider on her skin in the middle of the night, and I told her about Little Village, the private school turned summer school that I made friends in.
Here's the really interesting thing both of our stories would share in common:
We always belonged. Our families were our friends, our cousins like siblings. My mom told me how when she was younger, she used to hang out with her family over the weekend as her social life. Both my best friend and I, isolated from our family thanks to differing self-interests, had lost that kinship that is so sacred in the East. In America, it's not the same. Our extended family aren't our friends, they are people we meet up with every year. And in my family, not even that because of the distance. I haven't seen most of my cousins in real life in two years. That's what I spend New Year's Eve doing. Talking about the past with my best friend.
Happy New Year's everyone.
As for resolutions, I've always made my own resolutions before New Years's that I plan to continue enacting and getting started on the next year regardless. Main ideas: Run a mile in ten minutes, write everyday, only use Tumblr on the weekends, get good grades first semester of 2013, and do my sister well before she graduates.
Sayanoraz