On Friday morning, Guidance Coach appeared at the English class door. He gestured with an envelope, which he handed to the nearest student, who passed it on. Everyone in the row looked at the address and names, as I stared helplessly. 'That's right, go ahead and look where I'm applying to college', I thought reflexively. A few passes later, I had ( Read more... )

Who says that John Kerry is always on the wrong side of history? His favorite baseball team, the Red Sox, is finally going to the World Series. How is that for validation ( Read more... )

With somewhere around 286 hours until I have to turn in my college application, I have reached an elevated state. It may not be color-coded, but it is palpable. With only 1.5 of my essays finished, I am starting to imagine the nightmare that my application could be. How many taboos could be included, counting the other letters? Some possible ( Read more... )

My assignment sense, or in this case, my sense of [hmmm-hmm-hm]or was on the mark. Today, [hmmm-hmm-hm] assigned a short story (actually, whatever writing we want to turn in, whether essay, story, or poem) just as I was developing my plot. I realized that my drug deal/use scenes in my story were not going to be very realistic, so I finally asked ( Read more... )

After the cross-country meet in the bitter wind, I went to the library and rented Lawrence of Arabia, Minority Report, and The Shipping News, mostly because they did not have The Hours, Ghost in the Shell, or Whatever Happened to Baby Jane. I finished eight of my drawings watching Lawrence and Minority Report, which combined take up a lot of time. ( Read more... )

Just as junior Kentucky Senator Jim Bunning cautioned a Paducah reporter, explaining the reason for his bodyguards on a visit to a Quilter's Museum, "There may be strangers among us!", I have had a feeling of foreboding today. Somehow, without the threat of immediate deadlines, I am unable to do anything. One of my college application essay rough ( Read more... )

Break. Yesterday, Cross Country Coach confronted me about my political ideology, which I called "Practical ( Read more... )

"I'm on page 79 in this book! My brother stays in his cave," my sister chimed from her stool (she did not see any problem with coming in and watching the dentist work on me) without any conversational segue ( Read more... )

If there were an album made of my as-of-yet undocumented past few weeks, I can only imagine that the track list would look something like this ( Read more... )

When we went into lockdown on Monday, the AP Environmental Science class quickly devolved into a discussion about our prospects of escaping from the high school with our lives. Doctor Coach tried in vain to quell the talk, but everyone went to the windows anyway. Two police cars pulled up, two ambulances, an official SUV of some authority. Doctor ( Read more... )