vontropnats
Life's a bitch and she has puppies.
Million miles away...
The time has come. Tomorrow I leave for a land far far away. Hopefully, things will go smoothly as planned, but one never can tell. I hope to see you all again in a few weeks, but in the off chance that I don't, I'll be back one day or another. I'll miss you all. 
And the Lord Said...
It has recently occurred to me that when people get bored enough, and by this I mean no mere manifestation of boredom, but SERIOUS "I'm staring at the wall and naming the visible bricks on my neighbors house" boredom, they refer back to the AIM buddy list and randomly click on people's profiles to see their away messages. I know I do this sometimes, and I damn well know that I'm not alone. Well, whenever they look at my profile, they see the link to this page, and surprisingly, people read these little blurbs more often than I had initially thought.
I quit blogging for a while; actually, for months. I used to use blogging as a means to release all the emo-ness built up inside of me caused by some, well, interesting circumstances. Anyway, I'm no longer emo, and thus, I've not blogged in a while. Despite my laziness, every time I produce something on this page, people see it as at least remotely interesting, and they always have feedback within hours, sometimes within a half of an hour. So, I figure people check this page on a "regular basis", and the static appearance of it does nothing but waste thirty seconds of someone's life. Ergo, it is my duty to bring forth more of the random shit that floats in my head, and here is the latest installment...
It is July the 5th in the year 2007. In less than a year, I will graduate high school. In ten months, I'll know where the next four years of my life will take place. In seven months, I'll be swamped with applications. In a month and a half, I'll be back at school. In a month, I'll be in the Ukraine. In three weeks, I will be leaving Governor's School. In thirty-six hours, I'll be going home for break. In three hours, I'll be asleep. You'll notice that as I listed these seemingly random things, I never delved past the year time-frame. In a year and two months, I'll be gone; I will have left Winston-Salem and I will be starting my life anew, elsewhere, hopefully in a location far more spectacular than Camel City. But what of everyone else? Suddenly, the people that I've been around for years (in the most extreme cases, twelve+ years) will be gone too. I'll have to adjust to a new location, a new climate, and an almost foreign way of life. This excites me more than it does other people, I think. Most people are eager to go to college with all their pals, eager to stay close to mom and pop so they can share a Thanksgiving dinner, they're completely content with staying in the South, and even more satisfied with North Carolina in and of itself. As for me, I'd love to branch out and learn what exists north of the Mason Dixon Line, or maybe see the Wild West with my own two eyes.
I'm confident that I can achieve this, but let me tell you, the return home is going to be perhaps the weirdest trip ever. For instance, I've been at GSW for three weeks now. In a day and some change, I'll be back at home. I'll be sleeping in my own bed. This seems almost bizarre to me, and I've only been here for three weeks. I can't imagine how incredibly, well, weird, it's going to be returning home after six months. But I've digressed from my point. Yeah, seeing my room, my house, my car, my bed, and all that other crap will be out of this world, but seeing everyone that I haven't seen for the past year will shatter any sense of unusualness I can imagine.
I watched American Pie 2 the other day. Damn good movie if you've not seen it; personally, my favorite of the three. Looking past all the boobs and booze, the movie captures this sense of awkwardness quite well. As I watched this, I thought to myself, "What the hell am I going to be like during the first summer after college?" Will me and my buddies rent a house at Lake Norman and party every single night? Probably not, though that'd be pretty dank. And the aforementioned question is by no means limited to myself. I wonder what the hell everyone else will be like too. And how exactly are we going to hang out? Just chill like back in the old days? Maybe drive to Mt. Airy to get the famous Pork Chop Sandwiches (PCS) one Saturday afternoon while having Man Talk in the car? I dunno man, but I know it's going to be bizarre. Personally, I can't wait.
I quit blogging for a while; actually, for months. I used to use blogging as a means to release all the emo-ness built up inside of me caused by some, well, interesting circumstances. Anyway, I'm no longer emo, and thus, I've not blogged in a while. Despite my laziness, every time I produce something on this page, people see it as at least remotely interesting, and they always have feedback within hours, sometimes within a half of an hour. So, I figure people check this page on a "regular basis", and the static appearance of it does nothing but waste thirty seconds of someone's life. Ergo, it is my duty to bring forth more of the random shit that floats in my head, and here is the latest installment...
It is July the 5th in the year 2007. In less than a year, I will graduate high school. In ten months, I'll know where the next four years of my life will take place. In seven months, I'll be swamped with applications. In a month and a half, I'll be back at school. In a month, I'll be in the Ukraine. In three weeks, I will be leaving Governor's School. In thirty-six hours, I'll be going home for break. In three hours, I'll be asleep. You'll notice that as I listed these seemingly random things, I never delved past the year time-frame. In a year and two months, I'll be gone; I will have left Winston-Salem and I will be starting my life anew, elsewhere, hopefully in a location far more spectacular than Camel City. But what of everyone else? Suddenly, the people that I've been around for years (in the most extreme cases, twelve+ years) will be gone too. I'll have to adjust to a new location, a new climate, and an almost foreign way of life. This excites me more than it does other people, I think. Most people are eager to go to college with all their pals, eager to stay close to mom and pop so they can share a Thanksgiving dinner, they're completely content with staying in the South, and even more satisfied with North Carolina in and of itself. As for me, I'd love to branch out and learn what exists north of the Mason Dixon Line, or maybe see the Wild West with my own two eyes.
I'm confident that I can achieve this, but let me tell you, the return home is going to be perhaps the weirdest trip ever. For instance, I've been at GSW for three weeks now. In a day and some change, I'll be back at home. I'll be sleeping in my own bed. This seems almost bizarre to me, and I've only been here for three weeks. I can't imagine how incredibly, well, weird, it's going to be returning home after six months. But I've digressed from my point. Yeah, seeing my room, my house, my car, my bed, and all that other crap will be out of this world, but seeing everyone that I haven't seen for the past year will shatter any sense of unusualness I can imagine.
I watched American Pie 2 the other day. Damn good movie if you've not seen it; personally, my favorite of the three. Looking past all the boobs and booze, the movie captures this sense of awkwardness quite well. As I watched this, I thought to myself, "What the hell am I going to be like during the first summer after college?" Will me and my buddies rent a house at Lake Norman and party every single night? Probably not, though that'd be pretty dank. And the aforementioned question is by no means limited to myself. I wonder what the hell everyone else will be like too. And how exactly are we going to hang out? Just chill like back in the old days? Maybe drive to Mt. Airy to get the famous Pork Chop Sandwiches (PCS) one Saturday afternoon while having Man Talk in the car? I dunno man, but I know it's going to be bizarre. Personally, I can't wait.
Sons and Bitches
I've been at Governor's School for a week and three days. Personally, I haven't had a moment of enlightenment nor any such revelation up to this point. Sure, I'm having a pretty decent time; however, I sincerely doubt that I'll look back onto these six weeks in my late twenties/early thirties and think, "Damn, that summer changed everything about me." Eh, perhaps I'm just a pessimist, but between the long nights and gruesome food, I don't doubt that others feel the same way. In fact, I was having a pretty miserable time until last night...
Siv Shapiro, a professor at UNC-G and graduate of London University, Boston University, and the University of Pennsylvania, delivered a monstrous speech at Hanes Auditorium last night. The gist of which, that which I will attempt to humbly summarize for you now, dealt with the core problems of America's modern public education system. Now trust me, I've heard all the No Child Left Behind debates and I've read Kozol's Savage Inequalities, but his take on this issue is one I've never witnessed before. It was especially astonishing to see in person, to boot.
Shapiro argues that the American education system is centered at competition and nothing else. Education has evolved into a form of survival of the fittest, and only those who know how to "play the game" can succeed. What he means by this is that everything is based around empirical data. GPA, class rank, SAT scores, all the other bullshit. From Day 1 we are taught to be merciless, to let no one person stand in our paths to greatness, to live in this world of cutthroat competition and win at all costs. But as we get caught up in competition, we lose sight of things that are more important. We drop courses that we may enjoy the most simply because we MUST take something that offers an extra quality point to boost our class ranks. We forget about the struggling students and focus solely on ourselves. However, competition drastically favors the wealthy and the elite. The people who have the time and money to invest in competition are almost always the same people who are valedictorians that end up at Harvard/Yale/Princeton.
Some days prior to attending Governor's School, I reassessed my own plight to college. I came to a pretty drastic conclusion. Going to an Ivy League school requires commitment, nobody can argue this statement as false. However, the level of commitment one has to take on is something I couldn't understand until recently. I decided that I wanted to go to an Ivy League somewhere in the middle of Junior Year...roughly around January of 2007. Prior to that point, both UNC Chapel Hill and Wake Forest were extremely solid options for me; now they are back-ups. Anyhow, I'm going to fail when it comes to attending one of the Elite Eight. Now let me tell you why.
The decision came much too late. The road is long; I cannot cover it in a mere eight months. One has to decide that he or she wants to attend and Ivy League (or other elite university) as early as possible; personally, early middle school or late elementary school seems right to me. If the decision is not made by the applicant, it will be made by the parents. Here is where it gets tricky. Rarely can parents of the poor, parents in rural areas, parents that work several jobs, parents that are struggling, make this decision for their children. The parents that make such decisions are easy to spot - the wealthy, the graduates of these schools, the most elite people in their respective societies. No mother in the Bronx will begin to cater her child to an Ivy League university straight of the womb.
The decision is only the first step. The reason the decision must be made early is due to the amount of cute bullshit you have to lace your application with to even stand a chance in admissions. Nobody cares if you're the president of Spanish Club at your high school. Hell, I bet the guys at Yale pass those applications around and have a good laugh at 'em. What they want to see is excellence in everything, and excellence for them is set at a very high standard. You can't lead mere clubs, you have to lead initiatives. You have to lead fund raisers. You have to lead projects that enrich your community. You have to do research outside of the classroom. You have to excel in academics, and often times, athletics as well. Not enough school work and volunteer work to occupy your time? Get a job and work 20 hours a week; now you are impressive.
I've not lead initiatives. I've not created organizations, or done research, or excelled in athletics. I probably could have accomplished all this if I had started much earlier. This is why you or your parents have to decide that you are Ivy League material as early as possible. They read thousands of 3.95 GPA, valedictorian, 2300 SAT applications every day - it's a crap shoot unless you really stand out.
It's sad that nobody could make the decision for me. This country isn't native to me, and I strongly doubt my parents knew what Princeton was before we emigrated here. And at that point, I had to struggle to master a language and succeed as much as possible; Ivy Leagues were not even in my peripheral vision. So I'll leave you with this food for thought. "Why is it that you're 25 times more likely to find a rich kid at an elite school than a poor kid?" - Siv Shapiro
Thank you.
Siv Shapiro, a professor at UNC-G and graduate of London University, Boston University, and the University of Pennsylvania, delivered a monstrous speech at Hanes Auditorium last night. The gist of which, that which I will attempt to humbly summarize for you now, dealt with the core problems of America's modern public education system. Now trust me, I've heard all the No Child Left Behind debates and I've read Kozol's Savage Inequalities, but his take on this issue is one I've never witnessed before. It was especially astonishing to see in person, to boot.
Shapiro argues that the American education system is centered at competition and nothing else. Education has evolved into a form of survival of the fittest, and only those who know how to "play the game" can succeed. What he means by this is that everything is based around empirical data. GPA, class rank, SAT scores, all the other bullshit. From Day 1 we are taught to be merciless, to let no one person stand in our paths to greatness, to live in this world of cutthroat competition and win at all costs. But as we get caught up in competition, we lose sight of things that are more important. We drop courses that we may enjoy the most simply because we MUST take something that offers an extra quality point to boost our class ranks. We forget about the struggling students and focus solely on ourselves. However, competition drastically favors the wealthy and the elite. The people who have the time and money to invest in competition are almost always the same people who are valedictorians that end up at Harvard/Yale/Princeton.
Some days prior to attending Governor's School, I reassessed my own plight to college. I came to a pretty drastic conclusion. Going to an Ivy League school requires commitment, nobody can argue this statement as false. However, the level of commitment one has to take on is something I couldn't understand until recently. I decided that I wanted to go to an Ivy League somewhere in the middle of Junior Year...roughly around January of 2007. Prior to that point, both UNC Chapel Hill and Wake Forest were extremely solid options for me; now they are back-ups. Anyhow, I'm going to fail when it comes to attending one of the Elite Eight. Now let me tell you why.
The decision came much too late. The road is long; I cannot cover it in a mere eight months. One has to decide that he or she wants to attend and Ivy League (or other elite university) as early as possible; personally, early middle school or late elementary school seems right to me. If the decision is not made by the applicant, it will be made by the parents. Here is where it gets tricky. Rarely can parents of the poor, parents in rural areas, parents that work several jobs, parents that are struggling, make this decision for their children. The parents that make such decisions are easy to spot - the wealthy, the graduates of these schools, the most elite people in their respective societies. No mother in the Bronx will begin to cater her child to an Ivy League university straight of the womb.
The decision is only the first step. The reason the decision must be made early is due to the amount of cute bullshit you have to lace your application with to even stand a chance in admissions. Nobody cares if you're the president of Spanish Club at your high school. Hell, I bet the guys at Yale pass those applications around and have a good laugh at 'em. What they want to see is excellence in everything, and excellence for them is set at a very high standard. You can't lead mere clubs, you have to lead initiatives. You have to lead fund raisers. You have to lead projects that enrich your community. You have to do research outside of the classroom. You have to excel in academics, and often times, athletics as well. Not enough school work and volunteer work to occupy your time? Get a job and work 20 hours a week; now you are impressive.
I've not lead initiatives. I've not created organizations, or done research, or excelled in athletics. I probably could have accomplished all this if I had started much earlier. This is why you or your parents have to decide that you are Ivy League material as early as possible. They read thousands of 3.95 GPA, valedictorian, 2300 SAT applications every day - it's a crap shoot unless you really stand out.
It's sad that nobody could make the decision for me. This country isn't native to me, and I strongly doubt my parents knew what Princeton was before we emigrated here. And at that point, I had to struggle to master a language and succeed as much as possible; Ivy Leagues were not even in my peripheral vision. So I'll leave you with this food for thought. "Why is it that you're 25 times more likely to find a rich kid at an elite school than a poor kid?" - Siv Shapiro
Thank you.
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Going away...
Well, for the next six weeks, I'll be at Governor's School West at Salem College. Afterwards, I'll be overseas. See you all next year.
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Sorry...
To everyone out there that believed, thanks for the support. It appears as though the fight in me has died. I no longer have great dreams or astronomical aspirations; reality has caught up with me. Continue to believe in yourself while others fail. And thus, I concede; looks like I'm staying here for longer than expected.
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