Three more weeks of school.

This is so stressful. I'm only sixteen and I'm already losing my hair. It's sad really..

I really don't know what to say to you, blog-o-sphere... I'm honestly starting to dry out slowly...

In 1992, the average salary for a female attorney was 75 percent of the average salary for a male attorney.

Numerous studies of classrooms have shown that girls are called on far less often than are boys and that their answers are listened to far less seriously.

Women are 1/2 the world's people; they do 2/3 the world's work; they earn 1/10 the world's income; they own 1/100 of the world's property.

Two days ago, a boy approached me in my front yard and began to openly flirt with me. I shot him down multiple times and told him that he should leave because I had better things to do than listen to a pig oink; in my defense, he was making derogatory comments including comments about the way I was dressed (shorts and a band shirt), what I was doing (playing touch football with my brothers), and what I should be doing (I should've been "in the kitchen, baking a cake or something"). If you, the reader, don't find this disgusting and disrespectful, please leave my blog right now and don't come back. After I told him off, he proceeded to call me a myriad of names, of which ended at "stupid feminist." The reason I am writing about this rather than about The Great Gatsby is because I am TIRED of being pushed aside. I am tired of being a "Silly little girl" or a "feminist"
Does anyone in this world know what a feminist is? As defined by dictionary.com, a feminist is an advocate of social, political, legal, and economic rights for women equal to those of men.
I'm just done.

“You are all a lost generation," Gertrude Stein said to Hemingway. We weren't lost. We knew where we were, all right, but we wouldn't go home. Ours was the generation that stayed up all night.” 

For the last few weeks, I've read The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway and a few supplementals. This book is the 2013 Academic Decathlon book. It's a book about the Last Generation, the group of men and women after the Great War (World War I) who moved to Europe in search of something that they longed for but never found. They dreamed big and lived in the moment. They Drank and were merry because tomorrow they might die. This notion is repeated throughout history.
After World War I, it was the Lost Generation and flappers (women who defied the niche that society had forced upon them from birth).
After World War II. there was the Baby Boom. Soldiers who'd returned home--sometimes whole but more than anything, broken in both physical and emotional ways--and their wives were more in love than ever. These men had left home and could've died at any moment. Now that they were home, they were going to raise a generation better than their own.
After Vietnam, there was the sexual revolution of the '70s. People weren't into the power that The Man had over them. They defied society and its restrictions: Sex, drugs and rock'n'roll. This was the time of the hippies and the Love Movement (which may or may no be the real name of this movement).
Now, soldiers returning home from battle are faced with our generation. Teenagers who aren't really teenagers. Kids enter the 'teen' phase of life earlier than ever. Nowadays, our youth lives in the moment, often making questionable decisions that even they don't understand--although they believe themselves to be 'mature.' We no longer live with the eloquent thought of be merry today for tomorrow, we might die. No, the motto that future generations will hear about is YOLO, a dumbed down version of the classic Carpe diem (Latin for Live in the day)

You spend your whole life stuck in a labyrinth, thinking about how you'll escape it one day, and how awesome it will be, and imagining that future keeps you going, but you never do it. You just use the future to escape the present. -Alaska, Looking for Alaska
I'm a small town girl with big city dreams. When I dream, I dream big. If you we're to meet me & get to know me, it'd be obvious to you.
But all I have are dreams. And that might be all I'll ever have. It's hard to face, right?
Well, in end we all face reality. Just like Jake & Brett. Wanna know what I'm talking about? Read The Sun Also Rises

So I was wrong.

My blog will not be about life at monroe. It will be about books!
Okay, so like I've mentioned before, I'm a big literature fan. By literature, I don't mean Sarah Dessen or Glass by Ellen Hopkins. No, I mean classic literature.
Let me re-iterate. I love C L A S S I C literature. Like the Bronte sisters or Tolstoy. When I go to bed at night or am having a bad day, I don't turn to cheesy romance novels or murder mysteries. No I turn to Anna Karenina and Catherine Earnshaw. The stories that the authors write are (to me) the same story Emily Bronte did. Love stories are so much more eloquent and touching. Battles are so much more dramatic.

But do not think that I only read the antiquated books of our grandmother's generation. I can be hip! (That was a joke.) Two of my most recent authors are John Green and a man named Ned Vizzini.
Wanna know why I like them so much? Well, I'll tell you!
They have written the words that I've always thought but never said out loud. They know how I feel without being a teenage girl from California. And that's an amazing thing to me. So look them up. I recommend It's Kind of a Funny Story by Vizzini (which is also a movie) and The Fault in Our Stars by Green. Read them. They might become your favorite too.

So this is my return to the blog-o-sphere. I haven't blogged in a while.
So Kim commented on my blog saying I hadn't spoken a word about her so here it is, Kim! I first met Kim in the magnet office when I had been told I could work in there & she said I was lucky. I guess she got sent to the library to T.A. And when I was exiled from the coveted spot as the magnet office t.a. I joined her in the library. At first, she overwhelmed me. Though she be but little, she is fierce! (Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, look it up you plebeian)
And I as I grew to know her, I grew to love her. She made my days bright and she was funny. She was a little ball of sunshine I knew would be there when eighth period rolled around.
Now, I feel like we're not as friendly as before but I still like discoursing with her.
Well, I guess my new blog topic is life at Monroe, how it's been and what I think it's becoming. Have a good day.

So it's valentine's day here at Monroe. Woo!
Yeah, right..

As a student from the magnet, I have to live with everyone in F Hall. Ever been in there after school? It's like a highway. One way is into the hall and the opposite way is out of the hall. Add balloons, flowers, stuffed animals and all the sugary treats our society has deemed acceptable to gift to another and you can picture what it's like to walk through the hall on Valentines Day. All these things result in a bitterness of the heart that begins as annoyance then shifts to anger then grows to bitterness. And this feeling doesn't only plague people who are single. No, this has an effect even on those of us who have a significant other.
This is my tangent for the day. Have a happy Valentine's Day.

12 February 2013

Last Friday was the AcaDeca Awards night. It was amazing, even though I didn't medal in anything.
We're actually 20th out of the 58 schools. Still pretty good, in my mind. One of my closest friends got a Bronze medal in Interview; one of the seniors got a gold medal in interview and a bronze in speech (I think, I might be wrong); and my boyfriend (that was awkwardly typed, just so you know) got a silver medal in speech, a honorable mention in essay and he was the top scoring student of our team.

To tell you the truth, I was really upset that I didn't medal. I cried for a long time and I did resent my teammates for a bit. I have this thing that I have to be the best at everything. It comes with being a dancer and a student in the highly competitive Magnet. In dance, you have to better than everyone to even be noticed. To tell you the truth, there's been many a time that I've hoped for or relished in someone's mistake. And it seems like I'm a horrible person, I know.
But you don't understand. I grew up in the environment where I needed to be the best. I was found "gifted" at an early age. This led to my placement in the "more advanced" classes surrounded by children of the same mental capacity. My fourth grade teacher instilled such a love for reading that ever since, I've been a literature geek.
The Odyssey? Age nine. Bullfinch's Mythology? Age ten. Edith Hamilton's Mythology? Age eleven. Pride and Prejudice? Age 12. The Scarlet Letter? Age 13. Doctor Zhivago? Age 16 but I read it three times: the first in a week, the second to understand the book and the third to actually analyze and iron out all the inconsistencies in my mind.
From the same education that gave me a love for literature, I also got a love for history. What interests me so much about books full of someone else's story and another country's story is that even though all of it happened in a world from long ago, they will forever be remembered. They will forever have their name printed in a book that brags about their accomplishments. Isn't that amazing? Imagine, if I do something big enough to span decades and centuries, a girl or boy in the future will have to forever remember my name and what I've done.

I'm done with my life story. For now...

4 February 2013

So I am finally done with Academic Decathlon. For this year... But it feels good.
I tied for the highest score on our team (in the Super Quiz), we're unofficially 19th of the 52 schools who participated, and in the western San Fernando Valley, we're second only to Granada Hills. But it's Granada Hills, they're state champions!

I'm really really proud of myself and my team. We worked hard and it sure has showed. We're awesome like that. So that link down there is a link to an article the LA Times wrote on the day of the First Round of our competition.



LA Times wrote about Academic Decathlon.

Two days before competition; 31 January 2013

We must travel in the direction of our fears.

Let me tell you what I fear. I fear that on Saturday, I'll completely blank out. I fear that the taunting voice in the back of my head will win out over all the hours I've put into studying. I know what I'm doing. I know that I've given hours to studying.

I'm just so stressed. I want to cry and just give up. But I can't. I can't let them down. I can't let Mrs. Miller down. I can't let myself down.






I'm sorry. I just wrote and deleted about six paragraphs. My mind is so confused. I don't make much sense.
Well, maybe I'll tell you about how I do. But  I'll probably just cry in a corner. Have a good weekend.

29 January 2013; Tuesday after AcaDeca competition part

So last Saturday (26 January 2013) I competed in the Speech & Interview part of the AcaDeca competition. It's a two part thing; one Saturday, you give your prepared speech and an impromptu speech and you interview. The next Saturday, you test on the other 8 subjects. Yeeeeeeeeah. I think I enjoy the speech portion better..

Let me give you the rundown on AcaDeca: you have ten subjects. As previously stated, you do two pieces one Saturday and the other eight the next. The subjects are: speech (prepared and impromptu), interview, art, math, LangLit (a novel and shorter selections), music, science, history, and economics.
The eight subjects are all based on a chosen topic. This years topic is Russia.
Great subject, right? The right answer is no, if you have any common sense.
Last years topic was Imperialism.
But, I hear the year before that was the Jazz Age. Flappers, jazz, shockingly showing some leg (by that I mean the knees). What's not to like?


Do I bore you with my talk of this? Well, you only see the outside view.
But if you join, you get to see why I love this team.

Week of No Sleep

So this week is crunch time for my Academic Decathalon team. Yes, I'm a total nerd. I can tell you what the oppurtunity value of an hour is; I can tell you that the Challenger exploded 73 seconds after launch, killing the first US civilian Miss McAuliffe, a schoolteacher; I can tell you that Anton Chekhov entered his final phase of life in 1898 and had to spend his honeymoon at a resort for tuberculosis patients.
And I'm so stressed out. Everything annoys me, or makes me wanna cry. I haven't had more than four hours of sleep and I am so tired of having a snack food for dinner and then ravaging the cupboards at the wee hours of the night.
And if AcaDeca stress isn't enough, my boyfriend has decided that it's time to fight over every little thing. Great, isn't it?

Every once in a blue moon, I write pages and pages and pages of my thoughts and problems in a little blue book. But now, I wanna write a letter or sixty...

Off to study some more. Oh, joy!

16th of January 2013

So this is my first post. I still don't know what to do exactly but I'll wait for the writer in me to take over, inspired by the mundane life I live.

Well, my name is Jacekleen (pronounced jay-suh-clean). I'm a junior in the Law & Government program. I did Academic Decathlon last year & continue to do it and have done Dance Guard since freshman year. These are the only two extracurricular activities I can boast of, as sad as it is.

Well, today has been another day in the continuous streak of bad days. I've been annoyed at the world since this morning so I hope no one takes my annoyance as something worse. I snapped at Kim but now I realize, she deserved it.

The highlight of my day was probably lunch. I actually hung out with someone other than the usual Guys.
This is capitalized because these are the group of male schoolmates I hang out with everyday: Jose, Chris, Gabriel and Alex. Everyday, nutrition & lunch.The bell is gonna ring in six minutes so I'm off.