school is out

...and has been for five weeks now.

I miss it.

Year 8-10 was a bit of... err... I wouldn't say it was a complete waste, because I did learn things, but it was the last two years of high school that really left an impression :)

You know, getting up every morning after an average of 6.5 hours of sleep was painful. Truly. But I'm glad I stuck with it because it was so much more than just slogging through 8 periods of class each day.

Some classes *coughCHEMcough* were more playin than learning.

Others *coughLITcough* were never fun, but at least the people sharing your pain were pretty cool.

scattered.

In lower school, the TEE feels like it's an age away. In year 11, the workload is suddenly quadrupled from year 10, and you panic a little, but you know you still have time. All the way up till your mocks in year 12, you never really feel like those finals are going to come. When they do, it's surreal and in the middle of each exam, you hope you'll wake up and realise you still have a week to study for the monster in front of you trying to pass off as a testpaper.

So the library became our second home for a while. It was like being at school. You couldn't avoid seeing high school kids there, annoying all the uni students with loud 'discussions' and too much giggling. I hated having to go in my school uniform, because tartan skirts are just oh-so-inconspicuous. I believe group studying reduces stress. At the time. Okay, group studying just postpones stress ><

But there is a point in the midst of all that stress where you realise that it's all pointless. Getting that 99 point something TER isn't important anymore. If you've been studying the whole year for something, you sure as heaven better know it the week before the exam, otherwise you're pretty much screwed anyway.


In the two months leading up to the TEE, I think a lot of us knew that we would finish off the five years with decent results and a WACE (unfortunately, I do realise I don't speak for EVERYONE here ><). We also realised just how far the TEE is from being the most important thing you will ever do in your life.

In the last two months of my time in high school, I became friends with so many people I had hardly spoken to in the last five years of my life. People who were just classmates before suddenly became people I'd miss when it was all over.

llllllll

People I saw a little bit too much became people I wanted to keep seeing, to keep hanging out with, to keep getting angry with, and to keep pissing off.

llllllll


Valedictory was a stunning night not because we officially graduated, looking smart with our white sashes. It was because of the huge amount of support and respect we demonstrated as a year group (I have stories about this, but just believe me without them). It was because we all grew up a little, knowing that it was the last time we'd all be together. It was what happened afterwards, when we all gathered outside to do the hug-and-bye thing. We learnt then, that there are no such things as cliques. We are all one class, together in the knowledge that even though the days of spoon-feeding are over, we are good kids and we will turn out okay.

Yeah, the homework sucked. School hours were carefree, and exam stress made me feel like rotten bananas (my mood smelled like them too). Friendships were strained, mended, ended, forged, strained again, and mended again.

You can look back in ten years and believe high school was a breeze, but right now ask any Year 12 just out of school and they'll tell you it wasn't easy, that it's been the toughest part of their (rather short) existence.

But they'll also tell you that it's been the best time of their lives and, quite frankly, they wouldn't trade it for the world.

Know it's been great,
believe it gets better :)

this is a high school musical moment

The TEE marks the end of our schooling days; the end of strange school uniforms; the end of smelly classrooms.
When the TEE is over, we will no longer have to worry about how many Cs we need to achieve to graduate, whether or not 52% gives you a pass in English, or whether Newton-Raphson was made to torture, or bore.

The TEE seems scary and horrible and you-just-don't-want-it-to-happen; but we cannot wait until it is over. When we finish our last paper, we'll be happy. We'll smile, and laugh, and burn our books. We can smell how close we are to blissful lack of brain activity.


But we're also beginning to realise something else.



How are we going to get used to not seeing each other everyday?


We don't all talk to each other everyday; some days, we don't even see each other. But we know that we're all around... somewhere.

We don't know why we all hang out together, why we do things together, why we even LIKE each other. We just do.
And as much as we actually kind of enjoy the holidays when we don't have to see each other all the time, suddenly, the fact that we're all going in very different directions hits us and we realise...

Well, we'll just have to find another way to get in each others' faces now, won't we?


Speaking of getting in your face...

This is the result of an experiment to prove just how lousy I am at taking pictures of myself. I couldn't even fit my whole head into the frame.

Nicole did a lot better than I did. At least you can see both eyes.

But this one takes the cake. I like :)

Ohhhh yeah. The school fees are going a really long way.


Yesterday, we felt sad knowing that our mass stupidity could only last for three more months.
Today, we forget about it, because we have three more months. And we're all still in it.

We'll look back at this photo one day and remember what great idiots we were.
But we'll know we were all idiots together.

We'll know, we were all together.

almost made me cry

Dear Mr. President
Pink

Dear Mr. President,
Come take a walk with me.
Let's pretend we're just two people and
You're not better than me.
I'd like to ask you some questions if we can speak honestly.

What do you feel when you see all the homeless on the street?
Who do you pray for at night before you go to sleep?
What do you feel when you look in the mirror?
Are you proud?

How do you sleep while the rest of us cry?
How do you dream when a mother has no chance to say goodbye?
How do you walk with your head held high?
Can you even look me in the eye
And tell me why?

Dear Mr. President,
Were you a lonely boy?
Are you a lonely boy?
Are you a lonely boy?
How can you say
No child is left behind?
We're not dumb and we're not blind.
They're all sitting in your cells
While you pave the road to hell.

What kind of father would take his own daughter's rights away?
And what kind of father might hate his own daughter if she were gay?
I can only imagine what the first lady has to say
You've come a long way from whiskey and cocaine.

How do you sleep while the rest of us cry?
How do you dream when a mother has no chance to say goodbye?
How do you walk with your head held high?
Can you even look me in the eye?

Let me tell you 'bout hard work
Minimum wage with a baby on the way
Let me tell you 'bout hard work
Rebuilding your house after the bombs took them away
Let me tell you 'bout hard work
Building a bed out of a cardboard box
Let me tell you 'bout hard work
Hard work
Hard work
You don't know nothing 'bout hard work
Hard work
Hard work
Oh

How do you sleep at night?
How do you walk with your head held high?
Dear Mr. President,
You'd never take a walk with me.
Would you?

Dear Mr. President
Pink

wood, paint, springs, and love

yesterday, i got a warm feeling inside.

we were driving out of brockman park when sam suddenly went

"eee.. look at the businessman in the playground."

so i looked, and i saw this little family of three in the park playing in the playground. the first thing that caught my attention was the mother rocking the little girl on one of those horses with springs underneath. you know them? yeah.

only she was rocking the thing really, really fast. it looked almost violent. and she was laughing. the little girl just sat there being thrown back and forth by the motion, and the mother continued laughing.

that amused me to no end.

there are two of those rocking horses in the playground, and the father was sitting at the other one, rocking back and forth like a child.

it made me smile; it made me happy. because there he was, still in his suit and tie from work, shamelessly squashed onto a rocking horse designed for a child thirty years younger, watching his wife and daughter laughing and playing, at the same time leaving all his adult concerns behind and just appreciating what God's given him.

i only saw the scene for a whole of maybe ten seconds. but it gave me a lovely feeling for the rest of the day because i knew that no matter what kind of crap life throws at you, coming home to people that love you, more importantly, to people that you love, will make you feel like it's all worth it.

and it's alright to let go. it's ok to have your pants above your ankles and look stupid and oversized on a wooden horse on springs; it's ok to have people passing by in cars laughing at you. because once in a while, someone will walk past, and it'll make them happy to see you happy.

funny how it works, ey?