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 :)

Experiment 38

This is what they place into the hands of immature 16/17 year old Chemistry students who have nothing better to do except see what makes what blow up.

Harmful in contact with skin. Toxic if swallowed. Very toxic by inhalation. In case of accident or if taken, seek medical advice.

We laughed when we saw that one.


We didn't when we saw this one.

May cause cancer by inhalation.
May cause heritable genetic damage.

......

Cancer.
Great.
Heritable genetic damage.
Fantastic.

And it's all by inhalation.


That, kids, is why breathing can be so dangerous.

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.

what we REALLY do in Chemistry

It was Educational Video Day in Chemistry today.

And yes, it IS as riveting as you are imagining it to be. All that and more!


So Sarah decided to do a little bit of doodling.


It came out just a little bit on the emo side, though.


So I decided to do a bit of doodling myself. Of the happier sort.


This made Sarah feel much lighter, so she made more doodles!!


We really got into the whole stubby people thing (mine less stubby than hers), and while she made her million and one mini-drawings, I made one more.

But whoa, Sarah was really feeling the love


So now you know what we really do in class.
It may look like we're diligently making notes, but you know better.

Yeah. That's right.
We're making Picassos.