Four Days

What a joyous day. Well, not any part of the day was especially joyous except the end of school…
I have a four day weekend this week. It will be awesome.

I’ve gotten over the whole not getting into Honor Society thing and I’ve moved onto actually filling out my college applications. So far, the whole application thing is easy — except for the essay. I don’t know why but I’m completely blanking on anything to say. I don’t want to say my life story in my essay and I don’t want to sound like I’m only interested in photography.
Basically, the whole essay feels like a glorified”Get to know me” information packet, where I make myself sound like God’s gift to their respective college. Personally, it sounds flattering, but I can’t really write it without feeling ridiculous. I’m at the point now where I have no idea what else to write…and chances are I’m going to be working on it all weekend. Oh well. This weekend will still be awesome.

In completely unrelated news, I found this really interesting article from the author of What’s So Great About Christianity. I’ve never seen an article express these ideas so clearly. But instead of me talking about it, you should go read it.

Separation

Today I got some interesting news…

Being the day before the application to the National Honor Society is due, I was scrambling to find information and advice as to how I should fill it out. When I asked my guidance counselor, he told me — rather simply — that I wasn’t going to get in. He told me not to even bother filling out the application. I asked why…and he said that my GPA wasn’t high enough.
When he said that I sort of thought he was kidding; my GPA is (or was) high enough and I had actually started to raise it in the beginning of this semester. As I looked at him he told me the problem:
It turns out that my public school is choosing not to recognize 3 full credits from my old school because those credits are considered “religious” and therefore not valid. The class being rejected was named simply “Bible”. My guidance counselor told me if it was named anything else, it would probably get accepted…but with a name like “Bible”, they won’t take it.

Wait. What? How does this work? So it is okay to offer classes which explore the religions of East (a class they actually offer at my public school), but not recognize classes offered by other schools because they talk about Christianity?

Because of them rejecting these credits, I don’t get the GPA credit and therefore my GPA fell just enough to put me .03 points below the standards for National Honor Society. I now won’t get into Honor Society in time to put it on my college applications which could affect how some colleges look at my application.

I’m really starting to wonder how far people are going to take the idea of political correctness and separation of church and state — an idea that is basically developing into separation of Christianity and state and not necessarily other religions. There would never be a public school in the United States that, in their right mind, would deny credits to someone who took a class teaching the Koran. If they did, they would have the biggest lawsuit on their hands. But because it was a Christian class, no one cares that it’s unfair.

Still Good

Been awhile since I’ve written on here. I think it is because life has started to get repetitive, and when life is repetitive there isn’t anything to talk about.
What’s odd about life being repetitive is that I’m not really upset or unhappy about it. Sure, there aren’t many surprises, but life is good now: school is easy, I’m hanging out with my friends, and I’m loving my photography class more and more every week.

Around Wednesday or so I should have some new pictures up on here. I’m waiting until Wednesday because that is when I see my photography teacher and he can tell me the right way to edit my pictures — I always seem to miss something when I do them all by myself.
Last week my photography class went to Olbrich Gardens and I took some cool panoramic shots that I’m excited about.

So yeah, life is good. Repetitive, but good.

Centered

I realized it has been a while since I posted an actual picture alongside one of my posts. I guess I have just been concentrating on putting all my photos on my flickr page.

Anyways, I took this picture while on a “field trip” with my photography class to the UW-Arboretum. I didn’t realize until I took out my camera, how long it had been since I had photographed something. It had been around two weeks or so — which is a long time for me.
Holding my camera and slinging my tripod around my shoulder made me feel centered again. I don’t know what it is, but photographing takes my mind off of so many things — it’s almost like I’m asleep, not really thinking about anything, but dreaming about what can be there.

When I got to the Arboretum I realized how much there is to photograph. What’s ironic about this is that it is really hard to isolate exactly what I want. Sure, the long grass of the prairie and golden yellows of all the plants is nice, but I don’t want it all, it’s just not my style to photograph too many things in a frame. Instead, I like to seek out one interesting aspect and make it stand out above everything else; in other words, I want my photographs to convey one message about what I was seeing.
And photographing the prairie was really hard. I’m not sure exactly what was more frustrating, being the main course for the mosquitoes, or not being able to isolate individual aspects of the lights and shadows on the prairie.

When I got back home and looked at my pictures, I was pretty unhappy with them. But I did find two or three redeeming shots…this one is one of my favorites. It is a dying and shriveled leaf dangling from a stem. I took about 10 shots of this leaf before I got the one I wanted.

The Point of Tolerance

I think this will be my last post about my new school…I think I’ve been talking about it too much.

It has been a week and a half since I switched and I think I’m finally coming to the point of tolerance towards going there every day. I mean, at first, I didn’t think I could make it the whole year because the day went by so slowly. But ever since I’ve had a few people to talk to in the hallways, in class, or sometimes at lunch, the days are getting better. I think the biggest reason it has taken me a week or so to get situated is because the Senior class I’m in is very cliquey  and doesn’t reach out a whole lot. Most of the people I talk to now are all younger than me. In some ways that is humbling because a Senior isn’t supposed to spend a lot of time with underclassmen, but I’m getting over myself and understanding that it isn’t a big deal.

In other news, I’m going to working at my second Badger football game tomorrow selling Coke to completely hammered college students. My first game was a lot of fun, but I’m not sure what to expect from this one because the weather isn’t going to be very warm and therefore not many people are going to be thirsty enough to buy a Coke. It’s alright though, I get to see a Badger game for free.