a clusterfuck of random thoughts

finals week is coming and i am lonely/have nothing to do aside from work (which i dont feel like doing) so here's a blog post for myself

so what has happened? frankly i dont remember. the past months have been a blur, and it feels as if the beginning of the term was only a few days ago. every day when i see my friends, i am happy as ever and greet them with the enthusiasm of a creature that has been deprived of social interaction for a decade. it doesnt even feel as if tsts, amc, comc have already happened, and honestly it hasn't really even registered in my head that i'm now a junior in high school. I still feel and act like i'm 14 or 15. oh, how society becomes unforgiving as you get older. 

let's do a few check in's - 

how is math going?

uh, what can i say? considering the general amount of shittiness that has been so pervasive in my life as of late, math contests have been going almost flawlessly. aside from shafting comc with a 67 or smth (which hopefully does not come with consequences, as I should still probably be able to take all canadian team selection tests due to my placement last year), I have been at awe at how little I have deproved since last summer's mop. 

aside from comc, notable tests I took so far were the november tst and the amc 12a. both went amazingly: i score 7/6/0 => 13 on the tst and 11111 11111 11111 11111 11100 => 138 on the 12a. 

this has been completely unexpected given the amount of time I have been putting into math this term, and i cannot say i am not utterly ecstatic :) 

so what is there left to do for the rest of the year? so many things! something tells me i cannot keep banking good luck to keep my test scores alive, so maybe this thanksgiving break i'll find some pleasure in some oly grinding. 

so how is everything else going? uh, lemme just say had math comps not been going in my favor recently, i wouldve hanged myself by now.

grades: uh, fuck . 

so i'm taking 5 classes this term: math, cs, english, chinese, chem. I'm probably getting a 6 (A+/A equivalent) in math and chem as long as i stop slipping up on my chem daily quizzes so im probably not going to worry about that. now, I currently have like a 94 in CS, which is like on the edge of a 5/6, so i'm gonna have to be careful in the next few weeks. like, theres only two grades left to be inputted, namely the oral test and the final reflection. I probably got like 93+ on oral test, so I just need to not fuck up the reflection that is to come. this means i probably have to grind some shit out so i actually have stuff to write about. 

uh, so humanities. english and chinese. let's talk first about chinese. i love the class. i love the people. i kinda like the teacher, at least from an informational perspective. she teaches stuff i enjoy learning about. and i learn. my chinese has gotten significantly better since the beginning of the term. BUT, ... my grade in that class is a 92.87, at least at the moment. that's a 5. sometimes i go to bed wondering if i am actually incapable of getting a 6 in chinese (as a semi-native speaker) and then proceed to beat myself up mentally until i fall asleep. anwyays, i think i can still get a 6 if i grind my ass off for the last important assignment but this one will probably be close.

alas, english. given an undesirable teacher, the one saving grace of an english class is usually the group of people in it. but i fucking hate my english class. my teacher is insanely strict (although, i admit, knowledgeable), and i talk to like 2 people in my class outside of school, so there's really, really not much going for me here. i'm sitting on the edge of a 4/5 here, and I have like two large essay/assignment grades yet to be posted. im genuinely shitting bricks at the prospect of getting a 4 in english. 

most likely gpa this term is like 5.6 or smth, but haha fuck grades dont define who i am lmao. 

life in general: 

theres actually a lot to explain, though im not sure i want to.

let's start off with the tamer shit first. i feel like my identity in the social circles i am in is always, in some form or another, the "smart kid". for this reason, though i dont usually like expressing it, i always feel somewhat challenged whenever everyone else calls someone else "smart" because it makes me feel like my societal role is less significant. after all, if someone else is the smart kid, then what the hell am i? it makes me feel like i bring no other value to any friend group and makes me reflect on my lack of other, perhaps non-academic attributes. why cant i be the funny kid, the nice kid, or the hot kid? why i am i doomed to be the "smart" kid forever? a curse and a blessing, though i think perhaps more of a curse. 

with all of this being said though, i don't think im arrogant. its not like i cant accept that others are "smarter" (whatever the hell this word means here) than me. it just makes me feel insecure, and even a little societally displaced when people ask me stuff like "hey, do u think xxx is better than you at [insert stem thing, usually math]."

at the end of the day, i know i'm above average intelligence, but that there are still people better than me at what i am good at. however, that doesn't render me useless: my role in society is defined by the bonds I share with those around me. if i was straight up swapped with another completely different guy who was essentially just me but better at all academics, my friends would still feel the negative effect: an absence of a certain type of energy only I can provide :)

there's something else i really want to get off my chest but i dont really want to go through the effort of explaining it, so ill leave it at that