I just checked my grades for the tests and I got a 99 on the pre-calc quiz today (I always think I do worse than it actually appears) . I got a 96 on the physics honors free fall quiz yesterday. on the physics honors jumping time lab quiz on 2/3/16, i got an 82.9.

i have a 97.1 in physics honors as the overall grade and an 80-84 is a C, 85-91 is B, 92-100 is an A. Thanks! in ap english we read lots of cool books, I also read Ethan Frome which had a sad ending. ethan was always tied with his obligations and he felt guilty leaving his ailing wife zeena (hypochondriac), even though he had a crush on her cousin mattie silvers. instead of taking the train and leaving starkfield, massachusetts (winter’s are cold and lonely, quite rural area, ethan married zeena because he didn’t want to feel lonely) with mattie, they both decide to crash their sled and ethan is left with a paralysed right side and mattie is left with a concussion. zeena gets stronger because she has to take care of both of them. i always wondered how children become adults because i feel like there is so much to learn in this world. i even wrote a poem about it, i often enjoy writing poetry about nature, life and love.

Here is the poem:

Looking into the Mirror

Looking into the mirror, looking at me

Sometimes I see a pretty reflection, sometimes I see myself worn by time

Looking into the mirror, I ask myself “Am i really me? Is this who I’m supposed to be?”

Looking into the mirror, looking at myself trying to find out who I really am

Is this the true me, the me I want to be?

Or is it the me that’s been shaped by the world?

Looking through the mirror, I never look with the same eyes twice

Those thoughts in my head either put me down or build me up

Looking in the mirror, I try to see myself in the future

Sometimes my reflection looks haggard and ugly, at other times confident and self-assured

I don’t know what to believe

Looking through the mirror, I see myself growing up

The illusions of childhood breaking into pieces

The world shaping who I am

Looking into the mirror, I ask myself “Is this really me? How is it that I can be my worst critic and also my best cheerleader?”

Looking into the mirror, I think about the shattered illusions of childhood, how the broken pieces remind me of the difficulties I’ve faced and wonder “Will I be strong enough to pick up all the pieces, put them together and build a strong future?”

Looking at the mirror, asking myself if I’m ready to go out into the real world

Sometimes my mind cries “I’m still a child! I can’t handle an adult’s responsibilities! I need freedom!”

Other times I see myself accepting to become an adult, knowing I’m still me

Looking in the mirror, I feel conflicted about me

Looking at the mirror, I’m uncertain if I’m perfect the way I am or need to change

Looking at myself, I wonder if I’m ready for the future

Looking in the mirror, I wonder if I’m really me and if this is who I want to be.

I think many adolescents wish their parents would guide them more and question their self-worth and where they are going in life.

thanks anita, it is hard trying to find my path in life since i have so many interests especially in science. yet, i am leaning strongly toward gene therapy and going to rutgers or rowan. i’ve also added two more prospective colleges bloomsfield and berkeley as well. sometimes i wish my class rank was higher because it is 25/383 and there are many people who are applying to the same colleges i am with higher class ranks and i feel the strain of competition. i’m glad for your support, it is great to have someone to talk to especially when i feel rushed in life to pick a career and go towards it. sometimes i feel like everyone around me knows where to go and what to do in life and i’m still working on my way. i think at this age my parents really value my education and so do i, but it would be good if i could get out into the real world and experience it more such as take myself on a camping trip and learn how to live independently. i love nature and i yearn for the fact of possibly taking a hike on some hills and working my way to climbing a mountain. it would also be good if i got a part-time job so i could learn what it’s like to work and manage money, but i have to help out at the restaurant and my parents are so focused on my education. i agree with them that education is important, but sometimes i need a break and i need some time out alone in the world to discover myself and my capabilities. i balance education with community service in my life, but usually education comes first. if i have a test, i won’t stay after school to help with breast cancer fundraising no matter how much i want to since i know i have to do well in school and get a good career. after the test, i’ll do some fundraising on my own with permission from my community service teacher.

I hope you are okay, anita, don’t be anxious you have a great mind and you give great advice;) I wish there was a hiking club, I think I might start one, it would be a good contribution to the school. I like your idea of having a picture of nature to look at when I’m stressed. There are times when I feel like nothing I do is ever enough, there are so many people who keep seeing my faults and wonder why I even am trying. One guy told me today that I was never going to do well in math and science and I should just focus on english and history, but english and history don’t hold appeal for me as they used to, i like learning about math and science more. this same guy told me that i was a failure in life and called me fat. I am currently 117 pounds with a height of 5′ 5”. one of my friends who was sitting three seats down defended me. i have to take the physics honors test tomorrow because of the concert that took place in school today. I realize that there is a lot of competition in my school, but I have three guy friends who no matter what always help me with school and I’m grateful for their support. My special friend seems to be drifting away from me; he doesn’t like the person I’ve become the person who is trying quite hard, being competitive and trying to do well in school and get a good career. I think the part that he doesn’t like is how a lot of my friends are guys, since most of the people who enjoy math and science and working out in nature (camping, hiking, running) at my school are guys. He feels incompetent with all the other guys since his gpa is only 89.9, while my other friends and me have 91-94s and higher. i try to talk to him sometimes these days to tell him it’s okay if his gpa isn’t as high and also that I still care about him, but it’s like an awkwardness has come between us and we are forging our own paths. We were once such close friends that we were often called spiritual partners by our other friends, now we just feel like acquaintances trying to understand each other for the first time.

thanks anita;) I am working on improving my circulation so I don’t feel so cold during the the winter. I have a friend who is taking the laidback route in school. he is also encouraging me to not worry so much about my grades and enjoy life more. I typically worry about my grades and there is so much competition in school these days. it’s sad that my special friend and i are seemingly drifting away because every time we see each other in school, we always look at each other awkwardly or sometimes quickly look away. it’s like both of us has changed and we don’t know each other anymore. i have become the confident girl who is trying to be an honors graduate for senior year and taking many ap and honors classes and being immersed with school work and friends who value education. i used to be more carefree and shy, but that side of me seems to have become dormant and he’s not sure if he likes the new me. I have found a solution for my mural project that I thought i had to abandon because the lotus design would be too hard, now i can find a way to pay back to the high school that has given me so much. after finishing the ap world history quiz after school today, i met members of the art club and also two of the advisors, they were making a mural outside the new wing downstairs outside of the history classes. I told them that i wish i could be as artistic and one of the teachers, whom i knew said that i was artistic, i just enjoy making things such as sewing and pottery rather than drawing. the other teacher introduced herself and she said that it wasn’t hard to make a mural and she told me that she scanned students drawings into a computer and used graphics to make the image more visible and colorful and then used a projector to project the photo on the wall where students could trace the lines with marker. i think i will join art club so i can do things like that. one of my friends is in art club and i think i can ask him if he can help me as well. I think the quote that applies most to my life right now is “Don’t be afraid to take risks and lose some things because you will always acquire something new and better and you have the satisfaction of at least trying.” I think I have lost some of my friends and some of my teacher friends (english and history), but i have discovered new ones who like math and science, working out and community service as much as i do. it is sad to know that my special friend enjoys english and history more as well and i feel bad for knowing him so long and now it’s like i’ve become a totally different person to him. there are teachers and my parents who tell me that i will never do well in math and science, that i should focus more on history and english, but those subjects don’t appeal much to me anymore. last night, i had a really cool dream about physics and wind powered generators. in this dream, i was experimenting with a wind turbine and i was calculating physics equations to figure out how much wind power would turn the generator. the dream was so cool, that i slept later and missed my bus because i wanted to figure out more of the equation. the next day i went into physics honors class and the teacher had a poster on wind power and he explained it to me when i asked him about it. it made me really upset this morning when my special friend said “you’ve changed so much. i’ve never would have thought you would be the girl to pursue math and science. i never thought you’d be the girl to be interested in criminal justice. i feel like i don’t know who you are anymore.” i was quite upset, but i understood how he felt because after meditating and realizing that my path lies more in math and science, it is quite a change for him, yet i feel upset that he had a limited view of me and the way he said it and how he couldn’t even look at me made me feel pained. this is why i feel like the quote “don’t be afraid to take risks and earn the satisfaction of trying, don’t be afraid of losing something because there is always something valuable to gain.” comes into play into my life. i feel like i have pursued so many goals in life and some of them, i couldn’t achieve because they weren’t meant for me, but i continue to set goals and know that if i lose one goal, i will achieve another. i have currently lost my goals of going into an english or history career to discover that i really truly cared more about math and science. in seventh grade through eighth grade, i lost the goal of wanting to play hockey with my special friend because i didn’t have time in my busy school schedule, but i managed to make two best friends and build my confidence in eighth grade and also i met my special friend in seventh grade. i lost the goal of getting into the junior national honor society, but my gpa is still high and i have acquired many intelligent friends. i am currently focusing on learning how to do reiki, improve my immune system and circulation and my health and doing well in school. there are times when i wonder if i am going to be able to do well in the semester. i stayed after today for ap world history and one of my friends who is on my bus saw me and asked me if i was staying after because she was as well. i told her i was for ap world history and i think she must have seen the stressed look on my face because she asked me if i was okay, i told her i was fine, but she didn’t believe me. she told me that i could tell her if i wasn’t okay, so i told her that i was stressed with the competition and also the idea of making goals and losing them, i told her that my special friend seemed distant and i wasn’t sure if i could do well in this semester. she listened and told it was going to be okay and that life is like that, a road of goals which some can be achieved and the ones that can’t be, just leave them behind and move forward and learn from them, life is meant to be lived. she told me that i was smart and that i would do well in this semester, that i shouldn’t stress too much and that with time, my special friend and i may become close again. i told her that i wished i could be as optimistic as she was, but i’m realist who tends to look more on the pessimistic side at times and that sometimes it was hard to believe in myself when my parents saw so many inadequacies in me. she told me that no matter what happens, that i would succeed, that she believed in me and that she saw that i had hope and potential, i just had to have the courage and will to keep going. when i told her that i wasn’t sure if the hope i was holding on to and the goal setting was worth the losses i’ve experienced, she told me that life isn’t an adventure without sacrifices and that i had so much hope and potential in me and that it doesn’t matter what others think, the right people believe in me and also she says i have an inner strength that prevents me from giving up. when i feel stressed, i try to live my this quote “when you reach the end of your rope, tie a knot and hang on.” i feel like there are times when the currents threaten to pull me under, so i must build a boat to stop them if they become to big for me to swim, if i feel like i’m just hanging on and drifting through life, i have to build a knot of hope and hang on, if i have a mountain in my way, i have to get a sledgehammer and turn it into a molehill. she really comforted me and i realize i am going to do whatever it takes to build the life i want, going into gene therapy (parents think it may be too hard for me, but i find the topic fascinating especially if it relates to cancer research and stem cells and rewiring dna or creating new ones) and reiki (which my parents don’t like wicca or buddha anyway because they are christians and they think spiritual life interferes with education) and also police force (which my parents think i am not strong enough). I think they have so little faith in me that it makes me annoyed. i also had a dream that i was confident and that i was in a science lab researching microbiology and pathology and ways to detect diseases within a person’s dna. i think my dreams are leading me into my career and i have high hopes of attaining it. i also had a dream last night that i felt like i was falling from the sky and there was a net that caught me and entangled itself around me and wouldn’t let me go. finally an old wise man spiritually enlightened (had a halo around his head) came and told me that i was falling through life and that i would lose a lot of things, but he would be my spiritual guide and that he would help me along my path to my goals. he told me that i had to believe in myself, not let others get me down and he took me on a journey through beautiful woods and he showed me all the cool sights i would see along my path. he was the one who introduced me to physics. he told me that right now it was okay that i was stressed out because everyone has a period in which they are happy and period of stress. he told me that i should take the stress and use it to help me on my spiritual path by meditating. he told me that whatever path i chose i would always be supported and not to worry. i was lifted on this beautiful purple light in my dream and it cleansed and healed me and i was back to my own world feeling more relaxed and hopeful.