Hello wooooorld!
Ugh. *Angry Kid impersonation* I feel sicky.
I'll admit that I'm pretty sure I got colds less often in the other states we've lived in... And it was a lot easier to clean my glasses in those states, too. My glasses have looked gross lately.
Honestly... not much happened this week. (It's a good thing, though, since that means I can devote quite a bit of time to what I wanted to talk about last week!) Besides being kinda sick (I threw up on Tuesday! *yay!*), there's really only that I've started a new English paper (of the informative sort) and Spirit Week. Well, I guess there's also that I feel like I've been accumulating mild injuries, lately...?
Spirit Week wasn't as awesome as I was hoping for. I just don't understand why most people don't even bother! I understand when you literally don't have anything to wear for one of the days, but why not try for all the others? You lame-o's. (...Should the apostrophe be there? It looks weird either way.)
What I'd been trying to do was take what we were supposed to wear for every day of Spirit Week and make a costume out of it. I mean, it's almost Halloween, and it's looking like I'll only get to wear one proper costume on the actual day! I wanna make the most out of October, since the month has been a little sucky!
Unfortunately, a few of the days I couldn't figure something out for. I thought it wouldn't be that hard. *tear*
But, I did still get three full costumes! I dressed up as Alice in Wonderland, Batman, and a panda. (The last one had a lot of thick clothes, so sometimes I had to take off my hat or my vest or even both... and without those things there, I just looked weird.) And I felt pretty cool, even though most people didn't know what I was doing.
I'm writing my English paper about microaggressions, since that was one of the teacher's chosen topics (well, it wasn't specifically just microaggressions, but it was just generally terms like microaggressions that have apparently been showing up a lot in colleges and the internet). This issue makes me a bit... angry.
Besides the fact that people are taking the original term and using it to gain attention, they are also doing it to be racist towards white people. (I hadn't intended to make that italic and bold, but I'm leaving it because this is important.) I mean, yes, a white person may accidentally say something offensive to a Hispanic or black or whatever person, but that doesn't mean any other race isn't as capable of being accidentally offensive. Anyone can be, and most likely is, at least a teensy bit racist, including to their own race. They're almost most likely going to be racist against their own people, in fact, and that tends to hurt the most. But who's being accused of saying the wrong things? Only white people. It is literally in all the definitions given in the articles, scholarly journals, research papers, etc. that I've read. The term "microaggression" only applies to things white people say to non-white people (or, as they sometimes say to sound a little less blunt, what "people belonging to the majority" say to "people of minorities"). That seems a little unfair, especially considering the newer generations are generally more equality-oriented than the older ones anyways, but they're the ones that have to deal with this. Real microaggressions should be fixed, but most of what's going on nowadays regarding microaggressions is because of butthurt people who want to make white, straight men pay for their "wrongdoings" when they literally did nothing wrong. In fact, I don't think these people are even butthurt; they're just taking this chance to make people feel guilty for being part of the majority.
And you know why I can say that white people are being a little mistreated? Because I'm Hispanic/Latina. I'm not even fully Hispanic/Latina- just half- but I don't look like I'm also half-white, so I can say things about white people without people screaming about racism and injustice in my face. I guess that's just one of the advantages of being in a minority.
Also, there's some people that think certain things offend Mexicans, like calling us "Hispanic" and wearing Day of the Dead makeup? As my sister said today, "I think I'd know if I should be offended." If you don't look like you're trying to offend us, we're most likely not going to be offended.
Oh, and saying "you guys" when referring to a group does not make women feel left out! What the heck?!
Okay, so finally, what happened at the ACTs last week.
So my mom and I got up early and drove over to where I was taking the test. It was at the high school where I would've gone if we stayed in Murray (the house I lived in during 3rd and 4th grade). I'd never been inside, so it was kinda weird.
My mom stuck around for a few minutes just to ask about what they do with phones and stuff during the test, then left me to my own devices. I stood off by myself, observing the surprisingly talkative teenagers around me. I realized quickly that most of these people already knew each other and already had their separate groups of friends, so I came to the reasonable conclusion that most of them went to this high school. But then-
Wait.
Wait.
If most of the people here went to this school, and I was pretty sure my friends from 3rd grade went to this high school, too... Did that mean I might see my old friends today?
I'd thought the likelihood was more like... medium, since people had to pay to take this date for the ACT, unlike waiting till the end of the year for the free ACT, but I also was pretty sure my friends all cared about having good grades and such. So, yeah. I was a little unsure about if they'd actually show up or not.
Absolute craziness time? Yes, because I saw all three friends that I'd actually hung out with after 3rd grade! I don't know if I've actually given them codenames, but Future Me can't possibly not know who I'm referring to if I say "my friends from 3rd grade". (My bestest friend from that year, though, doesn't quite count, unfortunately, since I hadn't hung out with her any time later, unlike my other friends.) First I saw... okay, what am I gonna call each one? Hrm... I guess I'll go with Anne, which is pretty close to her real name. When I saw Anne walk through the door, I grinned and excitedly ran over to her and said, "Hi!" She looked somewhere between pleasantly surprised and downright confused, especially when she asked "Why are you in Utah?!" but she hugged me all the same, and we talked for a bit.
A little after that, when we were already in the line to be checked off the roll, I saw another friend. I'm having a hard time thinking of an easy codename that won't sound like I only define her by her race (which I don't), so I'll call her Yoshi since I remember thinking that her little brother's name sounded a little like the name of that green dinosaur thing. (Now I can't even remember what his actual name is, but thinking of his name being like Yoshi's had actually helped me for a while when I was younger. Heh.) I rushed over to say hi (after I stared a bit longer to decide that, yes, it really was her), and she just seemed... a little weirded out. Like, she even said "This is weird." She wasn't rude or anything, but didn't seem as excited about seeing me as I was about seeing her. It was pretty awkward.
At least I felt a bit better when I went back into my spot in the line and informed Anne about what just happened. She was like, "Yeah... Yoshi's just awkward. That's how she is."
I added, "Well, that's probably why we became friends in the first place. I mean, come on, all of us are a little awkward." She laughed at that one, and didn't even bother denying its truth.
Once we were admitted and could check the posted lists of who was going to test in which room, I saw yet another name- that of the friend I will call Ballad, since that sounds close to "ballet" and is still music-related (she comes from a very musical family) and it's apparently an actual name. I grinned again at the prospect that I was most likely going to see my third friend from this town, and she actually did show up a few minutes later! She seemed to be the most excited to see me, which made me happy. I hadn't seen her for the longest time out of all of them (besides the bestest friend mentioned earlier), but things still felt pretty natural and normal between us. It was kinda funny, because she was pretty tired from waking up early, and she said a few mildly-loopy things because of it. We actually sat right next to each other in the testing room (the teacher put us like that), so it was nice to know one of my old friends were there with me.
A smaller, but still pleasant, surprise was when Anne pointed out a few people we'd gone to school with. Since I'd only been in the same school as her for one year in elementary school and we're now looking at high school kids, there weren't all that many. She found two kids within the vicinity at that moment, and I actually recognized both- a kid named Jacob and a girl who I remembered went by Claire. (It was weird when Anne referred to her by her full name and I was like "Wait, Claire isn't her real name?!") As much as I say I don't remember much from when I was little, some things stuck quite well. A little later, when I was talking to Ballad, she actually went to say hi to Claire and then asked her if she recognized me. (Not before motioning to me without looking and thus hitting me in the face. It was hilarious.) She did! That is always something I wonder about people I used to go to school with... Do you remember me as much as I remember you? I know I'm usually one of the quieter kids in class, so it's nice to know that I wasn't invisible or forgotten, even if all they remember is my face.
After we finished the test, Yoshi came over and chatted for a minute, asking what school I went to and stuff (which Anne and Ballad had asked too) and said it was nice to see me. I don't know if it really was as awkward as it felt, or it just felt like that because of earlier, but... yeah. I dunno, it just felt really weird, which is disappointing.
Anne was already gone, since she'd done the no-writing test, but I still got to chat a bit more with Ballad and just enjoy being with her for a bit longer. Since we left at the same time, she actually was okay with stopping over to my mom's car to say hi to her. I don't remember if Ballad and my mom had talked much in the past, but it was enough for them to be happy to see each other.
Once we started leaving, my mom was saying how different she looked from when she was little, and that she'd been unsure at first of whether it actually was her or not. I can definitely attribute recognizing Ballad so easily to seeing pictures of her on Facebook.
I'm nervous of this ACT, since I feel like my pacing was worse than the first time, at least on the math portion. That was the score I'd been most disappointed with, so the fact it's most likely lower this time around is just... urgh. Then there's the fact that I did the writing test, and I have no idea if I'll get a decent score on it or not.
Okay, that's just about everything. Since I have a bit of extra time, I guess I'll add that, the day before the ACT, I'd been studying in the campus's cafeteria, and a man from Afghanistan came over excitedly and asked where I'm from. He thought I was Middle-Eastern. *sweatdrop* Specifically, he said I looked Persian, and I Googled pictures of Persian people once I got home. Yeah... me and my sis could see why he thought that. Not so much the face shape, but other aspects like my eyes, eyebrows, and skin color. We still talked for a little bit of time, even after I told him that I'm part Mexican, and don't really identify myself as Middle-Eastern. I know I have Middle-Eastern blood in me, but that's not really the same thing as what he was asking.
Happy Halloween (tomorrow)!!! We'll see how November goes... K bai!
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