Hello world!
Sooo I got my new ACT score on Monday~ I'd been at school, working on one of my school projects (YAAAY stress!), and decided to take a break to check my emails. (At least, I'm assuming that's what happened at the moment, seeing as that is a regular occurrence.) To my pleasant surprise, I got an email from ACT that my new score was in. I logged into ACT, and took a deep breath before clicking on my October results. I was so anxious, because I thought that I might've not gotten a better score, and the money, effort, and stress over that test wouldn't have been worth it. Dude, I even closed my eyes as the page loaded. Once I opened them back up, I'm pretty sure I forgot how to breathe for a second.
It was a 34.
Already, the 31 was impressive, but this is insanely good! Even my math score went up by 2 points, when I was absolutely sure that was the one I messed up! And I got a perfect score of 36 on Reading!
As for the Writing Test, it gave me an 8. Apparently, it is out of 10 points, so that was also pretty dang decent. Oh, if only I could put that instead of having to do essay responses all over again for my college application.
I guess I should mention now that I agreed to apply for BYU, and so began my application on Friday. Though I expected some essay questions, I assumed they would be short. The ones I actually have to respond are not super long, but it's still longer, and I'm gonna have to take a while to make good responses for these. Unfortunately, I don't know if I really have enough time to make responses that I'll be totally happy with by the time I have to submit the whole thing, seeing as I only have till the end of this month, and I have a lot of schoolwork to do! *really annoyed groan*
Anyway, back to when I saw my score. I basically stared at my screen for a full 5 minutes as I processed the fact that that was a flippin' 34 and that flippin' 34 was mine. I have no idea how I pulled that off, man. I was shaking for a while from the shock and relief and happiness. Mostly the shock.
I didn't even tell anyone about my score for, like 15 minutes. I instead- wait for it- pulled out my mandarin oranges from my lunch and ate both as I continued to stare at the screen and freak out. Because, of course, that is a normal reaction.
Once those were done, I finally got up to tell my teacher, who, of course, hugged me for, like, another 5 minutes. Then I finally got around to sending texts to my parents. (Wait, I might've sent the text to my mom right before going to my teacher... Whatever, you get the point.) (The teacher actually sent a Facebook message to my sis, but that apparently never went through. Weirdness.)
My dad had already wanted to go eat out on that day, but my parents then decided to treat the eating out as a celebration of my new ACT score. We ate at a Chinese restaurant we'd never gone to before, and it turned out to be very delicious! Something cool about it was that they serve dim sum at all times (when all other dim sum places only do it for breakfast/lunch hours, and likely only on the weekends). Rather than the usual of going around with the different food items on carts, they just let you order the items you want on the little paper. They take a while to give you your food, but my dad was perfectly happy with that, since it meant they were making everything on the spot for us.
Ironically, one of our fortune cookies said, "If you succeed the first time, try something harder."
Okay, so last week, the lady who my sis was going to work under in Spain basically said "I don't want you anymore". (Thanks, lady.) Seeing as she wasn't going to have an actual job to look forward to, she decided to just come back here after her time in Iceland, which had been her original plan with her Icelandic vacation anyways. She arrived late on Monday. She was looking a lot better than when she had returned from China, but she was still clearly tired. She was very happy to hear that we left some pho (which my mom tried making at home for the first time the day before, and it came out quite tasty) for her, plus we'd bought some extra BBQ pork buns at the dim sum place for her. (Pork buns are always our favorite dim sum item, no matter which restaurant.)
The day after, she was in the mood for Crown Burger, so we got overstuffed on burgers, fries, and shake. ...And then I went to KF. That was not a very good idea.
On Wednesday, there was a special event at BYU- a banquet put together by its math department for high school students and their math teachers. Basically, if the teachers at the school thought you were a really good math student, they nominated you to go. A school could have up to 5 nominated students, and I just so happened to be one of them.
It was actually pretty cool. The dinner wasn't super fancy, but still good. While we finished up eating, they started some presentations: first, one about the programs and stuff you can do if you study math at BYU; second, one about different applications of math, like animation; third, one where the guy was basically saying "What cool stuff can you actually do with a math degree?" There was a really cool demonstration where, just as there are paths from one point to another you could do that would take the least amount of time (1D lines on 2D planes), there were minimal areas (2D) in 3D spaces, which he demonstrated by holding up an open cube (no faces on it, only vertices and edges) and similar shapes and dipping them into bubble solution. The bubble film acted as the areas, and the results were really cool and interesting. I sure hope I remember that trick!
After these presentations, they had students go up (called by school) to take a picture with a big Y and then receive a certificate. They also gave us some BYU Math shirts and other little goodies on our way out.
Though it's too late to add this to my U of U application, I can at least have it on my BYU app. That, coupled with my ACT score(s) and my time in math camp, should hopefully give me a decent chance to come in for science.
I'm still iffy about studying just math, but it's generally not as horrible as people think, and math nerds are awesome human beings!
This is completely unrelated to anything, but I just wanna keep this as if it's actually vital information. Throughout the week, I was reading a Danny Phantom fic from an old FFN friend. I made two fantastic discoveries due to that.
1. This was an AU, in which Danny is actually a ghost when the accident happens, so it's basically the reverse of the original story. (This is my second time reading a fic with this sort of AU, and I absolutely love both.) This Danny had died in 1897, so a lot of things are new for him. One of my favorite things about this AU Danny, though, is that he occasionally uses really outdated slang (like "schmuck"). I was curious as to whether the slang he uses was actually accurate for his own time period, so I looked it up. Turns out it was all indeed correct- some slang is really old, whether we still use it or not. I recognized quite a bit of it, so it was shocking to realize they had said the same things as we say now over a hundred years ago! And then, of course, some of the slang that I hadn't heard of before was sometimes hilarious. I think I'll do a more thorough research on old slang in the near future and start using some of it to see if it catches on (with my friends, at least).
2. There is a fan-made character named Wes Weston that's practically canon in DP, and I had no idea until the author asked if we wanted him in the story. (Apparently, the reviewers had said no.) I looked him up, and found an article that gave quite a bit of detail as to his character and how he came to be. This whole thing is really fascinating! (Oddly enough, there was apparently more romantic stuff about his dad than himself... As far as I understood, at least.) I should also see if there's some good fics that include him and any other fanart and fancomics about him that were not already shown in the article.
So, two more reasons to be happy that I read a fic besides the story itself!
On Thursday, I did a lot more stuff at church than usual... Before the usual YW activity, one of the sister missionaries had hosted a tiny makeup class, and- since I was the only one that didn't really care about seeing her do the makeup- I volunteered to be the model. (At least it turned out they had brought some makeup wipes, so I was able to get everything off. I guess I tried a little too hard, though, since I think a bit of the stuff on the wipe got in my eye. *sweatdrop*) The actual YW activity was heart-attacking the old YW president's door (our presidency was changed last Sunday). Then after that was my mom's dance class.
Something that's making me really happy about the dance class is that everyone is having a ton of fun. Even though some people are having a harder time figuring out how to do the moves, they're still laughing and carefree and enjoying themselves. It feels like everyone is truly letting go of everything that is stressing them out or pulling them down, at least for a moment.
It's because of stuff like this that makes it frustrating when so many people don't want to dance.
I think all that's left to talk about is the stuff from yesterday.
I had another special KF class on Saturday. This one was about being able to withstand very hard blows, basically by tensing as many of your muscles as possible at the same time. The form itself is not all that short, but exhausting because of the tensing and the stuff you do with your breath. The last bit of the form, though, is when you let go of the tension and scream as you do some movements as fast as possible. (New philosophy: It is much better to scream with others than scream alone.)
That, though tiring, I could handle decently. However, people then started getting wooden boards broken over different parts of their bodies (thigh, back, ribs, arm, and throat). Even though I was seeing that no one got really hurt, it was still scary to watch. The only person, I guess, was one kid that went into a pseudo-seizure because of the stress/anxiety of the board hitting his back.
Yeah... I, um, kinda started crying a bit once the teacher directly asked me if I wanted to take a turn after that kid went down.
Lately, it feels like I'm crying a lot, and for reasons that people can't understand completely... and often ones I myself can't entirely comprehend, either.
I felt like such a wimp for basically being the only person who didn't do it, but I couldn't bring myself to participate in that. I was just too terrified. At least no one forced me into it anyways, and my dad didn't get mad at me when he realized how upset I was. He was like, "You know how to do the technique, and that's what matters to me. The board-breaking's just for show."
Ugh. I already started crying again just thinking about me crying before. I really wish that wouldn't happen.
In the late afternoon, there was the ward's Thankgiving party. My feelings are mixed about it, but in general they lean towards the bad end of the feelings spectrum. My dad was in charge of the dance music for the party, but for the most part, people refused to dance. We had to resort to frickin' line dances, and some people didn't even know the line dances! (Since I knew all of them, though, I ended up being in all of them in the hopes that it would help draw more people in to dance. I don't think it worked very well.) People were so weird about the dancing, too. For at least most of the songs, at least one person was recording with their phone, and everyone applauded at the end. I just... what???
Well, ain't it great that, now, everyone thinks I love line dances when I don't? (The only one I truly enjoy is the one called "Cha Cha Slide", and I kinda like "Cupid Shuffle"?)
Ugh. Not my favorite ward party. At all.
Okay, I think that's everything. Wish me luck on everything, yet again. I think I'm supposed to present my physics project with my group this week! *so scare, much terrify*
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