Graduation

Graduation is getting closer and closer. As each day passes by, i get more nervous about graduating. My senior year has been a hectic one. It's weird. i keep remembering things that my friends and i used to do when we were in elementary school. we used to have sleepovers. We were huge fans of the spice girls. we used to pretend like we were them all the time. we even performed a spice girls concert! (it's hilarious to watch, but there's not any real raw talent there) During the summer when school was out, becky and i would go outside and have music countdowns. we were obssessed with the backstreet boys, and we used to pretend that we were their girlfriends. we watched the kid's choice awards and the teen's choice awards. i remember watching the amanda show, ahhh! real monsters!, hey arnold, and Rugrats. they don't show those shows anymore. we've all grown up and our tastes have grown up. becky and i still have similar tastes in music still, but there are bands that i listen to that she doesn't. she listens to linkin park and i listen to the cryptkeeper five. we don't have sleepovers that often anymore. we used to have a little tradition where i would stay over at her house on new year's eve, but we broke that this year. Becky and I are two totally different people. She's the party girl; she always wants to party, and she always goes to parties that i don't approve of a teenager going to (even though i am a teenager). i wouldn't go to them. i'm the conservative one. i don't like to speak my mind, i always have to be talked into doing risky things (that's a pretty hard task to tackle), i don't dance or sing in front of people because i know that i can't sing.

i look back on all of those memories, and i can't believe how fast the time has gone by. soon i'll be leaving chilhowie and going to college. as a matter of fact, i haven't even started college, and i'm already homesick. Even though it scares me to go off to some big, scary place all by myself that i know i'm not just staying a week and then going home. I'm staying semi-permanently-i'm not staying forever, but i'm not leaving anytime soon.

Senior Trip

Every year Chilhowie High School goes to Washington D.C. for the senior trip. I was on my senior trip last week. I love D.C.! It was the second time that I had been there. There were a lot of funny things that happened. Beth fell down at Arlington Cemetery. An officer came out of his post and yelled "Get behind the line!" It was funny. The trip started out pretty rocky. Everyone was homesick. It was really hot up there the first two days. The third day we went to Inner Harbor in Baltimore. We toured Camden Yards, where I fell down. Only a few people saw me fall, though. I love the Orioles. My dad took me to an Orioles game when I was a baby at the old Memorial Stadium. I had never been to Camden Yards until last Thursday. We went to the new Newseum. I thought that it was really interesting. I wish that I had a camera so that I could've taken pictures, but I used all my film up on the first day when we were at Udvar-Hazy. I wanted to get pictures of all the planes. I wish that we had gone to the Holocaust Museum. I asked Mrs. Hill why we didn't go and she told me that they had taken one class to the Holocaust Museum, and it took them a whole two hours to get through it. That sucked. Out of all the museums in D.C. I wanted to go to that one the most. Our tour guide took us down Embassy Row and showed us where the vice president lives. We also did a tour of the Capitol Building. We didn't get to take a tour of the White House, because our representative couldn't get it for us. Oh well. We also didn't get to go to the International Spy Museum. That place was fun the first time I went. The only thing that sucks about that museum is that you can't take pictures.

I'm really excited about this summer. I'm taking a U.S. Government I class at Virginia Highlands Community College and doing Bridge Scholar with Upward Bound. On June 23-25, I have to go down to Carson-Newman College for Orientation. Then, I get to go with Upward Bound on a musical tour of Nashville and Memphis. We get to go to Graceland! Then, in August, I have to pack all of my things and move into my dorm room at Carson-Newman College.

Columbine

Maybe it's just me, but I was thinking that too many people have forgotten about the massacre at Columbine. Some people may think that that's appropriate, but not me. One of teacher's junior year said, "If you don't learn history, then you're bound to repeat it." I think that he's right. If people forget about Columbine, then someone else is going to repeat it. Then it will be the same reaction all over again. I know that the tragedy at Virginia Tech may be the deadliest campus shooting now, but that doesn't mean that people can forget all the other campus shootings. If anybody died on a school campus, it's a tragedy. So why forget about it? The government or someone should establish a school violence awareness week and schools should hold assemblies to talk about the shootings so that students know that they happened. I want to think that the Virginia Tech shootings and Columbine massacre didn't happen, too, but what will that mean for future generations? As of right now, there is not one history book that I have read that talks about Columbine. You would think that a school massacre would be just as important as any war.

I am so against violence. I live in Chilhowie and I go to Chilhowie High School. Chilhowie is not that far from Virginia Tech. So April 16, 2007 was like 9/11 for us here in Southwest Virginia. I'm not talking about giving the shooters of these massacres more publicity, because I know that they don't deserve it. I'm talking about keeping another Virginia Tech or Columbine from happening.

Starry-Eyed and Heartbroken

I fell in love with this great guy. He was perfect in my eyes. We were a prom hookup last year. I didn't have a date, and his date had ditched him, so our mutual friends made us dance together. We began dating the Monday after prom. He had the prettiest blue eyes, I could stare into them all day if I was given the choice. He wasn't like all the other guys that I usually crushed on. He actually had manners. Have you ever met a 17-year-old guy who had manners? Most of them just want to get you into the backseat of their car. We were so cute. Neither of us knew what to do. I was his first and he was my first. Of course there was a little confusion at first. I didn't get to see him very much. I saw him before school, between certain classes, and right after school when the bell rang. I never saw him after 5:00 pm or on weekends. I was perfectly contented with that. I trusted him. I knew that he wouldn't go around with other girls, because he wasn't like that. His parents didn't know that he was dating me because he was afraid that they would give him a hard time. I tried to convince him to tell them, but he was set on not telling them. I didn't get to see him on the weekends because he wanted to spend time with his family and spend time doing his homework. His school work came before anything. He was always under pressure to get good grades. We had so much in common. He also had some things in common with my dad, which scared him a little. We dated for a month and a half. That was the best month and a half I'd had in my entire life. I've gone through so much in my life, that it was great to finally be happy with my life. When we held hands, I felt like I was actually important to someone. I felt like nothing in the world could mess this up. During our relationship, we were apart for one week. He went on the senior trip to Washington, D.C. I had to come to school and do everything by myself. That was the worst week of my entire life. To make matters worse, my sister was put in the hospital for emergency gall bladder surgery. The doctors said that she had gall stones all the way into her pancreas. By the next Monday, my sister was still in the hospital, but she had already made it through her surgery, and my boyfriend came back home. I was head over heels for him, and we had only been together for a couple of weeks. I seriously felt like we were meant to be together, even though we were only 17 and we had the rest of our lives to figure stuff like that out. He was about to graduate, which scared me because I didn't know what was going to happen between us. Would we stay together and try to make the distance work or would it not last?

Things were going great between us. But, the week before his graduation, he broke up with me. It was totally unexpected because things were going so great between us. He said that his grades dropped in one of his classes, and that he would sit in class and think about me and about us. It sucked when he broke up with me. I never stopped crying about it. It hurt so much because I loved being with him. Even though I never moved on, it seems like he already has. That hurts a lot. After his graduation, he didn't talk to me at all. He ignored every message that I sent to him on Myspace. Eventually, he deleted me from his friends list and blocked me. I'll never forget the day he deleted me from his friends list. One morning at Upward Bound, I was working on my webpage. I logged onto my Myspace account, and he wasn't there. He was my number one. I remember thinking that maybe it was a mistake. So, I logged off and logged back on several times. After I realized that he had deleted me, I started crying right there in my webpage class. I felt like no one gave a crap. The only time during the summer that I saw him was at a viewing. His cousin had passed away. I saw him, so I went over to see if he was okay. He wouldn't say word one to me. His friends were laughing at me because I even attempted to talk to him, which made me feel like he had been saying mean things about me. My mom said that she saw him in Food City a couple times, so I started going to Food City everyday to see if I could catch him in there. I never did run into him at Food City that summer.

Two months had passed, and it was time for me to start school again. I had a hard time because I had to walk down the halls and see every place that we ever stood at and held hands and talked. It hurt a lot because I had to go back to the school, he didn't. He got to start a whole new life at college. He was all that I could think about. This time, my grades suffered. I had to drop Math Analysis because my head was so full of thoughts that I couldn't grasp the concept of what the teacher was talking about; not to mention that the teacher was a bitch to me anyways. I asked her for help with one thing, and she acts snooty. Anyways, one month into the school year and three months after my boyfriend and I had broken up, I was in the guidance counselor's office. That's where I took my online class. I also had a friend in there that was the office help. I asked her if she had talked to "Bob" (that's not his real name, by the way) anytime over the summer. I wanted to know if he had said anything about me. She said that she had, but it was about classes. So I started talking to her about what had gone on between "Bob" and me. That night, she sent him a message on Myspace telling him about what I had said. He sent me a message apologizing for his actions, saying things like that he was an idiot for doing what he did, he felt horrible for ignoring me, and that when found the little "scrapbooks" that I made for him, he almost broke down and cried. He wanted me to forgive him, and that if I didn't that he would understand because he didn't deserve it after what he had put me through. Of course I forgave him. I still wanted to be with him. I replied to message, telling him that I wanted to be with him really bad. He messaged me back and said that he didn't want to be in a situation where there was this much distance between us. I understood that, even though I was upset at first. I saw him at a football game. I thought that there was maybe some feelings left between us, but his friend blew that out of the water. She started saying stuff about me, telling my sisters that she was going to tell me that she was his new girlfriend. She also told my sisters that he told her to come and get him after I sat down with him. I don't know if that true or not. He said that it wasn't. After she had treated me so badly that night, she tried to say goodbye to me. I yelled at her, right in front of some of his family members. I felt like an ass. He got upset with me, which made me feel like he was sticking up for her when I was the one that she was torturing. I think that maybe he was upset because I yelled at her in front of his family; which, even I felt bad about that. We've been talking for a couple months. I was hoping that maybe there was still some feelings between us, but I don't think that there is anymore. I send him emails, and he chooses which ones he wants to reply to. I tried to get him to take me to my senior prom, but he wouldn't, which broke my heart. I had a miserable time there, by the way.

I still want to be with him so bad, though. I miss him so much. There's not a day that goes that I don't think about him. When I hear a love song, I start to cry. Ever since we broke up, I've cried every day. Even at prom, when they played slow songs, I started to cry because it made me think of all the songs that we danced to at last year's prom. I have those songs on my iPod. I really, really thought that we were meant to be. I guess he doesn't think so.

Report Cards

I am a little upset today. I got my report card this morning, and there's two A's and two D's on there. This wouldn't be a big deal if I were any other student. But I'm not just any other student. I am ranked in the top 20% of my class and my GPA was a 3.625. Then I found out some good news: most of all the seniors that took AP classes this year had problems with the class.