cassandraclare:

“vanillanightt asked you:

It’s not really a question, but an observation. I understand the reasons, but on Facebook after the recent post about TMI casting information a lot of fans are confused as to why they would want an Asian actor for Magnus Bane. Think you could clear it up, once…

Sarah and Brenda took a lot of flower pictures. I’ll email them all to them. But I’m gonna use this one for this post because I think it’s metaphoric of how I’ve grown.

I’ve bloomed.

I’ve just returned from giving a presentation on my internship that I’ve been doing this semester. Presentations aren’t anything new to me—I’ve done plenty every month for IB since freshman year. But, this one, my mother and boyfriend came to see. Of course, I warned them that it was going to be boring, but they came to support me anyways, which meant a lot to me.

I looked over at Mother during the presentation and I saw her smiling—afterward, she told me I did great. And this is something quite rare; my parents don’t usually get too involved with my school life. I can usually handle everything myself. But it was nice to show her the culmination of the hours I’ve put into the ER and I think she really is proud of what I do. That gives me a lot of satisfaction, because your parents really are your first teachers and they have your best interests in mind. It’s nice knowing that the people I looked up to first are supportive of what I’m doing, who I’m becoming.

My boyfriend is also very sweet for spending three hours late on a school night before his final IB exam tomorrow watching mainly strangers present. Afterward, he expressed his awe at my abilities as an orator and me as a human being in general, “captivating the audience from the get-go.” It’s nice to know someone I regard so highly regards me in a similar manner.

But, here I am, the sum of all the people I’ve met and all the experiences and trials I’ve gone through. And I do believe I’ve opened up to the world and I’m not closing in on myself and accepting mediocrity. I’m searching for greatness within myself and I’m hoping someday I’ll achieve it.

My boyfriend and I, being the superb test taking students we are, picked the same essay questions to write! Well, of course we did—those two options were the best out of all of them.

But then you realize that none of the questions were that great and you accidentally write an essay saying that Truman was at Tehran and Yalta…Ooops x.x That probably killed my score. Eh—it’s better than thinking Brezhnev was Gorbachev ;D Besides, I got into college already =p

It’s May 6th. I graduate June 6th.

I’M FREAKING OUT.

Holy cannoli. I used to think I was good at math. Then I took Maths Higher Level. I mean, yes, I’m doing math that is years beyond what the standard is, but I realize more and more each day how much of an art than a science it truly is. The Paper 1 test today killed my soul. As it killed the souls of all the other kids dumb enough to challenge it. The Math Studies kids are probably the smarter group, deciding to find the mean, median, and mode of a set of numbers instead of mathematically inducting a trigonometric matrix.

Reason number 1 I turned away from engineering =p

But, I mean, I got some college calc waived for next year. So I’m hoping for some super waiving this year xD Well. Two more papers to go for math. Let’s finish out stronger than before?

Today marks not only the day that my soul was picked to pieces by 14 pages of paper, but also five months from the time that I’d found someone just as odd as I am. And we celebrated by studying for Paper 1 during 1st period through the end of ELT, sat down for our two hour examination, then went on to study for Paper 2 for 3 hours—a total of eight hours of math.

And now it’s time for me to go off to finish a paper before setting out clothing (dress in layers!), making lunch, then falling fast asleep to catch a few dreams of passing tomorrow’s test.

Testing is upon us! Which means it’s time fooooooor: MAY TESTING SURVIVAL KITS! Last year, I was pretty selfish and only gathered things that I’d like to keep around me in testing environments just for myself. This year, I was feeling festive and decided to make one for a sister of mine, my boyfriend, and my best friend. They were each a little different—for example, I added a Band-Aid and herbal stomachache medications to my sister’s bag because she tends to get stomachaches when nervous (calcium carbonate—i.e. TUMS would work just as well), Asprin went into my friend’s bag because she suffers from stress-induced headaches, and my boyfriend got some lotion because his hands are always itchy and cracked in cold weather which could be uncomfortable to write tests with. Anywho, this picture is an example of the bags I made <3

Actually, most tests don’t allow many items. IB tests disallow food or drink (and souls, but, you know…). So, being prudent about what one brings is prudent.

I like to keep around a lot more things, though.

An extra pencil, because it’s good to be prepared. An erasable pen is good for math tests and essays where pencil isn’t allowed, but erasing would save sooo much time. And make it look better. More professional. You want to avoid crossing things out.

Tissues are a must. No one wants to be that sniffly kid in the background (you know who you are…). Along the same lines, I throw some cough drops in there to throw at those coughing kids. Some calcium carbonate to calm queasy stomachs, some Asprin/Ibuprofen  for the head, and perhaps a Band-Aid for paper cuts when you’re in the zone and doing some hardcore paper turning. Also, since we all wear glasses, there’s a glass lens cleaner in there. It distracts me, personally, if there are smudges on my glasses.

I have a few squares of chocolate in there as well as Wintergreen mints. Because I like them.

Also, minty gum is in there because it’s not socially acceptable to eat annoying people it’s nice to have something to chew on sometimes during difficult questions.

I tossed in a little note of good luck and there we go!