'The End of the World' (written late November/early December)

Apocalypses fascinate people. What kind of apocalypse will it be? What will happen afterwards? They create a great playground for writers to explore not only humans bravely facing impossible odds but also the events that occur afterwards. Are we still in existence? How do we cope? I enjoy novels and shows about small groups of people overthrowing tyrannical governments and overcoming overwhelming odds as much as the next teenager. And I believe that the world as we know it is going to end one day and that it will usher in a new world. Even though I’ve been questioning my faith over the last few years, I’ve internalised basic Christian beliefs to the point that I would still set my moral compass by the Ten Commandments, even if I don’t always follow it, and would still believe that the world is one day going to end, etc, even if I suddenly decided to walk away from Christianity. I’ve struggled with why God has let the world go on for so long doing things that He disagrees with and what the purpose of us living separately to Him is, unless it’s just to give us time to decide whether we want to live with Him before bringing everyone back and judging us. But, regardless of how I am mentally with things, part of me will never let me stray too far from Christianity. It is a part of me and even when I have doubts, something in me holds me to the rock. Or the Rock holds me there.

The idea of the eschaton has always kind of scared me. It probably didn’t help that Left Behind was my favourite book series when I was twelve, when I first prayed with the uncertainty of whether I was really a Christian or had just been doing what was set out for me and the worry that I was only making the decision to pray for salvation out of the fear of the consequences of not doing so, the stick behind the proverbial donkey. While the fears of not being ‘truly’ saved lingered on and off over the years, my main issue with the Second Coming was the idea of lost opportunities. I guess part of me has always said that it will come eventually, and that’s great, but I want the chance to get married and work and live my life here before things happen and the playing field changes in unknowable ways. I knew that heaven was a sure thing and would happen at some point and be forever and be perfect, but I wanted a chance in this imperfect world first. That viewpoint was held whenever I was comfortable in my faith. When I wasn’t, I’d view it with worry that it was going to come in my time of doubt and that I wouldn’t be ready for it (conversely and rather strangely, after reading Left Behind a small part of me wanted to be like Bruce Barnes as it would mean I’d have the opportunity to minister to people, especially as I’d never been completely sure about whether my father went to church because my mother did or due to his own belief in Christ). But the point is that – and this is an admission that I’d never make to my family – one of the reasons that I hate hearing reports about dates for the end of the world is that part of me fears that that theory is true and that I won’t be ready and that I will hurriedly do more spiritually out of a fear of the apocalypse rather than out of love of God. This is, I believe, why superheroes are making a comeback. People have fears about technological developments or global relations or zombies and escape in stories of society facing circumstances that it cannot overcome and being saved by a person who obtained powers from spiders or however Superman got them (he’s like an alien, right?) or through technology. We worry that our own society is going to need a superhero, so we rally around imaginary superheroes. The thing is that we have been given a superhero, Jesus, but we ignore him. Now, my problem is that part of me accepts this but the other part struggles with sin and with whether I’ve been forgiven or have sought forgiveness and turned back too many times and whether the Bible is even true. It’s like I sought explanations from my brother (I still need to read his Extension History on the historiography of Jesus Christ, actually; online note to self), but the more he assured me that there was actual proof the less faith I had, until I’ve ended up in this weird place where I accept that it’s all true but am distanced and feel disconnected from God. Did I, while seeking intellectual reassurance, lose my emotional one? Am I like Victor Frankenstein, seeking scientific discovery (or in my case what apologetics have stated) and sacrificing emotional connection and values for it?

The other, more prominent and more easily communicated, reason that I hate the theorizing about when the world will end is that I believe that it is impossible for us to know. The Bible says that God alone knows the exact time. Mayans living in ancient times had no idea. People near the end of a millennium are just guessing. Christians trying to use whatever formula to work out a particular date have no chance. The latter annoys me as it also just results in a string of potential ends-of-the-world that just make people laugh over the claims, have less belief in its eventual occurrence, and have even more derision for Christianity.

I’m also a person who seeks assurance from others’ opinions. I hate to admit it when I firmly believe that what other people think about you doesn't matter as much as what God and you think about you, but it matters to me. Which is, I believe, why my mind often blanks when I'm talking to someone I barely know and refuses to give me words to say. (It's often not even wanting to say something but being too shy, although that happens too; it's just that around strangers/friendly acquaitances I have nothing to say, but then when I'm with my family or close friends I'm suddenly a torrent of words.) Even though I know that it doesn’t matter that other people choose different pairings in Fire Emblem or that it doesn’t matter that I didn’t build up enough support between the characters to get the ending I wanted, I need to replay the game (in Hector’s mode, so it may not really count as replaying) so that Lyn and Hector wind up married and Eliwood and Ninian end up together and, while I appreciate the ability for people to make their own desired pairing, as long as it is between certain characters, work, I don’t like knowing that other people are equally convinced that Hector ended up with Florina or that other rider or alone. I don’t like my brother feeling that he’s won an argument or that he is right when Mum and I both disagree with him, because he’s wrong but he thinks otherwise. While I’m fine believing something that other people don’t believe, I feel like the Aurons whose reality was endangered by other people’s disbelief.

So I am 99.9% sure that the world will not end the day I get my HSC results, and that belief is not even affected by the annoyance that I would feel if I’ve finally completely finished high school and gotten my final results only to have it all rendered irrelevant. In fact, even that 0.1% believes that it won’t. It’s just that that 0.1%, or probably a greater percentage actually, contains my uncertainties and my fears and is telling me there are people out there that believe that it will end that day and nothing I could say would change their minds; what if it does? What will happen afterwards, and will I be ready for it?

Expect the unexpected: exam-style

‘Expect the unexpected.’ Well, we’re not going to just walk around expecting a giant piano to fall on our heads or other extremely unlikely events to occur, but this is decent advice for exams; or at least ‘be prepared for the unexpected’ is. I was hit with some unexpected situations in high school exams. In our year nine English midcourse, the teacher setting the Romeo and Juliet section used an online quiz, which a friend and I had both used to revise leading up to the exam. In my French Continuers speaking HSC, we spent a few minutes discussing driving – which I hadn’t expected. My initial shock was no doubt evident.

 

In general, questions for the French Continuers speaking exam were rather strange. One person in my class was asked about the difference between France and Switzerland, and then asked about the difference between French people and Swiss people when he said that he hadn’t spent enough time in Switzerland (a day a year prior) to really know. Another guy, who was also studying Japanese, was asked the difference between France and Japan. One of the questions that we all did as practice, though I don’t believe that any of us were asked, was “What makes a good friend?” (One weird variation of it that we were asked was “Are you a good friend?”, which was really awkward and I just wanted to answer it with “Je ne sais pas, vous devez demander cette question à mes amis”.) (I don’t know, you should ask this question to my friends).

 

There was no way for me to know that I was going to spend a fifth of my exam talking about driving, or for Tom to know that mentioning that he’d visited Switzerland would open him up to questions on that front, or for our other classmates to know to expect the other questions they were asked. But I, and while I can’t speak for them probably they too, could have been better prepared by expecting a question that I might not be ready for, by having told myself to keep calm and pause to think rather than to start immediately and then to stumble a little over the sentence. So I guess the point of this, for you and for me as a new uni student, is to prepare like crazy (while sleeping well leading up to it, of course; I value sleep over extra last minute refreshing) but to go into tests expecting to face a question that will floor you and to have to work through it so that on the tests where you do face that question, you can quickly accept it and work on dealing with it rather than spending a minute despairing internally while trying to find a way to get through it. So expect the expected, because a lot of the time what’s expected is what will occur (we know that submerging ourselves in burning water won’t make us feel cool and pleasantly refreshed, after all), but be prepared for the occasional curveball.

Updates and an equation about marks

I'm about to upload a group of posts that I drafted in December but didn't upload because I wanted to go back to expand and edit them. I'm reading through them and making minor changes before posting but am going to largely leave them untouched because they're really just holding up more posts as I wanted to wait until these were finished but now, looking back on them, am not sure whether I can really continue the trains of thought. I'll leave the ones that I didn't really get a good start on and hopefully come back to them at a later point.

Considering that the title for this post is going to be Update, I may as well give some updates on life at the moment. I'm happy with my HSC results. I wasn't on the first day as it was, while in the middle of the seven-mark range I'd wanted, a mark under the mark that I truly wanted. However, I then reminded myself that I should be very happy with that, considering I didn't study as much as I'd planned (I'd thought I'd do fourish hours a day, starting the second week of the holidays, but didn't) and was distracted during the last two weeks of exams, and that it was well over what I needed. When people from my year were sharing their results on our Facebook formal page, a person made a comment about how your mark isn't that important or something. Another person said how yes, it's not, but it represents the work that he put in over the year. Reading that exchange, even though both guys had been more forceful with their statements and from memory it was a bigger issue, was really interesting. It's important to see your mark as an equation: ability + effort + other (alertness on day, etc) = mark. If you didn't put in as much effort as you should have or if you'd been nervous and so had slept poorly leading up to exams, then that's the case. Don't look at it as "I didn't try my 'personal best', or there were extraneous circumstances that affected my mark, so it's not a true indication of my ability".  That's life. You put in the effort you did and you were as relaxed as you were and things happened, like they always do, and that culminated in your mark being what it was. Look at it as "My mark was very satisfactory for the effort I put in; if I wanted to try to get higher, I should have studied more/been more disciplined in sleeping patterns, and while there wasn't much I could do about those personal problems that cropped up during exam period, I could either appeal or I couldn't, and if I couldn't then I tried my best". I empathise with people who had personal problems during exam period. My grandfather was in hospital from the Sunday night leading into the third week until mid-December, and I had four exams in that time period, including one the day after he was admitted. But I still see it as important to view it in the latter perspective rather than the former. It's saying very similar things but the essence is different - one implies that the fact that you could've gone better renders that mark invalid, whereas the other says that the mark is a good indication of ability + effort + other and that there may have been things out of your control affecting both effort and other but that they happened and that you need to move on.

Okay, glancing over that paragraph it looks like I'm not content with my mark, but I really am. It's just that that process was the one I went through when reconciling myself with not getting over 90 and I tend to ramble when I have a keyboard in front of me (the computer kind, though the musical kind is about two metres away).

I've also started working in child care. I simultaneously love it and am terrified that I'll encounter something I can't deal with. (Yeah, proposition at the end of a sentence, but it sounds weird as 'something with which I can't deal'.). Which makes it a very good experience as the field in which I want to work is one where the point is helping people, which requires interaction and uncertainty about what the next cases will hold. Yeah, I still don't like calling non-family members on the phone (or even answering it, really, though that's less stressful). I can handle best friends but then if a sibling or parent answers it it reverts back to non-family-member-what-do-I-say worry levels. Even though it's just a phone call. That's something that I better overcome before I finish my degree, eh? Maybe I should call everyone whose number I have or go out to a park or something and make myself talk to every person who is neither a child without a parent, who shouldn't be talking to strangers, nor a creepy-looking stranger; isn't immersing oneself in one's fear supposed to help? Anyway, I am loving my job and the nerves at each new day have almost completely disappeared, so I think I just need to get accustomed to meeting new people.

Update on Post-HSC Life

I haven’t blogged for a while because I’ve been busy with my exams, NaNoWriMo, reading and post-exam things. But so much has happened.

Firstly, exams. They mostly went well. My Frankenrunner essay could’ve been a lot better structurally – I ran out of time for it so ended up with an introduction, one ginormous paragraph that was packed with context, content, techniques, etc and a conclusion – and I don’t think I went into enough depth with my SOR essay on Hasidism despite mentioning three good points, but mostly I’m really pleased with how things went. My double-exam day went well too. French Extension finished earlier than I'd thought (I’d thought that my exam would start an hour later than it did, and I ended up starting about ten minutes earlier than the set time too) so I ended up waiting for Dad and ended up spinning around and making a noise that was kind of weird and not quite a squeal, but a similar concept, and watching the then-latest episode of The Lizzie Bennet Diaries. Now, I’m just stoked that I’ve finished. It's a little weird being able to stay up late watching a movie without considering the consequences for school the next day or for homework completion and being able to go out and do things in the middle of a week day, though. And signing out was bittersweet. I was fine for most of it but my SOR teacher, usually really focused (though hilarious) in lessons, was beaming so much (I think it was the wine…) and I saw my accelerated SAC teacher, who I hadn’t sought out but she passed me while I was waiting for another teacher, and my French teacher said a bunch of really nice things in person and in the school reference that she’d written for me…so it ended kind of sadly. I guess I just have to encourage any children of mine or of my brother to go there and I’ll go to the parent learning groups, even as an aunt, etc just to visit.

I’ve since gone shopping with Mum, visited my grandfather a couple of times, gone to a friend’s seventeenth, gone to another friend’s eighteenth, played basketball a few times, started practicing on the punching bag (I think I need to rest a day or two as my knuckles are getting bad), swam a fair bit and walked up and down the mall talking to my best friend about ‘cliques’ at school and Shakespeare and the degree to which our school is nerdy and indie. I just saw us as nerdy but she made quite a decent case for indie.
 

Mum and I also visited my grandmother about a week or two ago, which was great as it provided some perspective on things. There have been some issues in which we’ve all sided with my grandfather (though he’d rather that we not choose sides) and it was nice stepping back and spending time solely with Nanny and getting the chance to see how things have affected her over the years. It’s given me a new appreciation for her side, so while things are still weird at times and I’ll always take Dar’s side on those particular issues I’ll hopefully remember that this isn’t just black and white and she had put up with a lot prior to last year’s fiasco. It’s always good to take a step back from things and view them objectively or from another person’s point of view; it provides a much fairer view of situations, promotes peace (sorry, still got SOR Religion and Peace on the brain) and helps you grow as a person.

On a lighter note – NaNoWriMo! My novel went well. I stopped at  about 51.5k without having finished a couple of scenes throughout the story, and editing is naturally a must, but there are some scenes, metaphors and similes that I am really happy with. The best way to get yourself to do something is to do it at a time when you’re not supposed to do it. My final exam was on 7 November, so I’d decided to make sure that I did exactly and only the word count per day. Because writing was more interesting than studying, I wrote a lot in bursts throughout the day. With my highest word count for a day being about 6500, I wrote 21557 words in the first week. I kept up the required daily word count for a few days after the exam before slacking off a bit for the next few days. The great thing, though, is that I had that buffer and so knew that I could miss a day or two, or not meet the daily word count for a few days, and still make it. But while it’s great to get ahead so that you have this buffer and so can be at ease mentally instead of constantly worrying about having to catch up and whether you’ll even finish, the main point is just that it’s easier to do the thing that you’re not supposed to do than the thing that you’re supposed to do. Take cleaning my room as an example. I had a few stacks of school work and lots of books strewn across my floor. Before the end of exams, there was a day when I really wanted to clean up that room but I knew that I had to wait until I’d read more and finished my exams so as to be able to deal with both suitably. Now that exams are over, cleaning my room is pretty much the last thing that I want to do. I want it clean and I’d like to get to it eventually, but it no longer has the same appeal as that one day. My aunt saw it and commented on it before she and my cousin went on holidays, though, so wanting it to be significantly neater before they returned was good motivation. It’s not clear yet, but it’s a lot more organised and the schoolwork portion of it is done, except for a folder of English sheets that I started putting together and then didn’t really keep a track of it.

My goal to read 100 books this year is well underway. I think I have about eight books left to read. I’ve been rereading Deltora Quest, which is great due to the childhood memories and also the new appreciation of it that has come from completing NaNoWriMo, having not read it for a few years and visualizing the events more and realizing that a lot of gross things were given a more detailed description than I’d realized. After Isle of the Dead and Sister of the South, I’ll probably move onto Les Miseerables; I bought the book a year or two ago but haven’t gotten around to reading it, and really want to have read it before watching the upcoming movie (though we watched a movie of it in year eight or nine French).

HSC Update

Oh, and because I forgot to mention this in the other post (it wouldn't have suited there, anyway), my exams are going well. I've only had my two English Advanced ones so far - so two out of seven - but while my Frankenrunner essay consisted of an introduction, a ginormous paragraph stuffed with info on context and philosophical influences and a theme and examples, and a conclusion, most of the two tests went well. My next exam's on Tuesday. The good thing is that getting into the exams has reminded me that they're not too daunting - they're just like our trials and midcourses, except worth more and a bit more final - but the problem is that it's really hard to get motivated to study for French. It's a skill-based course, so, while practice is important and I've written out extensive grammar notes and plan to practice the grammar points and specific tasks over the next two days, it's something that you don't need really specific knowledge for.

My posts today were both kind of rushed because I went to my cousin's uncle's memorial service this morning and the time is now in the AMs. But I really wanted to write an update about how exams were going after having written pre-English exam nine days ago.

The Bittersweet Transitional Period Begins

This transition from high school to university is really bittersweet. It’s slightly daunting as I’ve spent the last six years with, mostly, the same 180ish students. They know me and I know them. We may have incorrect perceptions of each other and some of us may have never actually spoken to one another, but we generally know who everyone else is and are comforted by that. The past three or so years have seen friendships change as people develop and change classes and find new people who share the same interests as them. We have all changed in the past six years, whether it’s in terms of our opinions or our understanding of the world or how we act or how we look. And I love that these people have shared that journey with me and helped me change and, in some cases, maybe been helped by me. 

In many ways I only became comfortable with a group of people in the last few years. There was a time in year nine or so where I literally spent recess and lunch sitting at a group and not talking to anyone. The group had changed since I’d first joined it in year seven and I just didn’t feel comfortable with most of them or that I related to them. The decision to leave that group was one of the best decisions of my school career – behind the decision to go to my school in the first place and the decision not to change schools for years eleven and twelve – because I found my current group and formed some really close friendships that I hope we’ll maintain in the coming years. I’m not sure whether my original group would have noticed that I had left, at least for a while. I literally just stopped sitting there one day after realising that it was pathetic to sit with a group of people with whom you never conversed. But while many of my fellow students will be attending the same university as me, we’ll all be scattered across different faculties and will be choosing different courses at different times and on different days (hopefully we can organise having lunch or dinner as a group monthly to keep in touch, or join the Frisbee club or something together). I would hate to one day run into an old friend, at the ten year reunion or just at the shops or work or our kids’ school or something, and not remember their name or who they are.

But while I’m going to miss sitting at our table every recess and lunch under the tree with the things that get in your eyes, I’m looking forward to the opportunity of being a new person. Part of being at one place so long is that people form expectations of you and of how you’ll act. That’s good, as it makes you feel comfortable and known. And it’s good because you know what to expect of them, and it’s generally quite similar to what they expect of you. But while quickly meeting people at uni who share the same interests as you is unlikely – come on, it took me about three and a half years to find my true friendship group at school – university offers the chance to start again. It’s the first day of high school all over again, except you have those friends and that experience and the changes that have occurred, and so while shyness and uncertainty are going to reign their ugly heads, it’s a chance to say ‘No, I’m not going to be like that here’ and to try your best not to be. It’s not quite a clean slate, because you still have that history and will hopefully cherish it, but it’s like opening up a new tab on your internet browser while keeping Facebook opened. You’ll still see when your friends have something to say and can still contact them, but you can do absolutely anything you want to do in your new tab.

Graduation magic

I graduated high school last week :D. I still have my final exams, which are daunting now that I don't have the barrier of a few days left at school and my formal and muck up day and graduation to partially conceal it. It will be fine though, I'm sure; the only problem is that I need to motivate myself to keep working, especially in English Advanced (my essays really need some work). The simultaneously worst and best thing is that the English Advanced exams are first; it's the subject that I'm most worried about, but then at least I will be able to do extra work accordingly over the next two weeks and then it'll be out of the way and I'll just have the other exams to go. Which have their own levels of stress because I really want to do well in CAFS and French Extension, both of which I went well in for school assessments. Anyway.

My best friend visited yesterday; we watched a lot of Supernatural episodes, most of which I recall elements of (surprising, because it seemed to all merge together the first time I watched it) and I set her up to Facebook (whoo, finally!!!). We also ended up psychoanalysing (in our very inexperienced way) the acquaintance that my "it's over" post was about and her sister, realising how little we both know about her (despite the fact that we've known her since we were seven and about five respectively), how much her sister seeks social validation and how the acquaintance may have, unbeknownst to us, always sought the same but in a more subtle way. And we discussed her break up and speculated on factors that may have influenced it. Yeah, my bestie commented on how we regressed from bookworms to gossips. Before suggesting that we both look at where we placed psychology on our UAC preferences.

The last three days of term were amazing. I haven't spoken to the friend that I mentioned in the earlier post except for a brief 'hi' at graduation, but the formal was awesome. We danced a lot as a group, there were speeches and it just seemed kind of magical. One of my favourite moments would have had to be when one of my friends ended up getting the deputy principal to dance and he somehow ended up bopping awkwardly in the middle of a circle of jumping teenage boys. I hope that I never stop thinking about the formal when I hear Bon Jovi's Living On a Prayer (our last dance at the formal). The water fight the next day was also a blast. A guy from my English class shaved his hair for cancer (his younger brother died a year or two ago). My best friend shot the principal (lightly and from two metres away). It was weird seeing the change from 170 formally attired seventeen- and eighteen-year-olds who often looked older to a group of people running around with shaving cream and water guns, running down the slip 'n' slide and mostly just relaxing together. Then there was graduation. Omgsh. I kind of ate too much in the French party that we had beforehand and have always had a fear of being in front of crowds etc, so was trying to manage a slight feeling of sickness, sadness and overall worry at the fact that I was going to have to walk up in front of everyone. It went well. My lip was trembling the whole time I was standing in front of the assembly but I was able to actually look at people other than my family, which is a significant improvement from year seven. I put off writing about this as the last week was so rollercoastery and amazing and I wasn't sure how to truly capture it in words. It didn't hurt that our vice captains' speech managed to both incorporate a Harry Potter reference (we've had five deputy principals in the past six years; they mentioned how our current one is the only one to survive the DADA-professor-like curse) and a mention to how, in year eight, someone in our year managed to convince most of the year, and most of the teachers, that someone else was dead.

Squashing it up together like this probably hasn't done it justice but there's no way to really do it justice so I'm just going to have to settle with this. Graduating is equally exciting and daunting and is just a generally amazing experience that I am so happy to have had.

The Point At Which You Say "You Won't Hurt Me Anymore"

My last week of school has also seen the breakdown of one of my oldest friendships. But I'm not really that sad* because it's definitely been a long time coming and while you may not get to choose whether you get hurt, you get to choose who hurts you (The Fault in Our Stars, John Green). And I'm tired of this girl hurting me.

We've known each other since we played netball together when we were about seven, so for over a decade. Except we didn't really see each other much after that until we found out that we were both going to the same high school, where neither of us had any really close friends. So our mums did the whole make-it-so-that-they'll-have-each-other thing. And it's kind of worked out - we were still friends until today, right? I think six years is a good length of time for something that only really started due to a lack of other friends. In year seven, we didn't really have much to talk about other than netball and school so we often just sat together and ate without talking. Honestly, I wasn't a very good friend to her then. Bookworm me, who had gone to four different primary schools (one of which I went to twice), hadn't had many lasting friendships and thought that it was perfectly acceptable to read at recess and lunch as we weren't talking much anyway. Well, she ended up running away one day (literally, I was following her then she and the people that I was in this club thing with ran up the stairs and I decided to be dignified and not follow and just send her a text saying that our friendship was over) and I hung around by myself for a while until these two girls invited me to sit with them (I wasn't sure whether it was a permanent invite and I felt weird just joining their group if they hadn't asked me but they kept asking until I just stayed and joined their group). Two years later, my ex-friend and I were in the same classes and befriended each other again and became a lot closer than we had been in year seven. In years nine and ten, I considered her to be one of my three best friends. We're really similar.

But she has a habit of only really ever considering herself. She does what's best for her or what she thinks will be fun without considering the consequences. After one of my friends told her about her crush, she went right up to the guy and told him about it. She complained that these two girls kept sitting with us but always encouraged them. She and her best friend created a kind of Burn Book folder last year with things such as a hierarchy categorising the influence held by differnet members of our group.

So I came to accept that our friendship is really superficial. I could talk to her about netball or school or the environment, but if it were about something important it would be better to speak to my best friend. It always meant more ot me than it did to her. For example, last year my grandfather almost died. He was taken into emergency before staying in intensive care for a week or two then slowly moving back down the rungs of how-critical-is-your-problem. I didn't really tell anybody about it while it was happening. One of my best friends had lost her grandfather a few months previously and I didn't want to dredge up bad memories. I should have called my other best friend and considered it but didn't. So I turned to my third close friend and told her everything and how he was about to be released but I was really worried that he wouldn't get the quality of care that he needed. Her response? To express brief concern before cheering when her friend got a spare (it was at bowling) and then proceeding to never speak of the issue again. So I decided not to talk to her about anything truly important to me. I had my mum and my dog and my best friends for that. But, you know, we were still friends, so I figured that she still had some level of concern for my happiness and wellbeing, just like I did for hers and for that of my other friends.

Um, no. I was wrong.

We had to organise formal table seatings recently. It was initially perfect - we had exactly twenty people and exactly twenty seats if we took up two tables - but then we realised that the friend who had wanted to sit elsewhere no longer wanted to and the friend who had been sitting with another group for the whole year wanted to return to ours and my friend who wasn't part of our group didn't have any other close friends going and so wanted to sit with us if possible. So we fixed it. We had two tables of eight and one of seven. No problem. Except we then had to cut a table somewhere. So Friday, when I was at home sick, my 'friend' and her friend (it's really hard identifying who I'm talking about without actually saying names) put the names on the new list. Except they decided that it should be 10-10-5 (they asked two other people who are best friends but not really close with anyone else so as to bump up the numbers). Because the last group only had five people and there was another group of ten, we lost that table. We found out about that today. As I had been part of the three girls who had asked everyone who they wanted to sit with etc and organised the seating, I was going to go and put our names down again. She said that she already had but that I should go talk to the organiser. The conversation pretty much went around in circles for a little while as she didn't tell me exactly what she meant, so one of the other organisees and I went to check it out and found that the five names had been white outed off. My 'friend' had found out the period beforehand. After much worry and debate during the day and discussions of how we could make it work and whether we could get that table back (we couldn't) or rearrange our tables to make it work (difficult), we talked to the year advisor and she'd already replaced the two best-friends-who-aren't-particularly-close-to-anybody with my best friend and I and slotted the other three people (two of whom have been part of our group for years) into the best spaces that she could find for them. Not a perfect solution, but an acceptable one. We have to eat at the tables and then can shuffle chairs over so the three of them are sitting with the rest of us.

The hard thing is that she never apologised, admitted at least partial responsibility or tried to help us fix it. She just kept saying that we had to talk to the organisers and that she was pretty sure that there were groups of two and three seats available on other tables that we could use. Ah, thanks. Why don't you and your friend take those seats then? I was fine with sitting with my best friend and other three friends, though my ideal would obviously be sitting with my group, but the hardest thing was that she never even told me, let alone helped. I found out because I happened to see the seating plan. If we hadn't, the five of us could have, for all she knew, been split up completely. And she didn't care enough to give us a heads up. There was no "Sorry, if I hadn't changed the plans so that I could sit with the people that I wanted to sit with - but didn't initially tell you that I wanted to sit with - everything would be fine." There was no "I'll help you find Caitlin." There was only a "You have to talk to Caitlin, she normally sits over there."

Part of the disappointment is the knowledge that we haven't really been true friends for a while, we've just seen each other as such. She moved two or so years ago and started hanging out with a group of people that I honestly don't think is good for her, and she's changed accordingly. I think that was the turning point of our friendship. She had started growing up and considering other people's feelings but since then she's become kind of bitchy and we just haven't been that close. I've been on her periphery; she talks to the wider group if it suits her, but doesn't consider them actual people with actual feelings when it doesn't.

At least this chapter of our relationship is finishing with the end of school. We were good friends in years nine and ten and distant ones these past two years, and I guess our friendship is just a bumpy high school one that has run its course and crashed just before the end of school. We're probably doing the same degree (different strands) at the same university but I know that she has demonstrated a lack of concern for other people enough times that I won't be sitting with her or doing more than saying a brief "Hey, how are you?" I don't know what will happen next year. We might end up rebuilding our friendship. If she demonstrates that she has changed enough to warrant my trust, I will extend it to her. That's why it's only the chapter that is over. It's a cliffhanger, I guess, and no one knows whether the next few chapters will hold a reconciliation or whether it will be a ten-years-later epilogue set at our high school reunion.

I believe in the power and necessity of forgiveness. Without it, everybody would, quite frankly, be screwed. But I believe that there is a point at which one has to say "No, you've hurt and disrespected me enough" and just walk away. We're similar enough and have known each other long enough that I would find it hard not to talk to her and care about her life if we saw each other regularly, so I guess my only choice is to walk away during this period of anger and disappointment and not look back.

People fall in touch after high school. One of my best friends has been conscious of that fact for years. I guess that the end to this high school friendship is just much more obvious than the end to those that just peter off as people get too busy to really see each other anymore.



*I went outside to get the washing in halfway through typing this. Actually, I am sad. I'm sad and hurt and pissed off but mostly disappointed.

Grease's Ending: Empowerment, Anti-Feminism or Critiquing?

Grease: a tale of love and empowerment or of anti-feminism? I love the music just as much as most people. However, I have to be honest here. The first time I watched it I came away feeling disappointed by the ending. Well, a mixture of feeling disappointed and having been inspired to ponder the expectations that women have as I would be perfectly okay if Danny had started behaving more like Sandy (then again, it’s more so because I identify with original-Sandy and so the ending is unsatisfying for me; it’s not a matter of gender but of my personal values. If the 'good' guy became 'bad' for the 'bad' girl, I would still be put off. Though, in all honesty, I probably would like it more than the 'good' girl changing for the 'bad' guy). According to one of my best friends no one likes the ending, though, so when Mum had Grease among her movie suggestions for tonight I agreed to watch it again. I thought it would be nice to watch the ending again to see what I think of it, and even if my opinion hadn’t changed at least the music is catchy. Well...my opinion is pretty much the same, except I’m considering that the purpose may have been to empower Sandy in some way. But now I’m just left in this pit of uncertainty; is Sandy’s change permanent? Is she now going to smoke and drink? If Danny tried to sleep with her at the drive in again, would she let him? Or is it a makeover without an ideological change? Or maybe it’s a mixture – maybe she’ll smoke and drink occasionally but not get drunk or smoke excessively as she’s ‘loosened up’ but still likes what she used to like. I don’t believe that she would have gotten used to and started to enjoy smoking and drinking so quickly, or that she would change her views about sex so immediately. Or has she? Is she willing to change her opinions so as to ensure that she keeps Danny’s interest?

On a different note, I picked up on a lot more of the innuendos throughout the movie.

I wanted to explore my theories first, but I just did some brief research about this.

-        Reminder – Danny was also willing to change for Sandy. He donned a Letterman sweater in place of his leather jacket in the last scene and told his friends about how important she was to him.

o   http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20120122114150AAgldfu

-         Apparently my whole ponder-the-expectations point was actually what they were going for. Huh. Interesting.

“The point of the show is always missed by 99 percent of the critics all over the world, and by a lot of the actors as well... It was a poke! A good old-fashioned razz against those...Hollywood movies that turned the main guy into a fine, upstanding citizen...” - co-creator Jim Jacobs

If we’re looking at the story, I don’t like Sandy’s change. If we’re looking at the reasons behind it, I completely understand it and, from an English-student-perspective, appreciate how they used their text to critique movie trends.

o   http://www.dailyherald.com/article/20101202/entlife/712039939/