Release

As Christmas arrives, I have felt a release in many ways. The first semester of college is over, I have finished all of my essays, and I have left the Online Debate Network staff. As break starts, I have developed a new interest: learning about the web and exploring the options created by the competition between the search sites Google and Yahoo!. My preference is Google, though I have been recently drawn to Yahoo! Answers, a site where one can ask and answer any question that falls within the rules. Unfortunately, this leads to a lot of low quality questions and most of my energy on the site has been spent trying to find worthwhile questions. I hope to find a solid interest over this break so that I don't stagnate, but this is beginning to look like a formidable task.

For Christmas, my family is traveling to Minneapolis to see my uncle, who is in alcohol rehab after getting his third DUI and trying to commit suicide. After the wonderful Thanksgiving at my other uncle's house there, I hope that the experience will be similar.

As well, things tend to change when one is gone for a while. My father broke up with his girlfriend, though he still shares a house with her. He moved into a new, smaller apartment in Neenah with his former employee Steve Herrick. He and my brothers have been playing a karioke game and one of the presents he gave today was DDR, which means that now there will be singing as well as dancing.

My mother hasn't changed much. She is still rather neurotic though I am able to joke with her a bit. My brother Kit still enjoys a level of control and Ian is still rather mellow.

I am growing both my hair out and trying to grow a beard, though the results have been a bit substandard as of yet. We'll see if it works before the second semester starts in January.

Leaving Grinnell

Well, it's time to head back to Neenah, where I will be spending the next five weeks, with the exception of Christmas, when my family is going to Minneapolis.

This is one of the most recent pictures of me available: 

Final Exam week coming to a close

After not posting here, I've decided to start up my blog again.

Final exams are over for me but I still have some essays to write...so despite the relief of finals being over, I still have a ways to go.

A boring summer

I graduated on June 8 and recieved my diploma on the 9th. The graduation ceremony was nice and I left it feeling good. That kicked off this years summer vacation.

The first event that I had this summer was a trip to Rochester, MN for a week and a half to stay with my grandfather as he recovered from chemotherapy. He had undergone the chemotherapy, which killed off his bone marrow 11 days before I arrived and his condition bottomed out and he started to recover while I was there. He and I stayed at the Gift of Life Transplant house in Rochester. While it was great to see him recover, most of the time was a collosal bore. He slept most of the time, forcing me to either read or surf the Internet. In fact, because of this boredom, I started participating the the Online Debate Network again. However, after about a week and a half, he was well enough to go back home, so we took a private airplane back to his house in Sheboygan, where I stayed for another week.

After that, I did get to do some fun things, such as watch Batman Begins in the theater for my birthday. I also started to get more information about Grinnell College, such as what dorm I have and what roommate I have. Currently, I am working on repainting one of the bathrooms in my house, which is boring and the small of the paint is rather strong.

A trip to Indianapolis

This weekend was quite eventful. On Friday, I went with my fellow Neenah High School seniors to Six Flags Great America for the 2005 Senior Class Trip. I took my first ride on a real rollercoaster on the theme park's "Ultimate Flight of Superman" ride, which is somewhat of an upside-down rollercoaster. Riders sit in the seats , which is beneath the rail. When everyone is strapped in, the seats rotate backward so that everyone is facing the ground. Along with the Superman Rollercoaster, I rode with The Raging Bull Rollercoaster, which is more conventional, the Viper, which is a wooden rollercoaster, the Iron Wolf, where all subjects are standing up, and the Demon twice.

A bus arrived to pick up all band students that were heading to Indianapolis to play in the Indianapolis 500 parades. The bus arrived late, so we had to catch supper on the way to our hotel. We arrived and went to our hotel rooms. My roommates were Brendon Otto, Eric Proces, and Steve Yazicioglu and we watched various movies on TV and made various criticism.

In the morning, we readied ourselves to participate in the Flagstar 500 Festival Parade, which went through the heart of Indianapolis. At the end of the parade, we were all drenched with sweat and very tired. We then headed back to the hotel, where I showered and ate the provided buffet lunch. Afterward, we headed back downtown to look at the mall and eat dinner there. The mall was fairly boring, so it was a relief to leave and head to an IMAX film about Dolphins that was fairly interesting. Then we headed back to the hotel and went to sleep.

The next day was Racing Day and we had to wake up before 5:00 am to make it to the Racing Track to play along with 24 other bands on the 2.5 mile track. Afterward we changed into normal clothing and watched the race until about the 170th lap. We then came back to Neenah. However, our marching wasn't over. Today, we marched in the annual Neenah-Menasha Memorial Day parade.

Gold Tassel Night

Tonight was the presentation of the gold tassel to all seniors with gpa's above 3.0. It has been traditionally sceduled to coincide with the last choir concert of the year, so the choir sang before the tassels were presented.

Senior Awards

Last night's Senior Awards Ceremony was extremely long and boring. However, I did manage to win a few awards. Eric Heywood and I were jointly chosen as the Outstanding Senior Math Student and I was recognized along with Brett Schilke for being a National Merit Scholar Finalist. I also won a scholarship that I didn't see coming, the Nora Mayor Scholarship, which is given out to a student who shows ability in math and physics.

As well, none of the Science Teachers were able to attend because of the Regional Track Meet, which Neenah hosted. I was also chosen as the Outstanding Senior Science Student, and I recieved my plaque today as well as the 13th Edition Merck Index, which has just about every compound imaginable listed and described within its approximately two thousand pages.

Another Weekend come and gone

This weekend, I slept in. On Saturday, I slept until noon, and today I slept until 1 pm. However, the difference is that I did much more today than yesterday. I attended a soccer game that we lost (again) with an embarrassing 5-0 score. Afterward, I headed to NHS to practice marching for the Indianapolis 500 parade. Afterward, I worked on a European Union powerpoint for History.

My Final High School Concert

The last of my high school concerts was a orchestra concert and it went off quite well, in my opinion. The pieces that I played for were a flute concerto by Mozart, a horn concerto by Strauss, and two of The Planets (Mars and Saturn) by Holst. As with past orchestra concerts, there were definite mistakes, but this one was much more exciting and I felt better in tune with the music.

My Final High School Band Concert

Tonight was the last band concert of my high school career. It was originally scheduled for Tuesday night, but the threat of a school shooting put a wrench in that plan. However, with the author of the threat in custody with a confession, school was back in progress and so was the concert. I thought it went off quite well, but there wasn't anything particularly special about it.

The Freshmen played first with a march, a folk tune medly, a piece that used a variety of percussion intruments centered around dinosaurs, and a piece called Awakening of the Hills. The Concert band played a march followed by a piece call Choral and Shaker Dance, which was not suprisingly very similar to a piece I played in Freshman Band called Choral and Shaker Dance II. They finished off with a piece that the FVA South Honors Band played in March called Bayou Breakdown. The difference was that they had over a month to prepare, whereas we had three days. The Symphonic Band started with the Overture to Leonard Bernstein's "Candide". We then played a lyrical piece called "Irish Tune from County Derry.", which was followed by a fast, woodwind-heavy piece called, "Shepard's Hey English Morris Tune". We finished the night off with a piece called the Ascension, which I liked quite a bit. During various breaks between pieces, awards were announced for all the bands. I, of course, did not receive one; mainly because I didn't really put much effort into band this year.

An eventful stretch of days

On Saturday, I recieved a letter from Grinnell College saying that I had been accepted. This means that I will probably end up going to Grinnell over Lawrence. I am waiting for one more college letter, which I expect to arrive in Early June from The University of Chicago. That letter will be pivotal as that is my current top choice of college. However, it appears that I will have to enroll at Grinnell as I did at Lawrence, to ensure that I have a spot there for next year, should the UC decide against accepting me, which is quite possible.

On Sunday, I played horn for the Neenah-Menasha Congregational United Church of Christ's musical service with a group of brass players. The music ranged from good to painfully out of tune. It was most out of tune with the barbershop quartet that sang a few times, though the children's choir was not much better. I would say that the brass band's performance was mediocre and that some of the vocals from the adult choir and soloists were pretty good. Unfortunately, the service ran until noon, which constricted the time available to me to do my homework.

Afterward, I had a soccer game at 3:30. Our team was outnumbered and we lost 8-0. I was badly out of shape and was quite indifferent by the end of the first half. During the second half, I was goalie, and not much happened beyond a few more scores from the other team.

Shortly afterward, I attended the Senior Music Banquet, which recognized the seniors who are in music at Neenah High School for staying with music. It was a nice banquet, with a Jazz group from Lawrence University coming as entertainment. All the students recieved plaques and little bags symbolic items.

Monday was another normal day of school, though there was quite a bit of homework due yesterday. However, I did do something a bit bold: I decided to make Monday my last day on the Online Debate Network. The site has degenerated to a degree and there hasn't been much worth debating. I feel that with my eagle scout project and my trip to Minnesota in June to be with my grandfather while he recovers from a bone marrow transplant and some chemotherapy, I don't have time to participate there. I am no longer growing in my views or my outlook and there has been quite a bit of unrest there. I feel that it is best to move on and to seek other ways to expand my horizons.

Today was rather interesting. I woke up somewhat late and as I walked out of my bedroom, fully expecting to grab whatever stuff I needed for school and to run out the door in order to catch the bus, when I was instead told by my little brother that school was cancelled because of a bomb threat, so I could go back to bed. I gladly obliged and slept until about noon. I found out that the reason for school cancellation was not a bomb threat but a written threat on a bathroom stall that there would be a school shooting today (May 17). So, I guess that I will spend my extra time doing homework.

The ACS Banquet

Tonight, I attended the American Chemical Society awards banquet at Lawrence University for the Chemistry Olympiad test that I took earlier this year.

The Final AP test

Yesterday was my final AP test, and I thought I did moderately well on it. However, in conjunction with my cold, I was very tired yesterday and I slept through the afternoon and the night, with a break to get a drink. I look forward to better times.

Three down, one to go...

Today I took the Biology AP test. Though I ran into some difficulty with plants, I have a feeling that my score will be 5. After the test, I went to Pizza Hut with some of the other test-takers and had a pizza buffet. Today, my focus is Chemistry, because I have the Chemistry AP test tomorrow and so the only classes that I will have tomorrow at full legnth are Band and Advanced Chemistry. Seeing as my lab journal is due in Chem class and I need to do some final touch-ups on my lab report from the last lab (the CSI lab in which my group failed to find a match). To Chemistry!

My Trip to Chicago and Mother's Day

On Saturday, I took a trip to Chicago with Human Biology students from both last trimester and this trimester. We left the high school at around 6:30 am in coach bus. On the way to Chicago, I napped a bit and reread half of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. We arrived at the Shedd Aquarium at around 10:oo am and left around noon. I had been there a few times before, so much of the sights were deja vu for me.

In the afternoon, we saw what we had come to Chicago to see: Gunther von Hagan's Body Worlds Exihibit at the Museum of Science and Industry. In the exibit we many plastinates, which are cadavers or parts of cadavers that have been treated with reactive plastics to become hard and preserved. To say the exihibit was awesome would be an understatement. There were over ten full body plastinates as well as numerous organs, sections, and slices of bodies. Parts of every bodily system were displayed there. It was truly amazing how much was there and it gave me a real appreciation of the human body. After leaving the exhibit, I bought a copy of the Body Worlds book, which has pictures of all the plastinates in the exihibit, a few more not shown in the exhibit and explanations for all.

Though there was a mix-up with tickets, we were able to attend the omnimax show about the human body at the Museum of Science and Industry as well. However, the time for the show was 5:00, an our after the rest of the museum closed, meaning that we did pretty much nothing for a good portion of an hour. However, the show was excellent and created even more respect in me for the functioning of the human body. It showed some of the systems of the body in action, which helped compliment the display of body structure at the Body Worlds exhibit. Many of the kids were grossed out, especially by the digestive system, but I just found it fascinating.

During the trip back, the sore throat that I had developed on Wednesday turned to laryngitis.


Today, Mother's Day, was fairly uneventful. I slept in and then went with my family to Sheboygan to see my grandfather for the last time before he heads to Mayo Clinic as well as to visit the niche for my grandmother's ashes.

AP European History and the Diversity Fair

Today, there were two major events at Neenah High School. It was the day of the Fourth Annual Diversity Fair and the day that the European History AP test was held. The Diversity Fair is an event that started my freshman year and originated from a school organization known as STAND (Students and Teachers Advocating Neenah's Diversity). I was technically a member, but I don't think that I did much. All I remember was that the diversity fair seemed like a good idea to me at the time. Now I just see it as almost a complete waste of time. Very little focus is put on Neenah's miniscule amount of diversity. Now, the Diversity Fair serves as a fundraising opportunity for other school clubs with very few diveristy oriented stands. There was also an assembly fourth hour, but I didn't go because of the European History AP test.

The test was fairly easy, and I think I did well enough to get a score of 5. It ran from about 1 pm to 4:30. At about 4:20, a tornado warning was announced, but that didn't impact me because I was already done with my exam and the room we were in was considered a "safe room" for tornadoes. The warning was over at about 4:45, but many of the students left anyway. I had to stay because I didn't have a ride and the sophomores were split into a second room and they took longer to go through procedure, meaning that they ended up finishing at about 4:00. I caught a ride with a neighbor.

The First Eye of the AP Storm

Today was a break from AP tests. However, tomorrow, I have my second AP test, European History. I feel much better about this exam than I did about the Spanish Language exam for two reasons. First, I am better and understanding history than I am at learning Spanish. Second, I know what's coming on the test. I took the US History Exam last year and got a 4. The European History Exam has a much similar set up: multiple choice, two free response essays, and a document based question. I feel confident that I can earn a 5 on this exam because the material is much fresher in my head than the material for the US History exam.

The "second eye of the storm" will be this weekend, because I will have the Chemistry exam on Monday and the Biology exam on Tuesday. After that, I will be done.

In other news, I will be heading to Chicago with a group of Ms. Pacolt's Human Biology students on Saturday to go the the Shedd Aquarium, which I have already visited in the past, but it is still fun to come back. In the afternoon, we will be seeing the Body Worlds exhibit at the Museum of Science and industry, which is the actual reason for travelling to Chicago. The exhibit consists of many human bodies partially dissected in various poses to show the various systems of the body. The exhibit was set up by Dr. Gunther von Hagens. The bodies are treated so that they don't smell or rot, and I anticipate it being a fun experience.

The Spanish AP Test

I took the AP test today, and my apprehension was justified. The test consisted of four parts: listening, reading, writing, and speaking. Of the four, I would say I did the worst by far on the reading section, in which I left a third to a half of the questions blank. I do not have much of an idea about what I will earn on this test, though I doubt that I will earn a 5 (the highest score).

As well, today we had a lab in Chemistry relating to colorimetric analysis of solution concentration. The scenario was that a dead man was found drowned with water with a significant concentration of phosphate in the water. The three suspects are the man's two sons and his daughter. One son owns a pool; the other owns a farm pond; the daughter owns a mine pond. In the lab, measured amounts of "water samples" from each of the bodies of water are combined with heavily acidic ammonium molybdate and tin chloride to produce "molybdinum blue", which is put through a colorimeter, which sends light through the sample and tells how much is absorbed. The frustrating thing was that my group found the water from the man's lungs to have a phosphate concentration that was in between that from the pool and from the mine. The other two groups found it to be from the pool; so our group made some silly mistake along the way.

First AP test tommorrow

I have my Spanish Language AP test tommorrow; the first of my senior year. It also happens to be the one about which I feel most aprehensive. I feel that my Spanish speaking skill is sub-par even after 5 years of Spanish. Oh well.

Cadaver Lab

I have been busy as of late, which is the main reason for the enormous time gaps in this blog. Today, I went with my Human Biology Class to Marquette University in Milwaukee to their Gross Anatomy Lab, where we were shown three partially dissected cadavers and some brains and a spinal cord. Though the formaldehyde smell was not pleasant, the experience was fun. It was interesting feeling the textures of the various organs, despite the fact that they had been treated with formaldehyde and were drying out, which made them more leathery and tough than they normally would have been. I did get to hold both two of the brains and look at them closely as well as a spinal cord. Recently, I have found myself more and more interested in neuroscience, and I have a feeling that I may pursue it in college.

I have enrolled at Lawrence University in order to keep my spot, but I am still keeping my options open to the two schools that waitlisted me. The school that I really want to go to is the University of Chicago, and I actually feel that I have a decent chance of being accepted. I have sent in a letter that I wrote as well as a letter of recommendation from a teacher I have known for quite a while and some grade transcripts. As well, I have been able to find a student that was accepted at UC who would be willing to write a letter of recommendation.

I am sensing the beginning of the end of my time on the Online Debate Network. Though it has been fun and I have been able to open my eyes to new opinions, I feel that I have learned all that I can from the site. Now, with college approaching and other events coming into play, I feel that I can better broaden my viewpoint through other means and I also feel that I will soon be too occupied to participate anyway. I hope that I've done a good job as moderator and even more, I hope that the site continues, as I think it is a jewel among forums to those seeking a better understanding of others' opinions.

My future as of now is up in the air. I recently placed well enough in the ACS's National Chemistry Olympiad preliminary test that I made it to the second level (and won $100). If I did well enough there, I should find out soon whether I will be able to participate as a member of the National Chemistry Olypiad Team in the International Chemistry Olympiad competition. Though I think that I may not have made it, as only 20 members of the team will be chosen, I need to keep my schedule open just in case.

As well, I will be staying with my grandfather at a transplant house while he undergoes some bone marrow transplants and chemotherapy for his myelomma. This will take place during the summer and I will be helping him with cooking as well as providing companionship. My Grandpa is great to talk to and I hope it goes well for him. I think he will do well as he has always been active and fit.

Experiment

I am going to experiment with something new: I am going to pray. This may seem somewhat awkward because I do not hold belief in any gods or supernatural forces. However, I do feel that if I were to share my troubles with an imaginary friend, I would feel much less stress. Basically, I am trying to use one of the benefits of religion without being religious.

Science Olympiad

On Saturday April 2, the 2005 Wisconsin State Science Olympiad was held at UW-Stout near Menominee, WI, which is about a four hour drive from Neenah. I participated in five events and built the tower for the tower building event. My schedule went as follows:

9:00-10:00........Astronomy
10:05-11:05.......Forestry
11:10-12:10........Chemistry Lab
12:15-1:15..........Physics Lab
1:20-2:20...........Chemical ID

Astronomy consisted of a test of Astronomical knowledge that could be taken with the aid of any materials, including a laptop. My partner and I, however, did not bring any materials, giving us the sense that we were not going to do very well. We finished the test to the best of our ability and left.

Forestry consisted of identifying samples of various trees from a multiple choice list (including none of the above) using an tree guide that was given to all teams a few months ago. My partner and I did a fairly good job finding the species and its habitat and economic uses and we were the only ones who had the slightest idea of how to do the tiebreaker round of our group (Given the number of teams, events are separated into groups; there is a Forestry event during each of the time slots available to different teams. This is true of the other events as well). We thought we had done a fairly good job and had a medal-worthy performance.

After Forestry, I learned that the tower had not supported all 15 kg of weight. However, I had thought that the scoring was solely based upon efficiency, so I thought it would medal anyway.

My third event, Chemistry Lab, went quite nicely. The lab and test centered around oxidation-reduction reactions. To conserve time, I worked on balancing an oxidation-reduction reaction, given as part 1, while she put together a galvonic cell, given as part 2. We worked together on the questions of part 2 and part 3, which had to do with electron orbitals and Lewis structures. After completing the event, we were quite confident in our performance.

I had the same partner for Physics Lab as I did for Astronomy. This event centered around optics, and more specifically, prisms and different wavelegnths of light. It consisted almost completely of mathematical calculations, some of which we found to be difficult because we were rusty on some formulas. We came out thinking that we did a bit worse on it than we did on the Astronomy test.

The final event was a disaster. Last year, my partner and I had gotten second place, which had been my only medal, in Quantitative Analysis, which was now Chemical ID. Hoping for a repeat performance, I was put into this event again, with a different partner, as my partner from last year had graduated. However, the mistake we made was not to plan for the event. I memorized the solubility rules to refresh my knowledge of which ionic compounds would react and which ones wouldn't. However, last year we made did reactions and made a flow chart to memorize before the event. Such planning did not take place this time. Another setback was the fact that we had to use five pipets for ten chemicals, which meant that we needed to clean them after using them each time instead of an excess of disposable pipets that quickened the process. The entire situation left me in the dark with not enough time to turn on the light. So, I finished the second part of the lab and guessed what every single compound was, probably not getting a single one right.

We left UW-Stout immediately as to get home at a reasonable hour, meaning that we missed the awards. We ate at Pizza Hut and arrived home at 8:00 pm. Just today, I found out the results:

We won second place in Chemistry Lab, barely losing in a tiebreaker
We won third place in Forestry
We won third place in both Astronomy and Physics Lab, much to my partner's and my suprise.
Not surprisingly, we tied for tenth in the Chemical ID event out of eleven possible places
We won third place in Geocaching, forth place in Practical Data Gathering, and fifth place in Robot Ramble, in none of which did I participate.
The Tower was tied for ninth place with all the others that failed to carry the full load.
The team was ninth out of thirty-eight overall.

The results were pleasantly suprising to me.

I has also recieved my last two college letters while I was gone. From Williams I recieved an expected rejection. However, from University of Chicago, I recieved a letter very similar to Grinnell's, which told me that I was on an unranked waiting list. This means that I will enroll at Lawrence but work to earn admittance to both University of Chicago and Grinnell. Of the schools, I most favor Univeristy of Chicago.

A trip to Sheboygan and Milwaukee

Yesterday night, my family and I left for Sheboygan, where my maternal grandfather lives. We stayed the night at his house and talked to him and ate with him. We left this morning and headed south to Milwaukee.

In Milwaukee, we toured the Milwaukee Public Museum, looking over many of the exhibits that we had seen in times before: the geology exhibits, the rainforest exhibit, the butterfly exhibit, the insect exhibit, and the botany exhibit. Afterward we quickly toured the gift shop, not buying anything, and then headed to the IMAX theater, where we had bought tickets for the show about lions of the Kalahari, which I enjoyed. We then headed back home.

Upon arriving, I recieved my first letter of rejection from a college: Carleton. This had been my first choice of college up until now, but as I have not been accepted, I guess I will set my plans elsewhere. It is not a total loss: I have already been accepted at Lawrence University in Appleton, which is a fine college with a conservatory of music where I could continue playing my horn for concerts. As well, there are still three other colleges from which I have yet to recieve letters. Perhaps the responses I recieve will be better from these colleges.

The first day of Spring Break

Today was the first day of Spring Break, but it wasn't very exciting. I attended a "Sportsman's Breakfast" even for my Venturing Crew at a local conservative church. Somehow thinking it to be some sort of charity event last night, I decided to come. I found it to be incredibly boring. We set up a table with climbing gear and a kayak to the side, with a labtop playing a slide show on the table to the left of the climbing gear. There were also other stands from various venders: a scuba diving organization, a paintball group, a boating group, a bike shop, an outdoor's shop, and an archery group among others. The breakfast was attended mainly by men and their sons. Besides the two girls at our stand, I saw one other female in the room (which was a gymnasium) out of about a hundred or more.

I arrived around 6:50 and we set up around 7:15. People started filtering in at 7:50. Breakfast was at 9:00 and an evangelistic speaker who preached that Jesus was a "man's man" spoke at 10:15. The whole thing was rather boring and ridiculous and I was glad to leave. When I got home, I worked on a tower for the Science Olympiad competition at UW-Stout on April 2. I completed my first one last night, but I am trying a different design and comparing the two.

Tonight, my family and I watched The Incredibles, which I thought was a pretty good movie.

Spring Break at last!

Today was the last school day before Spring Break. Unfortunately, it was not an easy day. Upon arriving at school today, I found that many kids were carrying around posters with various music sayings on them. This could only mean one thing: I had forgotten completely about my assignment for band due today. The assignment was to either write an essay or make a poster with a theme chosen from a list of four. As I didn't have the materials to make a poster, I wrote an essay on the "Music is Contagious" theme. Beyond my band assignment, I also had to finish my Chemistry homework. Luckily I got everything done, but it was certainly stressful. However, looking on the bright side, today will make spring break even more of a relief.

An orchestra concert and an acceptance letter

Today's school day was fairly normal. In European History class, we took part in our "termfest" competition, where the class is divided into two teams that each send up one player at a time to guess what term our teacher is describing. Each competition the list of terms grows with the terms from the current unit. Today's match was a decisive 25-10 victory for the seniors over the sophomores and the one junior of the class. In Spanish, we reviewed vocabulary, learned some idioms, and took some AP practice tests. In Human Biology, we learned about muscle and neural tissue. In Band we sight read a few new pieces that we may or may not play at our next concert. Finally, in chemistry we finished up our lab by weighing the precipitate, which had more or less dried (in my case, it was less).

When I got home, though, I found that I had recieved a letter in the mail. I opened it and found that I had been accepted to Lawrence University. They said that They really liked my essay and that I would be recieving a $5000 a year merit scholarship on top of need-based aid, should I decide to attend Lawrence. I will decide once I recieve letters of acceptance or decline from a few other colleges and take a final tour of those to which I have been accepted.

I then watched a wrestling match of my brother, Kit. He seems to be an unlikely wrestler, as he is quite a bit smaller than most middle schoolers. However, he was able to get a pin on his opponent in the first match, but he lost the second match. This was the first wrestling match that I have seen, but I must admit that I was a bit bored watching middle schoolers wrestle, which was probably not helped by the fact that I am a bit tired from missing some sleep.

After the match, I had a bit of supper and got ready for the String Festival, which is the all-city orchestra concert. The concert starts with fifth graders playing violin in the Suzuki style. The sixth graders were the first actual orchestra. Each group played two or three pieces. As this concert was really an event for the parents's sakes, I found it to be a bit boring and was half asleep by the time the eighth graders had finished. However, I was ready to play when we started with Pirates of the Caribbean followed by Lord of the Dance. The music was actually pretty fun, despite the lack of melody in the third horn part and past experiences from Symphony.

A day of chemistry

Today was truly a day of chemistry for me. After a late wake-up and an emergency ride to school from my neighbor across the street, I took the ACS "US National Chemistry Olympiad" test, which ran from 8:00 to 9:50. I had participated in the same contest in 2003 as a sophomore who had just completed "Chem-Study", our school's first level advanced chemistry course. I did very well that time; I and my fellow classmate, Toby Heyn, scored first and second respectively in the region out of both first and second year chemistry students. Feeling pretty good, we progressed to the next round, where we found that many of the questions pertained to areas of chemistry that we had not yet studied.

However, this time around, I found myself at the disadvantage of not having taken Chem-Study for two whole years. While I have started Advanced Chemistry, which is actually a UW-Oshkosh General Chemistry course, we are only a week and a half into the material, which is complete review. However, as I took the test, I found that I remembered many of the concepts, though some were still a little fuzzy. Even with my disadvantage, I think I did fairly well; perhaps even well enough to progress to the next round.

After the test, I worked on a bit of homework for my Human Biology class. When the bell signifying the end of second period rang, my schedule went back to normal. I had lunch with a friend of mine from Cross Country, and while eating I worked on filling in some of the preparatory information for today's Advanced Chemistry lab, the first real lab of the class. I went through Human Biology and Band (though today was a Symphony practice day for a concert tomorrow).

The Lab proved to be quite long. It involved the gravimetric determination of phosphorous levels in common gardin fertilizers. This meant that we had to dissolved the fertilizer in water, which we ran through a filter to remove chunks. Then, we added aqueous magnesium sulfate (MgSO4) and and aqueous ammonia (NH3) to the mixture to form a hydrated magnesium ammonium phosphate (MgNH4PO4) precipitate, which we let sit for about fifteen minutes. After that fifteen minutes was up, we then had to filter out the precipitate. Unfortunately, there were only enough resources so that one person of every two could filter at a time. Of my lab partner and I, she went first. Even more unfortuante for me was the fact that the filtration at our station was one of the slowest, meaning some groups had had two sets of precipitate filtered by the time my partner was finished. This meant that I was the last to leave, and I left at 5:15, over two hours after school was over, and over and hour after the predicted finishing time for the lab. None the less, I got my preciptate filtered and I was able to catch a ride with my mother home.

Sack it to Goodwill

Today was the day that community groups collected the bags that were sent in the newspaper last week with the "Sack it to Goodwill" logo and a brief explanation on the front. This week, they were full of clothing and other household items given freely by local residents. Sack it to Goodwill is a program where residents give items to Goodwill by leaving bags full of items to be collected by community groups such as the boy scouts.

I was collecting bags with the Venturing crew this week. We were given an area of moderate size that had few houses, and most of the houses on our route did not have bags. However, the houses that did typically left more bags than the one that had been sent in the newspaper; so, by the time we were finished collecting, the back of the SUV we were riding in was full.

What a week!

Well, this week started off quite well. I had all my new classes, and I found out that I will have considerably more homework this trimester than I did last trimester, though my schedule did not change much. However, the two classes that are different this trimester, Human Biology in Place of AP Biology II and Advanced Chemistry in place of Keyboarding I, produce most of the honework load.

While AP Biology II may seem like it would be a challenging class, the challenge ended up being in the concepts which I already understood to some extent before entering the class, not in the homework. Human Biology will not be incredibly difficult, but there is considerably more homework. For one, there are diagrams that we need to color (with either colored pencils or marker), and for another, there a study guides that need to be completed each unit. As well, there are more labs, and more memorization required in Human Biology.

Advanced Chemistry, which is actually contains every part of UW-Oshkosh's General Chemistry class as well as some extra material, is understandably more difficult than Keyboarding I, which had no work outside of class. In Chemistry, there are homework assignments almost every night, as well as labs and quizzes that run past class time. Today we had our first set of quizzes, the Chapter 1 quiz as well as the Safty Masterquiz. School normally gets out at 3:10. We started these quizzes at 3:05. I was finished at 3:30 and subsequently missed my bus. Though Advanced Chemistry is undoubtably my most difficult class this trimester, I think that I will enjoy it the most.

Beyond a new set of classes this week, I had a string of activities. They started Monday night with the last math meet of the season. I knew that I just had to do fairly well to get a place on the All League Team of the Fox Valley Math League. This is chosen by ranking the top 8 students (regardless of grade level) by the combined score of their top four meet results. Students who attend all five meets have a buffer score, which I did not have since I missed the first meet. The Second Team All League takes the next 5 of each grade division (senior, junior, and freshman/sophomore). All of those who are on the All League Team recieve plaques, while those on the Second Team All League recieve much smaller silver medals. I have been a part of the Second Team All League for the past two years.

At the meet I scored 31 out of 40, which tied me for first place for the senior division. The top score overall was a 38 by Nick Wage and Yichen Hu. This meant that my total score from my top four meet scores was tied with Eric Heywood, a fellow teammate from Neenah at 119. We both were on the All League Team. This success set contrast to my performances at the Solo and Ensemble competition on Saturday.

The next day at 7:00 in the morning, I took the AIME math contest. It is given out to those who score high enough on the AMC test, which is given out earlier in the school year. It consists of 15 questions that are multiple choice. However, the catch is that there are 1000 choices for every problem and they are every integer between 000 and 999. I had taken the AIME test my sophomore year, and I did fairly poorly. However, that year I had taken the AMC 10 test (the one that can be taken by anyone in 10th grade or lower) and scored the highest in the state, so I won a plaque anyway.

This year, I felt that I did much better. I weas able to solve most of the problems within the three hour time limit, but I was forced to guess on about three of them. After taking the test, I recieved a book of math riddles called Hexaflexagons and Other Mathematical Diversions, which was the prize given out to the top scorer of the MAA math competition at each school.

Wednesday was perhaps the most interesting of the days this week. Last month, I was chosen to participate in the FVA South Honors Band, which was created this year by the band teachers from Oshkosh West, Oshkosh North, Neenah, and Menasha High Schools. Each of the teachers selected 15-30 of their best music students from each band to form the FVA South Honors Band. We received our music on Monday in Symphonic Band class and spent the class sightreading, as we also did on Tuesday. On Wednesday, however, we spent the day rehearsing at UW-Oshkosh under the direction of Dr. McWilliams, the director there. Here is our schedule:

8:00.......Arrival
8:30.......Full Band Rehearsal
9:30.......Break
9:45.......Full Band Rehearsal
11:10.....Break
11:30.....Master Class divided by section (mine was with Dr. Atwell, the Horn professor)
12:30.....Lunch
1:45.......Full Band Rehearsal
2:45.......Break
3:00......Full Band Rehearsal
4:00......End of Rehearsal

So, I was in rehearsal for over four hours as well as a one hour horn class. It was definitely fun and I loved the pieces of music that we played; they were much better than those that we tend to play in band class. But these rehearsals were held for a reason: we had a concert at 8:00 that very night. Amazingly, after only three days of having the music, the concert came off better than a normal band concert, for which we normally have more than a month to prepare.

On Thursday, I had a meeting for our Science Olympiad Competition at UW-Stout on April 2. I have signed up for five events: Astronomy, Forestry, Chem Lab, Physics Lab, and Chemical ID. I also started working on a tower for the tower building events. I finished the base of the tower and got some of the glue stuck to my hand, which I removed using ascetone and alcohol at home.

That brings me to today, which was for the most part, a normal day, except for the quizzes in Chemistry class. I finally have some free time to write this entry for my blog and to relax a bit after a long, fun week.

Venturing Crew

I mentioned in an earlier entry that I participate in a kayak rolling class on Sundays. However, today, after this class, my Venturing Crew held a meeting where we talked about upcoming events..which included a trip to Florida in 2006, a kayaking camp, climbing at Devil's Lake, and a potential trip to the boundary waters in Minnesota. Afterward, I recieved a little coaching on my Eagle Scout project, which is based around planting some prarie plants on a 5,000 square foot plot of land and making a viewing platform in the center.

Solo and Ensemble

Today, the Solo and Ensemble Competition was held at Oshkosh West High School, which is about ten miles south of Neenah. I was scheduled to play my solo at 9:42 but ended up playing it at about 10:42, since the room where I was to play was behind schedule by about 40 minutes and then my accompianist had a schedule conflict, and I had to sit through the two horn performances that were scheduled after mine. I was hoping to play marvelously, but instead, my mouth was dry and I played the solo at about the level I was playing it within the first or second week of deciding what to play. The judge scored me at a 2, which says that I did a mediocre job. I am inclined to agree with the judge. I played the solo 100% in every one of my practice sessions in the two weeks before the competition.

At 3:42, my horn choir was scheduled to play. The actual perrformance happened at around, 3:50, which wasn't as bad. We played through the three movements, and then our lively judge asked us some questions about our horn playing. She acted incredibly inthusiastic, but near the end, she gave some hints that our performance was sub-par. She told us that class A pieces were very difficult (they are the hardest class) and they take much more work than horn in band and that we probably should have started practicing earllier. While our band does perform more difficult horn music than what she was suggesting, she is right about our practicing: we only practiced in the morning before school, which didn't yield much time and only in the last two weeks before the competition. Judging by her comments, I think we will recieve a 2 rating as well.

So, overall, it was not the best Solo and Ensemble competition that I've performed at, and it was the last one, but I think I will get over it.

The end of the second trimester

Today, I had three final exams: one in Spanish, one in Biology, and one in AP European History. I think each of the tests went rather well. As, the other two periods (for me, Band and Keyboarding) had their finals yesterday, there were only seventy minute periods in the day and no lunch, meaning that we got out at 11:40 in the morning. I barely missed the bus, but by chance got a ride home with a neighbor. As the second trimester is over, I can breathe a sigh of relief as I start with a clean slate in the last term of high school. My schedule for this next trimester is:

Mod 1 (7:50-9:00) AP European History
Mod 2 (9:10-10:20) Spanish V
Lunch (10:30-10:55)
Mod 3 (11:00-12:30) Human Biology
Mod 4 (12:40-1:50) Symphonic Band
Mod 5 (2:00-3:10) Advanced Chemistry

The schedule's a bit harder, but I look forward to a more exciting trimester to close up high school.

The first day of second trimester final exams

Today was the first day of second trimester final examinations at Neenah High School. The first half of the day consisted of shortened thirty-minute classes. So, I went to spanish, biology, band, and keyboarding in the first half of the day. The third hour class was placed at its normal time (10:30-12:30) in order to have a normal lunch schedule. Afterwards, the fourth and fifth hour final exams were offered. This meant that I went to band, where we simply practiced our chamber music pieces for the Solo and Ensemble competition on Saturday. Then, I had Keyboarding, which consisted of a scantron and four typed documents.

Dissecting a rat

Today's biology class consisted of dissecting rats. In my dissection, opened up the rat's skull to expose the brain. The brain was rather soft and was easily cut with a razor, so I had to use some caution. The rats were dipped in a formaldehyde-like substance that gave the rats a yellow color and made them smell bad. Unfortunately, despite wearing gloves, I got some of that substance on my hands, and despite repeated hand washing, my fingers still smelled like the dissected rat. This was rather annoying at lunch for whenever I brought my sandwich to my mouth, I could smell the preservative, which reminded me of the cut up rat. Not very appetizing...

The Young People's Concert

Every year, the Neenah High School Band hosts a Young People's concert, where elementary schoolers across Neenah come to Pickard Auditorium and watch a performance. This year, however, it was a performance of the entire music program, and actually, most of the band did not participate. Those that were there were those in senior choir and senior symphony. When it came time to showcase band instruments, the directors simply used symphony wind instrument players. As I am in symphony, that includes me.

The concert started with the entire symphony (no choir) playing a piece that is actually a medly of themes from Pirates of the Carribean. The next part of the concert was themed around the development of music over the years, so as the choir performed, they started with a Gregorian chant and moved to a madrigal piece. Then the "band" began its section of the concert. I played along with our first piece, Ronde, a renaissance piece played by brass. Next, the woodwinds played a piece. Third, we played a Sousa march known as "The Thunderer." Then, a Jazz Combo played. At that point I left the concert, as I was no longer needed.

A day of Tutoring

Today, I tutored a fellow student on Calculus...more specifically Calculus using a polar coordinate system, since there is a test on Monday. I hope he does well, because the entire session (including lunch) lasted from noon to 5:00, but I think it helped him. It took me a while to remember what to do with the problems, as I have not taken any math classes this year.

The uneasy calm before the storm

Next week is finals week, so we have some large projects due then. The biggest is a 25-page biology report, but there are items to do in all subjects before crunch time. The finals themselves do not scare me, but the rush beforehand does. As a bonus, however, I will not have to go to my father's apartment as he and my brothers are on a boy scout outing. So, I will have a long weekend of work.

Preparing for the Solo and Ensemble Competition

On March 5, the local Solo and Ensemble Competition is held, where students from the Fox Valley compete by playing practiced pieces either alone (a solo) or in a group (an ensemble). Pieces are divided by difficulty into A, B, and C classes; A is the hardest and C is the easiest. A judge scores the performance and gives it a rating of 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, or 1*. A 1* rating is given for a very good performance of a class A solo and makes the performer eligible for the state competition.

I am currently working on a class A horn solo and a horn choir, which is a large ensemble. I do not know the rating of the horn choir, but it is probably a class A. My solo is coming along quite nicely as I have been practicing it quite a bit. Our horn choir is meeting every morning this week to hone the piece so that we sound good on Saturday the fifth.

Kayak Rolling

Today, after church, I took part in some kayak rolling learning sessions with the Venturing Crew that I am a part of. Venturing is an off-shoot of Boy Scouts of America and involves kids ages 14-21 taking part in events that tend to be a bit more "high adventure" than those that normal boy scouts take part in. I worked with a former scout on a hand roll, which involves flipping oneself up without a paddle. I wasn't able to quite get a good roll, but I got close. Next week, if I am able to get a ride to the site, which is the Appleton YMCA, I will hopefully be able to successfully hand roll and paddle roll. We'll see.

More annoying than creationism

I can find creationists, who typically know little about the Theory of Evolution by Means of Natural Selection, to be quite annoying at times, especially when they make proclamations that "evolution is garbage" or the like. However, what can sometimes be more annoying are those that do see evolution as being the truth but don't know much about it and go about proclaiming how it works to others. One of the most interesting (and annoying) claims that I have heard from this crowd is that macroevolution = microevolution over time, and that both are irrelevant concepts to the Theory of Evolution that were created by creationists in an attempt to discredit evolution. This is not true. Microevolution and macroevolution are distinct concepts agreed upon by biologists.

Microevolution is undeniable to even the most ignorant layperson. It simply involves a change in allele frequencies in a population over time. This happens all the time, especially in small populations. Often, it is a product of selection (whether through human behaviors or not). The most famous example are the peppered moths of England. The vast majority of these moths prior to the English industrial revolution were white in color, which gave them an advantage, because the lichens they often landed on were also white. However, after the industrial revolution, these sensitive lichens began to die off and as a result, peppered moths that were darker tended to survive. Actually, currently there is a trend in the opposite direction as cleaner air standards have been imposed. Thus, the dark moths are disappearing. Microevolution observed.

Macroevolution is a bit trickier to observe, but it has been observed at the basic level, speciation. This case also occurred in England with the advent of the subway and the emergence of a new mosquito species. Culex pipiens is a type of mosquito that preys upon birds to obtain the blood (and thus blood protein) neccessary to raise viable eggs. However, with the advent of the subway, a few C. pipiens individuals strayed into the London underground. Today, there are two separate species, C. pipiens, the normal bird-preying mosquitos, and the underground mammal-preying mosquitos, Culex molestus. These two types are unable to interbreed successfully and are thus separate species. Thus speciation, the simplest part of macroevolution, has occured. More complex elements of macroevolution, which include the transition from dinosaurs to birds, or the transition from a group land-dwelling mammals to whales have good documentation in the fossil record and can be seen through modern-day evidences of homologous structures, and even more recently and convincingly, the genetic codes of organisms have lent support to common ancestry through the similarities and ratios of differences between similar species.

Evolution plays a role in modern society beyond tracking endangered species and charting the history of life on earth. It is used in disease treatments. Evolution plays a part in the development of drug resistances by bacteria and viruses. Contrary to popular belief, however, resistance does not appear in the presence of these drugs, such resistance actually already exists among a very small portion. The frequency of the alleles changes through the selection presented by the drug, which will wipe out those that lack resistance much more quickly than those that are resistant, and may even have no effect on the resistant organisms. This means that we observe microevolution, a type that plagues our medical community.

A good night's sleep

Well, I finally got some descent rest last night. Our school had a 1:20 dismissal and I had a nap after arriving home. I had supper, watched a movie, and then slept from 10:00 to 9:30.

The aftermath...

The concert turned out to be a relative success. Though I did not perform the best at the Russian piece, the Hebrew Songs came across very well. Overall, the performance was mediocre, and many of the parts were downright boring. However, that is what is to be expected at a high school orchestra concert.

Orchestra/Symphony Concert

I have my uniform, which is a tuxedo, for tonight's orchestra concert. I will be playing two pieces of three. The first one is a German piece that features the choir singing some Hebrew songs while the symphony plays allong with them. The second is called the Circus Band, which I do not play for. The final piece is the Russian one that I mentioned earlier in an earlier entry (ВOCПOMИHAHИЯ O ΛETHEЙ HOЧИ B MAΔРИΔE). I think that the concert will go relatively well, except for our last piece.

The middle school band tour

Today I had two band concerts, one at Horace Mann Middle School at 8:00 and one at Shattuck Middle School at 1:10. I started out by going to Horace Mann at about 7:45. I had my brothers carry my two instruments, a horn and a mellophone, because they attend Horace Mann. The concert lasted about an hour and I was on pick-up crew, so I helped put away the music stands and help load the percussion instruments. At the end of this, I found out that I had misunderstood a direction to get on the bus, because I thought that there was another means of transportation for the pick-up crew. I was half right. I had to load my mellophone, horn, garment bag, and jacket into the moving truck (which housed the percussion materials) and I got to sit on the floor of the moving truck between the driver and passenger's seats.

I got back to school at about 9:50 and got back to class at about 10:00. The second concert was nearly identical to the first, except that it was at Shattuck Middle School, which is a bit larger. For this one, I didn't have any problems with transportation, as I was not on loading crew. However, lugging a mellophone and a horn onto a bus is quite the chore. I got back in time to catch the tail end of Keyboarding class, so I didn't have to make up any assignments.

Returning from the ski trip

On Saturday, my family and I traveled to Mellen, Wisconsin, where we met up with a group from the Neenah-Menasha United Church of Christ, the church that my family attends. We stayed in the basement of the Mellon United Church of Christ and played word games before going to bed around 11:30.

We got up around 7:00 and ate breakfast. A large portion of the group was going cross country skiing, but my family and two others were going downhill sking at the Blackjack ski hill in Michigan's upper pennisula. I rented some skis and bought some poles and hit the slopes. Like most midwestern ski hills, Blackjack is relatively short. It has harder runs than Wisconsin ski hills and most family-oriented ski areas like Brule, but it was fairly easy for me. However, there was one run, Cameron's Spur, where I made a mistake. There was a large jump on the side of that run and I decided to take it once, only to get a small amount of air and have to turn my skis to start going downhill again. A second time off of the jump, I aimed lower, but ended up getting a whole lot of air and landing on the bottom of my lower back, which still hurts.

After Blackjack, the Church group headed back to Neenah, but as Valentine's day was set as the backup day for any snowdays, there was no school on Monday, so we headed north to Iron River to stay at the AmericInn hotel. It snowed during the night and the next day, we headed to Brule. I have been to Brule quite a few times before, and none of the runs are anything near challenging to me. However, it was a bit more fun with the fresh snow. After our day at Brule we headed home.

Skiing

This weekend, my brothers, my mother, and I will be skiing in northern Wisconsin and Upper Michigan. We will be joining a church group today, sleep on the floor of a church in Melon, Wisconsin, ski, and head to a hotel further north, ski, and come back. This is the first downhill skiing that I've done this winter, which is largely due to financial reasons, but normally I would have skied quite a bit by now.

Pep Band Tonight

Tonight there is a pep band performance for a boy's basketball game. Though it is my seventh, which is two beyond the required amount of five for symphony students, I think it is a good idea to go. First off, I don't have much to do today, so it will provide me with something to do. The second and more important reason is that the Symphonic Band has a set of two performances, one at each middle school on Tuesday.

Since we have Monday off of school, as Valentine's day was chosen as the snow day insurance day, we need to bring home our uniforms and our insturments, as we will report directly to Horace Mann Middle School in the morning instead of the high school, so our equiptment won't be available. This means that I will have to bring home two instruments: the melophone and the horn, neither of which are light or compact. So, I decided that it would be a better idea to take them home in my families van rather than try to fit onto the bus with a horn, a melophone, my music folders and a garment bag containing my band uniform.

Middle School Jazz Concert

Today my mother got quite the surprise from my brother Ian: there is a Jazz Band concert today. So, this evening, we went to see a concert consisting of the combined seventh and eighth grade choirs singing some simple jazz songs alternating with the Jazz Band (consisting of seventh and eighth graders) playing various jazz pieces. The music wasn't the greatest, but they sang and played fairly well for seventh and eighth graders.

Symphony

At my high school, there are three bands: the Freshman Band, which meets first period, the Concert Band, which meets fifth period, and the Symphonic Band, which meets fourth period. The Freshman Band, as its name suggests, contains all the high school freshman taking Band. The Syphonic Band, of which I am a part, consists of all the seniors and any juniors and/or sophmores needed to fill the positions. All other band members are in Concert Band.

As part of Symphonic Band, where I play horn, I am obligated to fill positions in the orchestral symphony should there be an opening. Thus, I am a part of the symphony, since this year, the orchestra director wanted all five horn players from Symphonic Band to participate in the symphony. Overall, symphony is boring and a chore. The final piece that we will be playing at the orchestra concert is the epitome of boringness. ВOCПOMИHAHИЯ O ΛETHEЙ HOЧИ B MAΔРИΔE (pronounced Vospominaniya o Letney Nochi v Madride), which is a programmatic piece about a summer night in Madrid. The piece is full of rests, which is annoying because our director is not a very good conductor and is hard to follow.

However, there are some perks to being part of the symphony. I don't have to take the fourth play test and I have the option of attending two less pep band performances, but I'm not sure its worth listening to the orchestral conductor drone on, expecting us to read his mind, while not playing for large portions of music, then coming in with random notes that are hard to hit the first time.

An Average Day

Today was a relatively average day, so I think I will recount what a normal day is for me.

I wake up at around 6:30 am, eat breakfast, make my lunch, get my backpack and horn ready, get my coat and hat on and leave the house at 7:14. I walk to the bus stop, which is approximately two blocks from my house. The bus leaves at around 7:20 and arrives at the high school around 7:30. I then leave my horn in the band room and head to my locker, where I drop off my coat and hat. I then go to the school library to participate in the daily trivia contest, where I am about the middle of the pack. I then head to my first class.

My first class is Spanish V, which runs from 7:50 to 9:00 (7:50 to 8:55 on Tuesdays). We go over any homework that was assigned for the date and sometimes the teacher checks to see that it was completed. Then we move on to various group activities and worksheets where we have to speak and write Spanish. Unfortunately, our school has a trimester system, which is a major drawback for foreign language because a class is only offered over the course of two of the three trimesters, creating a longer gap of time when students are not speaking the language. I took Spanish IV during the first and second trimesters of my Junior year and am taking Spanish V this trimester (second trimester) and next trimester. If it weren't for my ten-day trip to Spain last June, I would have gone nearly a year without Spanish. So naturally, I am just barely up to par on my Spanish, even though we are more than half-way through the trimester.

My second class is AP Biology. This runs from 9:10 to 10:20 Mondays, Wednesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays, and 9:05 to 10:10 on Tuesdays with a 20 minute extention period called X-mod, where we get our weekly Principal's announcement and recieve information for school wide events such as formal dances, assemblies, and scheduling. The class itself is somewhat unstructured. This is our teacher's first year as a full-time teacher and she was placed into the Biology department as a replacement for the teacher who was orginally going to teach AP Biology, because over summer vaction, he decided to take a one-year sabbatical from teaching. Her inexperience with teaching can show at times and her teaching style somewhat reflects that of a college professor. This is fine for me, as I can understand all the concepts put forth in the class with relative ease, though her teaching style is hard on some students. Tests in this class are excerpted from the AP exam and have a slight curve to reflect the difficulty of that exam.

My third class and favorite is AP European history, which runs from 10:30 to 12:30 with lunch from 10:55 to 11:25 within the period (10:40 to 12:20 with 11:05 to 11:35 lunch on Tuesdays). The teacher of the class is Mr. Morgen, who is also the Cross Country Coach. He is a fun teacher who encourages a free flow of ideas and encourages critical thinking and analysis. He is energetic and loves doing what he is doing. Class periods vary depending on the lesson. Sometimes we watch a movie with historical context, such as Luther or Elizabeth, sometimes we discuss the events of a period and how they interact, sometimes we do tests, and often times, we do a combination of these. He has taken us on a field trip to the Chicago Institute of Art to showcase the evolution of European art, starting in the Renaissance and working up to the nineteenth century. He makes history enjoyable and intriguing in a similar fashion to how he makes running enjoyable.

My fourth class is Band, which runs from 12:40 to 1:50 (12:50 to 1:55 on Tuesdays). We are currently working on music for a tour of the two middle schools in Neenah and chamber music for the Solo and Ensemble Competition that is approcahing. Thus normally half the class is unstructured time where we study our solos and ensemble pieces, while the other half is a full band rehearsal of the pices that we will be playing at the middle schools.

My fifth class is by far the most boring. Keyboarding class runs from 2:00 to 3:10 (2:05 to 3:10 on Tuesdays). We do a series of drills and excercises in typing, which is especially boring since I am already significantly above class expectations in terms of typing ability.

When Keyboarding is over, I usually take the bus home after gathering my horn and getting on my coat and hat. That is, of course, if I don't have an after school meeting to attend.

Accolades

Well, today I attended the math meet. I tied for third place among the seniors at the math meet with my fellow team member, Eric Heywood at 31 points out of 40, which was fourth place overall. Our team (which has been abysmal this year) pulled a surprising third place in the large school division. Overall, it was a good math meet.

However, the biggest award that I got was not the third place medal that I got from the math meet, but the notification that I had made it to the next level of the National Merit Scholar Competition. This is a scholarship opportunity based off of the PSAT test. The PSAT is a practice version of the infamous SAT test that also doubles as an entry test for the National Merit Scholar Competition. I did very well on that test with a 77 (which correlates to a 770 on the SAT) in Math and a 70 (which correlates to a 700 on the SAT) verbal score, as well as a 76 (760 on SAT II) Writing Skills. This meant that my selection index was a 223, which was high enough to qualify me for the National Merit Scholar Semifinalist level. After achieving semifinalist rank, one has to fill out an application for the National Merit Scholar scholarships, which range from $500 to $2,000 a year from either one's college or a corporation. Achieving the finalist level means that I am even closer to obtaining a scholarship as well as being a nice title that comes with a certificate. So, I am thrilled to find that I have advanced.

On the eve of a math meet

As a member of the math team, I periodically go to "math meets", where I go to another high school with a bunch of kids from my high school who are in search of extra credit in their math classes and take a set of five fifteen minute math tests. While this does not sound like the most fun way to spend an evening, I find it to be a good time where I can compete with other high schoolers. The tests are not conventional math tests: usually the questions are trickier, but if you can see the shortcut to the answer, it is fairly easy. Of course, in order for these tests to be competitive, most competitors need to get most of the answers wrong, and they do.

The five fifteen-minute tests are divided into three individual tests with calculator use prohibited, one individual test where calculators are allowed (and encouraged), and a team round where calculators are allowed. In the individual tests, there are four questions per test: the first question, which tends to be the easiest, is worth 1 point; the second question, which is a bit harder, is 2 points; the third question, harder yet, is worth 3 points; and the final and hardest question in each test is worth 4 points, adding up to a total of 10 points, which means that one can acheive an individual score up to 40. The team test is taken with all the members working as a group to finish the questions. A team can have up to eight members, but only four can be seniors. There are six questions on the team test, all worth 10 points to count toward the team score. Team scores are tabulated using the combined individual scores plus the team score.

Since to most people, a math meet would seem to be a waste of an evening, the math teachers offer extra credit to those who go. However, I do not get any extra credit, as I have completed the highest math class offered at my high school: Calculus. For me, math meets are a recreational event where I can compete against my fellow classmates and other high school seniors as well as a particular junior who tends to get the higest scores at meets. My typical score at a math meet is around a 30. If I do well, it will be more and if I do poorly, it will be less. For the past two years, I have earned the honor of second team all league (the league being the Fox Valley Math League), which means that I was not one of the eight highest scorers overall, but I was one of the five next highest in my grade level. Last year, I was the ninth highest scorer. This year, I hope to earn a place among the first team all league and I think I have a very good chance. While this may not be a great experience for some, I think it's fun to test my math abilities against others in the area once a month.

At my father's apartment

My parents are currently undergoing the process of divorce and are currently working out a custody settlement. Currently, I stay at my dad's house for Wednesday and Thurday evenings (staying at my mother's overnight). On Saturdays we stay at his apartment all day and stay overnight. My father apparently wants half custody, which would end up meaning that we would stay at his apartment for a whole week, every other week. I don't think this would be a good idea, and I will go into some of the reasons why I think this.

First, he really doesn't pay much attention to my brothers and I. Most of the time we are left to our own devices as he plays World of Warcraft. The times when he does pay attention are at supper time and whenever we help him maintain his apartment, which doesn't happen very often. Secondly, we rarely go anywhere besides the apartment, and there is not much to do there beyond using the computer and watching movies. If we do leave, it is to go to a movie theater or to rent a movie from the local video store. Third, he is very lax on discipline, which is especially bad for my youngest brother, who often takes advantage of this and doesn't do his homework as he should. Basically, it is not a very friendly environment.

"Winterfest"

Today, my high school held it's winter pep rally. This comes as the culmination of the winter "spirit week", which involves various dress up days. This time they were: Pajamarama on Monday, Clash Day on Tuesday, Twin Day on Wednesday, Inside Out Day on Thursday, and the traditional Red and White Day (represnting our school colors) for the pep rally. There are also a set of unofficial senior dress up days that are perhaps a bit more interesting: Senior Citizen Day on Tuesday, Gangsta Day on Wednesday, and Secret Service Day on Thursday, while Friday is still Red and White Day.

Overall, I found the pep rally to be mediocre. I play in the pep band, which does alright. The highlight of the assembly is the performance of my high school's show choir, which goes by the name of Vintage. Afterward, the assembly goes downhill: our "Cheer and Dance Team" shows off their abysmal cheerleading skills (probably the worst in the Fox Valley if not all of Wisconsin) and a class competition is held. This assembly's competition, was "Whipped Cream Hangman", which isn't really a form of hangman at all. Contestants from each class run up to their class's table, picks up a magnetic letter with their mouth out of a pie pan filled with whipped cream and runs back with it. When all of the letters are recovered, the team needs to unscramble the word that they make up.

Other than that, today was just a normal day with slightly shorter classes.

Starting a blog outside of ODN

To start off, I am a 17 year-old citizen of Neenah, WI. I attend Neenah High School, where I am a senior and will be (thankfully) graduating on June 8. I am also a moderator at the Online Debate Network as well as the leader of the Book Club. The site is relatively small, having been started November of 2003, though its growth has been relatively slow as of late. This is both a curse and a blessing. It can be rather stagnant at times with the same debates being rehashed without variety. However, this has gotten better with the advent of some new active members. As well, this also allows much easier moderation and thus a cleaner discussion board. There are no personal insults and repeated substanceless posts are not allowed. Overall, it is a very open environment where Liberals and Conservatives, the religious and non religious, as well as anyone thirsty for knowledge and a new view of the world can thrive.