new colleges

"There is nothing worse than aggressive stupidity."--Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Well, I agree. Stupidity is bad enough, mainly only when the person refuses to try to learn something. But aggressive stupidity...

Anyway, I've updated the colleges I want to go to. A while back, I had two; now, the list is as follows:

• Chatham U ; Pittsburgh, PA
• Lawrence U; Appleton, WI
• University of Farmington, Maine
• Chapman U; Orange, CA (a city named orange? Bonus points!)
• Maharishi university of management; Fairfield; IA

and there are five more I'm still contemplating.

Books, books, and more books.

I just checked on my list of books that I want to read and realized the number goes over 200. Two hundred books that I want to read, not including the ones I happen to pass by and deem interesting at the library. If I get ten books at the library, and only three books on my 'want to read' list, then I better get cracking. I still haven't found Sarah Ryan's Empress of the world, but I have managed to read Orwell's 1984.
The point of this ranting is I can read nonstop for the rest of my days and never be satisfied. My list of books to read grows by the day. And to think when I was five I had been determined to read every book ever written. It makes me laugh now, but then I was totally set on doing it. Unfortunately, the grade school library had the books divided by difficulty; If I was at a blue dot level, I was under no circumstances allowed to read a green dot book. The adults never did understand my obsession with reading children's books.

Scholarships

I finally complete Fastweb's list of scholarships and head to Zinch.com's. Zinch is easy; it focuses on getting me a college, rather than getting me into one. Then I head over to eOrganizer. Guess what I'm met with?

"You have 30 matching scholarships!"

30? THIRTY!? AHHH! Well, I did find a few quick and easy ones; the infamous "lottery scholarships". But there are still more that will require at least two weeks of research, not including writing and revising essays.

Therefore, I am off. To be penned in my room with my laptop, reading over past winners and writing spectacular essays at the dawning time of 2:57 in the morning. Yay for coffee!

colleges

So I was doing some research and decided I'm definitely going to apply to two colleges: Chatham University and the Maharishi university of management. If you just took a second to check these two out, you might be confused.

Well, my plans in life are to get a degree so I can obtain a job before working on my psychology degree. My preferred "pre-career" is a teaching job, and that's where Chatham U comes in. I can take a course on writing and acting as well, for fun.

Granted, I may take online college courses for my Psych degree. But if not, I plan on going to Maharishi.

That's pretty much it...I really am procrastinating on homework. the time is 4:03 and I have an essay on Les Miserables to turn in in six hours.

late nights? try months.

It is officially 1:16 in the morning and three months of no sleep is catching up to me. "Three months?" you say, "That's impossible!"

No, my friend, it is not. But I don't recommend it. Thai Ngoc, born 1942, claimed in 2006 to have been awake for 33 years or 11,700 nights. I don't want to begin to imagine what kind of coffee that man needed by year one.

How did this happen, you ask? Well, it all started with theater tryouts. That's my mark because I can't remember anything beyond that. That was on September 3rd. It was wonderful being back on stage; intoxicating. Rehearsals lasted until the day before Halloween. Now, on Halloween I should have gotten sleep. However, I was preparing for NaNoWriMo and waiting for the midnight bell to chime (quietly, and figuratively at that) So I could start writing. I stayed up every night in November and brought coffee to school every morning with a caffeine filled soda in my bag for back up.

You'd think I'd be sleeping right now. But you're wrong. Oh, are you ever wrong. Now I am not only editing and revising my novel, but I am catching up on schoolwork (memorizing scripts, reading Les Miserables) and working on scholarships (holocaust essay, davidson fellows scholarship.) That should keep me busy until new years eve until--guess what?

January novel writing month begins. Hooray! Which means editing will take place in February and the last play of the school year will begin tryouts in march. If it goes like the last play, that will keep me up until...the end of April, which will be my birthday. Guess what? I turn sixteen. You know what that means. A job. Less free time, more late nights/early mornings. And in August? The summer national novel writing month.

Oh, I forgot to add the national novel editing month, March, and national script frenzy month, in April. September will be for editing. October 2009: sending my novels for publishing and getting ready for NaNo in November. It's a vicious cycle. I can see now how Thai managed to stay awake for 33 years.

But it's not like I get no sleep. I take cat naps at school when I can catch them and chill on the bus in the mornings. Who knows? I may even take a weekend off just for sleep.

saving the world...one website at a time

Social websites such as MySpace and MyYearbook have systems where users can have fun and contribute to various causes at the same time.

Myyearbook.com gives users "lunch money" when they play games, send messages, or just tour the site. Users can then go to the 'causes' tab and give their lunch money to a greater cause. These causes include research to cure cancer, stopping AIDS, books for kids in poor countries, clean water, saving the rainforest, and more. It sounds easy, but lunch money only goes so far. 2,400 lunch dollars will only buy a square inch of blanket for the homeless. 5 will get a millisecond of peace to prevent genocide, and 1,032 lunch dollars will save one square foot of the rain forest.

But users have banded together and make a difference. As of today, we have bought: 133,486,889 grains of rice for the hungry, removed 4,994,594 ounces of CO2 from the atmosphere, saved 4,223,680 square feet of rainforest, bought 10,225,935 calories of food for animals in need, bought 70,941,456 ounces of clean water, purchased 288,619,766 milliseconds of research time, written 42,820,199 words in books, bought 116,035 condoms, bought 467,669,376 milliseconds of peacekeeping, and provided 2,398,725 square inches of blankets for the homeless.

If it isn't a lot, it's something. It's a difference that wasn't there before, and the numbers continue to rise by the minute. MySpace also offers applications to help. The application "dog world" helps shelter dogs every time you send a virtual gift to a friend. For every gift sent, a small amount is set aside to donate to the SPCA. They make the donations at the first of ever month to save abandoned animals.

The "Green Planet" application uses the similar strategy. For every ten gifts you send through this application, one square foot of the rainforest is saved. They use sponserships to the Nature Conservancy's Adopt an Acre program. Adopt an Acre is a program that provides critical funds for rainforest protection and restoration. And the AdoptForest's Acres Adoption Program. The financial contributions support the protection of natural resources and the creation of social and economic development programs for the people living in South American rain forests. 3,661,361.5 square feet have been saved so far.

Through activities like this, we can help save the world.

Freud

I have mixed feelings on Freud. The reason I'm bringing this up is because I just finished writing a four page essay on him. I had to stop, because originally it was supposed to be much shorter. Anyway, Freud discovered and published many theories which turned out helpful to humankind.

Even his controversial sex theories were probably mostly due to his own overanalyzing himself during self psychoanalysis. However, I found myself blaming him for homosexuals going into the ovens during the holocaust.

Maybe I'm just tired. Working on two projects at once with no sleep can't be good for me. But on the note of the holocaust, schools dim it down so much that it doesn't get to have a real impact on students. I think the only 'real' way we can get to students today is to actually take them to Germany's old camps. To the places where they deceived and betrayed millions of people.

Well, I'm off to do more research on this. My next project: saving the world through the internet.

Holocaust essay

Wow, so I found this essay scholarship that can win me up to 10,000 dollars towards college! All they want is 1,200 words, but the winning scholarships are good.

I'm off to clean the library of holocaust and genocide books, and hopefully at least match these wonderful essays that won last year. If anything, I know what not to write, and that's a start.

National Novel Writing Month

I've just completed a 50,000 word, 172 page manuscript of my novel, Withered Rose. I'm so stoked! I finished it in 26 days, so I'm using the rest of November to chill out a bit and step away from the laptop before going back to edit.

After editing, querying, revising, and publication, I'm hoping to have a copy of my wonderful book in my hands by the beginning of August. Then I'll start on the summer national novel writing month. There's one in January as well, but that's a little too close for comfort if I'm going to be working on editing my current manuscript.

In April I'll be doing Script Frenzy, where the goal is to write 100 pages of a play. I can't wait!