Schmitz Syndrome

I have my nose pierced. I'm not sure why-- when a six-year-old I babysit asked me why I "have a pin in my nose", I didn't really have a valid response-- but I like it. Recently, I decided that I would switch out the small blue stud I've had for a couple months for a silver hoop.

This afternoon, after my classes, I biked over to a local tattoo/piercing shop, and bought a captive ball ring for my nose. It looks like this:










You can open the hoop part with your fingers, and the ball slips out (or pops out and bounces all over your bathroom, if you're me). Anyway, the pierced, scarified guy who I bought the ring from asked me if I wanted him to put it in for me, or if I'd prefer to put it in myself. I said I'd rather put it in myself, for a variety of reasons. I didn't tell or ask him about any of them, but they were:

1. It'll probably cost money, or something.
   
2. I can totally do this myself. How hard can it be?
   
3. I don't want to have this dude stick his fingers in my nose.
4. I'll have to do it myself eventually, I might as well learn how now.
   
5. Seriously though, I can do this myself. I'll just look it up on YouTube if it's hard.

So I went home, and attempted, for probably a good half hour, to pop that stupid ball into the hoop. I despaired. I looked it up on YouTube. The girl in the video I watched said she wouldn't show how to do captive bead rings because they're too hard and annoying. I phoned a friend. He couldn't do it. I tried some more. The ball slipped out of my fingers, for the third time, and pinged its way behind the bathtub. I swore loudly, and gave up. The hoop is now kind of pushed together so the gap is smaller than the width of my nostril. I think it'll probably work.

But why didn't I just get the professional nose-ring-inserter at the shop to put it in for me? Upon reflection, my entire list from above is somewhat idiotic. It probably wouldn't have cost any money. I had no idea what I was doing. That guy's fingers were probably far more sterile than mine can ever hope to be. Etc., etc. That series of justification is of a type that my father and I have now deemed Schmitz Syndrome. If we have the option to do something ourselves, we'll take it, regardless of any professional people with experience specifically there to help.

It's the kind of fierce independence that lead to deciding to unschool myself, and that led to crawling around for ten minutes on my bathroom floor, looking for a tiny metal ball.

Tim? Oh, he's in my Fave Five.

Pawlenty, that is. Juuust kidding.

I went to an Arts Advocacy Day at the Capital today, which induced the usual mixed feelings of doing something significant and preaching to the choir. After all, there are not so many legislators who will spit on your shoe at the mention of maintaining arts funding. But, as my cuckoo bananas representative, Cy Thao, somewhat explained, it's a matter of prioritizing. No one wants to whack funding from inner-city arts programs, but no one wants to eliminate dental care for seniors, either. Ideally, of course, we would have enough money to fund both, but we don't live in Sweden.









Maybe that's a good thing.

So we did the usual keep-this-and-that thing, and the legislators did the usual yeah-we'd-really-like-to thing, and then I went over to my friend Keefe's house and ate a bunch of pancakes.

Dem0cracy in action?

Click

The sound of everything falling into place. Everything I planned for my first unschooling semester is, officially, happening. How wild is that? I owe a lot of gratitude to the random forces of the universe, or something. In the spirit of general good vibes, watch this video.


It's great, right?

Anyway, the reason for my good spirits is a call that I got a couple days ago from the Loft Literary Center. I applied for an internship there a while back, I interviewed for it, and they were calling my back about it. I didn't end up getting the internship position I applied for, but I'll be doing outreach for the teen writing group at the Loft as an internship position, which sounds awesome.

I also had a great weekend. And after I write this, I'm gonna take a nap.

Yeah, things are good.

Misnom-ing

Time for a confession: I'm not sure if what I'm doing is really, technically unschooling. In fact, I'm not quite sure what it is. I'm taking classes that interest me and seem like a productive use of my time, but I don't exactly wake up every morning thinking, "Well, what I'd reeally like to do today is go to Physics class for an hour!" I just don't. Science has never been something that clicks into place in my brain. Science clunks around in my brain like a golf ball in a tin can.

Theoretically, unschooling should be about doing what you're passionate about. To some extent, I'm doing that. I'm blogging, starting a novel, reading... All things I love. But my days are tightly scheduled, and I don't wake up with the ability to do whatever I feel like doing with the rest of my day. I'm not sure if I could handle that, or if it would be enough of a challenge to the tin can portions of my brain. If I could, I would probably spend the rest of the day reading blogs and finishing The Bell Jar. That's a use of my time that would bring me the most joy, but are you really learning if you're only doing things that come easily and naturally to you?

On the other hand, why do I think learning has to be unenjoyable before it's really considered learning?

At any rate, what I'm doing is like the bastard child of an unschooling, public school, and homeschooling threesome. (Awkward...) Right now, it means I have enough free time to pursue my passions, but enough tethers to high school to enjoy a three-day weekend.

About College

This is the most nerve-wracking topic for me to consider right now. I know that what I'm doing is right for me, but will colleges see that? Will it just look like a cop-out? Will I end up working at McDonald's (which is obviously what always happens when you don't go to college)?

I think this spiral of uncharacteristic concern was brought on by a new influx of college mail starting, like, three days ago. I had managed to completely escape college mailing lists before now (living in Bolivia for your sophomore year will do that for you), but no longer. I can't help looking at the form letters from Dean XYZ of Admissions and thinking, melodramatically, "Would you be saying all of these nice things if you knew I DROPPED OUT OF HIGHSCHOOL??" Then I throw the letters away.

Anyway, I've been looking at more hippie-dippie colleges-- Hampshire, Evergreen, what up what up?-- and hoping I can convince them of my reasons for doing what I'm doing.

I'm not normally this neurotic, I swear.

Central Moment #1

The first in an occasional series of snapshots of Central High School.

Administrator speed-walking to follow girl stalking down hallway: Girl, don't get smart with me!
Girl: What do you WANT me to do? Get dumb?

World Play

Just recently, a lot of things in my life have begun to relate to writing, both in small and large ways. This blog has been a part of this, and so has reading more, writing more. I've been consistently journaling for the first time in my life, and yesterday I started to write what I'm thinking might be a long story. Novel sounds scary and adult, so I'd rather not call it that. It's a story, and I'm excited about working on it. Words are also in my life now in dumb, small way. I spent all of Driver's Ed (more on that later) today rearranging random sets of seven letters to form dozens of tiny words. It passed the time enjoyably, which is more than can be said for watching movies of cars get run over by trains.

I'd like to think that this is my brain normalizing itself now that I'm challenging it in fun and different ways. Honestly, I might just have too much free time. But I don't think it really matters what's causing it, as long as something worthwhile is produced. I hope that'll happen.

On the subject of words and word-y things that I'm thinking about, I'm seriously thinking about heading out to Portland this October for Wordstock. It sounds like a good time, and a chance to get out on my own and travel. If this sounds like your cup of tea, join me!

EDIT: Wordstock link didn't work before-- it should now. Check out Shelfari while you're it at.

Bobby McFerrin's a Genius

Because simple pleasures are the best. Here was mine, today.

I biked to my friend AJ's house to pick up a messenger bag that I had left there (kind of like how I leave everything I own everywhere), and as I was biking back, I saw another biker going in the opposite direction. To briefly explain a somewhat unique phenomenon, I've found that both winter bikers and runners share the same propensity to give a hell-yeah head nod as they cross paths. It's heartening, and makes you feel like you and the other runner or winter biker are all in it together in your crazy, crazy pursuits.

The biker I passed gave me that nod, which was cool in and of itself. However, this guy was also probably the best biker ever. He was riding a bright red recumbent trike-- photo of what those are below. He had a tiny white dog wearing a tiny purple sweater merrily trotting along beside him, and I couldn't help but grin. When I am old and have back problems and no fear of being run over by a semi, I will be that guy.


This is a recumbent trike.

Balance

Sometimes, days click into place perfectly. Not because they're the BEST DAY EVER, but because they have a perfectly appropriate ratio of good and bad. Today was like that.

I woke up at 7:30am, got ready quickly and biked over to Hamline, because I realized last night that I totally forgot to buy the textbook required for my Spanish class. I spent probably 10 minutes figuring out where the Bush Student Center is (not by the Bush library, but by the athletic center-- why, of course!). Upon finding the Student Center, I stood outside the bookstore for five minutes, thinking that it opened at 9am. I decided to change out of my biking clothes and into my normal clothes in the mean time, and promptly realized that I had left my sweater at home, leaving me with the choice between a tiny tank top and my Day Glo, moisture-wicking biking top to wear. I despaired, then realized that the bookstore was actually already open, felt stupid, went inside, and discovered that there were no more copies of the textbook I needed. I then despaired some more.

Then I went to class, which was fine, and walked back to my bike, only to find that my keys were not in any of the five million pockets in my messenger bag, or in my equally numerous sweatshirt/windbreaker pockets. Despaired. Found my keys on a table outside the Student Center bookstore-- only the second place I looked. Things began to look up. I unlocked my bike, and biked to school. On the way, I almost wiped out once, and took a wrong turn that made for a several block detour. Things began to look down. I finally arrived at school, where my fantastic father was waiting with my sweater, despite his general confusion as to what the big deal was with just wearing the neon biking top to school, for God's sake.

I peeked at the clock in the car as I leaned in to grab my sweater, and realized that I was not several hours late, as I had assumed I would be. In fact, if I hurried, I would be right on time. I walked in the door of my Political Philosophy class just as the bell rang. That class passed reasonably well, and I headed down to Physics, only to discover that Mr. Murphy was out without a sub. In other words, there was absolutely no reason to remain at school. I headed out, with a brief pit stop at B Lunch. Naturally, I dropped my hat along the way, and rode home with freezing ears, and then ate a delicious sandwich.

Perfect.

Uses of YouTube

I just watched like five spoken word Def Poetry Jam videos on YouTube. If you don't know what spoken word is, it's kind of like spoken, rhythmic (but not necessarily rhyming) poetry. It can be a beautiful, emotional form of writing, and it can be a series of dumb speech patterns and posturing. This is one of my favorites. Looking at related videos on the YouTube sidebar will find you more. Fair warning-- it gets pretty addictive.

Let's Hear It For Immune Systems

It's probably something of a mark of my productivity that the most constructive thing I did today was my laundry. Uh... To be fair, I've been semi-sick for the past two days, but I haven't really fallen (fingers crossed) into full-blown incapacitating illness. I like to think it's because I drink a lot of water and orange juice when I get sick, but it's probably more like good luck.

At any rate, I've been using my almost cold as an excuse not to do things (bike to school, blog, open my math textbook) that should probably be done. I think I've nipped this laziness in the bud, but it's something to be aware of in the future.

As I mentioned above, I've been biking to school for the past week or so. It is both awesome and horrible. I am not a cool, enthusiastic biker-- I don't own a fixed gear, live in Uptown, roll up one of my skinny jean pant legs to show off argyle socks, etc. I don't even think I could hold up a decent conversation about biking. However, I've recently found myself biking to school and various other locales, due mostly to the shittiness of Metro Transit and my parents' shocking lack of desire to drive me everywhere I want to go. I feel pretty badass biking in the cold, though. Try it sometime.