my_senior_year thorn my senior year in high school starts today. i am almost done. one year left. 080902 ... auburn I didn't think I could feel old. And then I read that. (Congratulations. Enjoy it. And don't wear any masks. Be who you want to be.) 080902 ... birdmad started with an awkward confession 20 years ago last Thursday, i waited too long and said too much that day and it's taken me all this time to get past that moment wherein i probably should have just kept my mouth shut. causality_and_the_rear_view_mirror 080902 ... bird yes, auburn is quite right, do it your way. a large part of my regrets and bouts of craziness from that time stems from always trying to be someone or something else to the point where i kind of lost track of who the hell i was 080902 ... unhinged that is surprising; thought you were older. mine started ten years ago at this time. ten years....wow. seems like an eyeblink and an eternity. a strange and familiar reflection in the mirror those young eyes would see. for the most part, it's been a good ten years despite the rough patches. they could have been much rougher that's for sure. but, like most old people, i wish i could get some of my hope, innocence back. life has a way of beating those things out of you. *sigh* 080902 ... jane savor it, young'n. 1.5 months before graduation i was kicked out. 080902 ... past it's been seven years for me. something like that. i'm starting my sixth at this university, second time being in graduating year. 080902 ... crOwl our teachers went on strike during my senior year. subsequently, we lost three months. i ended up riding my bike all over southwestern pennsylvania. then, i left before graduation to go to california. the only way they'd give me my diploma was to produce a term paper. a friend of mine ended up doing it for me. i can't even remember what the subject was. at least i remember who wrote it for me. 080902 ... thorn i decided last year that i'm through doing things just to look good on college applications. i want to have fun and make it through. make it to college of the atlantic. jane, what did you do to get kicked out? 080903 ... jane i'm surprised i never wrote the story on blue, though i did write the day i got kicked out: http://blather.newdream.net/j/jane_s_rant.html i'm not even sure i'm into telling the story at the moment, but i promise you i will in the near future. thinking back on my foolish youth has been particularly devastating as of late. sorry dear. 080904 ... thorn no worries love. :] 080904 ... jane the short of it is that i went to an all-girls' catholic high school, even though i wasn't catholic and knew very little about it. my senior year we had class retreats. there were three senior retreats. when the first group came back, carrie nelson excitedly told us how she had snuck off on her own and smoked pot out in the woods. it sounded tempting and beautiful, as such things are. so i was part of the second or third group, i can't remember. it was may i think. we were staying at this old church/mission type things out in the beautiful hills. the first night was this exercise, everyone was supposed to have brought an item that symbolized something that meant a lot to them. i don't really remember that either, i just remember that the exercise made everyone cry and bond as high school girls will do. after that, we were all supposed to go to bed. one of the girls i was friends with said, "we're all going to smoke down in so-and-so's room, do you want to come." i actually declined. i was pretty happy with the evening and kind of emotionally tired. "oh, come ON" she said, rolling her eyes. i made some crack about peer pressure being a bitch and followed her down. the rooms were set up 2-people to a room. five of us were in the room, 4 of us were smoking. the fifth girl was just there to hang out. a knock on the door revealed the two teachers who had put the whole trip together. one did all the talking. she was so sweet about the incident really. just incredibly disappointed, and rightfully so. we were still baked out of our minds so when she sat down and talked to us about how long they had been doing these retreats and how it had never been a problem, we were just zoning out. we went home the next morning. my mom came and picked me up. it was quiet in the car for a while; she knew i had an overdeveloped sense of guilt anyways. she took me to breakfast in town and we talked the whole way home. she said she wasn't mad so much, she just didn't want it to affect my life adversely. i had just been accepted to NYU. it was a 4-hour drive round-trip. the way my mom figured it was, i owed her 4 hours of my time. which i spent doing chores when we got home. shortly thereafter we were all kicked out. i transferred to the local public school for a week. it was horrible. i kept running into people from junior high who were asking me what the hell i was doing there. i was once again in the shadow of my football-player older brother. i barely had a name there. the end result was that we were not allowed on campus, except to get everything out of our lockers, and get assignments from our teachers. we had been allowed to set up independent study with our teachers and get our diplomas. two years prior to our incident, 2 girls had been caught selling cocaine on the school campus. as it had been close to their graduation, they were permitted to stay in school. my thoughts are that their parents had given money to the school, but its a speculation that goes without hard evidence. i taught myself the rest of my classes with no help. i'd had an A+ in my calculus class that went down to a B- because he counted my absenteeism against my participation grade. i did sculpture at home, economics papers. days were long and peaceful. i was not allowed to go to graduation, even to watch my friends graduate. the same girl that had "convinced" me to smoke and i sat outside the auditorium in her car and waited for our friends to come out. we found out one of our friends was told right before the ceremony that she wasn't actually graduating, she had failed her math class, but she was still allowed to walk. so she was crying all through the ceremony. such a long story, and all for nothing. i still went to NYU. i don't even know if any of this is on my record. the people i feel bad for, the only people, are the teachers we disappointed. i never thought of them as evil for making us go home. we put them in a horrible position. just a little piece of my history wrapped up in drama. fucking high school. i'm glad i won't have to do it ever again. 080912 ... raze got my ear pierced and grew out my hair. cut my family in half to save what was left of my soul. failed at trying to fail grade twelve english class out of spite after a sadistic teacher found a way to make me hate something i'd loved as long as i'd been alive. didn't go to prom. didn't get my picture in the yearbook. tried to get high. didn't know how. lied_my_way_to_courage. lucked into learning how to bend a guitar string. got my first home computer and found blather. never even thought to tell any of my friends about it. now i wonder what might have happened if i had. 240913 ... epitome of incomprehensibility I read jane's story and now I'm upset about something that happened to her years ago. What was up with those teachers? Punish the kids, okay, but don't destabilize them so much, don't orchestrate a massive shunning. And here I thought it was harsh being suspended three weeks in grade 8 for slapping a teacher. My last year wasn't called senior year (grades 7-11 are high school here, which doesn't fit into the fabled four-year format of American high school and college). I wrote a short story for English class that ended up much longer than I'd planned. It was supposed to be a response to George Orwell's 1984 and instead it was about a girl going to a new school. I keep writing about girls going to new schools. Thankfully - for those around me - I seem to have gotten over slapping people in the face. But not by my "senior year." When I was sixteen, I had the foresight to limit myself to domestic abuse (parents, brother). I'm partly joking but I'm partly not - I shouldn't have been like that at all. But the slapping_a_teacher story is a little funny in retrospect. 240914 what's it to you? who go blather from