hup.

( cut for the sake of your eyes )

what the hell

I really need to get a grip on life.

I keep meaning to do stuff. I tell myself in my head over and over again that I'll do them. For example, I'll sit on my chair, and think, I should clean my room. Then I'll look at my room, and at the papers on the floor, and think about how to organize them, and at the books strewn everywhere, and think about where they go on the bookshelf, and at my backpack, and think about all the homework I should do, and tell myself in my head that I'll do it as soon as I get up, just a minute...

Until I have to go to class. Or my dad calls me to lunch. And I leave thinking, well, I'll do it when I get back, and then I never do.

ajfd;lkjasgkjbhajflkas;fjasl;fa can I just screw school, screw responsibility, go to Barnes and Nobles and buy those new books I want to read and come back and lie down in that comfy patch of sun in my room and just READ? Just for say, a day? I mean, I don't really care about all the achievements of Woodrow Wilson, no matter how great they were kthxBYE.

edit: At Denise's suggestion...

( list of things to do! )

the SAT... tests your ability to take the SAT.

the SAT essay... tests your ability to write something that, at first glance, looks like a good essay.

rubric

the depressing truth

wtf is this?

two quotes from the same article--

quoth: The team uses a technique known as "holistic scoring," a euphemism for reading an essay very quickly (a minute or so per paper) and making a snap judgment. This is not like grading a school essay, in which points may be deducted for uncapitalized letters or an insufficient number of paragraphs. The scoring technique puts a premium on a student's ability to develop a logical chain of reasoning over the mechanics of writing.

quoth2: The essay is virtually illegible -- no marks are deducted for bad handwriting -- but it is two pages long and is sprinkled with academic-sounding words such as "commodity" and "value." Ed Hardin, an expert with the College Board, makes a stab at reading the essay out loud. He had awarded it a 5 on the basis of his first impression and the sophisticated vocabulary but changes his mind as he tries to make sense of the stilted prose.

... ...

yeah, because first impressions totally put a premium on ability to develop a logical chain of reasoning. obviously. and when you actually read it and realize the essay makes no sense... well, that's all right, the first impression was good!

BS it and hope you aren't one of the ones they bother to read aloud.

oh, oh, and this

quoth: One essay struck me with its well-wrought line: "It may be the case, then, that secrecy has its own time and place in our vast world." I was dazzled by the calm maturity of that sentence — until I realized it could well have been composed in advance.

what the hell is wrong with our world. First, get dazzled over a sentence that doesn't quite make sense (it sounds good, but think about what it's actually saying) just because it has the word "vast" in it. No, try me. Take it out. It doesn't sound half as "sophisticated." Then, to doubt whether someone could have come up with that on the spot? No, it must have been composed in advance!

so that kid, who could very well have just randomly thought of that (what does that sentence really say? srsly. not much. if he's trying to say that secrecy depends on situation, say so. if he's trying to pull an Ecclesiastes, it's not very clear. the whole thing is vague.), got credit because the reader believes he couldn't have come up with it on the spot and must have planned it in advance and, and, hear this, gave him a higher score for "preparation."

omgwtf. *shot*

also, Andy, you know your utter lack of facts? Well, graders are apparently encouraged to ignore incorrect factual info and grade as if it were fact, because students under pressure get facts mixed up easily or something. So BS as much statistics as you want, people! They have to take it as fact.

so. lame.

thanks to my lovely sister, I have had a revelation.

from now on, the poems that I write, that I spend effort on, that I actually like...

I'm not going to send them in to get slaughtered.

I'm sorry. I like the sound, I like the rhythm, I like the flow, I like meaning and concrete language too, and they're important, but I would not, not slash the meter and the rhythm and the flow to pieces for the sake of... condensation... which is mildly acceptable, but worse than that, line length.

That is one of my biggest pet peeves.

I don't appreciate destroying things to make my my poem look like a BOX, thank you very much.

Dolce et Decorum Est isn't anything close to a box, is it? It's still a classic, isn't it? Same with The Road Not Taken. aasdflkjdalf;asdf I just don't like boxes. >>

And Sutton is a concrete-language-beat-poet to the core. I am not. I mean, I like Howl, but even that has a flow and a rhythm of its own (it sort of reminds me of rap actually). Actually, I think any of the "modern" poems that I've ever liked have had some sort of rhythmic flow to it. The ones that don't just stick out like a sore thumb. They don't read. Poetry's a type of music, y'know. They're called "BEAT" poets for a reason...

So! If I happen to write a poem to her prompt assignment that I actually worked on, really like and don't want to change, I think I'll keep it and write another one of those traditional BS Sutton poems (azureemeraldopalgold bwahahahaa)that you know will get through her for the assignment. because. MINE. rawr.

and I will keep separate copies of those poems that ended up clearing, but are full of things that are just her and not me and that I really don't agree with her on, and revert it to the way I liked it. :)

I know everyone says she knows best. but. that doesn't mean she gets to impose her will on my ideas so they end up 50% her and 50% me and totally changed from the original intention.

What this class is good for is the practice, the individual bits and pieces and the editing and fixing up of the language, but the products are no good, I mean they are but just. too much her. if it started out you and not BS, you know?

Who was it... Andrew Taw once said that. He said he hated Sutton because her students end up all churning out poetry exactly like her, and it's totally true, and no wonder because you can't CLEAR a poem unless it goes through her filtering process, and in the end we all become little Sutton marionettes, dancing on her strings of concrete language, of poems with profuse description and nothing and nothing at all, of little boxes of perfectly formatted words, of "poetry" and "language" that we all appreciate amongst ourselves because we have been with her so long and have learned to appreciate such poems, but to everyone else all sound the same.

You must admit, she is a bit of a control freak. (aiight, understatement much.) Her way--or no way at all.

when we print chapbooks I'll print out the minimal number, and then collect all the poems I actually like and take out all the ones I don't, and arrange them the way I want to, and revert the poems that I liked and were printed out but had minor changes made that just make me twitch every time I read them, and then I'll compile them all into my own chapbook, designed the way I want it to be, and go get it made at Kinkos, and then that'd be my real chapbook! and then I'm done with poetry class and restrictions and steel-wall-solid unreasonableness, because IIIs will probably squander all the last vestiges of creativity out of my marionette and leave the limbs swinging lifeless and broken and mechanical and what. the. hell. enough. not happening. (either that or my marionette will whip around and bite the hand holding the strings and then there will be ugly warfare and... no.)

sorry. this has just built up since... you know, the last year or so, and exploded around now because my sister is home, and also because we're doing work at about 20x the pace of last year (already written 2x the amount of poems we wrote last last semester... in several weeks)

I'm sick of this.

almost tempted to drop the class.

she keeps me from orchestra so much it's not even funny. and while I love poetry the people, I harbor no real love for poetry the class, it's mostly BS. whereas I love both orchestra and the people (most of them). ♥







though, it does help improve the writing.

... ... ...

rar.

( asd;lfkdjflkdfl )

anyway, after wasting all that time ranting, I feel slightly more... vindictive. And I've my coffee now. So I'll live. And now I have to go practise piano for the laaaaaame recital, because even LAAAAAAAAAAMER SJYS stole all my piano practice time. Hell, it stole cello practice time on top of that. and most importantly, LUXURIOUS INDULGENCE TIME. T____________T

yup. *angsts over life*

ahaha I have fake emo cuts on my arm too. How ironic. Earlier yesterday Vivian insisted on graffiti-ing my arm during Calc, and it still hasn't washed off. my other arm was mauled by Stephanie, and has a smiling fat monkey on it. one with a heart-shaped face. o____o

2308 edit: ...hm. After actually practicing piano, I'm not actually angry any more. At least Rachmaninoff's a piece worth practicing, yanno?

Music cleanses the soul. :)

...and maybe coffee too. a little bit. in a shortcut, eventual unhealthy side effects sort of way.

more profound truths of life:

( cello )

1556 edit: so after that little rant of life I practiced a lot and felt better. then ended up ditching dance and indulging in lovely Maya crack and imploding my brain. but I got relatively more achieved than I had planned. :) so life is good.

...I'm feeling a little crazy this afternoon. I swear I'm on drugs or something. The ensuing bits of crap and stupidity are lj-cut to prevent offending anyone.

( Ode to Taylor Marietta Greer )

I have this desire just to go somewhere, y'know? Like into a throng of people. And thread my way through all the way to the center and get up on a stool or something, then burst out in BWAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHA wild crazy maniacal laughter. That ever happen to you?

2114 edit: I know, I know. posting way too much on LJ lately. call it a bad habit.

but omg.

Biking that double cross-y turn from Saratoga Avenue on to my street at 9 pm?

Just. Totally not worth it.

The cars don't see me! I mean, they just don't see me. I stopped twice, IN THE MIDDLE OF THE ROAD, not like at the little island in the middle between the two ongoing bits of traffic where I usually stop which is dangerous enough anyway, but smack in the middle. To let a stray car pass me. Twice! Because they just didn't see me! I mean, after I stopped they sped right past me and didn't even notice then. By all rights they should have let me pass, but if I had gone on they wouldn't have seen me until I was lying in the middle of the road with my brains splattered out. Seriously. I felt like an invisible ninja. Or like I was in Taiwan.

And, while I navigate well enough now, it just gets kind of tiring. I mean it doesn't seem that scary, they're just cars, right? It just seems kind of whatever. But rationally, I wonder if one day I'm just going to space out and then I WILL end up with my brains in the middle of the road and my parents will die of grief and I will have been a very, very bad daughter indeed. Filial piety, y'know. It just makes me wonder, while I'm threading through the cars, in this dispassionate fashion, what would happen then...?

Yet, the safer route home. Has no streetlights. Oh me oh my. Saratoga's too safe a district for streetlights.

Ahhhh, school.

Love it, and hate it, at the same time. Like break! 'cept I was generally more mopey during break. You can't really blame me, though-- for the first week I pretty much wandered around hacking and voiceless with knives in my throat, dressed in pajamas with hair disheveled like a banshee, watching movies til I got a headache... and feeling generally miserable. If the entire break had been like the second half, I'd say otherwise.

Adam... left. A few hours ago. :( I miss him already, but am also glad that he's gone. I feel so contradictory. xD

A late happy new year to everyone, I guess. Haven't made any new year's resolutions yet. Might take one of these surveys floating around when I've some more time. Anyhow it's not REALLY new years until February 18th, when the red envelopes come in. WITH MONEYYYYYYYYYYYY~ ($.$) mwahahahhaaha I'll make resolutions then. For now, my only resolution is to ( whoops unintended short ranty thing ).

I wonder how I'll fare when finals week hits. but it's full of minimum days, so... /shrug.

In other news, after careful calculation, if, IF I get a perfect participation grade, I need an 88.85% (at least) on my calc final to get exactly 89.5% on my semester grade for an A-. >< /crosses fingers and prays.

Maybe that should be a resolution.

GAHHHHHHHHH ( adlfkjdskljfalsdfjlka )

OK, done bitching now. *wanders off*

( blargh )

...I forgot the original point of this post. I had something else to say, but it turned into a rant about yesterday... except today was actually stable and happy and I don't want to think about yesterday anymore, so I'll be quiet now. ^^; *totally cannot remember*

0158 edit: .... I TOTALLY just remembered what I was going to say, and then I was about to come here and post and and I was thinking about writing "!! moment of inspiration yay" and then while I was thinking about that I FORGOT again. T___T *dork*