Out not with a bang but a whimper

It seems like it has been ages since my last blog post, but I guess that is what the Christmas season does to you.  Everything gets so busy, but even though I haven't posted in a while, I've still made quite a bit of progress on the CAS front.  I guess the most pressing CAS update is a review of our dodgeball season... we lost our last match, winning one game and losing two.  It was a disappointing defeat, but we played quite hard and made them work for the win.  All in all, I think dodgeball was an enjoyable and interesting choice for an action activity.  I now know why they have two separate divisions for girls and guys... Aid and Pat rocked, although us girls weren't too shabby ourselves.

Dodgeball superstars, right here

We were both gracious winners and losers, and I think we represented IB well towards the rest of the school.  We worked really well as a team, and I believe that this whole dodgeball ordeal has brought us closer together not just within our class, but with the grade twelves as well.  We may not have ended the dodgeball season with a bang, but we improved a lot from where the IB team was last year, and I can't wait to continue the tradition in 2013!

Swimming in post-its

Things with yearbook have been moving along steadily.  We've decided to hold an art competition to find the perfect cover for our yearbook, a plan that has been approved by administration, so we'll be getting that underway soon.  Other of our ideas were vetoed by the higher-ups; we wanted to make a Facebook group where students could submit their pictures for yearbook use -- carefully moderated, of course -- but unfortunately it was deemed against school policy.  I've been taking some photographs myself lately, both of Movember and Spirit Week, but my current greatest undertaking is creating a comprehensive layout for the book.  Six pieces of paper, eighty-eight small boxes, sticky notes galore, rulers, pens, last year's book, calculators... I quickly found making an outline is no small matter.  It also involved much more math than I'd anticipated; our school has decreased in student population substantially since last year, but with the help of my trusty GDC I was able to determine how many pages I would need for both grad and student photos -- down two of each from last year.  I tried to leave us as much leeway as possible for unknowns that may spring up later in the year, with one extra page for clubs and one-and-a-half extra events pages, and also to give some groups that are usually under-represented in the yearbook a little coverage, such as a split page for drama/art, an IB page, and a full page for student council near the beginning instead of just an entry in the clubs section, not to mention a page for our yearbook committee at the very end.  I tried to deliver on my promise of more fun content as well, with a page reserved for a best of 2012/2013 survey, sports candids, general candids, a page both for chem free and for chem free awards instead of just one split, a page for the runners-up from our cover contest, an extra fun page for either confessionals, imagine-ifs, or whatever other sort of quirky thing we decided to run, plus I still found room to include all the vitals from last year.  Our next committee meeting is tomorrow at lunch, and hopefully everyone will be happy with what I've come up with.  I know we have a few people on the committee who love to hate change, but with any luck they'll like this layout just as much as I do.

IB victorious

Today marked the Dodgeball debut of IB Dodgin, and we had very large shoes to fill:  last year the IB team lost their first game in thirty seconds.  With such high expectations on ourselves, the nine of us were determined to lose with a shred of dignity.  We didn't.  Instead, we won.  It was a great team effort, and when Morgan hit their last player, we all flooded in from the sidelines, high-fiving and hugging her like we had just won the championship instead of the first game in a round-robin best-of-three match.  The grade twelve team we played against were determined to not lose to a bunch of IB nerds, and they came at us in the second game with a vengeance.  Patrick was a star, and we won again.  We had not only lasted longer than our predecessors, we had won our first match.  I'd love to stop the chronicle there, since our second match of the day involved us getting creamed by the grade eleven athlete preps, but we still put up a good fight.  They were really nice about it too, congratulating us on our previous win after the game, and we were all still ecstatic from raising the bar for future IB generations.  I really felt closer to the grade twelves too, becoming fire-forged teammates with Natalie and Megan, and anything done with my grade eleven classmates is always tons of fun.  Our next game is on Tuesday against a team that supposedly we should have a close game against, and if we win that match, we'll make it into the finals.  Go IB!

Breaking bones and boundaries

Alliterative titles aside, hopefully there won't be any fractures in our near future, but you never know in the world of Dodge.  Our mild-mannered squad of IB nerds have thrown our hat in the dodgeball ring in the name of becoming more involved in our school (and for CAS), and who knows where this (potentially ill-advised) decision will take us.  Dodgeball is kind of a big deal at our school; aside from the biannual musical, I'd say the annual tournament is the most hyped event.  I didn't even consider participating last year; I'd played dodgeball before in gym classes, of course, but I'd never really thought much else of it.  I'm decent enough for phys ed, but playing in a competitive tournament like this is going to be a new experience entirely.  We do have a few secret weapons up our sleeves:  since there is no co-ed league, somehow we managed to talk the coordinators into letting our team play in the girls' category despite having a few boys, and also we're quite likely to be underestimated due to our aforementioned mild-mannered-nerdiness.  Or maybe appropriately estimated, but we do have quite a few athletes on our team (myself included), so perhaps we will have some sort of element of surprise.  In any case, it'll be a great opportunity to bond with our class, the grade twelves, and a few of the Pre-IBs, as well as interact with the school at large, and it will definitely be a step outside my comfort zone.  Our first game is on Thursday; later updates as events unfold.

Silver linings

My ringette team participated in our first tournament of the season this weekend, playing against other provincial teams in the Maritime region. The tournament takes place every year in Miramichi (about three hours away from home), and let's just say our record in past years has not been stellar. We usually come fourth.. out of four teams. In any case, I left history class a few minutes early on Friday, hopped in the car, and drove straight to Miramichi, getting there just in time for our first game at 7:05. We worked hard, but we lost by the entire seven goal spread (in ringette, only up to a seven-goal difference is put up on the scoreboard, and at that point it goes into running time. If the team with less points scores, another of the leading team's points will be displayed on the scoreboard. If that goal causes it to become less than a seven goal spread, the game returns to stopped time). As much of a humiliating defeat our first game was, that team was the hardest in the tournament, and we remained optimistic that we could make a comeback. And that we did. The next day we defeated our opponents by the full seven goal spread, and I even scored the first goal of the game on a great cross-crease pass from my forward partner. I got a few assists too, although my biggest role was in forechecking. After that high, we went into our second game of the day too cocky. By ten minutes in the score was 3-0 for our opponents, and we just didn't seem to be able to pick up our passes. We were starting to get a bit panicked, but then I returned the favour from the previous game and shot my partner a nice cross-crease, and she scored, making it 3-1. Then our team scored again. And again. And again, and we were in the lead. The game wasn't as solid as our first that day, but even after that rocky start we managed to scrape up a 12-7 win (yours truly didn't get any goals, but she did end up in the box for a four-minute double penalty. Oops). With our 2-1 record we made it to the championship game against our heated adversary: the team we were creamed by in our first game. We all were super pumped up before the game, sitting in the dressing room, listening to "300 Violin Orchestra" and our coach's pre-game spiel. We were ready to take them on, ready to turn the tables and claim victory. The game started, and they scored. Again. And again. And again. And for our part, we got penalty after penalty and poor call after poor call. The refs, in all seriousness and with not an ounce of hyperbole, patted some of the opposing team on the head and gave them high fives after they scored. At one point we had three girls in the box, and the referee gave the ring to the other team when it should have been ours, and when our coach tried to talk to him, he said that he would only speak to a captain. Our coach pointed out that the ref had already put all our captains in the penalty box (on bogus calls, I might add), and the ref shrugged and said, "Well, that's too bad". Suffice to say, this is not the story of how the underdogs overcame adversity, defeated the cocky, obnoxious favourites, and won the day. This story ends with us creamed 1-25 (although, thanks to the seven-goal spread, the marginally less humiliating 1-8 was the official score). I guess that's how the underdog/favourite story usually ends when you're not in the running for the best picture Oscar.  While it's not easy to tell from my bellyaching, the tournament went phenomenally for us.  Our team won the silver medal, something I don't think a team from here has ever done before in this tournament.  I personally have been improving a lot; being sixteen years old in a U-19 provincial tournament and competing against the best first year university players isn't exactly the easiest situation to be in, but we still came out second-to-one. We'll see this team again at Nationals, and others that are just as tough, but we are going to work hard, improve, (maybe with a rock-fueled training montage), and by the time this season is over we'll be the odds-defeating underdogs Hollywood has been training us since birth to be.

CAS keeps right on trucking

Exam period has just wrapped up, so recently time for CAS activities has been tight, and time for blogging about them even more so. Still, even if exams have put a slight damper on my regular posting, I've still had a lot of action (and creativity and service) going on lately on the CAS front. I'll save my progress reports on newspaper and ringette for later posts, and dedicate this one to the latest developments with our yearbook committee. Administration has completely vetoed our hopes of getting the book released in June. It's immensely frustrating, since it is difficult to change things and make the book better when we're supposed to be in control yet someone else is holding the reins, but I guess this is one thing I will just have to let go. It really took a toll on my and Jessica's spirits, though; we'd really hoped to be able to move past an outdated tradition and start a new chapter. But, we can't dwell. If we do dwell on this issue, then we won't get anything done. I just hope we won't have to bend our vision even further to jump through these political hoops. In terms of actual, positive progress, we've formed a yearbook committee, which is great. There is one boy on it that was part of the old committee and keeps insisting that the way they used to do things is the 'proper' way to make a yearbook, and there are a couple of grade twelves who think that their seniority means they should get to call all the shots, but despite such issues I think the committee is quite strong and we'll be able to get a lot done. Jess and I have already taken some pictures of the field hockey team and gotten team lists from the sports coordinators, and we're currently looking into getting a list of all upcoming school events to make a yearbook calendar. Getting photos is currently our top priority, since layout can be done at any point, but you can't take photos of an event retroactively. Still, I'm hoping to be able to have a good discussion with the committee about layout next meeting, with ideas for pages and content that we can get the school involved with and make the yearbook full of memories and uniqueness. We've decided to potentially hold an art contest to select a cover for the book, and Adrian is taking charge of creating a social media page for students to submit their photos for yearbook consideration, so overall I can already feel our changes taking shape. We plan on getting inserts for the book that people can get signed at the end of the year, so we don't have to give up our signing-books dream entirely, so that's also a plus. My next steps are to create the yearbook calendar I mentioned previously, and also take photographs for Movember and Spirit Week, so all in all things on the yearbook front feel altogether quite manageable. There have been some speedbumps, sure, and there's bound to be more, but for now I think we've got things under control.

All these things we've done

Midnight last night the GISHWHES timer struck zero, but that wasn't the end for us.  I mentioned before that I'd written a letter to the editor in an attempt to satisfy item 13, "An op-ed piece published in a local paper about how "petty, vindictive birds are stealing from the elderly!"", and that Adrian had submitted it for me.  Well, nothing really came of it, and I figured that the newspaper had saw through my pretty prose to the absurdity that it most obviously was.  This morning, I opened the paper to find this:

It may have been too late to submit it for points, but, well... it ended our GISHWHES chronicle with a bang, alright.  Moving on to some of these other things that myself and the rest of the ibsasscats have thrown together over these past few days of GISHWHES:

Item 6:  If your child were a prodigy artist and had a marker and you were deep asleep and they were inspired to "beautify" your face, what would the result be?

Item 69:  You and a friend must take at least 50 of your stuffed animals/dolls on a field trip to a grocery store. All of the stuffed animals/dolls must EITHER be attached to your clothing or in a grocery cart or both.

Item 53:  Carve a Jill O'Lantern! Carve a pumpkin to look like a feminized Misha Collins. Bonus points for realism.

Item 149:  Draw or paint a picture of Miss Jean Louis riding a school bus like a horse as it flies off a cliff into a volcano. There can be no passengers and she must have a dialogue bubble above her head that says something she would definitely say at this moment.

Item 54:  Elmo Gone Wrong. What would a Tickle-Me-Elmo look like if it had a serious crystal meth problem?

Item 37:  A screen cap of a chat thread on Misha Collins' IMDB page. The thread must be started by a user with your team's name and must pose an unusual question about Misha's personal life, such as, "Is it true that Misha Collins eats nothing but the hearts of human babies?" Or "Why doesn't Misha have any fingers?"

Item 146:  Make a children's doll from items found in your refrigerator or pantry. Go ahead and really creep us out with this one.

Item 5:  Let's see what Twister would look like with 13 people. Each person must be wearing only one color of clothing, i.e. all yellow, or all red and no two people can be wearing the same color clothing.

Item 22:  We've all heard of a "flea circus". What do "flea strip clubs" look like?

Item 83:  You holding a picture of you holding a picture of you holding a picture of you holding a picture of you holding a picture of an apple. You must have a gold frame suspended around your head.

Item 148:  A picture of you and a loved one kissing. Here's the catch though - you must have at least 11 food items between your lips and the lips of your loved one.

Item 14:  A person in a business suit with a leather briefcase jumping into leaf pile.

Item 78:  A one-page GISHWHES comic strip involving a rhinoceros, a tangerine, and an appendectomy.

Item 150:  It's Medieval Battle Time! Huzzah! You and a friend or loved one, dress up in your best battle gear/armory comprised entirely of kitchen ware. You can be wearing nothing else. Strike dueling poses.

Item 98:  A dog taking a human for a walk. Human must be on all fours and have a collar around their neck and the dog must have the leash in his mouth.

Item 51:  How long was Miss Jean Louis's "kale binge"? One might find the answer on one of our social media platforms.

Item 10:  Find an object that was manufactured the day and year you were born in city or town of your birth. Prove it. (Note: the "object" in question cannot be you or your twin.)

Item 35:  Draw or paint a portrait of Misha Collins and the Queen of England, both dressed in Steampunk, riding on a single stallion.

And we didn't just have to take pictures; we had to make videos, too!

 

Item 100: In mime, depict one of the following phrases: a) "The pen is mightier than the sword." b) "You're the bees knees!" c) "Holkyn kolkyn!"

Item 140:  A stop-motion film depicting the two by two loading of Noah's arc and the ensuing flood.

There were a few other videos done to which I don't have links:  Item 129, "One of you pulling up to a fast food restaurant drive-thru to order a meal, but instead of ordering a meal, you are only allowed to make sheep noises into the intercom. Must clearly hear the person on the other end of the intercom" and Item 119, "Recite "The Raven" to a crow", but this is the majority of the zaniness we engaged in over the past few days.  My principal contributions were writing item 13, organizing and participating in item 5, making item 37, and the two videos shown here, items 100 and 140, were both my doing.  I'm actually ridiculously proud of my videos.  I don't know... just having created something in this way makes me feel giddily happy.

So, what did I learn during the course of this event?

• Our local newspaper has exceptionally low quality standards.
• All it takes to be able to raid the school drama department is to ask for the key.
• Together we can accomplish so much more than we could ever imagine doing alone.
• All neighbours deserve to be rescued from their homework for a dramatic sword/pen duel.
• Perfect planning is impossible, especially in a group; what's important is how you improvise.
• Sometimes circumstances don't play by your schedule.
• There's always time for the things for which you have absolutely no time.
• A good instrumental track improves any video.
• Like Murphy's Law says, anything that can go wrong, will.
• When placing plastic animals on inclined planes, don't overestimate the force of friction.
• There's people all over the world who see things in the same insane way I do.
• Creativity is craziness. It's having fun, it's that feeling of insane pride you get when you make something that is completely and pointlessly yours.  It's dreaming up intricate, precise concepts and then it's making plans up on the fly and fixing things as you go.  It's your grandiose outlines and your wild, illogical ideas, your best laid schemes of mice and men.  I'm not very artistic:  I can't draw or paint or sketch, but that doesn't mean I'm not creative.  I can write and I can do, I can edit films and come up with zany ideas and set them to music, I can find things and fix things and organize things...  creativity is so much more than just being able to draw pretty pictures, and GISHWHES celebrates true creativity in all its insane, imperfect glory.

So, that was my experience with GISHWHES.  It was strange, it was embarrassing, it was off the wall, and I'd do it all again in a heartbeat.  It was a great opportunity to bond as a class and to do things I would never have considered doing otherwise.

As one of my favourite books ends, "May God forgive me for this and all these things I've done".

My name in print

This is a little bit late, but I've been having some scanner trouble and I wasn't able to upload the pictures.  Anyway, a few weeks ago the first issue of the newspaper was released, and both my articles made it to print!

For the next issue I'm doing a book review on Reached, which, as you can see above, is released on November 13.  It's during exam time and I'll only have a few days to read the book and write my review before the deadline, but I'm sure I'll be able to make everything turn out a-okay!

GISHWHES: Day One

One of the rules of GISHWHES is that you can't post any of your pictures on social media until after the event is over, so that means I can't share our items thus far in this blog post.  Never fret, though; in six days I'll be posting them to my heart's content.  Our team meeting was today at lunch, and we have a pretty good tentative plan of who is doing what.  Everybody was really enthusiastic, and I'm pretty optimistic that we'll be able to get a bunch of items over the next few days.  My contributions so far are completing task 37 (A screen cap of a chat thread on Misha Collins' IMDB page. The thread must be started by a user with your team's name and must pose an unusual question about Misha's personal life, such as, "Is it true that Misha Collins eats nothing but the hearts of human babies?" Or "Why doesn't Misha have any fingers?").  It was actually more difficult than expected; on IMDB you can't just pick a username; it's automatically your email address.  So I had to make a new email, and I had to confirm the account by getting a texted pin, although I don't own a cell phone so I had to find one to borrow.  This was all at seven this morning while I was supposed to be getting ready for school, so I'm pretty proud that I managed to get it done all through trial and error.  In the morning I also sent a message to a friend of mine who's involved with a lot of music related things to see if he could help us with item 126 (Get an orchestra in a symphony hall with at least 25 instruments to play "Carry On My Wayward Son").  It most likely won't work out, but I promised him cookies and Halloween candy, so we'll see.  After school I also wrote a letter to the local newspaper in an attempt to fulfill task 13 (An op-ed piece published in a local paper about how "petty, vindictive birds are stealing from the elderly!"), and Adrian submitted it for me.  It's actually fairly strongly written and I managed to make it seem hardly absurd at all, so I have my fingers crossed that it'll get published.  Patrick, Jessica, Sarah, and Aaron all completed tasks as well:  task 54 (Elmo Gone Wrong. What would a Tickle-Me-Elmo look like if it had a serious crystal meth problem?), task 51 (How long was Miss Jean Louis's "kale binge"? One might find the answer on one of our social media platforms), task 98 (A dog taking a human for a walk. Human must be on all fours and have a collar around their neck and the dog must have the leash in his mouth), and task 22 (We've all heard of a "flea circus". What do "flea strip clubs" look like?) respectively.  I was very busy tonight studying for my physics exam and chemistry test that are both tomorrow, so I hope that later this week I'll be able to get more things done for GISHWHES.  A personal goal of mine is task 140 (A stop-motion film depicting the two by two loading of Noah's arc and the ensuing flood), but there are so many other cool options that I'm dying to do!

And another thing...

Woah, two posts in one day?!  Slow down, hotshot.  I considered leaving this until tomorrow, but it's already a few days old, and tomorrow I'll likely be reporting on day one of GISHWHES.  I had my final tryout for provincial ringette on Saturday, and I made the team!  I also took about two whole minutes to get the ring in the net during a shooting competition, but that's beside the point.  In any case, I've managed to make the first hurdle, and I can't wait to meet the next few challenges that I'll face in the coming weeks and over the coming season.  Our first provincial outing will likely be the Miramichi tournament late next month, although I will have a house league tournament prior to that.  Speaking of house, teams have also been picked in that division.  My team is fair; not stacked or anything, but solid enough and hopefully it'll be a good year.  I'll be playing center (joy of joys), which is going to be an immense challenge due to my firm status as a member of the endurance-impaired.  Skating from one end of the ice to the next and back again for an entire shift has never really been my forte, especially when you throw scoring, checking, and thinking into the mix.  The higher you set the bar, the more you get to grow, so I guess that'll be my mantra this season while I'm dying of asphyxia.

It's not easy being in charge

There's only approximately five hours remaining until the start of GISHWHES, and might I say I can't wait.  Nonetheless, it's been a lot of work so far for something that hasn't even begun, especially since we aren't the event's organizers; as the de facto team leader, I've found that organizing a group can be just as daunting a task as organizing an event itself.  I'm not exactly sure how all the problems and speed bumps became my responsibility, but I guess if you want an idea to come to fruition, you've got the put the effort in yourself.  First of all, getting a team together wasn't as easy a task as it first appeared.  Fifteen kids in the class, fifteen spots on the team seemed like mathematics at its most basic, but of course things weren't that easy.  When I asked the class who wanted to join the team, everyone said yes except for Kathleen, and everyone was supposed to register over the long weekend a few weeks ago.  By the Monday, only three people had registered:  Jessica, Adrian, and myself.  In addition, Ferdie decided he didn't want to participate after all, although Kathleen decided she did want to be involved so we still had a net membership of fourteen.  Little by little I managed to goad more people into remembering to register (likely annoying everyone in the process), and Mr. Broderick agreed to both be our teacher supervisor, and also register for our team to fill the remaining position.  However, things still weren't kosher.  A few days later Sue and Sarah followed Ferdie's lead in deciding that GISHWHES wasn't the thing for them, and our team was once again short, this time by two members (and to make matters worse, only six of us were registered by this point).  So with the help of Jessica I turned to the grade 12 class for help, and Aaron and my brother Michael immediately volunteered.  I was hesitant to allow my brother to join the team, as it felt like he just wanted to ride along for some easy CAS instead of actually participating, but I was pressured into letting him join lest looking like a complete jerk.  Sarah (a different one this time) was also interested, so I told her to put her name down and we could probably find her a spot.  Afterwards I went to talk to Mr. Broderick, who hadn't yet registered, and told him that he didn't have to, since we found another student (Sarah) to take the final position.  By the next day we had in theory a full team of fifteen and eleven people registered, so all the chaos seemed to be over.  As you can probably guess, it wasn't.  Michael bailed, even after he had assured me he'd be committed, and our team was once again left one member short.  I went back to the grade twelve class since there seemed to have been quite a bit of interest the first time and I believed I'd be able to find someone who wanted to participate.  I was right on both counts:  the class was full of people who wanted to be a part of GISHWHES.  So much so that they had decided to make their own team.  If Michael hadn't hogged that spot I would have gotten one of them on our team the first time I was there, but I'm not bitter.  Not at all.  Anyway, we went back to Mr. Broderick and asked him sheepishly if he would in fact register (it was especially awkward since we had originally told him not to register, then we told him to, then we told him not to, and here we were telling him to again), but he agreed, and over the course of the next few days our final team members registered and our team was full, just a mere 48 hours shy of the registration deadline.  Since then things have gone a bit smoother, although I've had to organize a meeting for tomorrow and talk to teachers to make sure the date was clear of other IB activities (our IB coordinator was planning a working lunch), and I've had to field everyone's questions, comments, and concerns, although I don't mind doing that at all.  Anything that fosters excitement for GISHWHES is fine by me, and hopefully everyone will be motivated over the event and I won't have to poke and prod people to participate.  I'm so excited for the hunt, and I hope everyone else is too!

Happy new yearbook

When I entered high school last year, I quickly became quite disillusioned about the yearbook committee.  Yearbook was one of my favourite extracurriculars throughout junior high, and for good reason.  It was a giant part of the school -- pretty much every student bought one.  The yearbook was fun and amazing and made by the students, creative and memorable and representative of our student identity.  After three years of such an amazing system, I wasn't prepared for the underwhelming flatness of our high school yearbook.  Its only theme is red and white -- our school colours, and every page has pretty much a cookie cutter layout.  A few of my friends and I went to the information meeting for the committee last year, and we were essentially told that the yearbook was not a place for creative thought.  If you're on the committee, you take the pictures you're told to take and you stick them in the place you're told to put them.  That's it, that's all.  We decided to not join the committee after that; it was obviously not the thing for us, but those weren't the only quibbles we had with the yearbook.  You see, unlike with our previous experiences, the yearbook covers up until the very end of the year, saturated heavily with end of year activities such as prom and graduation.  This, while fine in itself, has one unfortunate implication:  you don't get to sign yearbooks.  Throughout junior high, this was the source of so much excitement for students.  Flipping through the crisp new yearbooks when they arrive in June, finding the pictures of yourself and your friends, and most importantly, writing messages in the yearbooks of everyone you know.  That's where the appeal of a yearbook lies, through my experience.  Those are the memories: your and your friends' haphazard scrawls, not just the pictures and text on glossy paper (although those are important too).  As I said, in Intermediate the majority of students bought their yearbook.  Here, in high school, where yearbooks should really matter, only about a hundred are sold out of a student population of 1100.  Yes, the yearbook might miss out on pictures of prom and names of award winners, but those people have their own pictures and their own certificates and plaques to remember these events.  But signing yearbooks; those memories are totally unique.  This is a pretty long preamble for something in which very little has happened as of yet.  In any case, this year the previous yearbook coordinator retired, and no teacher has been willing to fill the position.  Jessica and I saw this as our chance.  We emailed the principal our proposal outlining our plan to create a new yearbook committee and begin a whole new epoch in our school's yearbook history.  The book would be made by the students, for the students, fueled by student input and student creativity.  The principal approved our proposal, except for one thing.  For the past forty years the yearbook has been released in the September of the following year, not in June when they can be signed, and to change that we'd have to get proof that this is what the students want; she is trepidatious in believing that swapping prom and awards pages for the ability to sign yearbooks is a fair trade.  We'll have to get the student body to vote, but I sincerely hope that we'll be able to make this work.  Signing yearbooks are so quintessential; I can't imagine graduating from high school without it.  But I'm getting away from the CAS activity at hand.  Long story short, Jess and I are attempting to conquer the organizational commitment so many teachers and staff have shied away from:  running the school yearbook.  With the help of our trusty teacher supervisor Mr. Toms and a committee of students that we have yet to interview, we shall succeed in making the school yearbook a product heralded from every corner of our school, something purchased, treasured, and signed by every student, and with input from the same.  We shall... stay after school tomorrow to take pictures of the field hockey championship, since nobody has taken any pictures of any school sports or activities throughout any of September or October.  Running the yearbook will be a daunting, time-consuming task, but I know we can do it!

Ringette adventures: continued

On Saturday I had my second provincial ringette tryout, and things are getting better already.  Endurance has never been my strong suit -- I've always been more of a strategist going in for quick spurts than someone who's able to keep at top pace for an extending period of time -- but this season is already proving to be the first step in changing that.  I am proud to announce that I experienced no lightheadness or dizziness, and I was no more exhausted than everyone else as the practice wore on.  Although I suppose that isn't saying much; it was another tough practice, and everyone was breathless by its end.  Still, compared to how horribly out of shape I was last week, I feel good about my progress thus far.  I did end up running some hills after my last post, although I only did one loop, so I'll try to do two next time and so on to work my stamina up.  I also had my first house league practice last week, which wasn't a big exertion compared to provincial tryouts, but every little bit of ice time helps.  I'm still unsure about whether or not I'm going to make the team; there were quite a few older, first-year-university girls at this tryout that hadn't been at the first one.  I wouldn't say I'm the poorest player there; there are at least two girls who I would say I'd rank above, and there's another few people with whom I'd probably be in the same skill bracket, but even if I do make the team, it'll be a challenge to keep up.  I'm kind of used to being one of the best, so that's a bit of hubris I'm going to have to get over if I want to improve and meet the challenge this season will pose.

GISHWHES, you say?

Around this time last year I saw a girl online talking about a worldwide scavenger hunt in which she was participating, and while at the time it piqued my interest, I never really looked into it.  I saw some more people talking about it this year, and I didn't make the mistake of ignoring it twice.  It's called GISHWHES, which stands for the quirky, a propos name "the Greatest International Scavenger Hunt the World Has Ever Seen".  The more I read about it the more enamoured I grew with the idea; as a team of fifteen, one scavenges items off a giant list, a feat that involves such things as doing good deeds dressed as superheroes, making a portrait of Shakira out of coffee beans, lifting a fully decorated Christmas tree into the air with balloons, and recording all of these creative and wonderful feats via video or photography.  Last year GISHWHES even achieved Guinness World Record fame as the world's largest scavenger hunt!  Everything I read pointed to one conclusion:  GISHWHES would be the ultimate CAS project for Creativity.  And, coincidentally, a fifteen person per team requirement is perfect if one's IB class totals fifteen people.  It didn't take much to sell everyone on the idea; well, except Kathleen, but I think even she is coming around.  We even managed to convince our history teacher, Mr. Broderick, to be our supervisor and help us out.  Anyway, when I got home from school today I registered and payed the fee, which is partially to pay for the grand prize (an amazing trip to Scotland that we have no illusions of in any universe actually winning) and partially goes to charitable organizations, which is a nice touch.  Everyone else is supposedly registering before Monday, which I hope they will, although the registration deadline isn't until next Saturday so there is still a bit of leeway.  I am just so excited for this project; it'll be tough, especially for someone lacking artistic ability such as myself, but I have a feeling that it'll be a truly amazing experience.

Confessions of a seriously out of shape teenager

I had my first provincial try-out for ringette out in Montague yesterday.  The second I stepped onto the ice I felt great; it's hard to believe how rejuvenating the taste of cold rink air is, the feel of gliding across ice.  So for the first few minutes before practice started, I was just skating around in circles, shooting some rings in the net, and lost in the nostalgia of how much I'd missed this over the summer.  Well, those happy-go-lucky feelings don't last for long when one hasn't done any real physical activity since soccer season ended and everyone else is apparently in the midst of training for half-marathons, playing field hockey for their school teams, and practicing for national soccer; listening to the new MatchBox 20 CD, reading HG Wells's The Time Machine in French and studying for chemistry tests don't really keep a young athlete in peak physical condition.  Suffice to say, once the real practice started I felt like I was dying on the ice.  After around twenty minutes my head started doing that thing where the edges of my vision go black, I get dizzy, and all voices sound far-away and tinny.  Thankfully, I didn't end up fainting, and after that things got marginally better.  Despite my extreme out-of-shapeness, I did manage to impress the coach with some good dekes and being one of the fastest to skate around the ice after a drill, even though I did miss some very easy passes and it likely looked like I was about to pass out for the majority of the time.  There wasn't too many people there, which was reassuring, but it is Thanksgiving weekend, and players are allowed to miss one try-out and still be eligible for the team.  I know there were quite a few girls who weren't able to make it, so it's still hard for me to gauge my chances.  It'll be tough; this year I'm playing in the Belle division, and while all other age categories are composed of only two years, Belle is three, and making a team whilst competing against first-year university students will definitely be an uphill challenge.  Speaking of uphill, the next try-out is on the 13th, and I'm going to try to jog some hills before that to get in a bit better shape and hopefully prevent an ill-timed collapse.

So it begins...

I wrote my two articles for the school paper today!  By some rarity all I had for homework was a sole math problem, so I had lots of time to work on the two 300-word pieces.  I'm glad I had this luxury of time, because they took so much longer than I'd expected.  One was on the subject of teen books to be released in the near future, and it was considerably time consuming to research, since writing solely on the books I knew are coming out soon would probably give the article an extreme slant towards the realms of dystopian fiction and fantasy (with just a dash of pop physics).  The research was actually quite a plus, all things considered, as I've found quite a few books that I hadn't heard of prior to this point that seem right up my alley.  Still, it was a massive time sink for a measly 300 words (well, 303 to be precise), especially since I had already written the first half of the article last night.  The other was on the fall lineup of comedy shows, with short reviews on the premieres of How I Met Your Mother and Big Bang Theory, and then a few lines on other upcoming sitcom dates.  To review those of course necessitated rewatching the episodes, and then finding upcoming shows required still more research, as again I didn't want to have the shows mentioned completely slanted towards the ones I prefer.  Suffice to say, writing a total of 602 words (as the TV article ended up totaling 299) consumed pretty much my entire evening.  Nevertheless, it did feel rather satisfying to complete the small projects, and hopefully with a bit more practice and proficiency these articles will start to come more naturally.