I think I'll try defying gravity

Jess made a video when we were in watering the plants today, so I thought it'd make a nice complement to my status update from yesterday.  We didn't do any planting; we just watered the lot, emptied the drip buckets (the ceiling has a horrible number of leaks), replaced a few of them with larger containers, and rocked out to the Wicked soundtrack.  Also, it was during our watering session that we got our campus assignments for Shad Valley emailed to us!  I'm going to be spending my summer in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, and I'm super excited for all that the future holds.

How does your garden grow?

Answer:  Rapidly, and with a wide variety of cute names.  Of course, the plants themselves have not started to grow yet, but our array of seed-filled pots and containers has gotten bigger and bigger over the last few days.  Yesterday we started small:  Adrian and Victoria planted four basil plants (all named Basil), and Mallory, Harini, and I planted five geraniums and three zinnias (with adorable and amazing names).  Mallory's two geraniums bear the moniker of Batman characters, Harini and I gave ours the names of Merlin actors/characters (Merlin, Arthur, Colin Morgan, and Bradley James), and then Harini named the last two after Mallory and I, as revenge for the jade plant.  That was just during lunch yesterday, so we didn't exactly have a ton of time to plant.  Today, however, we stayed after school to water the garden, and since we had a fairly large group of five, some of us planted while others dealt with the watering.  That is to say, Jess and Victoria handled the watering, Adrian performed a transplantation of Increase who is now safe and sound in a pot in the greenhouse, and Harini and I filled our boots with planting (and naming.  Mostly after Merlin characters).  We'd decided to plant snow peas and hot peppers in the greenhouse (possibly to sell to teachers, depending on how well they do), and since I'd found out snow peas wouldn't do that well in a normal pot because they need space to lean, I'd hoped to be able to find a window box lying around in the botany lab.  Unfortunately, there weren't any, but we made do with two large circular pots in which we planted a bunch of snow pea seeds.  Victoria had not yet left for watering at that point, so she helped me fill the planters with soil and named one, and I named the other "Viceroy" in her honour.  Next we planted hot pepper seeds in eight small pots (we discovered that they need to be grown that way, and then we can transplant the ones that grow into bigger pots), and as it was just Harini and I by this point, they all pretty much ended up Merlin-ified.  After that, we planted some normal peppers, some thyme, and some coriander.  Earlier today at lunch I was absent because I had an orthodontist appointment, but the rest of the group was working in the botany lab then as well, and Harini planted some fenugreek and Jessica a black-eyed Susan.  And that rounds out our planting to date, save for Increase Jr, a small portion of Increase that Adrian is attempting to grow into a new plant in Mallory's "Cactus County".  It's all very exciting; we'll probably be planting a bit more once we know exactly what we want to put in the garden proper, but still!  What we've got so far has already been so much fun to do, despite being a lot of work.  We need to make sure all the plants stay watered, and every plant has their own special conditions that we must ensure they receive; for example, the geraniums need to be kept in darkness until they germinate, so we keep plates over top of their pots except for when they are being watered.  It all doesn't seem like work though; it's just something new and exciting and worthwhile.  We'll have to be even more diligent coming in at lunch hours now to make sure all our plants stay watered, but I'm quite looking forward to it.  I hope it's not too long before all our seeds begin to sprout!

My friend Harini and my other friend Harini

We're beginning to get used to the gardening routine, but we still don't have all the kinks worked out yet.  Fertilizing, new plants, the mural project... all of that is going to be taken care of after we return to school after March Break.  Although we still have a lot of new things to deal with coming soon, I think we're beginning to get a handle on the basics.  Twice a week we've been watering the garden, a debacle that takes about an hour to an hour and a half and requires three or four people.  Right after school the group of us go down to the chem lab to borrow the keys that unlock the greenhouse door.  Before we even think about heading down to the lobby to water the garden, there's a whole routine we've got to take care of back in our greenhouse home base.  First off, we have Harini, named by Adrian in honour of our good friend Harini, who is not in IB and therefore not part of the CAS project, but equally awesome and who sometimes helps us out with our greenhouse duties at lunch.  In any case, Harini the jade plant had been in one of the science labs, and was on the brink of death due to neglect.  As we'd been given access to the greenhouse (as Mallory said, the botany lab is like we're in a video game and we unlocked an achievement that allows us into a new area), we relocated Harini there where we can keep her watered and healthy.  After she has recovered we are going to plant her in the lobby garden.

I wonder which Harini this is?

So, watering her is one of our botany lab duties.  The second is tending to Mallory's cacti.  She bought the seeds at a plant shop a few weeks ago, and now we have a number of pots that may very well sprout cacti sometime in the not-too-distant future.  After we finish all the greenhouse watering, we have to squeegee the floors so that all the excess water goes down the drain, as water just tends to pool everywhere in the greenhouse (it's not helped by the way the ceiling leaks).  After all that is done, we can finally grab the stepladder and make our way down the hall to the lower portion of the lobby garden.  Using the stepladder, we can climb into the bed and pick up any garbage that has been tossed in (which is typically an unfortunately large amount).  We also empty the wishing well that Adrian has instated, putting the change in a container in the botany lab to be donated to charity.  After the garden is cleaned, we get the hose out of the janitor's room and raise it up to the upper level, where we rain down the water on the garden from above.  This takes up the bulk of our time, since the garden needs a considerable amount of water.  After that, we pull the house back down to the lower level and water it from that direction, ending by washing all the dirt spray off the walls.  After that is done, we put the hose away, sweep and mop the floors, and return our supplies to the botany lab.  And that's the watering, done for another half week, save for the lunch hours when we must go into the greenhouse to tend to Harini and the cacti.  Now that we've just gotten into the swing of things, everything is going to get messed up when we return to school next week and start dealing with planting, fertilizing, and fixing up walls, but I'm still looking forward to it.  This gardening project is both a lot of work and a lot of fun, and I don't think there is any place in the school more peaceful and lovely than the botany lab.

We start as fools

Today we received our country and committee assignments for Model UN!  I managed to get my first country choice of Tanzania, although I didn't end up on the ECOSOC committee.  Still, as I mentioned earlier, I'm sure that the Social, Humanitarian, and Cultural Committee on the reconsideration of the responsibility to protect is going to be fascinating.  I don't really know much on the topic or on my country as a whole, so I suppose it is a good thing that we have a month or two to get ready.  As the Tanzanian proverb goes, we start as fools and become wise through experience (see, I'm learning stuff about Tanzania already).  Tonight I'm working on reading the background paper on the SOCHUM committee, which is quite interesting.  It alludes to many historical events, some of which I'm familiar with and others I'm going to have to research a bit about, but truly, it is fascinating.  Another perk about this committee, even though it is not my first choice, is that this is also the committee that Jessica will be serving on, so at least I will know someone.  On the other hand, she is representing Somalia, and I somehow doubt that Somalian foreign policy is one that any country is going to see eye to eye with, but who knows?  I'm still a fool when it comes to Tanzania's political stances, so maybe they and Somalia have more in common than one might figure.  I'm going to be away much of this weekend for a house ringette tournament, but I hope to still be able to find time to do some preliminary research on my country and on the issue.  I feel like I don't really know as much about world events as I would like, and so I think that Model UN is going to be an interesting and eye-opening experience.

Getting my hands dirty

We (Mallory, Jessica, Victoria, Adrian, Sawini, Kathleen, and I, along with Ms. McBurney) had our first meeting of the gardening club after school today.  First off we got a stepladder from the greenhouse, grabbed a box of latex gloves from the chemistry lab, and then jumped right into the soil.  Standing in the garden, we found that it was even more disgusting than we had been able to tell from outside, and as you may recall, we had thought it was plenty disgusting already.  Rotting apple cores, over a dozen pens and pencils, and an opened and mushy chocolate bar were just some of the treasures we found half buried in the dirt.  It took as a good while to pick up all the trash and put it in the garbage bin that we had dragged there with us, and after we had finished, we got a rake and worked on getting rid of the many dead leaves that were everywhere.  The plants were in a really rough shape; the only one that was in semi-presentable condition was the fig tree, and there were also two other trees, a cactus, and a nondescript beat-up bush that may have in fact been a second cactus, all in desperate need of some TLC.  While we worked we named the pitiful-looking plants -- the two trees of the same type were Charlie Brown and Linus, the bush/cactus was Increase (after Increase Mather of the Salem Witch Trials fame and the nickname we have for our history teacher), the cactus was Shepard or Shep (Mallory named it this in honour of the protagonist of Mass Effect, although Kathleen misheard her and so it also goes by Shrek), and we named the fig tree Kim in honour of Ms. McBurney.  There were also some vine-like things in the back, but they remain unnamed.  While we raked (and seeing as we only had one rake, it was Adrian who did most of the raking), Victoria and I worked on pruning; her with Kim and I with Charlie Brown and Linus.  Charlie Brown was in really bad shape and I had to prune it down almost all the way to the ground, although while I was working on Linus, some of the others managed to salvage what was remaining and lift it up by securing it with a hair elastic, so it actually ended up not looking too bad.  After we had filled the compost bin with dead branches, we set to work on watering.  The entire bed was really dry and dusty; as soon as we had gotten the hose working and water finally splashed the dry soil and fig leaves, there was an intense and pleasing scent of petrichor.  We spent a good half hour watering from the main level of the school, showering water down on the bed below and coating the leaves of the fig tree to dust them off (as Ms. McBurney told us, dust on the leaves is bad for the plant as it inhibits photosynthesis), and afterwards we went down to the lower level to continue watering and clean the dirt splatters off the wall.  We learned how to put away the hose, Jess and Sawini took turns mopping the floor, and when everything was said and done, we had spent an hour and a half tending the plants.  It didn't feel that long at all -- it was tons of fun and we had visits from many of our teachers, fellow students, and other staff at the school who stopped to talk with us for a few moments (our biology teacher even brought over her new puppy!).  We also got a lot of things done and, as we were leaving, we looked down at the garden from the third floor.  The plants were so much greener now, and the soil was a rich, earthy black instead of a dusty brown.  It just looked infinitely healthier, and if we can make so much of a difference in just one session, I'm excited to see how much more beautiful the garden will be when we're done with it.  On Tuesday we will be staying after school to water the plants again and apply some fertilizer, so I have my fingers crossed that, after the weekend, the plants will still be looking perky and not have reverted to their previous state.

Our new spring lineup

This CAS season features some old favourites as well as new and exciting premieres.  Classics return such as newspaper and yearbook, and we'll also be seeing the swan songs of 750 Words and provincial ringette, both reaching their crescendos in April.  Now, what's new on the horizon?

First off, there is Model UN, which will run from May 3rd to May 5th and entail much preparation prior to the actual event.  I have been accepted into the school delegation of twelve students, although we have yet to hear back with regards to which country everyone will be representing and on which committee they'll be.  My first choice was Tanzania, and I somehow doubt that will be a popular selection, so I hope I will end up receiving that option, although I am sure no matter with what country I end up I'll learn some fascinating things about both it, the world, and the issues that affect the two.  My first choice of committee was ECOSOC, and its topic this year is "Commission on Sustainable Development", so I think I would learn a lot about both the current critical situation with the environment and also how developing countries regard this issue.  Recently we had a guest speaker into our school to talk about climate change, and while what is going on in our world today is undeniably terrifying, I think it is definitely something about which we are better off being informed than remaining blissfully ignorant.  My second committee choice is "A Reconsideration of the Responsibility to Protect", which is an ethical issue that I find fascinating and would love to learn more about.  It's something that is so hard to wrap your head around, and I'm not sure where I stand.  I'm reminded of all those sci fi programs and futuristic novels where the most important rule of everything is that you shouldn't interfere (think Star Trek's prime directive), yet when one is talking about things like genocides and mass killings, how is it ethical to remain uninvolved?  All in all, it would be a fascinating thing to learn more about, and while I'd still rather be accepted to ECOSOC, being part of either committee would be a great experience.  The school delegation will be meeting sometime in the near future to learn about our country and committee assignments, and I can't wait!

Secondly, we have what is going to be my major CAS group project, fitting into the realms of service and creativity:  something we've been calling alternately the "gardening club" and the "school beautification project".  It has a number of components (only befitting of a major group project), and I suppose it would be most logical if I told them in the order in which we developed them.  First of all, our chemistry teacher used to teach botany, although this year there wasn't enough student interest and the botany class wasn't offered.  Despite not having a class, it's her responsibility to tend to the sad-looking indoor garden we have in the lobby, although with all the other important things she has to do, fixing it up isn't something she has either the time or energy to do on her own.  That's why a group of us decided to start a gardening club under her leadership:  we'd have access to the school greenhouse, we'd water the three nearly-dead trees and the sad looking cactus, we'd learn which plants grow best under our school's conditions, we'd clean all the trash out of the bed as it is currently being used like one big garbage can, and we'd use our newly gained knowledge of plants to grow flowers and the like in the garden.  That sounds like a nice CAS activity in itself, but what really propelled it into the big group project level was what happened when we went to go check out the bed.  It was a mess -- even more so than we had thought.  The paint on the wall was peeling all the way back to concrete due to water damage, chocolate milk containers and muffin wrappers abounded, and one of the trees was no more than a few sticks surrounded by dead leaves.  But the garden layout was interesting:  on the bottom level of the school, there is a wall in front of the garden and you are standing below soil level, and then there is also a wall behind the bed above your head on the lower level but under you if you're standing on the school's main floor.  Looking at this, we were struck by how perfect it would be for a mural.  So, that's our plan.  We'll do all the gardening things previously mentioned, but we're also going to learn how to plaster and repair the wall, do it, and then paint two murals.  The one behind the bed will be a foliage or a jungle theme, creating a sort of 3D effect with the real plants that will jump out in front of it, and on the lower wall we'll create an underground scene, with things like tree roots and dinosaur bones and stuff like that.  It's going to be a lot of work, but we have a great team of people (we'll also be opening the gardening club up to anyone else in the school who is interested, although we'll be spearheading the project), and I'm excited to help make the school just a bit more beautiful.  Currently, Adrian is composing a proposal to send to the principal to get official approval of our idea, although she already expressed interest earlier and I strongly believe that she'll give us the go ahead.

 My third new activity is more of a summer preview than an entry to my spring lineup, but it's something that I'm too excited about not to mention.  I've been accepted to Shad Valley, which is a pretty prestigious summer program for high school students focusing on the sciences, leadership, business, teamwork, and innovation; I've already gone through an extremely intense application process just to be accepted.  That in itself was a good learning experience, particularly as it is quite similar with what one might expect to see when applying for universities in grade twelve, but the actual Shad Valley program is going to be a thousandfold more extraordinary.  For one, they're big proponents of the IB program, and they particularly cater to the IB core, including, yes, CAS!  As they write on their website:

Through their active participation in the design/entrepreneurship project that’s a key element of Shad Valley, IB diploma students fully satisfy the Creativity and Action aspects of CAS. Through their involvement in this entrepreneurial endeavor, they build their knowledge, skills and understanding; explore the ethical responsibilities that surround innovation; experience the excitement of inquiry and discovery; build confidence in their ability to initiate change, both as an individual and as a member of a team; practice autonomy and self-reliance; and develop a strong appreciation for their own, and others’ talents. Many schools acknowledge participation in Shad Valley as fully satisfying the Creativity and Action requirements; others allocate partial hours. Because CAS focuses on in-depth experiences, the month-long, residential nature of the Shad Valley program makes it strongly aligned in helping satisfy this requirement.

So that's what's on the docket for summer CAS.  I'm going to be gone all of July for Shad Valley, living on campus and engaging in so many cool activities and learning experiences.  I won't know which campus I will be attending until early April, but my A choices were Waterloo, Queen's, Saskatchewan, and Calgary, so I'm hoping to end up with one of those.

That's what to expect from me over the next few months.  I do have a couple of other activities in mind that are either still in the planning stages or are yet to be approved, but for the most part this is what I'll be looking at in terms of CAS as I enter the home stretch of my grade eleven year.  I'm looking forward to continuing with what I'm already doing, starting these new projects, and getting that satisfied yet melancholic feeling of wrapping up a long running activity.  While school is definitely going to be keeping me busy over the next few months, I'll be sure to make time for all these exciting opportunities!

Ringette problems

Over the last few months ringette has been going well, but recently I've hit a stumbling block.  We've been having a lot of practices lately in preparation for Atlantics next week, and that likely will be fine.  I will have to miss one day of school (Friday), which I don't want to do at all, but it's just one day and I'll manage to get caught up.  What worries me is what else is on the horizon:  Nationals.  I had always wanted to just go to Easterns, seeing as Nationals is kind of above our paygrade and we likely won't have as many close games than if we went to Easterns.  But the older girls decided right out the gate that for whatever reason they wanted to go to Nationals, and so that's the way it was.  I didn't like it then, and it's even worse now:  while for Easterns I'd likely only miss two days of school, for Nationals I will have to miss an entire week.  And not just any week: The week of April 2nd -- exam week.  I can't miss six major IB tests; I just can't.  I would have to do them right when I get back, and it would be impossible to study while I was there:  I'd be sharing a room with three of my teammates as we are forced to do to increase 'team bonding' and I'll have no time for myself.  Last time I was at a tournament like this I ended up sitting on the top landing of the hotel's back stairwell to read the novel that was assigned for French class.  Trying to study for six big exams is not going to end well.  So what am I going to do?  I don't want to drop provincial ringette entirely; if I tell my coach that I can't go to Nationals he'll blow his top; I can't even take a third option and drop down to the A team that they created to go to Easterns because of some 'roster rule' that states you can only be on one roster per season, even if you leave the other team.  That's a real bummer for me, as all I ever wanted to do was go to Easterns, and if I had known that they were going to make this team later in the season, I would have held out for it in a heartbeat.  I'm caught between a rock and a hard place here, and I have no idea what I'm going to do.

Setting the parameters

Today I reached a streak of 48 days writing on 750 Words, and I have got to say, this second month is much, much harder than the first.  I'm finding it really hard to keep motivated, in part because of my busy schedule, but also because it's quite difficult to keep something going without an end in mind.  My first month was manageable:  I had the tangible goal of writing every day for a month, and along the way I was accomplishing the smaller goals that were rewarded with badges, such as writing for three, five, ten, and thirty days.  Now, however, I've lost those manageable little slices.  The next streak badge is not until I reach one hundred days, and the challenge of writing every day for a month sort of loses its novelty when you already did it the month before.  That's why I think that the reason for my struggle this month is because I lack direction -- I haven't really stated where I'm going with this activity or where my endpoint is -- and I therefore believe that if I decide on that, it will help me be more motivated in reaching that goal.  I need to set the parameters, if you will.

So, what's my plan?  My goal for this activity -- the end product that I'm working towards -- is to write every day for one hundred days, and, while doing this, write a total of a hundred thousand words (so a thousand words, on average, a day).  If when the beginning of April rolls around I end up deciding that I want to renew my deadline and set a new goal, that's fine, but for now, my aim is to keep this up for a hundred days, and continue to improve my writing skills and creativity in the process.  I might be in a bit of a rough patch motivation-wise, but the quality of my writing lately has been higher than usual (which I suppose might explain why I'm beginning to feel a bit inspirationally worn out).  I've been writing a lot of fiction:  a multiple-entry spanning story about a girl coping with the end of the world; the tale of a skier who dies on the mountains; a chronicle of the future told from the perspective of an island, just to name a few.  I've been writing more short stories than I have in years, and it's making me remember why, when I was younger, all I ever wanted to be was a writer.  I have different aspirations now, but I'm really glad that I have this opportunity to get back into fiction writing, because no matter how long I forget about it or for how many years I neglect it, it will always be something I love to do.

Albatross, hamster, and a turquoise horse

Wow.  I cannot believe that I have been writing on 750words every day for the past 34 days.  I have yet to break my streak, and I think that in itself is kind of exceptional.  Doing something every single day is difficult; it's not always easy to put away a twenty-minute or so chunk of time.  Like today, for instance.  I woke up early, went to the university to work on a project, went to work, and I just got home and was supposed to leave again for a party.  But you learn to make time in your daily routine; like now, when I managed to squeeze in my writing between all my other activities.  It is hard to really understand the magnitude of committing to do something everyday until you actually begin, but I don't regret starting this project at all.

Forcing myself to make time for writing has done so many good things for me.  It helps collect my thoughts; it has gotten me into creative writing again; it forces me to reflect on what is going on around me.  Sometimes I spend my entry just whining and complaining.  During the week before exams I used it to help get myself organized with regards to my studying -- I had no idea what I was going to do in what order and was feeling overwhelmed, but by the time my 750 words had been written I felt more relaxed and with a plan in mind.  For the past few days I've written short stories:  today it was about a teenage criminal living in West Vancouver in the year 2028; yesterday it was a tale based on a character from an episode of a television show I had watched; a few days before that it was a psychological thriller about a wall, of all things.  Sometimes I talk about deep stuff like religion or my plans for the future, and sometimes I just ramble on about Jessica's facial expressions while watching Supernatural or talk about today from the perspective of my cat.  I love how individual and diverse this activity is, and I love how it is unlike anything else I have done so far for CAS.  Everything else has been so group oriented:  working to a deadline for newspaper, working as a team for ringette or dodgeball or GISHWHES, organizing a committee for yearbook.  750 Words is just me and my thoughts and the direction my mind takes itself, and forcing myself to make time for this is really helping me in exploring my own motivations.

You may have noticed in the picture up top that I've gotten a few new badges as of late.  The albatross was for writing every day for thirty days, and the turquoise horse was for completing the monthly challenge.  When January began I couldn't really imagine writing every single day; at some point I would be busy or forget and slip up, but thirty one days later I still had not.  Looking at a month from the beginning seems like such a long time -- looking towards the end of February right now seems so far away -- but when you just take it a day at a time, you've reached the end before you even had a chance to blink.  All in all, I'm pretty proud of myself for being able to stick to my commitment and complete the January challenge; on average it takes me twenty minutes to write an entry, so that means that I dedicated over ten hours of my January to writing, and I think that is just incredible.  I've signed up for the February challenge, and while typing this here on February 1st I can't imagine reflecting on these words twenty eight days later in either victory or self-disappointment, at some point I will, and I definitely will try my best to make it the former.  The other of my new badges is the hamster, another of which I'm immensely proud.  It rewards the practice of going ten days without a single distraction, and I've been working really hard to type all my entries in one sitting to force myself to keep my thread of consciousness going.  Sometimes it is hard to push through it, but when I log into my 750 Words account and start my entry for the day, I refuse to take a break until it is finished, and I think managing to push through the fog of writer's block is another accomplishment in and of itself.

Suffice to say my 750 Words adventure is going well as I close the chapter of its first month, and I hope that I can keep this streak going for many more days to come.

Hex codes and half-priced Helvetica

Over the last few weeks, we have set foot into a new dimension of our yearbook experience:  page design.  The photography aspect has died down for the moment; at this time of year, there is no sports teams to capture, no school events that need coverage, and it is still too early for club pictures to be of any immediate concern, and we have taken advantage of this lull to finally delve into the realm of book layout that we have been neglecting thus far.  Jessica and I have had a few jobs behind the scenes prior to the grand opening of the yearbook editing website for the entire committee; I've already mentioned the page outline I made a month or two ago, and in addition to that, we've also had to select the colours and fonts to be used in the book.  The colour selection was fairly easy, but choosing the perfect fonts was a difficult decision.  You don't want too many or the book looks cluttered and disjointed, but with too few you don't really have any options to pick from.  We settled on five, and choosing those was no small decision.  Some were really neat, but they were a bit too crazy to be of any practical use, and others seemed too juvenile.  I should also mention that most of the options were essentially facsimiles of existing fonts, made 'completely different' by using a hip name to appeal to a teenage audience.

Case in point:  "Baby Maker"

We ended up going with "Coolvetica" (a shameless Helvetica clone), "Burning Facts" (having a sci-fi, digital clock-ish feel without being too out there), "Modern Art" (Agency FB meets Impact), "Ebony" (an innocent enough sans-serif), and "MacBeth" (a bit more ornate and perfect for graduation and more classy things like that).  We also got the default font, "Lynn" (it's definitely not Times New Roman at all).

A few days ago we had our first layout meeting.  Since I had the outline, I ended up having to organize the handing out of pages, making sure everybody had something to work on and no two people thought that they were in charge of the same page.  I ended up with a pretty eclectic array of pages to work on myself; I decided to do all the dividers so that they would be consistent, and since the software forces you to edit a two-page spread at a time and two people can't be working on the same two-page spread without a lot of technical blunders ensuing, I therefore became responsible for all the odds and ends that happened to be beside a divider:  Student council, best of the year survey, sports candids, and the runners up from the cover contest.  Jessica, Adrian, and I are also teaming up to make the IB page, seeing as we all have a vested interest in making sure it's awesome.

All in all, we managed to get most of the pages accounted for.  Someone is going to have to deal with all the staff, grad, and class pictures, but that won't be relevant until later.  There's also a few sports pages that have yet to be found a home, but as other pages get finished, I'm sure that someone will end up needing something more to work on.

I haven't got to spend a lot of time with the software yet, seeing as I was busy with organizational duties during our computer lab meeting, but from the bit I've got to play around with it so far it seems quite similar to what we used in junior high, although with a few changes.  It'll take a little bit for me to get used to the new format, but hopefully I'll be on my way to mastery in no time.

Let's see how far we've come

A reflection on my first quarter in IB CAS, to be submitted to my program coordinator. A general summary of my activities thus far are as follows, interwoven with an analysis of my experiences in attempting to reach the program's delineated outcomes.

The first and arguably most substantial of the activities with which I've become involved over this initial portion of the CAS program is yearbook. Last year the school yearbook suffered a notable dearth of student involvement, and upon the retirement of the previous yearbook coordinator last June, September began with no organization whatsoever on who would take responsibility for the 2012-2013 yearbook. Staff were unwilling to shoulder the burden of such a project on their own, and with no central body to organize it, the first few months of school passed with the issue altogether ignored. Throughout junior high school my friend Jessica and I thoroughly enjoyed participating in our school's yearbook committee, but the lack of opportunities for student involvement had left us disillusioned last year. Upon discovering that the book was now in limbo for this year, the pair of us created and submitted a proposal for the formation of a new yearbook committee, and after a time our proposal was ratified.

That is not to say that everything after that point was smooth sailing; on the contrary, I would say that this is the activity in which I have encountered the most obstacles. In any committee one will no doubt find many conflicting personalities, and dealing with the concerns and agendas of a multitude of different people has been without a doubt one of the most difficult and most educational experiences I've encountered thus far in CAS. I've learnt that, no matter how well formulated a plan and how passionately you desire to be able to follow it to its conclusion, when working with others, compromises and sacrifices are inevitable. Initially, our plan had been to make simply an IB yearbook, and it wasn't until that idea had been irrevocably vetoed that we even imagined concerning ourselves with this project. One of our biggest changes we wished to make to the previous yearbook format was to release the book at the end of June instead of the following September to enable yearbook signings, but despite heavy advocacy on our part, that plan was dismissed by school administration.

However, every failure presents a new opportunity, and being shut down in these fashions opened the doors to new possibilities and workarounds. Without being dissuaded from constructing an IB yearbook we would never have dreamed of taking on the entire school yearbook, and being forbade from changing the date of the books' release forced us to entertain new possibilities: we now plan to purchase signing pages that arrive in June and can be attached to the books after they arrive in September, enabling us to have the best of both worlds.

Through yearbook, I've interacted with numerous other people as well, in a more collaborative sense than the vetoing dynamic that comes with trying to sell a proposal to one's higher-ups. Sometimes, working with people on equal footing proves to be even more of a struggle. Some students on our committee desire to keep the book exactly the same as it has always been; others advocate radical changes. Some want a formal and professional book; others want it fun and 'not boring'. Balancing such viewpoints is a large task, particularly when you're in a position of relative authority yet are younger than some of the other committee members, who think that by virtue of their age they should get the last word. Nonetheless, Jessica and I have thus far proved fairly successful in incorporating the ideas of others and our own ideas, as well as keeping things moving and not getting too behind or stagnated. Most fall sports had almost finished their seasons by the time our proposal had been approved, but we still were able to act quickly and get everything photographed that was required, helped in no small part by Mr. Toms, our teacher supervisor. I personally designed the outline for the book, which proved to be no small task, and as a committee we even decided to create a cover contest to garner more student interest and involvement in the yearbook. All in all, thus far my experiences in yearbook have been both a learning experience and a relative success, and I anticipate this feeling will only continue as we get closer and closer to our final deadline and the unveiling of the product that we have been working so hard to provide for our school.

Out of all the CAS activities I've done, only two have reached their completion at this early stage of the program, and they therefore most definitely warrant some discussion. The first of the two was GISHWHES, a week-long experience I undertook along with an assortment of my classmates around Halloween. I was in a sense the leader of this project, and in that way I found it a bit more exhausting than it would have been had I merely played a part. I came across the event online, the offbeat acronym standing for “the Greatest International Scavenger Hunt the World Has Ever Seen”. It is an annual event embracing creativity and insanity; in teams of fifteen, one attempts to create the strange items from an oversized list, aiming to accumulate the greatest point total out of all the teams from all across the world. While for most of my teammates the event began when the list was released, my adventure started as soon as I first clicked on that link. My first challenge was to convince fourteen of my classmates to join forces with me, which wasn't as simple as it initially sounds. Some people didn't want to be involved, others were unsure, and the deadline for registration was fast approaching. With mere days prior to the cutoff only a handful of us were registered, and with so many people changing their mind from in to out to in again, I was finding keeping everyone organized hectic enough, and the activity was still yet to begin! There came a point where we realized that we weren't going to have enough people from our class to fill a fifteen-person team, and I eventually had to petition for members from the grade twelve class as well. It was a manic few days as I struggled to get everyone registered in time, but all was well that ended well.

If organization was key during the registration stage, it was even more so once the event began and we were faced with a list of over one hundred and fifty nigh-impossible tasks. I wouldn't have imagined an event so fueled by creativity would require such high levels of careful planning, but that it did. At this point in time we were caught in the thralls of IB, with tests and projects galore, and in the midst of this I was sitting in my room, attempting to create a stop motion film using Playmobil depicting the loading of Noah's ark; Cassy and Sawini were taking stuffed animals on field trips to the grocery store; Jessica was putting a wig on a carefully-carved Jack O'Lantern. We had so much else on our plate to juggle, yet we were taking time out of our precious schedule to engage in such insanity. I think that, above all, that was what struck me most in my GISHWHES experience. More than the organizational skills I was forced to hone, more than the unreal levels of teamwork required, it was this: what I was doing made no sense. I had a history test I could be stressing about, I had a thousand other things on my mind, but I was choosing to spend my precious evening coaxing plastic animals onto ramps made of jewelry containers. And why?

I think that it was in that moment, somewhere between the twentieth and the twenty-first time my first plastic peacock slid back down to the bottom of the ramp when I tried to set its partner down beside it, that I was pondering that question and was suddenly struck by the answer. In life; in the big picture; in ten years from now, the reason you're doing these things is for the experiences. When you're so focused on completing a task for a certain aim, often you can't see the forest for the trees, in a sense. You expect to get from A to B in accomplishing said objective; you often don't notice how the path from A to B can also give you insights into C and D and O. It's when you make time for the things that you have absolutely no time for that you learn the things you don't expect and not merely the objective B that you are planning to reach; to have a balanced life you kind of need to open yourself up to these sort of activities once and a while. I'm not much of an artist, and I'm also a bit more reserved than is required for most of your typical acts of insanity, so I suspected that improving in those two regards would be my B in GISHWHES. And it was, but even more than that I had the opportunity to bond with my classmates, improve my ability to keep everyone on task, and I became what I would consider just a slightly better rounded person. Sometimes you need to take a bit of a break from stressing out over pretty much everything to smell the roses (or dress them up in funny hats), and I'd say that's a pretty important life lesson.

The second of my completed activities was dodgeball, one of my two action activities thus far alongside playing provincial ringette. Dodgeball was a rather short season; our team was comprised of IB kids, and we're far from the school's top athletes, although we did manage to hold our own and do considerably better than the IB team did last year. I suppose there isn't too much to say about our brief dodgeball stint, but I would highlight three parts of the activity as most important towards the aims of the CAS program: teamwork, integrity, and magnanimity. Our team was comprised of students from both the grade eleven and twelve IB classes, and I therefore had the opportunity to get to know better some of the grade twelves that I had previously only known in passing. Working with students in my class is also always a great experience, but obviously much less exclusive to the dodgeball activity. Integrity is also something that dodgeball lends itself to quite well, and it is quite easy and consequence free to take either the high or the low roads. There is a referee, but with so many balls in the fray at one time, they very infrequently call someone out, and so it is therefore up to your own moral conscience whether after being hit to leave the playing field or act like it never happened. I won't pretend that the thought never crossed my mind when playing; nobody likes getting out, especially when you don't want to let your team down, but what really is the point of playing if you're going to cheat to get the upper hand? We may have lost some of our games, but we did so honestly and the ones we won were won of our own skill. Everybody in the tournament was quite magnanimous in victory, bringing me to my final point. Being both a gracious winner and a gracious loser is a very important skill to have, and it's hard not to feel respect for someone who, after defeating you in a close match, will come over and say without a note of smugness or haughtiness, “Thanks for the game! You guys played well.”

I'm also currently partaking in a few other ongoing projects: provincial ringette, as was previously mentioned, as well as writing for the school paper, and participating in a daily 750 words challenge to improve my writing skills. With regards to 750 Words, I've been finding it to provide an interesting perspective into myself in addition to increasing my writing proficiency; by writing a minimum of 750 words for the past twenty four days my total is over twenty two thousand, and upon forcing myself to write such an amount in such a stream of consciousness way I often start exploring thoughts, opinions, and ideas that I had never previously considered. Although I've been doing this exercise for less than a month I'm already seeing a marked improvement in my writing speed and quality, and I truly think that this experience is helping me gain a greater understanding of self.

It's hard to imagine three quarters still remain of the CAS program; it seems as if I have made such large strides already, and I'm excited to see how my current activities progress in the months and years to come, as well as whatever new projects I pick up along the way.

Hot off the press (well, lukewarm)

It's been a while since my last update on the newspaper front, and that means two issues of the Rural Reader have come and gone.  In November I was responsible for writing a review of Reached, the final book in a series that I've been a fan of since the first installment hit shelves back in 2010.  The novel was released right during exam time and my article was due immediately afterwards, so I was under a bit of a time crunch to get it read and reviewed, but it proved to be a good diversion and provided me with a welcome break from studying.  In December I interviewed Ms. Riggs, asking her questions about what she's read, is currently reading, and will read.  It was a less labour-intensive article on my part, but our deadline in December was rather short-notice due to us wanting to have the paper released before Christmas break, and I felt like it was a nice change of pace from the types of articles I'd done in the past.  This month I'm getting back into the reviewing game; actually, it'll be a quite similar situation to back in November.  I'm writing a review on Shades of Earth, the final novel in Beth Revis's Across the Universe trilogy (another series I started reading when the first book was released two years ago), and I'm going to be in the same boat this time:  the novel comes out tomorrow, and my article is due this Friday, so I'll be pressed for time to get it read and reviewed while keeping up on my schoolwork and the upcoming exams.  Still, I've been a little slacking on the reading front as of late, so it'll be good to back into the literary swing of things.

New year, more CAS

I've been ringing in the new year with a brand-spanking-new CAS activity, and I really think this one is going to be a great personal challenge:  it's called 750 Words.  I read about it -- as I seem to do with everything -- online.  It's an initiative to write 750 words on any topic, once a day, every day, and it comes in the form of 750words.com.  It keeps track of your postings -- you can go back and read any of your previous entries, although they are completely private from the rest of the world -- and it even tells you some pretty neat statistics, both about any given entry, and about all your entries in general.  For example, each day it will analyze your word choice and tell you what were your biggest emotions and concerns were in the text, such as upset, death, relationships, affectionate, money, and so on.  It also tells you the mindset the entry was written in based on four spectra:  introvert/extrovert, positive/negative, certain/uncertain, and thinking/feeling.  It tells you if you primarily wrote about the past/present/future, about sight/touch/hearing, about I/us/you/them; it even lists the words you used most frequently in the entry.

This is my chart from today, showing the words per minute I typed at throughout the entry.  The green dot represents the moment when I reached the daily goal of 750 words, and the green line represents the number of words in the entry at any given point in time.

As you can tell from the above photograph, you get badges added to your page to keep track of your streak.  I am entered in the monthly challenge for January, so I am attempting to keep that streak going throughout the entire month, and then continue it into February.

So, what do I hope to gain from all of this?  I always have loved writing, but I never seem to have the time or occasion to do much of it.  750 words is a really carefully thought out amount; it's not so long as to be like a novel, but it is not something you can just whip off in a few minutes on whatever topic.  You need to make a conscious effort to sit down, set aside twenty to thirty minutes, find a prompt, and just write continuously, and it is so very different from any other writing experience.  In the school newspaper, you're writing to convey information; same with school assignments.  This type of writing can be stories, reflections, journal entries, thoughts... I've actually been quite surprised with what I've written about so far.  Because of the length entailed and the stream-of-consciousness nature of continuous writing, it ends up going in directions I didn't expect, and I'm learning some things about myself and some opinions I hold that I never really noticed before.

I've found that writing every day is not easy.  Since it requires that conscious effort, it's not really something that can just become habit.  You've got to focus and push yourself to do it each day, but I really think this will improve my writing skills, and also help me understand myself and my motivations just a little bit better.

I focus quite a bit in my writing on the sensation of touch more so than sight or hearing; my writing contains a lot of "us" as opposed to "them" or "you" or "I".  I use 31% more conjunctions than the average person.

I can tell that 750 Words is going to be a very rich activity, and while it is definitely a commitment, it is one that I am prepared to make.

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".