You should’ve seen my face last week when I found out that I got an A on my World History test. And when I found out that I managed to pull my F up to a 94.9 overall, just in time for the third quarter progress reports.

Yeah. Apparently, World History quizzes don’t matter anymore. You can fail all of them and still get an A, as long as you score well on the test and did your World History notebook correctly. Because, after all, they were worth WAAAAY more points than the quizzes.

My little brother, Jerry, can babble a few phrases. “Baba”, or father, was his first official phrase (“Ge-ge”, or brother, didn’t really count, because that’s what all babies say). Then came “Jia-jia!”, which I guess is baby talk for “Jie-jie”, the Chinese phrase for sister. And then came “Mama” (I’m sure you can figure out what that meant), and then “Nai-nai”, or grandma. So, now he knows the family names of everyone in my immediate family!

Of course, he still has to figure out just who is “jia-jia” and all. I’ve been called jia-jia a few times, but most of the time, it was ge-ge or mama. Well, the mama can be reasonable, seeing as how I spend more time with Jerry than my mom does.

And Jerry doesn’t like regular toys either. He prefers Tupperware! Yes, those little plastic containers that are very environmentally and economically efficient. And some environmentalists even take them to Chinese restaurants to store their leftovers in instead of having to kill more trees and put them in paper containers (Mrs. Hodges, my eigth grade history teacher, was one of them).

But Jerry doesn’t know any of that. He just knows that Tupperware is good for biting, chewing, and drooling on. And when you try to take it away from him, he throws a baby-sized tantrum.

With all the squealing and shrieking he does, he sounds exactly like my mom. Even my dad and grandma think so. Jerry, you aren’t starting life on the right path here…

 

I’m depressed because I got a 50 on my first world history quiz.

This is sad. If I’m depressed because of some silly history score that I can EASILY bring up because it’s only the first grade of the third grading quarter, I’m never going to make it past life.

Well, another part of the reason why I’m depressed is, despite my efforts to stay on top of things, I’m procrastinating on my world history homework, which I need to do not only to earn some more good grades but it’s also good practice for the test coming up on Friday.

But, then again, I have all of Sunday and Monday to do it (Monday’s Martin Luther King Day).

But I still have to start practicing some ballet and catch up on Chinese.

I’m so tired, though. I’ve had an average of about barely seven hours of sleep this entire week. And I really wish that Ms Barreto (My ballet teacher) would move my ballet classes back about an hour because I’m really tired of getting home at ten at night, the time when most of my friends (Asian and white) are already snoring in their beds.

And my mom should be happy! She really shouldn’t be complaining that my PSAT scores weren’t high (I got a 184/240, which is actually eighty-nine percent higher than the nation’s sophomore PSAT scores. Which is pretty sad, if a stressed-out freshman who took this in October can beat nearly ninety percent of all sophmores in this nation. But then again, this test is for high school juniors, so sophomores aren’t really worried about scoring high on the PSAT yet.) enough, when people like Alice made a C on her American Government midterm, and Jason cancelled all of his extracurricular so that he only has piano, when I’m balancing ballet, piano, art, and Chinese all at the same time.

I made all A’s on my midterms (to my great surprise) and all my quarter grades. In total last semester, I made twenty official A’s: Two overall A’s for each of my seven classes, and six A’s for my midterms (I exempted my Creative Writing exam because a) I could, b) I’d have to write a sonnet in class, and c) I didn’t want to come to school that day.).

My extracurricular teachers all say that I’m an exceptional student and talented, I’m beginning to recognize a lot more Chinese symbols than I originally thought I would, and I’m trying out for every single math competition in the Mu Alpha Thetha club I joined (Unlike some people).

So there, mom. See if you can find anyone to compare me to now. Hah.

Oh, who am I kidding? Of course mom is going to find someone else to compare me to. In fact, she’ll probably import someone from China for the sole reason of giving me someone to compete with.

No, no. I think that’s just the 50-in-World-History depression kicking in again.

But in any case, even though I’m improving my math competition scores greatly, my parents still think that it isn’t enough, and now I’m doing an hour of math every week with my art buddy Anna Chang.

And my mom just dug out the Chinese math workbooks we bought oh so long ago during the summer of third grade, and now she’s teaching me even more math.

I don’t know why they’re doing this, though. I’m pretty sure I’ve expressed a clear disinterest in the math subject, even though I’ve won numerous math awards and am passing the Algebra 2 class without doing anything more than the classwork and homework.

But then again, all the Asian teens I know are reinforcing their math skills because their parents are buying them workbooks and making them do extra math everyday, so I shouldn’t be complaining.

Or should I?

After all, if I didn’t have so much stuff going on (Math club, Relay for Life, and the extracurricular) outside of school, I wouldn’t be this exasperated by extra math.

I’m probably going to end up with stomach ulcers and crap like that from stressing out too much.

But really, if I weren’t born Asian in the first place, none of this would be a problem.

I’m expecting to start working on the ORB, our school’s annual literary magazine, soon, because it’s due out at the end of April. Lorne and I went around to various classes, informing all of the students and the teachers about the ORB and encouraging people to submit their writings and art to be published in the magazine.

I wonder why none of the classes we went to were IB classes. It seems like the ORB is prejudice against gifted people, but I guess that in the past, most of the ORB submissions were sent in by IB people, and so they’re trying to get the traditional students to join in as well.

But besides that, and having to write a lot of random stuff under pressure, I’m having a lot of fun with the Creative Writing people. From last semester’s class, there’s Brandy, A.K.A. Music and anime girl, Eric, the science fiction and fantasy addict, Melissa, the dragon-lover (She wrote her entire NaNo story on dragons) and friend of my eigth grade best friend, Shaina (Who went to Wharton High School, so I can’t see her anymore), Lorne, and Chris, the quiet giant who also acts like he’s a violent, emo guy.

And there are a bunch of other students that I’ve never met before, but according to some of the senior Creative Writers, they’ve taken this class before, just in another year.

Yup. We’re quite the normal bunch.

I’m really, really tired.

 

Asian Standards

From Zoey’s Journal, September 16, 2007, Sunday evening:

“… My friends and I made up a new term, ‘Asian Standard’, which basically means a standard similar to those of Asian parents, which can be determined with this grading scale:

A=Acceptable
B=Bad
C=Crap
D=Disowned
F=Fuck you, you’re going to hell”

Basically, I’m going to flunk IB, Asian standard. Or at least, for the first semester, I probably will. Maybe it’ll get better once I learn how to not procrastinate (Which I am doing right now by typing up this blog entry when I have sixty pages worth of college-level reading to do, essay questions, and two notebook pages to fill up with notes.).

Sorry I couldn’t write more. But I’m up-to-date with my journal, so everytime I feel like updating my blog, I’ll just take something out of my journal.