204A — Now you're screw-driving...
Today was a decent enough day, actually. I stayed up until about 1 AM writing the most abstruse, high-concept essay of my entire life. (There was a unit in the AP Lit textbook last year about "Art and the Artist," and honestly I think I went even beyond the vagueness of that section.) This, of course, resulted in minor difficulties getting up in the morning for Mathcounts, but it wasn't actually as problematic as I thought it would be, and we ended up working on some basic counting and probability which should be useful as we go on.
From Mathcounts, we made our way slowly to the high school, eventually acquiring a spot in the very back row of "B lot." I sort of passed through AP Psych and Spanish 4 without ever really truly focusing, wanting primarily to return to my essay-writing, and the music in Orchestra was easy enough to allow my brain to truly wander as we moved through the motions. I went home after that, and finished the essay, eventually arriving at something like 6950+ characters (out of 7000) and over a thousand words. I ate lunch while looking over my application in the most broad overview I could.
During lunch, my mother and I watched the short film "Bao," which recently won an Oscar, and honestly I just started crying. It evokes both the urgency with which I have tried to "grow up" and the time and energy I have almost stolen from my parents in so many different ways. The combination of the guilt of my excessive time away from home and the stress of understanding that I too am about to go made me feel so viscerally sad. There was also something about the Chinese-ness of it all: for one, the title can either refer to "baozi," the steamed bun which comes to life in the short, or "baobao," an affectionate term for children, especially one's own (or those closely related). The way that the mother just poured in her heart and soul (as well as the minor scenes with the father) almost seemed too relatable, like they were intended specifically for me. The way the son begins to rebel against his parents and their culture and instead assimilate into the environment around him is fundamentally an exploration of the conflict of second-generation immigrants who lose their home culture and thus their parents and yet cannot fully assimilate either. I think what struck me the most was this: I try to think that I can put myself in other people's shoes, but the truth of the matter is that humanity—and me in particular—is extremely bad at that. I've always cognitively known how much my parents have put in to support me, but the sheer emotional weight of it gets lost sometimes, and I just feel so bad about it. This film provided me a glimpse into that emotional weight through that sense of attachment, and honestly just writing about it has made me cry again. I can't believe its accuracy, and even though it's not as if I've done anything particularly horribly wrong throughout my high school career, the film continues to sting nonetheless. I don't know truly how many people this short would affect as strongly, but it drove a knife right into my heart, and I honestly felt like I was its target audience. A cry has been long overdue for me, but I guess I never expected it to come this way.
I submitted my Presidential Scholars application afterwards, and rested. I went back to school to teacher aide, ran home to grab a few things for Science Bowl, returned to a History Bowl practice which went very poorly for me, went home, went to a filming session for our telenovelita (which is due Friday!!!), came home late (intensifying, to some extent, my emotions about "Bao"), and finished my AP Bio and AP Psych homework at the dinner table, working until around 11 at a relatively slow pace as I generally chatted with my parents. I wrote today's poem, and plan on sleeping right after I finish writing this.
Tomorrow, some AP Bio testing, more filming, and preparation for state debate. How exciting.
From Mathcounts, we made our way slowly to the high school, eventually acquiring a spot in the very back row of "B lot." I sort of passed through AP Psych and Spanish 4 without ever really truly focusing, wanting primarily to return to my essay-writing, and the music in Orchestra was easy enough to allow my brain to truly wander as we moved through the motions. I went home after that, and finished the essay, eventually arriving at something like 6950+ characters (out of 7000) and over a thousand words. I ate lunch while looking over my application in the most broad overview I could.
During lunch, my mother and I watched the short film "Bao," which recently won an Oscar, and honestly I just started crying. It evokes both the urgency with which I have tried to "grow up" and the time and energy I have almost stolen from my parents in so many different ways. The combination of the guilt of my excessive time away from home and the stress of understanding that I too am about to go made me feel so viscerally sad. There was also something about the Chinese-ness of it all: for one, the title can either refer to "baozi," the steamed bun which comes to life in the short, or "baobao," an affectionate term for children, especially one's own (or those closely related). The way that the mother just poured in her heart and soul (as well as the minor scenes with the father) almost seemed too relatable, like they were intended specifically for me. The way the son begins to rebel against his parents and their culture and instead assimilate into the environment around him is fundamentally an exploration of the conflict of second-generation immigrants who lose their home culture and thus their parents and yet cannot fully assimilate either. I think what struck me the most was this: I try to think that I can put myself in other people's shoes, but the truth of the matter is that humanity—and me in particular—is extremely bad at that. I've always cognitively known how much my parents have put in to support me, but the sheer emotional weight of it gets lost sometimes, and I just feel so bad about it. This film provided me a glimpse into that emotional weight through that sense of attachment, and honestly just writing about it has made me cry again. I can't believe its accuracy, and even though it's not as if I've done anything particularly horribly wrong throughout my high school career, the film continues to sting nonetheless. I don't know truly how many people this short would affect as strongly, but it drove a knife right into my heart, and I honestly felt like I was its target audience. A cry has been long overdue for me, but I guess I never expected it to come this way.
I submitted my Presidential Scholars application afterwards, and rested. I went back to school to teacher aide, ran home to grab a few things for Science Bowl, returned to a History Bowl practice which went very poorly for me, went home, went to a filming session for our telenovelita (which is due Friday!!!), came home late (intensifying, to some extent, my emotions about "Bao"), and finished my AP Bio and AP Psych homework at the dinner table, working until around 11 at a relatively slow pace as I generally chatted with my parents. I wrote today's poem, and plan on sleeping right after I finish writing this.
Tomorrow, some AP Bio testing, more filming, and preparation for state debate. How exciting.
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