I have another canker sore. The interesting thing is I only get them when under the pressure of school. This one sprouted up out of nowhere, seeing as it is summer and I have no school to worry about. I blame it all on a recent visit to Metro.
Last Thursday, I had gone up to Metro as per Alex’s suggestion. I admit, I was very skeptical, but the freshman class is a collectively neat one. This visit was also meant to allow me to speak with people—Deane and Georgia in particular. I received my SAT score and thought it was horrid, so I wanted to consult Deane and discuss colleges as well (I’ve reached a new low: I’m giving UMSL actual consideration). And well, I wanted to meet with Georgia about dropping IB. I hate to state the obvious, but that didn’t happen.
I got to thinking once again: maybe it won’t be that bad. Yes, after all that shit I talked, I sorta decided to stick with IB. I do, however, have a couple of trepidations:
- CAS. While I already have 175 hours of documented community service, it’s non-CAS. From what I understand, half of our 300 hours need to be CAS. Also, I need 260 hours before school starts. The problem: I’ve the slightest clue what my CAS project is, and it’s kinda a bitch trying to pull it all together in just a few weeks.
- Extended essays, internal/external assessments. All that time I spent wallowing over dropping IB could’ve been put to better use. I am now severely behind. My original extended essay topic could have gotten me on NSA’s good side, but I’ve thought of a couple that could be more interesting. HOA IA, I think it might be too open-ended: I doubt there would be any “credible” sources that debate the origins of America’s intelligence agencies. External assessment: yeah, you know the deal with that.
- I planned on working my ass off this summer to accumulate money, that way I probably wouldn’t have to worry about it and work as much during the school year. One of my little quirks: I like to shop, and shop a lot. According to my paycheck stubs, I should have around $1600 by now. My current account balance is more the vicinity of $25. I keep all receipts of debit transactions and I will soon compile an itemized listing of expenses to see where it all went. In theory.
- Will next year be any better? Will I end up dealing with the same emotional/mental shit that made last year so difficult? Probably.
I’m also very concerned about my “academic standing,” if you will. My GPA, last I checked is somewhere around 2.7. I’m not sure if I should mention this, but a friend of Monica got into NSA’s STOKES program. I want into that program. I asked Monica how her friend’s grades were: she responded “she graduated 2nd of our class.” Deepen the wound, will you?
One main reason I want to stick with IB is because I think it would look bad when they review my transcript. “Oh, a year of IB, how nice. Where’s the rest of it?” With this being intelligence and all, I doubt they’ll look approvingly of me quitting because it “got hard” nor do I think they’ll care about the history. It’s a question of loyalty, you know.
