The Year in Review

Well, faithful readers, my official school year is now over. The last co-op ended yesterday, and I cheerfully say "good riddance!" That, however, is not the purpose of this post. Today, I commemorate the year, the ups and downs, by reciting the whole of the events to a rather quiet, disinterested world. So, without further ado, let's look back into the rather interesting year.

In September, I started a new co-op, which I hated. I knew three people there, but I was only in a class with one of them. To add insult to injury, my first class of the day started at 8:30 in the morning. At this new co-op, I took Chemistry, Geometry, and Acting Fundamentals. In Chemistry, I was a rather quiet student, considering how early the class was, and my dislike of the whole situation. I talked a bit more in Geometry, but in both class pictures I'm standing in the back smirking or not smiling at all. In Acting, I was still the quiet one, but now the descriptor "mature" could be removed from my silence. :P

The other co-op, which started a few weeks earlier, was a more entertaining place. Most of my friends were at 'Co-op B.' There, I took my fourth year of Latin, an Apologetics class, and Intermediate Logic. Latin was a lot of fun, as was apologetics, but Logic was literally the stuff of my dreams. To be precise, my nightmares.
Now, I loved the subject of Logic, but my classmates were not what I was hoping for. As the only girl enrolled in the class, the small room felt like it was dripping with testosterone at the end of every class. There was one young man, in particular, who gave me the creeps, but that didn't come until later on.

I was also in the NCFCA - the National Christian Forensics and Communications Assosciation - a competitive homeschool speech and debate organization, and I was busily writing speeches before Christmas. I shall start my in depth chronicles around that time, since I consider it to be the 'real' year.

Shortly before Christmas break, I was so desperate for friends at the new co-op that I asked the young man I knew slightly to be my friend. He said 'yeah', and went back to eating his sandwich. This was one of the more amusing events at Co-op A. Also during this time, a specific young man in Logic class started paying me unwanted attention. He'd sit next to me, since it "looked like you don't have any friends. I'll be your friend!" and then would ask if I was depressed. Apparently, I gave that indication because I always sat next to the door, and looked at my wrist frequently to check the time.

Shortly after Christmas, speech and debate tournaments started up in earnest, and I was gone pretty much every three weeks or so. That was fun, because most of my friends are in the league, which meant that tournaments were very happy places. A recurring adventure at tournaments was my friend J and my adventures in the back hallways. We'd play spies, plot world domination, and work on J's extroversion in the more remote parts of a tournament. The extroversion bit came in because J was unhappy with her image, and was doing a total makeover (and very fetchingly it's turned out, too). At times, though, hanging out doing weird things in halls got us in to trouble. The event that comes to mind is a more-than-embarrassing one: J and I were playing spies at the Regionals' tournament, and one of our co-competitors from our state happened to come across us, startling us to no great ends. We ran off, hoping that the other competitor hadn't seen us, but said competitor followed, and proceeded to scare me rather badly a little down the hallway. O.o

During the whole, Co-op A was still a depressing little co-op. I always pick theme music to describe the year, and Tarja's I Walk Alone described Co-op A pretty well. Since Co-op A had a lot more school spirit than Co-op B, I enjoyed bucking the system on school spirit days. If we were supposed to wear pink and red for Valentines' Day, I wore black. If it were Dress-Like-A-Pirate Day, I dressed as a ninja. Small things like that, but it gave me something to occupy myself during the interminable day.

Also during this time, the young man in Logic grew a little more... persistent... shall we say. He was new to homeschooling, and hadn't quite fit into the homeschool social norms. Unfortunately, this lead to him asking some rather uncomfortable questions about various opinions about life, and I avoided him as best I could.

Everything resolved in the end, so that's good.

However, now the year is done, and I'm preparing for more school over the summer. I'm taking AP World History and Algebra II/Trig over the summer, so that come next spring, I'll have less homework to do. This summer, I'm planning to staff a local speech camp, as well as help out with a debate workshop for beginners. Worldview Academy is also in the plans, and my family hopes to meet up with my uncle sometime, who has terminal pancreatic cancer.

As for classes for next year, Rhetoric, Latin V, Biology, and Broadway Review, are the main ones that come to mind, though I'm sure there will be other school assignments.

Keep thinking!
B