Well, as first days of school go, it could have been worse. Not by much, mind, but I can take comfort in the fact that somewhere, someone had a worse first day of school. Probably someone in a third world country whose first day involved a nuclear explosion, but still...
So, where to begin?
At the beginning, I should think.
I got to school twenty minutes late and then, to add insult to injury, I got lost on my way to the office. Then again, it wouldn't be me if I didn't.
Then my locker combination didn't work and I had to go back to the office to get a new locker assignment.
I should have taken these events as a cosmic hint that the day was going to be a disaster, but being the fool that I am, I decided to be optimistic.
Fat lot of good that did me.
I managed to get a detention by the end of first period for passing notes, too.
The thing of it is, I didn't.
Someone tossed a piece of folder in my general direction, which landed on my desk. The English teacher, Miss Fowley, saw it, and decided that giving out a detention on the first day of school would work as a deterrent to other would-be rule breakers. It just happened to be me this time around.
Miss Fowley is one of those stern, strict, British types who warns you not to cross her or else feel her wrath. I don't like her.
My history teacher Miss Fern is nice though. In fact, she was the one highlight of the day. She's pretty young for a teacher, like in her early twenties, and she's really funny.
The only down side to being in her class in that I was seated across from Orange Julius, alias Clark Thomas. You remember him, right? The guy I douse with my drink at the mall? Yeah, that's him.
He went out of his way to be nice to me, which went over real big with his girlfriend, who threatened to hand me my spleen in study hall if I tried making any moves on her main squeeze.
It's nice to know that bitchy popular girls are the same no matter where you go, I guess.
Anyways, it's getting close to dinner time, so I'm going to go wash up and stuff.
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Tuesday, September 5th
It's starting to look like life in Springwood may not be a total waste after all. I managed to make a friend today. Well, maybe I wouldn't go so far as to call her a friend, yet, but I made an acquaintance, at least.
Remember the girl whose note passing I got in trouble for? She came up to me today and apologized profusely for getting me a detention. It seems she was throwing the note back at the guy who wrote it to her and stuck it on her desk. Apparently, he's an ex boyfriend who's trying to get back in her good graces but she's not having any of it, hence the note throwing.
Anyways, her name is Leah Drason and she seems nice enough. After apologizing and introducing herself to me, she sat down with me at lunch and we chatted for a bit. What little I know about her leads me to believe she's totally my polar opposite. She skates by with Cs and Ds, parties a lot, and is brash and extremely abrasive. She seems to have a core of niceness though that makes her extremely likeable. Who knows? This could be the start of a beautiful friendship.
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Thursday, September 7th
Miss Fern has given us a year long history project. We have to pick a person, place or event and spend the whole year researching it. Then at the academic fair next May, we each have to do a big presentation in front of everyone. She's giving us two weeks to decide what subject we want to tackle.
She said she's giving us that much time because this is something we're going to have to eat, sleep and breathe for the next eight months and it counts for half of our final grade. We've got to be sure that this is what we really want to work on.
So, I have two whole weeks to figure out what I want to do and I haven't the foggiest notion of where to start.
I mean, I have no idea what to do!
Well, that's not entirely true. I know what I don't want to do.
I like Miss Fern and I'd like to make a good impression on her by picking something no one else has thought of. I heard some of the girls in my class talking about what they were planning to do. There was lots of talk about the sinking of the Titanic, the civil war (remind me again, how can war be civil?) and the English regency.
In other words, anything they could rent a movie about.
Is it just me, or does that sound like copping out and taking the lazy route?
I want to do something that'll take a little more work than that, you know what I mean? Anyone can go rent a bunch of movies and glimpse at Wikipedia before tossing together a half assed report. I don't want to do that.
I mean, this is half of my total grade and since history is one of the subjects I count on to keep my grade point average at a decent level, I can't afford to mess this up.
I think I'll ask around a bit, find out what everyone else is doing before I decide for sure.
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Monday, September 18th
Alright, after doing quite a bit of recon, I have a pretty good idea of what the general population at Springwood High is going to be doing for their history reports.
Or at least the people in my class.
There's six students who're working on pieces about the Vietnam war, one each working on the assassination of JFK, the Salem with trials, the civil rights movement and Victorian era England. There's also a small clique of girls working on pieces that center around Johnny Depp...how they're going to sell that as historically relevant, I have no idea, but they're gonna try.
The resident goth girl with too much product in her hair is working on the history of serial killers (which takes out my hopes of covering the White Chapel Committee) and finally, Clark is doing the history of comic books.
Not that I noticed.
Shut up, I didn't notice.
He's dating the head cheerleader anyway, so even if I did notice, it's not like it'll matter in the long run.
Where was I?
Oh right. The hopelessness of trying to find a decent report topic that no one's thought of.
I got nothing.
I've been trying to think of something and I can't come up with anything that's anywhere near original enough to be an acceptable option. Maybe I'm thinking about this too much. Maybe if I stop worrying about it and obsess over something else, the answer will come to me.
I think I'll go for a walk, maybe hit the library and pick up something to read...that usually helps clear my head somewhat.
A walk over to Leah's place might be good too...her mom's giving her a hard time about flunking Social Studies, and she asked me to help her out...I'll go do that.
