Your own raft

In Huckleberry, Mark Twains rights about the raft that Jim and Huck share as this Utopia where everything is at peace and life is great. Life on land is chaotic and perplexing, but on the raft, floating down the river everything makes sense. I found this very interesting because it got me to thinking that pretty much everybody has their own place much like the raft. A place where somebody can just be theirself and calm everything down for a while. As teenagers, many things get us flustered, so it is important to have such a place. For me, there is nothing better than sitting in my room, listening to music, starring at the posters on my wall and reflecting on my past 24 hours. Plastered all over the walls of my room is album artwork and posters of my favorite bands. Perhaps Huck wouldn't like Foo Fighters if he were around today, but I can guess that being in nature is just as calming for Huck as being in my room is for me.

Home Alone...... with my parents

Today during dinner tonight my mother pointed something out that gave me a deep chill throughout my whole body. She said that my brother Quinn was going to be gone pretty soon and I better get used to the idea of being the only kid in the house. I grew up with three very loud and very rambunctious older brothers who always made it easy for me to go along unbothered because my parents were busy worrying about them. However, now that I am the only child left in our house I know that I will get more unearned attention than Paris Hilton. Every little thing I will do will be the story of the week and I will have a catastrophic overflow of questions on a daily basis. Im not saying that I don't love my parents but like most teenagers I can get very grouchy and if on one of these bad days I don't feel like answering any questions and my folks poke the bear, I don't know what's gonna happen. I hope that I am making mountains out of mole hills and I guess there will be no way of knowing what it will be like until my bro Quinn leaves in the fall. I just hope that I will learn to embrace all of the attention and that my parents will figure out that sometimes teenagers just need to be silent.      

ACT; Absolutely Can't Take it

There is not a single person on the face of the earth who enjoys taking standardized tests. The uneasy sleep the night before, the constant anxiety over not finishing a section in time and the hand cramps from filling in bubble after bubble. There is nothing positive about the experience until eight weeks later when you find out the results (granted that your results are something to feel positive about) and by that time the ordeal has been wiped from your memory as if you witnessed a horrific car accident so your brain just deletes it from the desktop or your mind. I'm saying all of this because on Saturday I was lucky enough to be able to drive down to ETHS and take the ACT. Fortunately I was not the only one who is lazy and didn't sign up fast enough to take the test at New Trier, so there were quite a few Trevians in Wildkit territory. However, the night before when I thought I was to be the only one in E-Town, the thought of being alone in a school that I am not accustomed to just added to my stress that I would get a low score. I have always been an over thinker and that translates to a poor test taker. I read the questions to many times and the passages to slow, and I second guess myself more than Elliot Reed. Therefore, whenever it is time for good ole Zack-e-boy to take an important test I am always less than thrilled. I don't like the idea that a large part of the descision that goes into whether or not a person gets into the college they want on based on one day of testing. There are so many brilliant kids out there who get great grades, but don't do as well on the ACT and SAT as kids who pull in C's and B's because they are lazy. I guess what I am trying to say is that I know the system sucks, but we all have to accept it because it's not going to change any time soon. So what if your ACT score is not the best. If you work hard you will end up in the right college.