Chapter 12

- January 30, 2023

Chapter 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 12.5

Senior year has definitely been the most interesting year so far, being the first completely normal high school year. It also being the most stressful year is probably an understatement, but there were always moments when I was able to set aside all my stress and focus on the present. It was only at the beginning of my senior year that I started to stop questioning all the possibilities of something going wrong. Being able to just accept whatever happens happens, helps me significantly. Obviously, this doesn't mean to just not care, but when a situation comes to a point where you can't do anything to affect the outcome, what's the point of trying? For example, once I finished my college apps, and submitted everything, what's the point of even thinking about it again? It became a matter of, "if don't get into this college, I have this college, so it is what it is".

It's interesting to think that 13%-15% of an average life is spent in school up to high school, which leaves around 85% to life. Whether or not these statistics are truly reliable, doesn't matter to me, but what does matter is the significance, rather than the insignificance of time spent schooling. Education never truly comes to an end, but traditional classroom learning does. I like to correlate life to the vastness of the universe as it creates an accurate representation of life. The universe is theoretically infinite, with an unlimited amount of possibilities of anything happening within it. On a deeper level, this is essentially what I like to believe life is. We have an unlimited amount of things to pursue, so why worry about one thing going wrong? Just like the universe, the only thing stopping us from achieving the maximum potential of life is time, but like, Kobe would've used that as motivation.

12 AP has definitely been my favorite English class, if not one of my favorite classes in high school, not necessarily for the content itself, but for my classmates and Mrs. Liamini. The entire class just has this rare vibe where I wouldn't mind coming to the class like I do for every other class. Just from my personal experience, I wouldn't really change anything about the class besides more in-class reading. One thing that I really liked about this class specifically was the blog posts. Unlike 11 AP, the amount of freedom we have while writing these posts is something that makes it enjoyable to write.

The biggest skill I've taken away from 12 AP so far is to be critical and to find meaning of everything in life. We practice this with every word we read, video we watch and, conversation we have in the classroom, but I also learned to do this in every situation I'm in. I've learned to never take anything at face-value and to always think ahead. Recently, I've been addicted to chess, so it's like not taking your opponents piece without looking at the other pieces that could taking your pieces, you always have think deeper.

The one goal I'm taking into second semester is the same skill I have taken away from the first semester of 12 AP. As I'm developing my skills to think critically, I want to be able to enhance it second semester, be able to make quick and timely decisions, think about consequences, find meaning. Although I have many other short-term goals for second semster, this is the one that I want to perfect throughout my lifetime, starting next semester.