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3:29am — Sunday, May 5th, 2024

Totally underestimated the power of senioritis and academic burnout. Talk about a double whammy.

I already got into college and the money seems alright (by “alright”, I mean I hopefully won’t be drowning in eternal debt), but I still have so much work that still needs to get done. I have a Semester Project for my Theater 1 class that is meant to act as a substitute for our general exam due on Tuesday, I have 3 AP exams for the next two weeks — AP Literature and Composition, AP Psychology and AP Biology II — and I have a College Trigonometry Dual Enrollment Exam from Tuesday-Thursday (we can choose the dates; for me I’m taking the first part on Tuesday and the second part on Wednesday because my AP Psychology exam is on Thursday and I can’t handle a DE Exam and an AP exam in the same day).

I’m mainly stressed about that Dual Enrollment exam. My teacher says 4-6 attempts on the practice exam should allow you to feel prepared for the exam, and that she’ll give you 5+ bonus points if you do 5 authentic attempts (like don’t just do an attempt and make a zero on it cuz you didn’t try and just wanted an attempt under your belt). The problem is College Trigonometry is SO FUCKING HARD — Literally, the unit of the HARDEST TESTS is in the exam, and no matter how many times my teacher says “the exam is easier than test 3” it doesn’t take away from the fact that Test 3 IS APART OF THE EXAM—

And my AP Literature Exam… I don’t want to admit it, but I honestly gave up on that exam and am planning to just yolo on it. But let’s be honest, my version of “yoloing” anything is just me studying less for that assessment than I would for any other assessment. By that, I mean I’m just gonna watch the AP Classroom Videos that she’s posted throughout the year, read through the notes on this app for AP Prep called Knowt, and try to remember the slim advice she gave for writing essays and the general format of the exam itself, and just hope for the best.

It’s hard when the fucking teacher gives you shit-all to help prepare you for the exam. She literally gave my class NO practice exam assignments on AP Classroom, NO practice essay assignments on AP Classroom— and when I tried to find her on my last day to ask for the AP literature exam prep book in my school library, SHE WAS NOWHERE TO BE SEEN. Don’t even get me started on the essays. I don’t feel confident nor prepared for my essays at all. And I know why— it’s because we did NOTHING but IN-CLASS ESSAY ASSIGNMENTS for MAJOR GRADES for THE ENTIRE YEAR. I got a B on every single one of those in-class essays— on only one of those essays, I got an A, and it was a pretty low A to say the least. And when my class asked her to give us more prep for essays — such as take-home essays, or assigning the in-class essays for a lower grade, or both — and she said no because she knew that she would take a long time to grade them. I can account for her on that, she does take a long-ass time to grade the in-class essays. Like about three-four weeks, maybe even longer cuz my perception of time is off.

But… that all falls apart because here we are, AP Literature students, writing or trying to write full-on essays in a 40-MINUTE TIME SPAN. And you can’t get grades in within 2 weeks or less? My mom was an English teacher and a pretty damn good one at that. I’m swallowing my pride for this, but she’s the whole reason I’m a good writer right now. My mom straight up said that if you know what you’re looking for in an essay, it shouldn’t take you that long to grade an essay.

And my past English honors and AP language teacher can vouch for that; this woman would give us in-class essays as well as take-home essays, and would give them back to us fully graded either the next day, or the day after that. No more, no less. I understand that all teachers and people are different, and they have own strengths and weaknesses— but when those weaknesses interfere with my success, that’s when I become frustrated. I literally don’t feel prepared for a NATIONAL EXAM that could guarantee me for college credit, that COSTS MONEY TO APPLY TO, all because my teacher can’t grade papers fast enough to provide us with more preparation. This is literally insane.

And yeah, that’s pretty much all I have to vent about; my AP Lit and my DE exam. AP Psychology doesn’t count because it’s mainly just my academic burnout talking— my AP Psych teacher is an angel blessed upon this Earth. This woman literally gave an entire Exam Cram worksheet to go by, along with multiple respires to fall back on, and they’re required, which helps me because it forces me to study, which I needed because probably would have procrastinated and had an anxiety attack otherwise (probably still gonna have an anxiety attack but that’s neither here nor there). I’m not focusing on my AP Biology II exam right now because if I do, my head may actually implode in on itself and we can’t have that. I’ll focus on that when the time comes.

Fortunately, my AP Bio teacher is still hosting classes and exam prep days for us, and she’s allowing seniors to come back regardless of administration has anything to say about it. I love her for that.

My poor boyfriend. I feel so bad. I’ve unintentionally ignored him for a good couple months now all because of my academic burnout and senioritis, and the fact that I’ve learned some not-so-good stuff about my home life that has impacted my mental health in a weird way. I have to promise myself that I’ll call him the minute summer hits. There’s no excuse after that (unless I pass out or sm).

Ughhhhh and graduation is a thing that exists. Kill me now. I might just relapse.

okay people. i’m gonna be spitting a lot of Words. because i’m feeling a lot of Feelings at the moment and i don’t know how to express them through any other methods so. yeah. 

this is just gonna be me venting so. probably wouldn’t recommend reading but idk u do u i guess. i put most of the things that i think are triggers in the tags, but i’m actual shit at tagging so. if literally anything is gonna affect you negatively just. don’t read. i can’t tag everything and yeah. idk. to the cut now i guess. bye. 

hi lmaooo what the fUCK am i writing lmaoo

so. first. my past week has been fucking shit. 

    first, i was super fuckin stressed cause i had chair placement auditions for band, a 70 point spanish vocab test, and a 5-7 minute presentation of elizabethan crime and punishment all due in the span of two fucking hours on wednesday. and my stepmother. has the fucking a u d a c i t y. to tell me that i’m actually only allowed to study (on my computer, where everything is) for one hour after school each day. like honey i can’t control what i’m fuckin assigned. and she’s already shitty with me cause she thinks that i’m not doing anything when i’m on my computer (which, despite what you all have seen of me, is not true lmao). so she’s super fuckin dumb about that. 

    second. my chickens. which i call my chickens because, up until recently, i was the only person that did jack shit for those fuckin birds. literally. stepmother bought the food and sold the eggs. maybe went outside once every couple weeks. it pissed me off but you know. whatever. that’s not even what i’m talking about this time. but she goes out there, before i do my daily stuff for them, and comes back in- whirlwind if pissed off cause the stuff isn’t done. like honey i haven’t done that yet. and she gets bitchy cause i haven’t done it yet and starts to go on about how she knew that i secretly hated the chickens and that she bet that i intentionally fucking killed some of them (cause a few of them actually disappeared this week)?? like what in the fUCK??? i would never fuckin do that??? and i love hearing her complain about what food and water is full to the top as if she bothers doing literally anything to help with them. so i’m now not even allowed in my own fucking backyard because apparently i’m a fuckin serial chicken killer. fuck that. 

    third. i had. the audacity to forget an entire assignment. and stepmother dearest sees it. and goes fuckin apeshit. i am the epitome of disrespectful and useless and such a little bitch and stupid and do i need someone to go with me to school every day and hold my hand and remind me to breathe? and like. i can take that, in a way. it’s the normal shit i get from this woman. what really, for some odd reason, got me this time? when she asked, i think completely sincerely, actually, if there was some sort of implant that could make me better. like bitch. i’m not a fucking dog, you don’t need to fucking chip me so you know where i am all the time. i’m not a fucking robot that needs a fucking upgrade so that my fucking memory is better. i haven’t really said anything to her (or anyone really) about this (cause i don’t fuckin trust her not to give me shit because of it) but i have. a fuckin Issue. with fuckin dehumanization. and that hit. every single fucking button. so i’m fucking pissed and just decide that hey. i’m gonna go to my room for a minute. so i don’t fucking murder my dad’s wife. and i get shit for that too!!! like what in the fUCK???? and now i’m at my grandma’s for some length of time. in fuckin exile. 

    fourth, because i feel like it’s its own thing. my stepmom. as i’m going to my grandma’s for my tommyinnit arc. stops me for a minute. uses her “i’m being genuine (lie) and just trying to make you understand my point of view (with the attitude that it is the only one that matters cause yeah) because being me is hard :(” voice. tells me. “I just want to help you, but you being here makes me think about hurting myself.” which. yes, i understand is not a thing to just dismiss. i do kinda feel shitty about it. but also. 2 things. one, she said it in such a tone of voice that practically screamed “this is a lie to make you feel like shit”. and two, she?? also does this?? to me??? like honey. the blood on the inside of the thighs of my pants and the pocketknife blade hidden in my jewelry box are saying a bit more about “thinking about hurting myself” than you, sitting there on the couch, rewatching game of thrones for the third time. i sound like an asshole in this bit. but i’m just. fuckin angry. 

     fuckin angry and fuckin pissed at myself. cause maybe if i didn’t fuck that assignment up, i’d not be in so much trouble. if i did the chicken stuff earlier that day i’d be at home still. if i could focus more in class my parents might not be as easy to piss off. if i were just. better. if i were not. like this. if i could do more than just “try to” change. if i could look at my issues and actually work to fix them rather than staying up till midnight on a weekday, spending over an hour typing a fucking essay about the shit i’ve been through this week that nobody is gonna read. maybe even if i just. weren’t here. 

    i wasn’t supposed to exist. there were. so many signs. telling my parents that they shouldn’t have kids. one - the fact?? that my mom had no less than four miscarriages??? before she got pregnant with me??? one would think that they may stop trying after like. two. and my mom already had one son! it was with her first husband (red flag right there lmao) but she had! a kid! already! why go through all that pain? idk. i’m not, and never will be, a parent. two - my parents! actually did! decide to stop trying! to have a kid! and then my bitchy little -9 month old ass was like “hey bitches are you ready for 16 years of hell?” three - there were so many issues with my (i mean. not mine but the only one i’ve been involved in) pregnancy. like. mom got badly sick like. 3 times. she told me one day that her doctor told her that it would be healthier for me? if she kept smoking while she was pregnant???? so that’s fun. and i’m positive that it was not just nicotine. yeah. fun. don’t necessarily have an issue with weed but like. bro. you’re pregnant. no thanks. four - i was a cesarean. not that that’s really an issue. but. i felt like it might go on here. five - i refused! to breathe! on my own! for almost 24 hours! this might have meant something!!!!! 

     i don’t even know what i’m writing anymore honestly. i’m feeling emotions and i hate it. it’s midnight. i’ve spent over an hour writing this.  why am i not working on my fic. bye.

i would like access to alcohol please lmao

um. suicidal ideation tw

so like. how do i explain to my professors that my dumbass geriatric dog is one of the few things tethering me to this mortal coil and there has never been anything worse for my mental health than not getting a fall break and that I haven’t had motivation to do the assignments for their classes for the past month or so and every day I wake up and wonder if it’s going to be the day that my fucking dog dies and I just lose it and I’ve been preparing for that since July but that’s not helping and the days are getting shorter and seasonal affective disorder does nothing but make it even more difficult to cope with my adhd and i don’t even regularly see people that i like like i did last year at this time of the year and i thought this october was going to be better to make up for the octobers spanning the last three or four years but suddenly I don’t think that anymore and every single moment that I have that I’m not doing a homework assignment or working I feel like I’m failing and like I’m wasting time that I don’t have and making your assignments due at 8 in the morning only fucks up my sleep schedule even more than it already was and yes these things could have been done two days ago but do you have any idea how difficult it is to exist when i feel guilty for it so yes your assignment will get done but no it’s isn’t going to be good and i cannot apologize enough for that but i don’t know how to put any real effort into the very thing that seems to be currently sucking the life out of me i adore you and i adore your classes but these assignments never end and I never have enough time to do them in and every damn day i dread waking up because i know that i’m just going to feel guilty for even bothering to live again and there is nothing i can do to fix that

reddie & 3 please?

3. teacher/student au

Richie hated this.

He hated this stupid community center with its stupid brick walls and uplifting posters. All the people shuffling around with their kind greetings and welcoming smile. It was a downer, forcing Richie to put his busy schedule on hold just to fulfill a promise he had to his best friend who had a crush on the instructor. Despite his best effort he had been cornered, and now here he was sitting on a chair that put a kink in his back and an headache between his temples.

“Don’t look so happy.” Ben sarcastically said, rolling his eyes and pulling out his notebook. “You’re going to like this, it’s a new skill that you can use all your life and-”

“It’s a sewing class.” Richie cut, leaning back in his chair and eyeing the exit. “You know how to sew, I’ve seen it.”

“It’s the advanced course.”

Before Richie could slap back the classroom door opened, but instead of the lush amazing woman that Ben so fondly described, in stepped a short man with a loosened tie and frowning face. With feather like hair that fell into his eyes-long past due for a cut-and freckles dusted along his cheeks and nose Richie swooned. He was gorgeous, absolutely gorgeous. It was like looking into the face of an angle and because of that Richie was sure he had died on the spot. Sitting up a little straighter he ignored the slouched disappointment from the friend beside him. With a tightened stomach and focused heart he awaited for the man to speak.

“Miss Marsh is not going to be in today so I will be covering her class.” The man muttered under his breath, clearly not amused with the commitment. “Lucky for her my class ran long and she was able to catch me before I was able escape home so here I am.” There was a small hand gesture, and Richie could feel his lips curl into a smile. “My name is Eddie Kaspbrak and I am your substitute. I was told by Miss Marsh that you all have your assignments and should-”

Richie spaced out, watching the teachers lips move but not hearing a single thing. All that filled his ears was his beating heart, it sepaking all the things he thought had been lost long ago. People moved around him, Ben tugging on his arm and gaining what little attention span Richie possesed.

“We can just go, I’m all caught up with the assignment.”

“What? No.” Richie sputtered, snapping back into place like a rubber band. “We can’t go.”

“Why not? You hate it-” Ben stopped noticing that his friend was still watching the teacher as he took the seat behind Miss Marsh’s desk. “O-Oh, now I get it.” A shit eating grin growing along his face making Richie scowl. “The tables sure have turned huh?”

“Go talk to him and find out if he’s single.” Richie half asked, half demanded earning a snort. “Come on, I came to this class to be your wing man so return the favor!”

“I’ve been asking you to come to class for three weeks, so-” He rapped his fingers on the desk, packing up his notebook and leaving Richie hanging by a thread. “In three weeks.”

“Wow. That’s harsh Hanscom.”

“An eye for an eye Tozier.” He hummed, standing from the table and turing to leave only to be stopped by a firm hand on his wrist.

Richie looked up at him with pleading eyes, “Please. I’ll do anything.”

“Anything?” Ben repeated, raising an eyebrow. Gulping down the inevitable guilt that would come from this decision Richie nodded, making his best friend sigh. “Alright, just stay here.”

Richie did as he was told, watching Ben as he walked up to the desk and casually struck up a conversation with Mr. Kaspbrak, who at first looked like he wanted nothing to do with him. After a few back and forths the teacher smiled, extending his hand out for Ben to shake. A nervous itch began to crawl its way up his spine, settling at the base of his skull. Ben pointed to him, and not knowing what to do he awkwardly waved immediately regretting it when Mr. Kaspbrak full on laughed.

Now, Richie had never been the type to have problems with relationship. That was Ben, not the smooth talking trashmouth who once talked a woman into blowing him as he did his daily radio show. And yet there was something different about this teacher, something that made him all giddy and weird like he was thirteen again. After what felt like forever Ben came walking back, a smile curling at the corner of his lips.

“Well?” Richie pressed, glancing back to Mr. Kaspbrak, who now busied himself with a book. “What did he say.”

“He said that Beverly likes me and is currently at the bar across the street hating that she had to miss class.” Excitement seeped out of every pour, making Richie slightly jealous. “I guess he is her wingman. Small world.”

Although happy for his friend he needed to know the rest of the conversation. “Okay but what did he say about me?”

“Oh if you wanted to actually talk to him you need to take his class, he said his time isn’t free.” Ben laughed, “I like him.”

Richie gaped, one hundred percent over this bullshit and already thinking of a way to get the teacher to spend a little one and one time with him. If he had to take a stupid community center class than so be it, it would be worth it in the end.  “Well what the fuck does he teach?”

“Ethics..”

“Aw fuck.”

3/100 Ways To Say I Love You

Pairing: Ong Seongwoo x Reader

Genre: Fluff 

Prompt: “No, no, it’s my treat.” 

Words: 3587

A/N: Hello readers! I know that I have been pretty inactive in the past week and that is because I was in Japan and did not take my laptop with me for the week’s getaway. :( For those who are still waiting for your ships and requests, I have started working on them and will post them soon so this Ong Seongwoo scenario would serve as the easing into the motion as I get back to my usual activity. :) Thank you all for being so patient and supportive with me and I hope that this does not disappoint. :) Thank you for reading and stay tuned for more of this series coming up soon! 

“I hope the study session was productive today. I know it’s a little heavy on the content, but I bet you could at least remember one concept… right?” Seongwoo asked, sounding slightly concerned.

“Y-yeah,” I stammered, taking a while to comprehend what he was saying. You see, Seongwoo and I had just spent 5 solid hours in the school’s library, focusing solely on the many concepts of Chemistry (whose names I could never remember) and Advanced Mathematics. And these were the two brain draining subjects that I neither loved or hated, but what I did know was that these were my worst subjects in the recent examination. In fact, I was far from the passing mark and it was as if my entire world had come crashing down on me when I received my results.

My parents went ballistic at my grades, breathing down my neck and telling me the importance of doing well in my studies, just so that I could aim for the top 3 universities once I graduated. They had begun to research on well-known cram schools and tutors, who charged an arm and a leg, but they were willing to do anything at this point to make sure that I pulled up my socks and score the grades that they wanted.

Unfortunately, cram schools had only given me even more pressure, especially when I was surrounded by students from the elite high schools such as Daewon Foreign Languages High School; they could conquer the entire Ivy League if they wanted to; or Anyang High School; they could get into the local universities easy, just with their grades alone. Hence, perhaps this was the reason why my grades fell even more, just due to the immense pressure alone.

“Hmm,” Ms Jung, my homeroom teacher, pondered during a short check-in session, as she looked at the possible options I had to improve and look ahead, “If cram schools do not seem to be aiding you in your learning, how about asking one of your classmates for help? Considering that all of you are students, and what more in the same class, perhaps the both of you could empathise and understand each other better.”

“B-but I don’t really talk to the class very much though…?”

“I know you’re soft spoken, I really do,” Ms Jung replied in an empathetic manner, “but this is the best way, in my opinion, for you to get a grasp of your learning gaps before moving onto the second year.”

I sighed at the thought, and even though I hated to admit it, I had to agree. It was probably the most effective way, especially when I had gone through too many experiences with teachers who gave no two hoots towards those lagging behind.

“Okay, the most I could do for you is to consult a student from the class. I’m pretty sure they’ll be more than willing to help you.” She said in an assuring manner, patting me on the back with a warm smile.

And so she did, and I had to admit that she was probably the most efficient teacher that I had ever met, because it only took me 4 days to receive a message from an unknown number.

“Hey. This is Y/N right? Ms Jung just consulted me this morning about advanced math and chemistry, asking me whether I was more than willing to tutor you. When do you want to start?”

I was beyond confused when I saw the message, so I replied, meaning no harmful intent, “Uh… yes this is Y/N, but who is this?”

“Wow, do you not save your classmate’s numbers? I’m offended.” The reply came in a flash, followed by another message, “Anyway, this is Ong Seongwoo.”

Ah… Ong Seongwoo.

Truth be told, he was indeed the epitome of a true surprise and the reason why one should not judge a book by its cover.

He was popular with the ladies (shouldn’t it be extremely popular), the volleyball team’s ace libero and could easily charm his way through a woman’s heart. It was a given that the students would oggle over him; the ideal man for the girls and an object of envy for the other boys. Sometimes, it was often rumoured that even the teachers loved him, especially when he was truly “drop dead gorgeous”.

Hence, to most, he appeared as the resident’s “fuckboy”, perceived to lead wild lifestyles, have an affluent background and probably flunked every single class in the process. However, Seongwoo was pretty much the opposite. He was, what we called, a closet mugger, and he studied hard and well. In fact, he was probably born brilliant since he could understand concepts effortlessly, and could probably score stellar grades despite having no sleepless nights or experiences of burning the midnight oil; which was a norm amongst high school students.

I suppose that was the reason why Ms Jung had assigned me to Seongwoo. He was the top student of the class in terms of his overall grades, second in the cohort and the A-star student in both Chemistry and Advanced Math. There was no other way around it, and besides, even though I had not spoken a single word ever in the year, he was still nice enough to offer his help anyway.

Therefore, we scheduled a time, making an appointment on a Wednesday at 3pm, and I had to say that the first meeting was extremely awkward. I knew he was good looking, but seeing his sharp features up close would make anyone turn into a blushing mess. However, the vibe that he gave was one filled with seriousness and it was intense, but he had every right to, especially when he was going to teach a student who was “significantly weaker” than him.

Indeed, he was baffled with what I did not know, asking me what I did not know from the syllabus first. In retrospect, I was probably confident in 10% of the entire syllabus and the rest passed by like a blur to me throughout the year. Like I said before, there were many teachers that I met who cared nothing for the weaker students, accounting for the state that I was currently in.

Nevertheless, he kept his cool (surprisingly) and sighed, before saying in a slightly dejected, but determined tone, “So… I guess we’ll just refresh your memory on the basics for today. Your foundation, as of now, is nowhere near stable, so before we can advance any further, these are all the things that you would need to know.”

Wow. Harsh.

As time went by, we started to meet more and more often, especially with me having to sit for a foundation test to see if I needed to change classes or not. Hence, for some strange reason, he was all the more determined to teach me, making sure that I knew everything to the point that I could spill all the information in the textbook, word for word.

Thankfully, in that span of time, I had also gotten to know Seongwoo a little better than what I had already known from all the gossips and rumours that were often present in the corridors. When he was not burying his head in the books, he loved to joke around with his friends, showing me videos of all the pranks that he had elaborately planned out, just to capture all of their reactions. God knows what ran through his mind at times, but he would show all these videos to me in the quiet library and it took me all not to laugh out loud at all of them.

There were days when we had forgotten where we were, only to realise the librarian staring daggers into our souls, but all Seongwoo had to do was to reciprocate with a small polite smile, which had also caused her to get a little flustered.

Indeed, behind that suave exterior, Seongwoo was just like any other teenage boy; playful, fun-loving, spontaneous and it was indeed a mystery to how he could excel in school without even trying.

At the end of the day, we ended up becoming pretty close friends and study sessions soon escalated to spending time with each other during lunch, sharing little snippets of our lives and laughing at all the embarrassing and hilarious moments that we captured. Sometimes, it went beyond the superficial and he was there throughout the triumphs and tribulations.

When I was sick, he came over with warm chicken soup in a thermal container. When I was sad, he was a shoulder to cry on, and all he had to do was to provide a comforting arm placed around my shoulder, assuring me that things will get better. When it was my time of the month, he knew exactly what cheered me up; dark chocolate (lots of it), caramel ice cream bars and instant noodles. Eventually, my mother had begun to approve of him, and it was clear that he too clicked with my mother.

“He’s such a nice boy, Y/N. Is he your boyfriend?”

Yep, she was that straightforward.

“Eomma, of course not,” I would laugh awkwardly after that, and she would only squint her eyes at me saying that there was no way she was going to believe it, “He’s… a little too out of my league and besides, isn’t grades more important now?”

She nodded in approval, but that was after she had given me a hint of what she had hoped for, “I understand how you must be feeling, but then again, I can’t stop your heart right?”

Feelings aside, after months of hard work and progress monitoring from the sharp eye of Seongwoo, I had taken my foundation tests quite smoothly and it was finally the day when I would find out whether I needed to be transferred to another class. As Ms Jung read out the names of the students who had taken the tests, Seongwoo closed his eyes and kept his hands together, possibly praying to all the Gods out there that I would pass it. I chuckled at the sight, but kept it together when Ms Jung called my name.

“And finally, Y/N…” I was still standing at this point, anxious to find out how I had performed. My palms were clammy and I swore I could have broken out in cold sweat at the anticipation. Ms Jung sighd at first, and it was as if all hope was lost, but her lips began to curve upwards and she said in a calm, yet proud, manner, “Good job Y/N. You scored the highest in the class for Advanced Math and second in Chemistry. Congratulations.”

That was when I heard loud cheering and a resounding applause from Seongwoo. Despite the fact that he was now faced with judgemental and surprised gazes from my classmates, he paid no attention, shooting me a thumbs up and a proud expression for my performance.

I mouthed a “thank you” to him and smiled at the rest of my class, bowing here and there to all who had congratulated me. Sitting down, I whipped out my phone immediately as I felt a vibration from my pocket.

“Good job Y/N. I’m so proud of you. Keep aiming high and just know that I’ll always be here for you when you need me. Let’s go out for dinner soon as a celebration okay? Indeed, never underestimate Mr Ong’s intelligence.”

I scoffed and shook my head, shooting him a glance and there he was, still with a cocky grin plastered on his face. On the contrary, I could still tell that he was proud of my achievements, and the same went for his own milestones, considering that he had mentioned to me that he was a terrible teacher. Hence, I was beyond grateful that the fruits of the labour was worth it after all, and it was mutual too.

Sadly, we started to lose touch eventually, especially when we were out of class. Sure, we still met up to study and acknowledged each other with an energetic wave in class, but that was about it for the initial start of the second year. We never really shared a common lunch break anymore, especially when our teachers started to band us according to our grades. When he left the class, he would shoot me a sad smile, and I’d just reciprocate the gesture, but wished him all the best through text anyway. Furthermore, he had started to prepare for his the upcoming volleyball tournaments anyway and they trainee for 6 days a week, juggling both their academics and ready for the big games ahead. He preferred to catch some shut eye, and in all honesty, I could not blame him.

After what seemed like an eternity, I had finally received a text from him, asking if I wanted to study with him and without hesitation, I replied with a “Yes!” and I felt my spirit brighten at the thought. Indeed, when one had a friend who brought a drop of happiness to one’s life all the time, it was a little difficult when they were not around anymore, even if it was just temporary.

So here we were, seeking refuge in a traditional korean fast food restaurant, flipping through the brightly coloured menu to see what they offered. I looked up, and noticed that Seongwoo was clearly ogling at all the pictures that the owners had so strategically placed. It made one’s mouth water with the sight of tangsooyook, wholesome doshiraks and golden chicken tenders, and it was clear to see why this was a popular food chain amongst all the high school students of Seoul.

“Good evening sir and welcome to our restaurant! Could I start you off with anything?” A chirpy waitress with the brightest smile greeted.

“Actually… We are ready to order.”

“Oh, of course, what would you like to have then? I can assure you that we only serve top-quality products and if you would like some recommendations, I would not mind to give the both of you some suggestions as well.”

Hearing that, he rattled on his order and I was a little surprised to hear how much he could eat, and most importantly, the price of the items he had ordered. They were not expensive individually, no, but with the seemingly endless list, it was hard to tell how much it would cost in total.

“So that will be 1 serving of tangsooyook, 2 servings of premium doshiraks, 1 serving of mixed mandoo, 1 serving of kimchi jjigae, 2 bottles of Chinsung Cider and finally, to end it all off, an Oreo bingsoo with chocolate and vanilla ice cream?”

He nodded and I was already fumbling for my wallet in my bag, but I was way too slow to possibly go dutch, especially when he had already handed in his debit card before she could even tell us what the price was. He smiled at me when he did so, eyes turning into two crescent moons and whipped out his phone to scroll through his Instagram and Twitter feed.

“Hey… Uh.. How much is it? It’s only right if I pay you back —“

“No, no. It’s my treat. Don’t worry about it. You deserve it, especially after working so hard for those stellar results.”

“T-thanks Ong but it was all thanks to you really. Without you, who knows where I would have been at this point?”

“Sure, I would like to take some credit for your great success,” he said proudly, but reverted back to his soft and gentle tone, “but at the end of the day, you were the one sitting for the papers anyway. Until now, I’m still proud of you and it’s good to know that you’re doing well now.”

And that was when I looked to see a beautiful smile that just made him even more handsome than he already was. Despite knowing him for so long, I still felt a familiar warmth spreading through my cheeks and ears and I cleared my throat awkwardly. My heart started to palpitate against my chest and I leaned back against the booth, attempting to calm myself down.

“Hi! Here’s your food and enjoy your meal!” The waitress was back again, holding onto a huge circular tray of food probably fit for a king. She arranged the food gently and nicely, but she was quick and said before running back to her station, “Here you go, picture worthy, don’t you think? Anyway, have a great night and if you need anything, just give me a call!”

It was amazing how she was still so enthusiastic, even if she was just simply serving customers and taking down their orders, without even stopping to rest for a bit and catch a breather. How I wish I was like that when I attended school too.

“Here, eat up.” Seongwoo said, proceeding to stack my side plate with two serving spoons full of tangsooyook and I thanked him for his kind gesture, “Like I said, you deserve it anyway.”

And that was how our sumptuous meal had gone as we spent time relishing in the taste of the food and caught up with each other at the same time. I knew of the fact that his team had attained a gold medal at the recent interschool games, but it was a whole different story hearing it from the player itself. He opened up about his highest moments, as well as his lowest, and told me hilarious anecdotes throughout the course of the dinner.

As for me, there was nothing much to say, especially when I was only a member of the school’s editorial club, publishing magazines containing updates of the school as well as taking photographs for the magazine itself. Hence, I resorted to spending most of my time actively listening to Seongwoo’s stories initially, before opening up about my recent experiences in the editorial team. In fact, I had also mentioned that the copies were well on its way, showing him a picture that a friend of mine had managed to catch from his volleyball finals.

“Oh wow, could you take pictures like that too?” He asked, after the photograph had piqued his interest, with a curious tone.

“I… can try, I guess? I’m still new to the whole photography notion, but I suppose I could try it sometime.”

“Could I be your model then?”

I chuckled and rolled my eyes, nodding, and once again, he exuded the vibes of a boy who had just gotten his very first christmas present. It was clear he was excited, chewing on his food happily with a wide smile on his face.

In the end, we ended up spending more time in the restaurant than we should have, surprised to find out that they were about to close for the night, as well as the fact that we had sat in the restaurant for quite a long while too. After an enthusiastic goodbye from the waitresses, we took our leave and made our way to the train station to get home.

We were in a state of comfortable silence as we walked, taking in deep breaths of the cool spring air and feeling the gentle wind against our faces. The city lights had also attracted our attention, and hence, we spent a little bit of time admiring the sights around us in silent awe. Furthermore, I had never been to this area of Seoul, hence all these sights seemed to give a different vibe, even if they could be selling the same things at the end of the day.

Now, it was the time to part ways, simply because we were going in two directions now. I was heading towards Myeongdong and beyond, while he was heading off to Apgujeong. Thankfully, our trains were not arriving so soon, and we took a seat right in the middle of the vast and relatively empty train station.

“Thanks for the dinner today.” I said, breaking the silence, and he smiled in response, “I’m glad you enjoyed it Y/N. Let’s… come back again, shall we?”

And I nodded, before hearing the sudden familiar whirring of the train tracks, signalling that my train was going to come any minute now. I stood up, but I only felt a tug on my wrist and turned around, only to be faced with an endearing gaze from Seongwoo. Strangely, I could sense a tinge of shyness, which was unlikely from a boy that confident.

“B-before you go,” he stammered, “I j-just wanted to tell you to be safe, get home as quick as you can and… uhh… text me once you’re home. If anything happens, j-just g-give me a call.”

“Sure,” I replied, and started to move away as he loosened his grip, “Don’t worry Ong, I’ll be home before you know it and I’ll be sure to get home in one piece. Be safe on your way home too and I’ll… see you tomorrow?”

He nodded with a small smile, finally realising that he needed to let me go so that I could get onto the train. Nevertheless, I faced the station anyway and noticed that he had made a heart shape with his arms as the train took its leave. Hence, I reciprocated the gesture shyly and gave a final wave, before heading back home to retreat for the night.

24 Hours without my phone!!!

Hello Readers!!!

For a class assignment I chose to endure 24 grueling hours without my cellphone, basically a piece of me. Seems simple right? Thats just one day, I mean people can go days without food or water, a measly 24 hours without my phone should be easy. Well it was definitely harder than I thought.

So heres how it went. I went from the time I woke up to the next morning, easy peasy. I always start my day off the same almost everyday. Pot of coffee brush my teeth and a good dose of social media. Not today! to make it a little harder on myself I decided to not turn on the TV or my computer to give myself a full media cleanse for the day. I am an avid runner and run every single day, so I grabbed my iPod stretched out and got ready for my run. DARN! I use my phone for the NikePlus app every run to mark my distance, check my run pace, and document my miles logged for the week. I made a small fit about it, “how am I going to know how far I run?” “what about my pace?” “Its going to look like I skipped a day” BLAH BLAH BLAH. Things that don't really matter, I mean people ran back in the day and even today just their own two feet and an open road or trail. So I decided to just run straight down the road and when I started feeling tired I would turn around and go back home. I Love using the app and still continue to use it daily but running without my phone telling me how fast or slow I'm running, or telling me how far Ive gone or how much more I need to run was kind of freeing. I was just listening to my body and running how i felt and not worrying about how many miles left to go or I need to run faster. The next day I went on google maps and mapped where I ran because I remembered what street I turned around at, I ended up running 15.4 miles that day and I felt great! 

So I was like, ok maybe I can do this! all I have to do is run a couple errands before work, go to work and then I’m done! Oh it was trickier than I thought. I know that I'm addicted to my phone and social media, and I often catch myself going through Instagram or snapchat for minutes on end and putting the phone away and sometimes without thinking about it like a reflex Im pulling my phone back out and scrolling through Instagram at post that I just looked at 5 minutes prior. Sometimes I feel ok with it because hey! at least I know I'm doing it so its ok!

As I stand in line at the grocery store I begin to feel a little anxious about the line not moving fast enough. I keep reaching for my pocket to pull my phone out, the funny thing is I know I don't have it but its like a weird reflex. I then realized the line is probably moving at a normal rate, I just don't have my phone to occupy my short attention span. Which I now believe is due to the way our phones, media, television, and almost everyone thing now is this formula of fast, now, more!

Time for work! at this point I'm pretty settled into the idea of no phone and my last minute decision to do no media as well. Work should be easy, because I work in retail we shouldn't even be on our phones at all anyway so piece of cake! Boy was I wrong! It wasn't difficult in the sense that I couldn't get anything done or I was stressed because everyone was on their phones and I wasn't. I just realized that so much of what goes on nowadays socially, revolves around media and our devices that we receive all this information on. A lot of conversations with my coworkers and friends would start off with “did you see what happened to BLAH BLAH on BLAH BLAH?” So many conversation starters are surrounded by whats happening on social media. I mean I was still able to talk and listen and have my input but I often caught myself leaving a little left out sometimes when people were sharing memes and looking at funny or embarrassing snapchat or Instagram posts. But I survived! the hardest part of that day was breaks in the lunch room. When everyone is face down glued to their phones, I mean I wasn't mad because I'm just like that if not worse any other day. Try starting a conversation when everyones attention is split between their food and their phones. The funny thing was the only time people were separated by their phones was when someone else wanted to show something on their own phone. Don't worry I didn't cheat and I didn't look. But I wanted to so bad! thats when I knew I had it pretty bad when I even had to think about “does it count if I look at someone else's phone?” But I didn't break! 

I did It!!! no phone no media for a measly 24 hours. I realized it was easier then I thought and Its not a difficult thing to do from time to time and I found it  healthy for myslelf. I felt a little more present at times when I wasn't thinking about what other people were doing or posting on their storylines or thinking about what I’m going to post on my storyline or snapchat. It was definitely a breath of fresh air when it was all said and done. The next morning I still checked my social media but I noticed that I didn't go through Instagram as long as I usually do and I didn't go through it for the 2nd or 3rd time within a few minutes like most mornings. Am I still addicted to my phone and media? Yeah you can say that. Do I still check my phone unnecessarily? Of course. But am I more aware of it? Yes, and realize a lot of the things I waste my time on are kind  of pointless. But thats what makes it fun, social media and my phone have so many upsides and useful tools that getting rid of it would be pointless. But it is nice to take very very short breaks from time time. :)

Categorizing Narrative Use

Introduction

Video games have used story lines to enrich their player experience since their inception. Weather it was a building sense of dread from the Arch Demon in Dragon Age or the stunning revelation in Bioshock, narrative serves to bring the player into a world apart from their own and evoke emotional responses. However, the specific use of narrative in regards to the mechanics of gameing is widely debated. Considering the experience in any given game is completely subjective and influenced heavily by the player’s own preferences, this debate doesn’t not seem to have a clear cut resolution. In the following analysis, I will attempt to break down the use of narratives in video games and compare their respective pros and cons, especially in relation to the side of the aforementioned argument which argues that games exist strictly as a set of mechanics which do not serve to enrich the narrative of the game, but allow for the facilitation the narrative and serve as the basis for the classification of the text as a whole as a “video game”. While I will attempt to keep the analysis purely academic, please keep in mind that these are my own subjective opinions.

Narrative and Mechanical Coupling

As I can tell, there are five total narrative classes in which all games fall. Firstly, and perhaps most commonly, there is Narrative and Mechanical Coupling. Games that fall into this category have a story that is paired with their mechanics due to the latter being created to serve the former, or created in tandem. Examples of this can be seen in games such as Castlevania: Lords of Shadow and Firewatch. Castlevania: Lords of Shadow is a third-person action adventure game where the player takes control of Gabriel Belmont with the objective of hunting down the titular “Lords of Shadow” to obtain their power. While it does have 3D environments and puzzle sections that allow the player to move around, and collectibles that boost your health meter and damage, the game runs on a linear mechanical track most of the time where the player must complete a plainly stated objective in order to progress. Explorable areas are comparatively small, enemies spawn in groups which must be killed to remove barriers, and boss fights are large action set pieces that require specific conditions to be met in order to deal damage, such as hitting glowing areas, throwing special weapons at the boss, or interacting with structures in the area. This is quite different than Firewatch, a game in which the player takes control of a Fire Lookout in charge of attending to a large part of the Shoshone National Forest. Described as a “walking simulator”, the player moves Fire Lookout Henry around the world to explore and uncover the story of Henry’s past and his relations to several NPC’s he interacts with, usually in the form of branching dialogue paths with the player choosing how Henry ought to respond. Some environmental interaction occurs, but it is usually limited to descriptions in order to expand the players’ understanding of the world, or special items pertinent to puzzles or story line situations. In each case, emphasis is placed on the story the games is telling with mechanics that serve only as a medium to deliver that story to the players. Both the narrative and the mechanics are paired to deliver an enjoyable, interactive experience.

Narrative as Secondary to Mechanics

Some games are meant to be played purely as an expression of the player’s will. Examples can be seen in games like Minecraft and The Sims. Minecraft has almost no story, with the player taking control of a single being in an open, completely explorable world with the freedom to gather and alter resources into whatever they see fit. The Sims similarly offers the player a wealth of mechanics and allows them to create their own stories in the lives of small simulated cities and people, which the player controls as an unseen, formless entity. Both games shed any inherent narrative and allow the player to build their own world of stories and decisions with little limitation. 

Narrative and Mechanical Separation

Some games have stories and mechanics that may not always compliment each other. However, rather than trying to reconcile this division, they simply approach both in a separate way. The narrative is stated in some way, weather diegetically or not, and the game mechanics carry merrily on. Examples of this would be in games like Overwatch, League of Legends, and World of Warcraft. Overwatch is a first person hero shooter where two teams of six players are placed into large maps to either accomplish, or prevent the enemy from accomplishing simple and relatively unchanging goals like moving a payload or capturing a point. The lore to Overwatch is quite detailed, but almost none of it can be found in game. Instead, online forums, blogs, web pages, and animated shorts tell the story all the while totally separate from the game mechanics. It may not make sense for Soldier 76 to pistol whip Mercy to death, but that is something you can do in game. League of Legends also shares this narrative style, with much more lore available in their client to be read in between games, but the bulk of it existing on their website. League of Legends is a MOBA, or multiplayer online battle arena, with an isometric view and a similar team structure and objective-based competitive play to Overwatch. Regardless of narrative ties and motivations, anyone can kill anyone else in League of Legends. World of Warcraft may initially seem like a bad example, as it is an MMORPG, or massively multiplayer online role playing game, with plenty of in-game lore and well-defined NPC characters and factions. However, because of the static nature of the game’s narrative, regardless of mechanical interaction, World of Warcraft certainly belongs here. Perhaps a quest is given to a player controlling a gnome mage to kill twenty members of the Horde army in a specific area. The player may kill these twenty members to complete the quest, but besides a gold and experience reward being given to the player (a mechanical change), nothing has changed in the narrative sense. That same player could kill thirty, fifty, one hundred, one million Horde members but it wouldn’t matter. After a time they would simply respawn and the game’s story would remain unchanged. Perhaps the ultimate expression of this would be Raid Instances. In a Raid, a large group of players assemble to take on difficult enemies in combat and defeat the Raid’s end boss. Even if the boss is a flaming dragon and harbinger of the apocalypse, if you kill him the world will remain in peril and he will simply respawn.

Canonically Fluid Narrative

Some games acknowledge their narrative and mechanical divide, but rather than keep them separate, they elect one particular versin of their story as “canon”, or an officially established sequence of events. Games like Dark Souls, and Archlord are prime examples of this. In Dark Souls the player controls an unnamed character of their own creation and tasked with slaying a list of powerful beings. From there, it’s up to the player. They can wield a sword if they want, or maybe cast spells. They can run straight to the Greatwolf Sif and try to kill him, or gather resources slowly to face the gargoyles. With little exception, the player can explore the whole of the world almost immediately and therefore has access to most of the weapons, spells, armor, and items in the game. Due to the innumerable approaches the game gives players to how they slay their enemies, it does not present a clear canon in the subsequent games in the series. In the third game, for instance, several hints in item descriptions and the environment itself hint that a Dragon Slayer named Ornstein abandoned his assigned post in the castle at Anor Londo, the city of lords. However, the player kills Ornstein in the very first game. He is not an optional boss, he must be killed to progress, so how could he leave the place he was killed according to the canonical lore? That is due to the parallel worlds concept upon which Dark Souls is built. It is stated plainly that the events in Dark Souls happen repeatedly due to their place in a cycle of death and rebirth, as well as an endless span of parallel universes where events play out differently. Because there are so many worlds, players were not sure how the third game would interact with the lore of the first. It does this by electing a certain canon while each player plays out their own version of that canon in their own world. Similarly, the MMORPG Archlord elects only portions of it’s narrative as static or canon. While the nature of the MMO would seem to place it automatically in the “Narrative and Mechanical Separation” category, this particular game skirts it by changing the lore just enough to suit what the players want. In the game, a player starts out as chosen race/class combination and can kill monsters, complete quests, and join dungeons to level up and become more powerful. After a certain point, a player might join a guild and choose to siege the castle of the Archlord. Empowered by the game with the ability to control in-game weather, summon monsters, and enormously increased health and defenses, the Archlord was once just another player who managed to kill the previous Archlord.  If the Archlord dies, his power is transferred to whichever player landed the killing blow and they will reign for a while before someone else can challenge them. While the overall plot of the game remains unchanged, much like World of Warcraft, the smaller narrative unique to that game server changes every time the power of the Archlord changes hands, since each player can choose whatever they want to do with it. 

Interpreted Narrative as Personal Experience

The final category of games is a bit more abstract. Games like Journey and Pathologic are hard to nail down in terms of narrative function because it’s less about the game interacting with itself and more about the game interacting with the player. Journey is an indie adventure game where the player controls a small being in a red robe and scarf in the middle of a massive desert landscape. The only mechanics are forward movement, jumping, and floating mid air for a while. Artistically stunning and joined by a magnificent musical score, the game has no lore in the traditional sense, but rather bits and pieces of story elements from which the player can form their own opinions. The game emphasizes the feelings it evokes, rather than the story it tells. On the other end of the spectrum of narrative rigidity, Pathologic is a game about three playable characters who all view the same story line from different perspectives, that being the quest of the player to find the cause of a mysterious and lethal sickness called the “sand plague”. The game’s initially concrete objectives and understandable survival RPG mechanics eventually give way to surreal and cerebral visuals, cryptic and sometimes lying NPC’s, and architecture that breaks the laws of physics. The game delves deeply into existentialism and other philosophical themes told not through the straight forward concept of argument or discourse, but rather through the murky and confusing concept of firsthand experience. The dread that comes from asking who you are, questioning your purpose, and losing control of your mind is not viewed from a safe distance, it is experienced in first person with your own logic to guide you. This game, just like Journey, is not about what happens in the game itself. Rather, the narrative exists to create parallels between the game’s world and our own, and provoke the player to think upon different aspects of life and psychology. 

These categories seem to be to encompass all of gaming as it is, but I’m sure it won’t be too long before a game exists that shatters this line of thought. Games are constantly evolving along with the way in which we interact with them. And even if the above analysis does not last long in the sphere of discussion, I hope it helps provide a new angle from which we can assess and interpret games.

[Electronic Rituals] Creating an Emoji Ouija Board

Prompt

Make a prototype of an electronic spirit board or other method for facilitating automatic writing (communication from unconscious/subconscious/collective gesture.) (You can use procedural methods like those discussed in class, or invent your own method.) Questions to consider: How does your spirit board produce “coherence” (if, in fact, it does produce coherence)? Who is participating?

Coming up with an idea

I bounced back and forth between several ideas while trying to come up with a concept for this assignment: 

What would a spirit board that used pictorial symbols (rather than letters) to spell out messages look like?

What do processes for automatic digital art look like? Can digital art be produced automatically (i.e. divorced from intention and influenced by our subconscious) and if so, what types? (Drawing on a tablet vs. doing an expressive p5.js sketch?)

What place does automatic writing/creation have in the place of DESIGN?

How could digital processes assist in “interpreting” our handwritten automatic writing/drawings?

Although I was really into ones that dealt with drawing, in the end I went with the first option (a spirit board that used pictorial symbols) because it seemed the most feasible to do a prototype around.

The concept

A web-based spirit board that spells out a message (or answer to a question) in the form of emojis.

What the querent sees:

The querent starts the process by writing a question they would like answered by the spirits. Then, they are presented with the Emoji board. After a few seconds, the planchette starts to shake and they are told to focus carefully on it (via gaze) in order to move it. (this functionality, i.e. the gazing to control it is shallowly implemented right now). The planchette animates out the answer to their question.

What happens behind the scenes:

The underlying process behind how the message is generated is that it tracks the user’s gaze through their webcam using Webgazer.js, and notes the top emojis that the user looks at when the board is first being presented to them. Then, when the planchette begins to move, its path is already predetermined by what the person looked at the most in the initial phase.

Here, I’m trying to play around with how to emulate (if it’s possible) the ideomotor effect in a digital form. In our readings on Ouija board, it was revealed that the way the planchette moves is due to the fact that participants are subconsciously moving the planchette in the direction of where they want it to go. This process is also inherently very visual - during studies of Ouija in dark room, the resulting messages were nonsensical.

In this project, I’m trying to play around with one example of how our subconscious could manifest in a digital interface: what draws our attention, where our eyes linger. However, there’s also an element of making this a hidden process: if we request the user’s webcam and give them a board, of course they’re going to think that they’re eye movement is going to control the board. 

In my prototype, I tried to intentionally divert expectations for control from one part of the narrative to another, by tracking gaze at a point in the narrative where users don’t expect that their behavior will have any output. (Honestly, not sure how successful this actually is, because I couldn’t get the gaze to at least stop and start the planchette movement which would help solidify the feeling of control)

Video: Run-through with visible gaze tracking behavior

Video: Run through in user-facing mode

Precedents

https://www.bustle.com/articles/46786-emouija-board-is-the-emoji-fueled-ouija-board-you-never-knew-you-wanted

I found this, but it looks like it never got beyond the paper prototype/kickstarter stage? Also says nothing about what mechanism they’ll use to generate messages.

http://www.brainjar.com/dhtml/ouija/

I also found this early-internet version of an Ouija board, where you type in questions and get somewhat sensical responses back

Challenges/limitations

Webgazer wasn’t super easy to get set up. Although it says you can run it with a few lines of code,  I had trouble setting up a local server that supported HTTPS when I tried to start from scratch. So I built my “prototype” off of some example code from Webgazer’s that provided a simple way to train the model by clicking on dots while gazing at them. I recognize that this is definitely not a good experience to package this if I wanted others to use the app.

Emojis as a substrate for language? Designing a spirit board constrains you to a certain number of symbols, so it wouldn’t be feasible to put every emoji ever on a single page. One of the open questions I have is: does it even make sense to use emoji as a substrate for messages, the way letters in the English language are in traditional Ouija boards? If so, which emojis provide the best bases to span all meaning? In a way, it’s sort of similar to the design of oracle decks.  Currently, I address this by randomly generating a handful each time the experience loads. This introduces an element of randomness that constrains behavior, which does not seem to be a formal characteristic of traditional spirit boards.

Lack of language processing. I currently don’t process the question at all, but I wonder if that could result in more tailored responses. I.e., if you ask a yes or no then we’d track if the gaze falls more towards the “Yes” emoji or the “No” emoji (which are the two emoji that are currently not randomized).

i will follow you to the end

i.

a second son and a beta shouldn’t have ambitions, but woohyun does.

he is sent to the academy and sectioned off to become a soldier because, as a second son, the only way he can earn a position in court is to rise through the ranks of the military. he is marked off as nothing special at all, and placed into a training squadron with another second son, and a weak first son.

howon is the middle child of his family, but he is an alpha. sungyeol, by the headmaster and teachers, is considered weak, but he is still the firstborn alpha of his family. both of them have the advantages and justifications woohyun doesn’t, but he doesn’t quite seem to see all of this through the same eyes as everyone else does when they shake their heads and sigh at him.

each son who has a father or brother in the court is sent to the headmaster’s office one by one to be spoken to individually. howon leaves the door open for woohyun on his way out, the alpha still running searching eyes up and down woohyun - they’ve only spent a night in their new dormitories together, and neither alpha has spoken much to woohyun yet, both settling for thoroughly judging him every time they see him.

he’s perfectly fine with this for now - no one is sent to the academy to socialize after all.

the headmaster greets woohyun warmly, asking about his older brother’s studies and how his father fares in court. woohyun answers every question cheerily, filling the conversation with jests that don’t encroach on any seniority, and the headmaster is roaring with laughter throughout in minutes.

“i know you are a hard worker,” the headmaster says most probably in what he believes is a reassuring tone, as woohyun stands and bows, preparing to leave. “you will easily finish your training and we will certainly grant you a good, secure post somewhere in one of the nearby towns - perhaps a magistrate position will suit you.”

woohyun smiles peacefully. “of course.”

ii.

each squadron of soldiers-in-training is assigned a lieutenant trainer. all students receive their academic training from the literati the court sends, but the physical training as well as discipline is given out by each respective squadron trainers. the initial way the system is described had had woohyun believing that there would be some level of objectivity to it at all when, in fact, there was absolutely none.

the trainers are, essentially, minders. they are quite literally nursemaids but rather than a gentle reproach every time one of them steps out of line, they either receive lashes, are sent to their dormitories without meals, some combination of both, or are assigned to some form of cleaning duty for the next month. however, just as there are a broad spectrum of nursemaids due simply to how each person does such a subjective job so differently, the range of trainers and their training methods spans anywhere from the strictness of an actual military general to a mild schoolteacher.

every trainer is only a lieutenant but kim sunggyu might as well already be a general of the king’s entire army as far as woohyun, howon, and sungyeol are concerned.

all three of them are sent to their classes forbidden from all meals on the first day for being a minute late to the meeting point. woohyun is sore from head to toe the entire first week, not even from any of the actual physical training but from all the punishments he is given for not wearing his robes correctly, for replying without addressing sunggyu correctly, for not properly memorizing field rules, for misquoting a poet, and everything in between.

sunggyu’s strictness becomes widely known throughout the students in a matter of a month, and if woohyun, howon, and sungyeol were not close before, the growing frustration and unfairness they felt from both sunggyu and the pitying gazes of their classmates for having the misfortune of being assigned the most intolerant trainer brought them together like brothers.

two nights before the first round of examinations, their discontent finally explodes into outrage, set off by sunggyu slapping sungyeol’s head with the side of his trainer’s stick because sungyeol fumbled around the pronunciation of an old proverb. sunggyu has been testing them for practice in the common area of the dormitory late into the night for the past two weeks - they are only allowed to sleep when all three of them can run through the sets sunggyu has chosen for that night, meaning that the candles are always burned out by the time they are finally let into their bedrooms.

howon yanks the stick out of sunggyu’s hand and throws it to the floor at the same time that woohyun says, low and angry, “what right does a merchant’s son have to raise his hand against a war hero’s firstborn?”

there is an infinitesimal moment where shock covers sunggyu’s face, most probably at the fact that they know - rumors, after all, have a way of bearing some semblance to the truth, and woohyun’s ears are open to everything even though none of the other students usually care to share gossip with their squadron. that moment is gone in less than a second, however, and then sunggyu’s expression is simply as controlled and steady as it was before.

woohyun is ready for any coming punishment - for whatever sunggyu has to say. he doesn’t expect for the next movement in the room to be sungyeol slamming past him and howon towards the doors that lead outside into the courtyard. “i don’t need either of you defending me,” is all sungyeol says when he tears his shoulder out of howon’s grasp, and runs out.

woohyun doesn’t know how long he and howon stare after their friend, but the silence is interrupted by sunggyu’s footsteps as he suddenly brushes in between woohyun and howon, walking out as well after sungyeol.

iii.

woohyun places first in the examinations in every subject. howon places second. sungyeol, disbelieving until woohyun and howon steer him to the rankings written on the scroll hanging from the wall itself, places third.

sungyeol tells them then, on the way back to the dormitories as all students are given their first personal day upon the release of the results, sunggyu had followed after him that night - he’d apologized for hitting sungyeol, but he hadn’t apologized for berating him over his habitual mispronunciation. he had sat with sungyeol in the courtyard through the night until sungyeol had finally recited the proverbs without a single twist of his tongue.

the lieutenant isn’t there when they return from the mess hall after lunch. woohyun doesn’t know about howon and sungyeol, but the beta hadn’t expected their trainer to be there today. the students are given a personal day, and thus, so are the trainers, and while a few trainers who are close with their squadrons are taking them out into the town, sunggyu clearly would prefer to have the personal day tending to his own affairs.

woohyun is about to suggest they go into town themselves and find some sweets stalls to put out of business when howon narrows his eyes towards the table in the common area, crossing over to it. woohyun himself hadn’t even noticed, but there is a small scroll and a sizable tied sack sitting there that hadn’t been there when they’d left this morning.

howon opens the scroll, eyes moving back and forth as he reads it quickly. his expression morphs from confusion to something that woohyun would call almost pinched and apologetic. “what is it?” sungyeol asks.

howon hands it over to sungyeol, and woohyun hooks his chin on sungyeol’s shoulder, reading along with him.

the trainers receive the results before they are made public. thus, i discovered last night the fruits of your perseverance. it isn’t much, but these are tokens of my pride for your accomplishments. enjoy today and tonight, and i will see you in the morning.

howon opens the sack and within it are three parcels wrapped in silk and tied with a thick piece of thread. there is a blue one, a violet one, and a green one. howon snatches the violet one immediately and both sungyeol and woohyun roll their eyes as they take the blue and the green respectively each.

woohyun unties the thread and lets the silk fall into his other hand.

they are daggers.

beautifully crafted, sharp and sturdy yet lightweight, woohyun observes as he unsheathes his.

“well,” woohyun says with a smile that feels strange on his face, “who else feels rather terrible?”

“oh, absolutely,” howon says briskly.

“the tutor my father himself hired from the king’s court was not able to teach me so well,” sungyeol says quietly, staring at the weapon in his hands.

they stand there, unsure of what to do - not truly feeling like celebrating anymore - for some time, until woohyun has had enough of wishing he could change some things that had happened and announces that they are going to get fat off of sweets and meat tonight.

they end up spending the entire night eating and playing games out in the town, joining other groups of students enjoying themselves. woohyun knows he isn’t the only one hoping that they would run into sunggyu at some point during the evening, but they never see him regardless of how small the town is. they don’t return until the sky is no longer pitch black, but rather beginning to turn into a dark blue.

naturally - all three of them are late to the usual meeting point at the large tree in front of the dormitory.

when sunggyu points to the ground with his stick, all of them prostrate themselves without a noise of complaint. woohyun actually feels the corners of his mouth tugging upward, and when he meets howon and sungyeol’s gazes, they too, for smile back at him. “no breakfast, lunch, dinner, or supper,” sunggyu says, the surface tone of his voice as flat as always, but underneath, there’s something almost like warmth - almost affection - and woohyun can hear the returning fondness in his, howon, and sungyeol’s own voices when they reply.

“yes, sir.”

iv.

woohyun is the smartest student in the entire class, and he is second only to howon in regards to their physical training. his family is important, but there are many more families of higher status with their sons in woohyun’s class, and he knows that the teachers and those sons are not happy with how well woohyun is doing and how far he is upstaging all of them. moreover, nearly all of these sons are alphas, and some of them are even in the same position as sungyeol - they are firstborns from military families and woohyun is succeeding against them as a beta.

sunggyu asks him to stay behind in the common area one night after the trainer is done revising their material with them for the evening. this is the first time woohyun has been alone with the lieutenant. he watches sunggyu close some of the books on the table, shuffling closer with his knees against the cushion. he’s only struck now, strangely, with the realization that sunggyu can’t be all that much older than woohyun is.

“the headmaster is not quite aware because he is a progressive man, so the teachers know he would not care either way,” sunggyu begins slowly, and woohyun instantly knows what this is about when their gazes meet. “they have spoken to me, however, about how you are scoring much higher than - than the sons of certain families who have large expectations and names.”

“i will make an educated guess then that they have told you, as my trainer, to ask that i lessen my accomplishments for my desperate peers and their parents?” woohyun raises his eyebrows with an almost bitter smile.

“they have,” sunggyu responds simply, expression indecipherable.

woohyun looks back at sunggyu levelly. “you, they, the timing of my birth, what i was born as - i will not restrain my capabilities for anyone or anything.”

sunggyu’s gaze doesn’t change. “did i ask you to?”

woohyun stares, feeling his eyes widen, his mouth open slightly as sunggyu smiles. he wonders if, that night that sunggyu had gone after sungyeol, if sunggyu had smiled then because woohyun surely knows that he has never seen the lieutenant smile in front of all three of them together. he wonders if howon has ever seen sunggyu smile.

the trainer’s eyes disappear completely when his cheeks are pushed up by the pink curls of his mouth, teeth flashing. “what right does a merchant’s son, who bested every literati and aristocrat’s son in his own time at the academy, have to scold a nobleman’s second-born for doing the same?”

the only words that woohyun manages to say to that are, “were you first in your class?”

sunggyu’s smile widens into a grin. “of course.”

“you wouldn’t have been were we in the same year,” woohyun then blurts out before he can stop himself. he blinks, and sunggyu blinks back.

sunggyu is no longer grinning, not quite a smile that his mouth is twisted into now. woohyun doesn’t know exactly how to describe the expression on the lieutenant’s face, but his tone when he next speaks makes woohyun’s heart beat hard and loud in his chest. “they give the scrolls that you wrote your examinations on to your trainers,” sunggyu says, and then there is a smile on his face - a small, almost smug smile. “you placed first in your class, but you missed one question.”

the lieutenant stands up, gathering the books into his arms. “i missed none,” sunggyu’s voice is almost sweet, as he turns to walk to his bedroom. “sleep well, soldier.”

v.

to say the least, woohyun’s ability to scent is nearly nonexistent. he is only able to tell sungyeol and howon are alphas because howon’s scent is incredibly potent and after enough time with sungyeol, his scent also catches onto woohyun. for the most part, however, woohyun is a beta and he doesn’t have much need for scenting so he doesn’t honestly care to try and improve a better sense of it. he had always pushed marriage to the back of his mind because his parents have another, older son anyway.

marriage is still nowhere near the forefront of his mind currently, but scenting - suddenly - is.

howon finds it nothing short of absurd and hilarious. “our dear lieutenant kim is an alpha, first of all,” he says a little too loudly for woohyun’s liking, but since the mess hall is generally loud and chaotic, woohyun supposes no one but the two alphas and himself can hear the conversation anyway.

sungyeol finds woohyun’s sudden intentions mildly amusing and fairly pathetic, and makes no attempt to hide this at all. he does his best, in fact, to project it. “find yourself a nice beta or a pretty omega across the lake and stop endangering your manhood.”

“my manhood?” woohyun snorts.

“you will find yourself a little lighter between the legs if you so much as suggest that you have intent towards him,” howon says, face mockingly solemn.

woohyun raises an eyebrow. “if i have bested you in every examination we have had,” he directs at them, “wouldn’t you have more faith in my abilities to pursue even the most unresponsive of targets?”

sungyeol laughs. “maybe you would be suited for him,” he says, almost rolling his eyes, “speaking of courting as if you are preparing a battle plan.”

“before you begin drafting your strategies, friend,” howon says, around a sip of tea, “you should consider that he could already be promised even if he has yet to be mated.”

woohyun leans back on his cushion, taking his legs out from beneath the table and raising his knee so he can rest his arm upon it leisurely. “i think,” he smiles, “you will all be rather astonished at how fondly our dear lieutenant already thinks of me.”

howon and sungyeol exchange unimpressed glances.

vi.

by the beginning of their second year at the academy, they are all deemed physically honed enough to begin officially learning swordfighting and archery. nearly all of them had at some point had lessons previously in their homes whether by their fathers or brothers or uncles, but learning how to use these weapons with intent to kill and defend rather than simply for sport is vastly different.

woohyun’s father was away for most of his childhood at court, too tired to engage in play-fighting with him whenever he came home late into the night. woohyun’s only brother could only roughhouse and teach him how to use weapons for the few years they had together before he was shipped off to the academy fairly early on to begin studies for his court appointment. not only is howon naturally more inclined than woohyun to excelling in physical fitness, but he also has two brothers to fight with and a father who has always stressed a man’s place is on the battlefield rather than behind books.

while howon has as much prowess in his education as he does on the fields, it doesn’t sit well with woohyun that howon is so much better than him even though woohyun maintains his place over howon in their examination rankings time after time.

he’s had quite enough of literally swallowing bits of dirt and mud whenever he finds himself face down with the tip of howon’s wooden sword poking into the back of his neck every time they are paired together - which is every time they have sparring sessions because no one else is up to snuff with woohyun and howon, so woohyun is always partnered with howon and even though woohyun is second physically in their class, he always loses because his opponent is always howon.

woohyun decides to kill two birds with one stone.

“lieutenant,” he says, one night, after he has made sure that sungyeol and howon are sound asleep and snoring in their beds. woohyun stands in the doorway of sunggyu’s room. the trainer is in white robes, dark hair over his shoulders, kneeling at the desk in the center of his room. his brush moves slowly and steadily over the scroll spread out in front of him, candles burning strongly in the corners of the room.

“i do not recall hearing you knock nor do i remember opening my door,” sunggyu says without looking up. he continues writing. “but do come in.”

woohyun steps in, closing the sliding doors behind him, and kneeling on the cushion opposite sunggyu’s at the table. one glance at the scroll tells woohyun that sunggyu is writing up the weekly report that is due from every trainer for each of his assigned students. sunggyu seems to be noting down howon’s archery results for the week. “i have a request,” woohyun says pleasantly.

sunggyu places the brush back into the ink and raises his eyes almost warily up to woohyun’s gaze. “what?”

woohyun grins. “your tone reflects your rather insulting expectations of me.”

“your expression reflects that my expectations will be correct,” sunggyu snorts. “well?”

“would you teach me how to fight?” woohyun asks, looking straight on into sunggyu’s eyes. he lets the grin fade from his face, expression even and hoping that, as sunggyu’s own gaze searches woohyun’s face, the trainer realizes woohyun’s sincerity.

sunggyu’s eyes narrow. “your teachers exist for that purpose.”

“you know that howon is first in our class in both archery and swordfighting,” woohyun says, “and i am second, but the disparity between my results and his are great. i am always partnered with him, but i haven’t won once.” understanding passes over sunggyu’s face. “i just want to win against him - so that i am not only a beta who can never win against an alpha.”

the lieutenant looks down at the drying ink and smooth paper on the table between them. his eyebrows furrow and relax, eyes focused on some invisible point on the paper. the passage of sunggyu’s thoughts is almost visible as woohyun watches him, the silent coating them somehow not uncomfortable in the least. “i am also not so strong - physically,” sunggyu says slowly. “neither archery nor swordfighting are areas that i excel in. however - i can teach you how to read howon’s - how to read anyone’s - style and technique. i can teach you how to predict so that you needn’t be stronger nor a better fighter than him.”

woohyun doesn’t know how long they truly hold each other’s gazes for - it could have been seconds or hours, but it feels only as if one single moment has passed. “thank you,” woohyun says, inclining his head slightly.

“i hope you are still as grateful once we begin,” sunggyu almost smiles as woohyun stands to leave.

vii.

woohyun can’t quite say he has been to hell or any other punishable form of afterlife, but he thinks that he would be duly prepared to do so after experiencing lieutenant kim sunggyu’s idea of private lessons. they always begin once howon and sungyeol are asleep, mostly because woohyun has told sunggyu that he doesn’t want either of them to know, but also because sunggyu isn’t finished with his own duties until that time of night.

the very first night, woohyun landed sunggyu flat on his ass in the dirt, and then each of the four nights following that, woohyun was the one who found himself pummeled to the ground in the silence of the courtyard behind the dormitory. sunggyu sent woohyun to bed each night with no explanation after the session until the fifth night, after the first two rounds where woohyun, once again, loses absolutely as he usually does to howon.

“did you just let me win that first time?” woohyun asks, dusting off the back of his robes and trying not to show any of the complete pain and soreness ringing through his joints.

“no,” sunggyu says shortly, offering a hand to pull the beta up. “i must lose before i win.”

“i don’t quite recall that proverb,” woohyun smiles at sunggyu’s withering gaze.

“it isn’t a proverb, you literal dimwit,” sunggyu says smoothly with no amount of love lost. “when you can, losing is the best way to analyze your opponent’s style of movement, attack, and defense. naturally, you cannot lose first in a real battle - “

“ - that is called death - “

“- but since you won’t be in any danger of dying on the practice fields, you can lose to howon one more time, and from there, you can practice this strategy of prediction enough that once matters become life or death, you shouldn’t need to lose even once to know your opponent’s style. you wouldn’t have time, anyway.”

sunggyu makes the technique seem easy and ideal enough in theory, but the reality of it is far more difficult and grueling. woohyun has already lost a number of times to sunggyu, but it doesn’t make him any more savvy to anticipating what sunggyu will do next - where he’ll strike next, where he’ll defend. this is probably made more severe by the fact that sunggyu’s style, as far as woohyun can grasp, is unpredictable by its very nature.

when woohyun is properly bruised up and worn down, sunggyu sends him to bed without so much as a glance back. he leaves woohyun with the assignment of losing to howon tomorrow at practice, but observing every time he allows howon to take a hit towards him and every time howon defends against one of woohyun’s own blows. “if you do as i’ve instructed correctly, if you’ve paid my words due attention tonight,” sunggyu says, already walking away from woohyun, “tomorrow will be the last time you lose to him.”

viii.

on a bright, sunny day, woohyun digs his knee into howon’s stomach, the point of the beta’s wooden sword poised above the space between the alpha’s eyes, ready to deal the killing blow had this been a true fight. two days before woohyun had lost to howon - once attempting to use sunggyu’s technique, and the second time finally able to use sunggyu’s technique. woohyun hasn’t slept for the past two nights, practicing on the straw and wooden dummies in the dormitory courtyards to practice what he had observed and analyzed.

woohyun knows, however, that his victory is also due to the fact that howon is fairly straightforward. woohyun has been fending him off fairly well anyway even without having any idea of how to truly analyze someone’s technique, but the finishing blow was only manageable because woohyun now knows not to pay attention to the tip of howon’s sword, but his eyes - his expressions, the way he inhales infinitesimally just before he is about to put strength into a strike, the way his throat constricts and his eyes dart when he is about to block an attack.

each pair of partners has an instructor watching their sparring to prevent injuries, foul play, and to call the fight once the victor is clear. when woohyun pins howon into the dirt, however, their instructor for today rushes forward but his mouth opens in complete silence, almost gaping in the same way that howon gapes up at woohyun.

“sir?” woohyun grins over at the instructor, who seems to jerk back into himself before slicing his hand down through the air and shouting the call to end the match as well as woohyun’s name as the winner. everyone’s heads suddenly turn, all matches freezing as woohyun feels dozens of pairs of eyes glued onto him. he removes himself from howon, grasping his friend’s hand and pulling him up along with him.

“what sort of secret witchcraft has our dear lieutenant been teaching you?” howon says, almost disgruntled as they make their way up to the main building while the other matches finish up.

“if i told you,” woohyun says coolly, “it would no longer be a secret.”

howon punches him in the arm, hard enough to hurt, but not so painful that woohyun doesn’t simply laugh to infuriate howon further.

ix.

when they return that day, howon steps right up to sunggyu and promptly demands, “what sort of trainer conspires with one of his trainees against another? what sort of twisted favoritism - “

“a trainer can hardly refuse when one of his trainees requests additional training from him - it shows determination and a desire for success - traits that should be rewarded,” sunggyu says smoothly, booting howon on through the doors with his shoulder against the alpha’s. when they reach the common room, there are bottles and bottles of liquor laid out on the table, along with food to go with the alcohol.

“did the spirits extract your soul and replace it with one kinder, one more benevolent and human - “ sungyeol begins, whirling around to glance at the lieutenant.

“there are no lessons tomorrow and this week of physical training is always the roughest,” sunggyu’s tone is suddenly almost slightly awkward, even though he’s smiling in that sheepish way, eyes curved and small teeth held together with his lips curling upward hesitantly. woohyun notices he’s edging to the side, dressed in his robes rather than his uniform, and beginning to make what is clearly an exit to his own room.

“you aren’t drinking with us?” woohyun asks.

howon and sungyeol also haven’t made any moves to sit either, blinking at sunggyu instead almost anticipatorily. the lieutenant blinks back, once at the alphas, and then at woohyun. “i’m not particularly partial to alcohol,” he says almost dismissively, hands waving for them to sit and start. “or - rather - my body isn’t,” he adds like an afterthought, and woohyun watches as howon and sungyeol look at the trainer almost quizzically, as if now realizing, the way woohyun had realized during their first few sessions together, that sunggyu wasn’t so much older than them - that in some number of years, he wouldn’t be their trainer anymore, he might one day be alongside them at court.

“you should drink with us,” howon says. sunggyu stares, and sungyeol takes that opportunity to step behind sunggyu and steer him by the shoulders to the table. woohyun helps shove sunggyu down onto one of the cushions, even as the lieutenant bats at them, frowning.

“fifteen laps for manhandling a lieutenant,” sunggyu mutters, as howon settles beside him, and woohyun and sungyeol flop down opposite.

“i can drink to that,” howon grins.

sunggyu raises his eyebrows. “good - i’ll gather more enjoyment out of it then,” he says, holding out his bowl for sungyeol to fill it.

when the lieutenant had claimed that his tolerance for liquor was alarmingly low - for a man of the military and for an alpha - they found that there were no untruths in those statements. not even an entire bottle was finished before sunggyu began speaking a little louder than he already normally did anyway, far more cheerful - followed by some additionally loud singing that no one requested but that sungyeol encouraged eagerly with plenty of cheering and applause - followed by sunggyu flopping onto his back and using one of the extra cushions as a pillow.

“i’ll take him to bed,” woohyun announces once sunggyu’s breathing gains a bit of an edge to it - not quite softly snoring, but nearly there. the beta barely manages to wobble onto his own feet.

“i’ll bet you will,” howon says suggestively, and sungyeol sniggers around the rim of his next bowl.

woohyun gives them an amused look, as he carefully slings sunggyu’s arm around his neck and lifts the lieutenant to his feet. he’s glad that sunggyu isn’t as completely unconscious as he seems - there is still strength in his legs even though he leans nearly the entirety of his weight onto woohyun. as he guides sunggyu out of the common area, where howon and sungyeol are going on attempting to drink each other to death without pause, and into the lieutenant’s bedroom, it’s then that woohyun finally knows what sunggyu’s scent is.

it hits him, fills his nose, when sunggyu’s head lolls close on woohyun’s shoulder, hair brushing woohyun’s cheek. the beta swallows dryly, reaching back with his foot to hook on the sliding door so he can shut it despite his hands being preoccupied. he needs his hands, however, to light any candles in the room, and since that isn’t an option, he settles for whatever moonlight filters through the windows.

woohyun gently lies sunggyu down on the mattress, which has thankfully already been rolled out. he watches sunggyu’s eyes flutter open as his head hits the pillow. their gazes meet, but woohyun doesn’t know if sunggyu is truly awake or simply drifting in the gray area between reality and dreams.

the alpha’s scent is so different from what woohyun normally associates as an alpha’s scent. howon and sungyeol smell typically like alphas - a scent that woohyun knows with his mind should make him want to submit and respect and beware as a beta, but woohyun’s body doesn’t seem to recognize it. he knows he isn’t typical himself in that regard.

sunggyu’s scent doesn’t have that edge that alpha scents have to woohyun - that initial acidic burn when it enters his nose and fills his lungs. sunggyu simply smells steady - he smells strong and light, intense and soft, like the forest after it has just rained, like a garden early in the morning.

sunggyu smells like someone woohyun would want to follow for the rest of his life.

“woohyun,” sunggyu whispers, eyes opening a sliver more. one of the alpha’s hands reaches up slightly, fingertips clinging to the collar of woohyun’s robes.

he thinks he would give anything to be able to lean down and press their lips together - right now, in the darkness, right here on sunggyu’s bed in sunggyu’s room.

he would give anything.

woohyun slowly, as softly as he can, extricates sunggyu’s fingers from his clothes, pressing his lips to those instead of sunggyu’s mouth. “sleep well, sir,” he murmurs. sunggyu’s eyes follow him for a moment longer as he stands before fluttering shut with a sigh.

the beta doesn’t know how long he stands there, watching him sleep. he’s glad that howon and sungyeol are far too intoxicated to realize how long woohyun must have been gone from the room. he’s even gladder that sungyeol already has a bowl filled and ready for him when he retakes his seat.

Andy’s Blogs

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Finally, I like how the setting is on a dock and how there is already casualties at the beginning of the book so it starts to set for a feel of the story. 9/19/19 The Future: Where I See Myself In 2022 I hope to see myself graduating from school and starting college with a local school. I also think I will have a career set and stone to study in school and a dream job in my head. I hope to have found a job by the time I get to 2026 and hopefully start on paying off my student loans. I hope the job I will get will make a good amount of money so I can support me and my parents. My plan is to graduate high school, go to college, work part time, graduate college, then get a job that can support me financially. This is the dream plan but I know there will be obstacles along the way that can affect me and I am going to be forced to overcome. 9/16/19 Theme: My Personal Choice If I ever wrote a book, the theme of the book would most likely “The tragic vanity: A character’s attempt to perfect society or his/her part in it.” I feel like I always try to do everything in the perfect or right way and that sometimes gets in my head. The joys in the world help me not think about being perfect and to just be myself and have fun. This theme really applies to me in these ways because I try so hard for everything to be perfect and sometimes that's not always is not a good thing. 9/9/19 The 6 Standards: What I need help on RI.9-10.6 seems it will give me trouble because I am not very good at analyzing texts. W.9-10.6 I potentially will struggle with due to technology not cooperating with some of the time and me not being familiar with some of the programs I will use. Finally, CCSS.ELA-LITERACY .SL.9-10.3 I might have problems with due to not knowing what fallacious reasoning is, and what distorted evidence is. In general though, I will try my hardest to master these standards and ask questions when I need to. 8/26/19 Annotating: A Way of Analyzation When I annotate, I always try to annotate the key ideas and the major points in the piece of writing. I also try to make sure to keep note of words I don’t know so I can look up later. Sometimes, I try to summarize the page so I can go back and know what’s going on during that page because it’s hard to tell what happened in certain parts of a book if it’s a long book. Another method you can use is illustrating main ideas to help you remember them. Writing something down doesn’t always work for everyone so sometimes drawing is a valid option that you can do. 8/22/19 The First Two Weeks: What I’ve Learned Overall, I’ve learned many things about writing in the span of two weeks I’ve been here. Even though I have learned a lot, there are still many things I want to learn about writing. I still want to learn how to get better at narrative writing and writing persuasive essays. Personally, those are the two things I need to work on and get better at so those are the things I’m most interested in learning this year. Grammar rules I feel like there is always room for improvement, so I would also learn more about that. In general, there are many things I would like to work on, but those are the main things. 8/19/19 Santiago: His Personality Santiago was a very interesting and relatable character in The Alchemist. He is unsure of what to do most of the time and is easily influenced by other people. I have these character traits sometimes when I am at school or at home so I need to work on these traits. He also likes to travel around places a lot, and I also enjoy traveling to new places. Santiago also felt very connected to his sheep. While I don't have sheep , I have two dogs I feel very connected to so I can relate to him. 8/15/19 ELA: My Strengths The one thing I am really good at school is being responsible. This year I will use this to my advantage in this class and my other classes by making sure I turn my work in and remember when things are due or when the deadline is for the project or assignment that is assigned. I will also use my responsibility to my advantage by being able to handle this class and my other honors classes because I know I have the ability to handle honors classes. 8/12/19 ELA: My Hopes for This Class “No one can ever take your memories from you--each day is a new beginning; make good memories every day” - Catherine Pulsifier “Try to make good memories every day because they will last forever” These quotes are anyone should try to live up to, especially me since I am starting my second year of high school and already starting my first class. I plan to try to enjoy this class as much as I can while still putting in lots of effort into my writing and reading to try and get the best grade I can. I hope to try and make good and fun memories in this class while still having the goal of getting an “A” in this class. I also hope on improving my reading and writing skills while still enjoying the text I am reading. Another goal is to get better at presentations because I am not very good at presenting in language arts classes in general. Finally, my last goal is to have fun while still being responsible and respectful because that is always important no matter what class you are in.

CASE, NEKO

I love a girl who loves Neko Case.

In loose accordance with my admittedly vague understanding of the Substitution Theorem of Algebra (if a = b and b= c, then a = c), that means I also love Neko Case. I’m hesitant to accept this, but not because I don’t love Neko Case—I might very well love Neko Case; I’m going to listen to a bunch of her records right now to find out. However, I refuse to blindly accede to anything Algebra has to say about the governance of my life, because although I’m unsure at this point precisely how I feel about Neko Case, I am absolutely positive how I feel about Algebra: I loathe it with the singular strain of unbridled vehemence I reserve solely for the most odious insentient phenomena which plague the human experience with their very existence (long lines, automated telephone customer support menus, quinoa, Amy Schumer, etc.).

I have suffered through three Algebra classes in my life: “Algebra I” in high school, “College Algebra” at Citrus College, and then another seminar that was creatively dubbed “College Algebra” at University of La Verne—the latter because the donkey-fluffing sadists at ULV arbitrarily decided the “College Algebra” course I completed at Citrus was insufficient to fulfill their “College Algebra” requirement, despite being an Algebra course taken at a College that had the exact same title and covered the exact same material as the additional class they forced me to enroll in (I can only suppose they were misinformed that significant advances were made in the field of studying numbers that aren’t even fucking numbers during the intervening span). I don’t think it’s a coincidence that each of the instructors who led these tutorials were stern pricks—devoting one’s life to a discipline which has no practical value to anyone except other Algebra teachers strikes me as a particularly unfulfilling existence—and I retained nothing useful from any of these experiences, save for perhaps one equation: g + f + y = go fuck yourself. I understand that there are people on this planet who love math the same way I love music, and I further understand that these people are responsible for developing technical innovations which better humanity in myriad ways while people like me fritter away our nights typing a bunch of worthless nonsense in the name of cheap laughs. Nevertheless, even if someone with a PhD in Algebra eventually cures cancer or resurrects John Bonham to properly reunite Led Zeppelin, I still won’t want to have a beer with them.

Thankfully, while Neko Case has written many songs about matters of the heart, weather events, and—perhaps oddly—tigers, I have yet to encounter a single tune in her repertoire about math. I’m loving her more and more every minute.

And I also love a girl who loves Neko Case. I found this out when I found out that The Girl In The David Bowie Shirt is also The Girl With The Neko Case Tote, and I found that out because said Tote was actually inside my apartment with the Girl who was carrying it.

I suppose I should update you on that: The Girl In The David Bowie Shirt and I reestablished contact shortly after I authored the last piece she was mentioned in (though she is unaware of its existence and has not read it). Our former radio silence has been replaced by phone conversations which routinely stretch into multiple hours, and we now text each other on more days than we do not text each other. She has visited California on two occasions since she relocated, and I was able to spend time with her during both of these visits. We have smoked cigarettes on my balcony together and we have eaten Thai food together. She has gradually become one of the closest people to me in the world—2,000 miles be damned—and one of the first people I share my breaking news with; even better, I have become the same to her. And I was absolutely correct in my previous estimation that she would prove to be a haunting presence in my life, because I still inevitably measure every other woman I meet against her and they all pale in comparison. There—are we up to speed?

I’m certain she’s figured out exactly how I feel about her by now; she’s smart as hell and I’ve said plenty of things to her which could only produce that one specific and inescapable conclusion. Yet I’ve never told her exactly how I feel about her in specific and inescapable terms. My hesitancy to do so is mostly borne from pragmatism—we live 2,000 miles apart, which is specific and inescapable math I can’t argue with. So instead of confessing that I write sappy drivel like this about her, I’ve resigned myself to our current stalemate. I figure I’ll just keep pining over her until either: a) I meet someone as rad as her who doesn’t live 2,000 miles away, or b) I die alone. I think it’s a solid plan, especially since the relationship we have right now is basically ideal—I may not get to make out, cuddle, or listen to records with her… but since we never see each other she can’t get sick of my neurotic ass, which is pretty awesome.

I knew who Neko Case was long before I learned that The Girl With The Neko Case Tote possesses the handbag in question. Neko (I think I can safely refer to her on a first-name basis, since I probably love her and all) makes her indelible presence felt in a ceaselessly superb band I have admired for many years—The New Pornographers—and she also provided some stunning duet harmonies on John Doe’s Forever Hasn’t Happened Yet, which is a record so good that my life would likely be tremendously improved if I listened to it every single day. However, I hadn’t properly investigated her eponymous work until my not-so-secret paramour included the song “Star Witness” from 2006’s Fox Confessor Brings the Flood as one of her contributions for a swap of post-modern mixtapes we prepared for each other.

If you were to pick 15 songs you want me to hear right now, what would they be?

This intriguing text from The Girl With The Neko Case Tote arrived one otherwise uneventful afternoon while I was killing time before work. And just like that, the tone and focus of my entire day shifted.

Naturally, I had long-machinated on a mix-CD for her (I even compiled a rough draft at one point, which I never gave her and still have). Now here she was, laying down the gauntlet, and doing so with a latent immediacy (“right now”) which granted me no room for second-guessing or reconfiguration. My friends, it struck me as a Herculean task. Yet it was a provocation I could not resist.

You do realize that choosing only 15 songs for you might be the most difficult thing I’ve done in my entire life, right?, I texted back with minimal hyperbole.

She called me immediately to admit that she was grappling with that same concern on her end (obviously, I would be getting 15 songs in return). She wondered aloud if we should set some parameters to help guide our selections, which I voted against. If the challenge was indeed to make our choices spontaneously, drawing upon visceral emotion rather than sagacious deduction, any self-imposed strictures that impelled our deliberations would indubitably be counterproductive to the assignment (goddamn, that was a pretentious sentence… why do you read this shit?). And the clock was ticking—I had to leave for work in 90 minutes, so 90 minutes was how long we had to pick each other’s songs. Once the timeframe and mission statement were established, we broke our telephone huddle. And I set about scouring my brain and my shelves to concoct the most kickass compilation I’ve ever made for anyone: “The 15”.

This was to be a unique finished product. That whole 2,000 miles actual-numbers math bullshit prohibited us from handing each other discs, as the mix-CD mating dance normally entails. Instead, we settled upon texting an ordered list of our picks to each other so we could cue up the tracks in sequence on YouTube and do our actual listening there.

Her roster chimed my phone 85 minutes later. Unsurprisingly, it displayed a musical sampling that was as inimitable and compelling as the Girl who compiled it.

I was delighted to discover that only one of the fifteen songs she chose was already familiar to me (“Why Can’t I Touch It?” by The Buzzcocks—which, I must tell you, is a tremendously flattering dedication to receive from a girl you’re cuckoo about; seeing that on her list made me wish there was a tune called “Dude, You Totally Can” that I could send back to her). I don’t think it will shock you to learn that I subsequently purchased each of the albums her 14 additional selections appeared on; logically, I did this because: a) all of the tracks she picked were absorbing enough to make me curious to investigate additional work by the bands responsible + b) I wanted to assemble a physical copy of her “The 15” for myself = c) I’m crazy.

[If it seems unduly zealous to purchase 14 CDs simply because they have tangential associations with someone I have hung out with less than 14 times… that’s because it absolutely fucking is. Luckily, all of those discs ended up being fairly excellent, so things could have certainly turned out far worse. For instance, I once bought a Ryan Adams CD because he was the favorite artist of a girl I dated for a few minutes, and I did this despite my supposition that Ryan Adams embodies the absolute rock bottom of shitty self-important hipster-minstrel twaddle. You can learn a lot about a person by exploring the music that is most important to them, so taking the time to investigate the melodic beloveds of someone you may potentially have intercourse with strikes me as a savvy bit of due diligence. Since The Girl Who Loves Ryan Adams was real cool, supplementing my library with Heartbreaker seemed like a sensible investment at the time. However, she broke off our brief courtship before I even listened to the album, after which I promptly returned it to Rhino. We never ended up having that intercourse, but I also never sullied my ears or my collection with the work of Ryan Adams—we’ll call it a wash.]    

I’ve always populated the discs I prepare for my crushes with at least a few songs meant to subtly convey overt messages (or sometimes vice versa), which I suspect is a tactic that every romantically-uncreative sap who tries to woo pretty girls with music has been utilizing since the dawn of recordable media. This ploy is one of the niftiest things about mix-CDs: the medium allows its curator to commission others’ words to voice sentiments they aren’t necessarily able to voice themselves. Jimmy Eat World is probably a better ambassador for my emotions than I am most of the time anyway, so I was perfectly comfortable deferring to them by slotting “Kill” onto the playlist I sent to The Girl In The David Bowie Shirt Who Has A Neko Case Tote. I also—either boldly or foolishly or both—included the most stellar love song ever written on her docket: Walter Egan’s “Magnet and Steel”. And I did so with impunity, because another marvelous facet of mix-CDs is that the subjective nature of their components imbues them with an intrinsic bulwark of plausible deniability. (And that was another wantonly ostentatious and unintelligible sentence… and so is this one—seriously, why the fuck are you reading this?).

Allow me to clarify. Imagine that TGITDBSWHANCT (shit, even my acronyms suck) heard those tracks and was instantly revolted by the insinuations they contain. The poor girl’s sitting there, innocuously listening to “The 15”, when suddenly Jim Adkins blurts out, “I loved you, and I should have said it.” Her eyes bulge wide with horror, she probably throws up in her mouth a little bit, and she gasps, “Dear god, I think Taylor might have chosen this song because he loves me and thinks he should have said it; I’m going to call him right now and venomously reject him because I don’t feel that way about him at all. How could I…? His sentences are goddamn trainwrecks!”

This is where the mix-CD force-field comes in handy.

See, if she did call me and say all that stuff—after she got done telling me she could never love a man who puts his paragraph breaks in such awkward places—all I would have to do to save face is cite the interpretative essence of music as an art form. “Oh, is that how the lyrics go?” I might innocently enquire before asserting, “The only reason I picked ‘Kill’ is because that song rocks” (granted, this is a flimsy justification; there are at least five tracks on Futures that rock more). I could also use that same maneuver to explain away the line in “Magnet and Steel” which declares, “the love that I feel is so strong, and it can’t be wrong”—“oh yes it can, shit-writer,” TGITDBSWHANCT might emphatically state; but she could hardly cling to her outrage over my excessive use of semi-colons if I explained that I merely selected that particular tune because of its brilliantly-minimalist guitar lead (granted, this is equally fucking flimsy—the fretwork on “Magnet and Steel” is certainly superb, but come on… if I was going to choose a song based solely on its guitar solo, it would be Motley Crue’s “Home Sweet Home”; that’s just basic common sense right there).

Ultimately, no such denials became necessary. As agreed, both of us let the music speak for itself and we never discussed the impetuses for our selections. If she was at all vexed by the memorandum Walter Egan delivered for me, that didn’t alter the frequency or character of our communications. Still, you better damn believe I scoured every one of her selections to see if they contained any similar lyrical or thematic clues.

The results of my recon were decidedly inconclusive—if anyone’s ever written a song called “I’m Secretly in Love with a Writer Who Lives in California”, it wasn’t on her list. The closest thing I found to a firm avowal was the passage in Jawbreaker’s “Ache” that says “somewhere, sometime, let me make you mine.” Although, in another verse the narrator concludes that he’s “safer alone”; “Ache” is an awesome track, but it didn’t prompt me to start shopping for a wedding cake just yet.

I can only conjecture what “Star Witness” means to TGITDBSWHANCT, and precisely why she nominated that particular cut for me—though it would be super-nifty if she picked it because of the wonderful line, “I would give anything to see you again.” Regardless, since I was willing to give Ryan Adams a try to better understand a girl I only spent a couple of weeks with, it probably won’t arrive as a bombshell that once I became aware of the Tote I quickly accumulated five of Neko Case’s records to study them as a means of studying the Girl with that shoulder-bag by proxy.

Neko’s oeuvre is frequently classified as “alt-country,” but I’ve never really liked that dubious categorization. More accurately, a lot of her music closely resembles what regular-Country music used to sound like, before the genre was usurped by a legion of insipid and interchangeable red-state pop stars whose only evident stylistic departures from the vapid dreck excreted by feces-mongers like The Black Eyed Peas are the employment of assorted twang-generating instruments and an increased emphasis on pick-up trucks as lyrical topics. Artists like Neko Case strike me as a more natural modern incarnation of the template laid out by—say—Hank Williams than something like—say—Carrie Underwood. Thus, the “alt-” prefix seems extraneous to me, unless we as a society are finally willing to acknowledge that the music which gets categorized as “Country” today is largely just Pop music marketed to drunk sorority girls and even drunker gun-toting lunk-heads who use the term ‘Murica unironically.    

In the interest of full disclosure, I’ll admit that my fluency with the last two decades of country music is extremely limited. I did randomly catch a few minutes of the CMA telecast a couple years back, wherein I witnessed a Stetson-adorned heartthrob (I think there was a “Luke” somewhere in his name) throwing up finger-devil-horns during his performance—which deeply exasperated and bewildered me, yet failed to clarify my understanding of what is considered “Country” music today. Further muddling matters, Luke Luke’s song sounded more like the material on KISS’s ill-advised grunge record than anything in the Waylan Jennings canon, and the dudes in his band were ornamented with black-leather wardrobes and lame tribal tattoos that made them resemble WWE mid-carders from the “Attitude” era (my first thought when I channel-surfed into this spectacle was, why is Godsmack playing the Country Music Awards?).

Listening to Neko Case, I’m reminded more of Emmylou Harris than X-Pac or Sully Erna, which is infinitely preferable. Yet Neko is most assuredly her own animal (a tiger, probably), and her music often veers into moodier, decidedly un-Country arenas, which I guess partially explains why artists of her ilk are distinguished with the “alt-” tag by the breed of snarky assholes who think that sub-genre designations are somehow valuable.

[Tangent: While I’m fully cognizant that recorded music is a Product and the people trying to sell said Product require readily-accessible Terms to market their Product to Consumers who enjoy similar Products, the superfluity of labels used to differentiate bands from other bands that are far more alike than dissimilar has become absurdly rampant in the 21st Century. I think the blame for this rests partly on lazy music journalists, who have increasingly come to rely on nonsensical chains of hyphenated buzzwords instead of conjuring constructive and evocative descriptions of how the music they’re writing about actually sounds and feels. The collective result of their fallowness is the presence of lugubrious jargon like “acid-house dub-step EDM” in Rolling Stone album reviews, hollow idioms which tell the layman absolutely nothing about the album being evaluated. Since all I understand about acid-house, dub-step, or EDM individually is that the ingestion of date-rape drugs is supposed to drastically improve the listening experience of each, the only thing their united classification suggests to me is, “some shithead in skinny jeans pushed a few buttons on his laptop and now this record exists.” Lest you think I’m unfairly singling out a realm of recorded sound that I personally regard as unartistic and uninspiring and utterly pointless, I would like to add that my beloved Metal community has become perhaps the most heinous dumping ground for obtuse sub-category monikers. If you thumb through any issue of a magazine like Alternative Press, you’ll encounter this phenomenon frequently, via testimonials like “the best melodic post-screamo death-core band in the world” (translation: “this group’s T-shirts are prominently showcased on an endcap at Hot Topic”). Further convoluting my grasp on our primary subject here, the gradual transference of country music into increasingly Pop-centric jurisdictions has led to the institution of the “Americana” tag, which has become the preferred critically-respectable umbrella for modern artists whose sonic lineage can be directly traced to the traditional bluegrass mode. This suggests that artists who make country music that actually sounds like time-honored country music can no longer be classified as “Country” artists; since their work bears so little resemblance to the hyper-glossy output of today’s Country performers, a new taxonomy had to be invented to accommodate the aesthetic that the term “country” used to encompass. Thus, the existence of “Americana” would seem to indicate that even people who love country music think Country music is fucking awful.]

As I visit the five corners of Neko Case’s discography represented on my shelves, I’m finding myself tremendously pleased—she really is goddamn fantastic—yet no closer to gleaning what “alt-country” really is. I have just finished listening to her live record The Tigers Have Spoken, which has more in common with a Dolly Parton live record than it doesn’t have in common with a Dolly Parton live record, yet is somehow not considered a straight country record (or are Dolly Parton albums retroactively classified as “Americana” releases now because they aren’t terrible…?). If Neko’s larger body of work is any indication, I’m led to infer that “alt-country” is country music that occasionally doesn’t sound like country music. But this only confuses me even more when I consider the Product currently being marketed as non-“alt-” Country music, which actually sounds like Pop music that occasionally sounds like country music. Reverting to Algebraic terms, if a (songs that sound like country songs) + b (a few songs that don’t sound like country songs) = c (an “alt-country” album), then shouldn’t it reasonably follow that d (aggressively overproduced Pop songs) + e (a few aggressively overproduced Pop songs that marginally resemble country songs) = f (something else)? Yet f is still classified as “Country,” which suggests either: a) Algebra is useless, or b) Taylor Swift is useless (I think a + b is probably the correct answer).

Muddy genre distinctions aside, I suppose Neko’s mien does have enough of its own dark-horse character to warrant a brand separation from Tammy Wynette (this isn’t intended as a slight; I fucking adore Tammy Wynette). Besides, if the “alt-country” label keeps Neko from languishing in the same record store bin as the aural codswallop defecated by the likes of Toby Keith, I’ll concede that’s probably a good thing.

Even after multiple spins of each record I own, I’m struggling to identify the best tunes in Neko’s arsenal; there are simply too many zeniths to choose from. The gal knocks out killer track after killer track with apparent ease, and I’m quickly becoming as smitten with her as The Girl With The Neko Case Tote is (though probably not as smitten as I am with The Girl With The Neko Case Tote, clearly).

I’ll have to credit 2002’s Blacklisted as the disc that officially converted me from curious party to fan. It’s certainly Neko’s most diverse offering, ably displaying her prodigious gifts as a songwriter by showcasing her ability to summon and sustain a multiplicity of moods. “Deep Red Bells” is the set’s showstopper—a richly melodic masterpiece whose stark gorgeousness becomes almost perverse once you figure out that it’s a murder ballad—though the similarly stunning “Runnin’ Out of Fools” arrives a few cuts later to demonstrate how equally adept Case is at crushing gospel-fueled torch songs which wouldn’t sound out of place on one of Roberta Flack’s records. Fellow album-sibling “Pretty Girls” is a prime example of the darker-edged exercises that enrich Case’s repertoire, which is liberally peppered with the kind of mournful meditations that would provide a perfect soundtrack for a late night drive on a secluded highway with a tumbler of whiskey in the cup holder (rest assured, “Pretty Girls” sounds equally tremendous right now even though I’m merely sitting in front of my laptop sipping an IPA).

Middle Cyclone is another knockout record, and features another tour de force of her melancholy mode: “Prison Girls”, wherein Neko brandishes her aptitude for crafting exquisite lines like, “I love your long shadows and your gunpowder eyes.” Earlier on that disc, “Vengeance is Sleeping” nimbly splits the difference between lovely and lamenting, wringing maximum potency out of an understated arrangement that allows Case’s stirred and stirring voice to soar as she confesses, “you’re the one that I still miss” (I would have been totally okay with that song being among “The 15”, by the way). Still, “Don’t Forget Me” is probably my favorite track on Cyclone, and had I heard it before I assembled my picks for The Girl With The Neko Case Tote, I surely would have been tempted to include it on her list—“you know I think about you, let me know you think about me too” is an apt summation of that subject, methinks.

I could go on and on, but this entry is already running long; besides, if I keep itemizing Neko’s highpoints, I’m going to end up writing about every single song in her catalog. Before I depart, though, I will offer this concession: now that I’ve familiarized myself with the body of work in question, I am willing to admit that Algebra was absolutely correct in this instance. I love you, Neko Case—specifically and inescapably.

As for the Girl who carries her Tote… Well, I don’t have all the right variables to solve that equation just yet. But at least I’ve got a wonderful soundtrack for our stalemate.    

I know this entry has meandered all over the place, but I’m still ultimately pleased with the way it turned out. In fact, I think it just might be one of the best self-deprecating long-distance handbag-worshipping memoir-core pieces I’ve ever written.

 September 24, 2015

Chapter 2: Part 2

Joakim "The human body can, on average, go four days without sleep before it will completely shut down. This is one of the few things I retained from my high school psychology class, which I theorize is due to the fact that I- myself- have actually gone much longer without more than a few moments of precious rest. As the song says, sleep is for the weak. Sleep isn't a top priority for me, really. It doesn't fit into my agenda the way other things do, like schoolwork or my amazing job or Zane. My world is set up in this perfect triangle and to let anything, even sleep, try and reshape it would bring my life into utter disarray. That is the last thing I need." "And what is it that you do need?" I lean my elbows onto the counter and look out across at the darkened school yard, just barely able to make out some of the shapes moving across the grass as students. The clock says it's still four in the afternoon, but I know it's gotta be at least seven. It'd be a blessing for someone to fix that. "Caffeine," I respond, gesturing to the coffee machine to my left. My lone co-worker, Madison, rolls her eyes. "I should have known that somewhat heartfelt speech would lead to that, Coffee-For-Brains," she huffs, nudging me to the side so that she could continue her job of wiping down the counter of our coffee cart. I whip a cup off of the tower and start to fill it. "Is that really your life though? School, work, and your boyfriend?" "Zane is just my friend," I inform her defensively, pausing a moment before I release the button and watch the last drop of heaven fall into my cup with a soft twip! I slide a lid onto it and take a lingering sip. Not a single customer has been by since probably around five, which isn't all that surprising on a Tuesday. Mondays, Fridays, and Sundays are always our busiest days. Madison thinks it's because teachers assign the most homework at the start and end of the week and most of our peers procrastinate till the last minute to do it, hence need caffeine to make up for lack of sleep. This seems pretty reasonable to me. "Oh, really? My bad. I just assumed..." The girl wrings the towel she was using in the sink and we both watch as the soapy water seeps down into the drain. "But really, don't you do anything else? Like, jog or play video games?" "Well, I'm actually amazing at chess! Back in high school, my sophomore year, I actually won my school the state championship for it!" I explode with joy at the thought of my old hobby. On and off throughout my childhood, chess had been a vital part of my survival. Whenever things got weird, I'd just shut out the world, whip out my dad's old board, and play until my brain was numb. It was relaxing for me, even when I was seven and couldn't play for crap. Not many people, including my best friend Zane, understood how I could sit and play for hours. They thought it a boring activity. For me, it was like the Olympics, speed racing, and a movie fight scene all in one. I couldn't bear to take my attention off the game. To my surprise, Madison seems almost annoyed to learn this. "God, Joakim," she groans, tossing her head back in the most dramatic way. I'm shocked she isn't in any of the school plays with that overacting. "Every time you open your mouth, you just make yourself sound sadder and sadder." I should react to this, but I don't. There isn't a reason for me to. Instead of giving her what she wants- which, I assume, is for me to be offended- I check my watch underneath the sleeve of my hoodie. "Hey, quitting time!" I chirp, removing my visor and apron. The coffee cart does have an actual uniform they provide, but I prefer to wear my own clothes, thank you very much. Instead of putting the short sleeved brown shirt with a generic logo on the breast, I simply toss on the unmarked visor and apron they provide. No one complains, other than Madison, if I wear my hoodie and jeans to work every day. I'm a good worker. Does not wearing my uniform really change that? "Okay. See you tomorrow, Joker," Madison waves me off. I raise an eyebrow at her. What's this? Did Madison really give me a nickname? A show of affection? A term of endearment? "Joker?" I echo. She lets out a puff of air and I see it as it floats upwards. The night really isn't that cold, so this is a very odd thing. "Sorry, it's just, you remind me of the guy from Batman. You know, the weirdo with the painted face? Yeah. You're the kind to grow up to be that guy," she says, turning her back to me so that she could pretend to mess with the cash register. Again, her comment- suggesting I was going to grow up to be an insane criminal- really doesn't evoke any sort of reaction from me. I've learned how to deal with Madison and her snarky nature. All you do is ignore her; don't feed into her sarcastic growls that probably are hiding some sort of deep set insecurities about herself (at least that's what Zane says they are caused by). If you do this, then she'll eventually become bored with you and move on. That's what many predators do, Zane explained. Comparing Madison to a predator really isn't that much of a stretch. "Whatever I guess," I say back, putting on the largest smile I can possibly muster up to show her this doesn't bother me. (Does it bother me? I can't even tell.) "Later, James Madison." "Stop calling me that stupid nickname!" she screams like a banshee at me. Her anger only amplifies when she hears me snickering as I rush away, adjusting the ties on my hoodie so that they are even. I walk to the dorm, my headphones resting comfortably on top of my head. It's a dangerous thing to do since I can't hear the outside world, I know, but the walk doesn't require crossing any roads and I stay on the grass to avoid bikers using the sidewalk. My nightly walk home is the only time I have to enjoy my music. When I get home, it's time to study and I'm not the type who can listen to music while trying to retain information. It's distracting. The dorm is practically spotless when I walk through the door. Zane is on our shared desk, trying to slap some spider-webs down with a broom. I don't remember why we even bother owning a broom when our floor is covered with snowy carpet. It's nearly impossible to sweep carpet. Believe me, I have tried. When the door closes behind me, my best friend glances over his shoulder at me. "Joakim, my buddy! How're you doing?" Zane calls, his voice echoing in the tiny room it's so boisterous. He's so great at making his presence known, he can do it without even realizing it. "Zane, mi amigo! I am as good as I will ever be on a Tuesday night after working half a shift with James Madison," I tell him, letting my backpack slink off my shoulder and fall onto my twin bed. The dorm is so undersized that Zane and I, with our combined arm-span, can touch each wall if we stand in the middle of the room. We can fit in two beds, a single desk, and a mini-fridge. Most of our belongings are kept in the four-feet-by-four-feet closet space we share. Lots of little totes make up for the lack of space. My friend returns his feet to the ground, giving up on the web, and gives me a sympatric look. "She bullying you? 'Cause, you know, if she is, you can tell and she'll..." "I'm not a tattletale!" I interrupt him, laughing at the simple thought of telling on Madison. What a grade school move. "But if I do end up killing her, will you be able to explain to the judge why I did it?" "Of course! And, as a psychology student, they'll have to believe me!" Zane chuckles, clapping his hands together like guys who give TED talks always do. Somehow, Zane gives the illusion that every word he speaks is the single most important piece of dialogue you'll ever hear just through his gestures. It's really a really good skill to have, especially for the field he's chosen. Zane is great with people. He never comes off as too strong or too weak. Unlike me, he never overwhelms people. All he does is intrigue them. "Of course! All murders who have twenty-year-old half-psychologists on their side always win! And, by the way, in college, I don't believe they call it bullying," I point out, letting my legs go out from under me so I can collapse on my bed. My head is pounding. For once in the longest time, sleep actually feels like a necessity. Maybe I could rest for a few hours before doing my work. It's not due until Friday, but I'd like to get it done now so I can hang out with Zane on Wednesday like we'd planned. "The grown up word is 'harassment.'" "Well, I'm sick of her 'harassing' you!" Zane yells from the other side of the room, letting his anger vibrate off the walls. I close my eyes, my body becoming unbelievably heavy. Must be the fatigue finally taking over. "Just leave it, Zane," I insist, my nostrils filling with an odd odor. "What is that?" I ask, picking my head up. "The smell?" he verifies. I hum yes. "No idea. I've been smelling it since I got home. Also, you are not gonna derail this conversation. Don't try to change the subject!" My head cloudy with a need for sleep, I roll onto my side and tug the blanket that's hanging off the edge of my child-sized bed. I didn't need much room. "Someone's probably smoking drugs or something." "Did you really just say that?" My friend is hacking he's laughing so hard. "You're such a sixth grader." It's not even that funny. "I'm tired, leave me alone." Zane says something to me that I can't make out. I'm sure it's just some comment poking fun at me. "What?" I call to him, letting my body relax even further into my suddenly comfortable bed. He repeats it, but I still hear nothing more than a murmur. "Speak up," I beg. Zane doesn't speak. I try to peel my eyes open to look at him, but I can't find the strength. My lips twitch a bit, but no matter how hard I try, I can't pry them open. I feel as if I am swimming in glue. Well, I've never actually swum in glue before, but this is exactly how I imagine it. Pretty soon, my head goes under and I'm gone.

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Customized education the path of the future

Submit-secondary schools reinvent themselves to maintain tempo with technology

Most college or college grads gained have the identical job — or profession, for that depends on — over the span of their running life. Or, the career they do select will shift and exchange and evolve with the tempo of technology, turning into almost unrecognizable within a long time to come back.

Training is converting, too. Universities and schools are adapting with online studying modules and hybrid teaching techniques. But the explosion in online studying has additionally made Submit-secondary publications available to each person — frequently free of charge.

And that’s flipped the traditional future Post-secondary Customized  classroom on its head, where educators are making ready Gen Z for an unsure international, and then education and retraining them during their working existence.

Students are graduating into a global in which 60 according to cent of them will exchange their profession 3 times and keep an average of 15 positions over the route in their lifetime, stated Caroline Konrad, director of the Ryerson profession Centre. Yet, the country wide underemployment rate for children is roughly 16 percent nationally.

This converting global of work is informing Ryerson’s profession Education strategy, however, “there is no person-size-suits-all solution,” says Konrad.

Education is not the sole obligation of educators. “It takes a network,” she says. At Ryerson, career Schooling extends far past getting Students in front of a career consultant. profession recommendation is embedded in curricula and through internships, and via integrating professional improvement into pupil stories.

“We need to ensure we’re providing Students with excessive-effect gaining knowledge of stories out of doors of the lecture room,” says Konrad.

“I see an evolution in probable each quarter,” says Jason Powell, fitness technology professor at Humber university. Generating work-prepared graduates calls for a regular glide of information from enterprise partners, as well as the potential to adapt quickly to trade. “We’ve got a software advisory committee for each application — they’re mandated to fulfill two times 12 months in order that facts flow to the program,” he says.

At a firefighter think tank, for example, they learned how firefighters are actually prepared to address remedy for fentanyl overdoses. “If we didn’t recognize those changes were happening we’d in no way be able to offer [students] with the talents,” says Powell. “We didn’t have those fentanyl overdoses 5 years in the past. If we didn’t understand this, we’d run the risk the graduating Students who aren’t work-prepared.”

Curricula is constantly evolving — and that extends past Gen Z to lifelong novices. “profession Schooling doesn’t stop as it would have achieved within the beyond, that is in which it’s approximately supporting adult newbies, new Canadians, each person looking at that subsequent step,” says Konrad.

“You simply can’t sit down on your laurels anymore and take an activity for 30 years,” says Powell. “You’ll be made redundant or you’ll be a low flyer.”

These days launched document on lifelong studying via The Economist observed that “in lots of occupations it has come to be important to gather new competencies as mounted ones end up out of date” and that a diploma “at the begin of a working profession does no longer answer the want for the non-stop acquisition of new abilities, particularly as career spans are lengthening.”

Submit-secondary Training has to offer “functionality,” no longer just skills development, stated Toronto-based futurist Richard Worzel. “It isn’t always the capability to have facts at your fingertips because absolutely everyone with a web connection has that,” he says. Instead, it’s “the capacity to frame questions intelligently and carry out studies and vital wondering in the sort of manner that you provide you with useful solutions — that applies similarly well to art records to writing PC packages.”

He believes Publish-secondary Education becomes tons more customized, in which a student will be each person, of any age, who wishes to enhance their competencies. “And the timeframe should not be years and semesters,” he adds. “It has to be for the time period someone wishes to increase the capability they want.”

The Future via Visions

Have you ever met a real visionary? They are able to see wherein it is they want to be and describe that location in first rate element. Maximum won’t bother with defining their vision of the Future due to the fact they’re now not sure the way to start the manner. The manner I describe it to my customers is through relating it to something that they may already be doing.

When people ask me how to create an imaginative and prescient, I start with the end country and use an revel in the majority are familiar with. An excellent example to use is making plans a holiday. Like Maximum, each 12 months you’ve got performed pretty a great deal the equal aspect, year after 12 months. Being curious and usually aware of what is taking place, you trust that there’s a better holiday obtainable. Shall we embrace a few months after your remaining excursion you make a decision to go and do something so that it will be a great deal more memorable? The memories of the beyond few years of holidays appear to be jogging into each different. A good signal it is time for some thing new.

For next year you have determined to go to the seashore. You don’t where the seashore is, you don’t know how you will get there, but honestly a seaside. You can describe what sort of beach you need although. Actual sand, now not beaten seashells. Crystal blue water with amenities no longer right up on the beach however near enough so that you’re now not roughing it. You’ll need access to sunblock but not have the fellow in a tiki hut at the seashore peddling it. An area wherein there might not be an awful lot hazard of shark assaults or hurricanes. no longer a horrific start to how your subsequent excursion ought to look.

Now comes selling the concept to people who liked going to a themed entertainment park 12 months after yr. you’ve got seven to ten months to persuade them, plan a way to get there and make it show up. As the chief, you need everybody on board but you can’t entertain out proper refusal to move along. As opposed to allowing display stoppers, you ask the way to make it work for absolutely everyone without distorting the imaginative and prescient. You lay down the ought to haves and loosen up Most of the opposite details. You need to realize that one or two may refuse to go. This is why you’ve got spouse and children, An area for folks who opt for no longer to go together with figuring out the vision.

This is a great factor for a technique check. If a majority of people don’t want to go along with your experience to the seaside then you haven’t been listening to your peeps. Either that or you need to find another group of buddies. You have to be assured to your change of direction and You have to paintings at speaking why. That is something you may practice to improve.

With the general public on board, it’s now time to devise how to get there. The first factor to do is brainstorm on the 3 to five things that have to significantly trade which will cross somewhere specific. The value goes to be higher. Do you save or borrow? You will want to take snorkeling classes. No experience in being that close to crystal clear blue water and no longer honestly explore it. The massive exchange may be that You need to discover ways to swim first. A 3rd big trade can be your dresser and This is structured upon cash and taste. studies and evaluation are critical. Of all the viable beaches, what type of human beings frequent your choice seashore. Is there a trade in currency, do the locals communicate a specific language, or what kind of transportation can you use?

With the massive, drastic modifications diagnosed you need to plot out what you’ll do each month to get nearer and closer to attaining your vision. each of the huge modifications may take 3 to 5 months to gain so pace yourself. And for each step you’re taking You may need to degree your progress. Perceive dreams for each huge alternate and the way to measure them. Cognizance on result type measures and keep away from growing new ways to measure the modifications. next, assign people to every of the steps. Supply them steerage, provide resources and help cast off any obstacles to their fulfillment. For each step you entire every month you should see upgrades for your measures.

gaining knowledge of how to create, talk and realize a vision would not come smooth to the general public. An easy intellectual exercising can make it less complicated. The single Most substantial distinction between the exercising described above and understanding an imaginative and prescient to your business enterprise is substituting the months for years. additionally, every step you take in figuring out your vision will make your organization stronger.