Honor Bands

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Today I went to my first ever honor band at Coe College. I had never been to one before so I had absolutely no idea what to expect!

After we signed in and got registered, we were sent to an area with other people who play the same instrument as you to have chair auditions. Luckily for me, it was my lesson teacher doing auditions for flute so it wasn't anywhere as nerve-wracking as I thought it would be! That took about an hour (there were about eighteen flutes! Yikes!) then we were all squished into a small band room. It was hot and stuffy. Not the most ideal setting for musical instruments, that's for sure!

We rehearsed for about two and a half to three hours before dinner. I was so hungry I could barely play a good note on my flute. The food was pretty decent considering we ate in the Coe dining hall. After eating in college dinning halls it isn't hard to see how easy gaining the 'freshman fifteen' is. They had an icee machine!

After dinner we had two more hours of rehearsal. My lips are so sore. I've never played that much for that long.

The music that we are playing is actually really fun! We are playing four pieces: two fast and two slow. The fast ones are going to need a lot of work done on them before next weekend when we all meet up again for our last rehearsal and our concert but they will get there. They aren't totally impossible!

If you have ever wondered what an honor band is like, well, there you go! I mean, this is the only one i have been to but I'm sure they are pretty similar in what they do! But just know going into it that you are going to have chapped lips and sore hands when you're done.


~Skooogster(:

Websites Need to be More Organized.

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So I’m currently pulling my hair out trying to fix my works cited page on my argument and persuasion essay I wrote last term. I admit, yes I did use easybib.com but I went back and changes some formatting things that I knew easybib didn't do. However, now I need to go back and put in a publisher and publication date. My teacher told us that if you go to the bottom of a web page, you can usually find a link that says 'about us' or something like that and you can find some of those missing parts. I've just gone to two sites that I needed to find this information for and there isn't an 'about us' link or anything of the like. So how am I supposed to find these things? Information on a University's website is going to be used and they should know that. People write books and provide the publisher, publication date, and author, everything needed for a works cited page. Magazines do the same thing. Pretty much everything else does except the website of the three university websites I looked at.

I am getting really frustrated right now because I have honestly looked at every single possible link that could take me to find the publisher for my works cited page. It would not be that hard to add just a quick link on the bottom of the page with this information.  

If a person who creates web pages for universities and colleges is reading this, please consider supplying this information. It would make language arts classes everywhere much easier and a whole lot less stressful!

~Skooogster(:

It's Prom Season Again!

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So, it’s that time of year again where everyone is getting ready for PROM! Yay! And for us girls, that means finding a dress. Now let the fun begin….

For most senior girls, you will get a dress no matter what because, hopefully, you will go even without a date. Unfortunately, I’m not a senior; I’m a junior, who got asked 22 days before prom. That didn’t leave a TON of time to find a dress but it’s still enough. Well, for me it was. I did find some good websites along the way even though I got mine in a store (today!). Sorry, but I won’t put a picture of my dress on here because I don’t want my date to see it until prom. Maybe I will add it later!

One of them is www.jjshouse.com. They have beautiful dresses at reasonable prices especially now when most people’s dress shopping is done but there are still those last minute shoppers. Kind of like me. Also, what I like about this website is, I believe you can get every dress in every color. So if you like the style you can most likely get it in the color that you want. It also allows you to send in your measurements for people who need custom sizes, like me. I have such wide shoulders that it is honestly hard to find a dress that will zip up past the middle of my back. It is very frustrating. This is one of the dresses I considered from this site.

Approximate shipping time: 14-17 days

Another site I looked at was www.merledresses.com. They have nice dresses but unfortunately, most were out of my price range. I actually found the dress that I REALLY wanted on there but it was almost twice as expensive as it was on the other website. This website also has the custom size option.

Approximate shipping time: 17-28 days

The last site I was looking at was www.livedresses.com. Their prices range from high to low but they are more in the middle of the previous two. This is where I found the dress that I absolutely loved. I got really excited because it 1. Had custom sizing and 2. Had a place to put when your prom is. This made me really happy because I thought, maybe if I tell them my prom is in 18 days they can tailor it and get it to me within the time period. But here’s the catch: April 27 wasn’t even an option for me to select. The earliest date I could chose was in May. And also when I put in my measurements it would say ‘false’ under some of them while when I put them into another website, it didn’t question it. So apparently, people like me who have weird body shapes can’t shop there. So I got a little disappointed. I would probably try it again if I had more time. It’s probably a great site if I had more than 18 days to find a dress. So it isn’t all bad! I’m just not recommending it for people who are short on time. This is the dress that I was seriously considering:

Approximate shipping time: 12-27 days

Fortunately I found my dress today at a store called Elegant Repeats. It has new and used dresses (mine was used) with prices ranging from $64 all the way up to $300+. I was lucky enough that this dress fit me PERFECTLY. Whoever wore it before me must have been my height exactly.

If you are short on time like me, I would definitely recommend looking at local stores. You can always get it tailored and there are some people who can do it within a week!

 

~Skooogster(:

Scrapbooking Ireland

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So I’ve started to make my Ireland scrapbook. Somehow I managed to take 1000+ pictures and decide on about 250 to put in it. It was not an easy task! There were so many pictures that I loved but obviously I couldn’t put them all in! I’ve never really made a trip scrapbook. I’ve made one for my friend for her birthday (which I have to say, I’m pretty proud of!) but this is a little different. I don’t have a thousand pictures of me and my friend (at least not then) to choose a select few for the book. Then not to mention I had to find all of the pictures that other people took that I wanted from Shutterfly or Facebook and download those.

Then I had to find a scrapbook. I didn’t want something too boring but I didn’t want something so crazy that it would take away from my cover picture. I decided on a teal book that had an engraved floral print. Simple, yet pretty.  

Honestly, the longest, most tedious part of the whole scrapbooking process would be the actual making of each page and deciding on the layout you want and then having to glue everything on. My biggest problem is I always want every page completely filled up but when you are making a scrapbook there needs to be some white space! I’ve also gotten frustrated with patterns. A lot of patterns take away from what is in the picture or are difficult to write on. If you are using a patterned paper, try writing on a solid color and gluing that onto the page so it is easier to read. You may be able to read it now but in thirty years your eyes won’t be as sharp as they are now so do your future self a favor and make it easier to read.  

My mom is helping with mine and she said that every time I look at a picture I tell a different story about something that happened when it was taken. I think that is the beauty of pictures. There are so many stories contained in just one picture and every time you see it you will remember something else that you didn’t remember the first time.

I really can’t wait to see the finished product. I’ll probably think that looking through it will make me happy remembering all the fun that I had but in reality, just like when I thought that watching Leap Year (a movie set in Ireland) would make me happy, it will just make me long to go back even more.

~Skooogster(:

Age is but a Number.

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You’ve all heard the cliché: ‘age is but a number’ right? Do you believe that? If a couple is happy together should age matter? Well, if it is a fifteen year old girl with a thirty year old guy that’s a little wrong. As you get older things start to get a little less awkward when it comes to age difference. But what about an older girl dating a younger boy?

Recently my friends and I have been talking about the unwritten guidelines of dating. Apparently, the guy is taller than the girl and the guy is older than the girl. But really, where did these come from? When did that become the norm and everything else is just...different? If a senior girl is dating a sophomore boy it's weirder than if a senior boy is dating a sophomore girl. Why is that? If they are happy together then why should age matter? I am actually friends with more underclassmen than upperclassmen so the odds of me dating a younger guy are greater than not. Also, I am very young for my grade. Currently, I am only 16 and I don't turn 17 until September. So technically, I am the age of most sophomores. True, I’d be a few months older but junior girl and sophomore boy just seems to have an awkward ring to it in today's society.

 

This probably comes from way back when, when girls about my age would be arranged to marry some thirty year old weirdo and the 'tradition' of guys being older than girls just continued as such.

 

But in my family, an older woman marrying a younger man is kind of normal. Especially on my Dad’s side. He’s the only one who married a younger woman in his family. So if I end up with someone younger than me, I would just keep going with the pattern of my dad’s side.

So girls, if you like someone who is younger than you, don’t think that it’s weird. Same thing goes with you guys, if you like someone older than you, don’t be afraid to go for her. It might not be the norm but there are plenty of guys who marry older women. IT’s not the norm but it’s acceptable!

 

~Skooogster(:

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ITDS: Idiodic Testing that Determines Scholarships

416 words

Okay okay, IOWA ASSESSMENT, whatever they're called, I still hate them. Three days of 110 minutes of testing that turns you from a person with a personality into a test score.

Everybody learns at a different rate but that doesn't make them dumber than you or you any dumber than everyone else. You know what it does make you though? A normal person. These timed tests don't show that much about a person other than their ability to take a test under stressful conditions. I mean, 40 minutes is NOT enough time for me to take a math test where half of the content I haven't even covered yet. But what disturbs me about this whole thing more is the fact that your test scores will determine your future. A person is more than a test score. A person has talents outside of academics, a personality that can influence more people than maybe the kid who got a perfect score on their ITDS.

Every year since third grade, I have been told that the better you do on these te3sts, the better chance you have to getting into the college that you want. What? Why should that matter? Okay, yes I understand that colleges want smart people but can’t that be determined by the classes they take, the grades they get and even their AP scores? Shouldn’t college acceptance be more about who you are as a person instead of who you are as a standardized test score?

The same goes for the ACT and the SAT.

I’m not saying that these tests are all bad. In fact, they challenge you to push yourself as a student to excel in your schooling but as a person who can know information inside and out yet still blank on tests, especially timed ones, I have been feeling more and more stressed out about my college searching process. As a junior, I really have to start looking and over the summer I’m going to start my personal essay. I’ve already taken the ACT once and got an okay score. If I really didn’t want to, I could easily make it into UNI with the score I got but I have been conditioned to believe that the higher ACT the better chance I have… which is true, but not right.

When I apply for my colleges I want them to look at me as more than an ACT or ITDS score. I want them to look at me as ME.

~Skooogster(: