Psat @ MindSay

Since Dad is not in Beijing, he can't go to Parent Teacher Interview. Mum didn't feel like going, so she didn't go either, so a day off for me.

What did I do for my day off? Practically nothing. Wasted half a day of my life on practically nothing, I have a tendency to do something like that for holidays, weekends and days off, I only seem to get active and do things when it is afternoon. Wish I had the kind of concentrated power of will that I put in for Sports converted into Academics, especially when I know that being a professional athlete is not what I intend.

Did a test run through the stairs to see how far I can go, and 10 floors is the maximum floors I can reach without collapsing and taking a breath. Not bad I suppose, was expecting to run 20 floors, haha.

ISAC volleyball tournament on Saturday, hosted by DSP, which is the Deutschland Schoolio of Peking according to my coach. There's going to be like 6 teams, and its a single match elimination, so its going to be intense, but it also means we have to find our form right before the match. I have absolute confidence in our volleyball team, we are better than the rest of the international school teams skill wise, but it is consistency that kills us.

I'm captain and my coach has not put me in starting line up so far in the season, so I had a little talk with my coach after practice. Our team has 3 setters, me, Ben and Shyam. Ben's our best setter and Shyam's supposed to be our best server, while I'm balanced in all aspects of volleyball techniques, with setting being slightly more stronger than other fields, and I have been a consistent and hard working player. Mr McCabe stated that Ben's on starting line up no matter what, which I have no problem with, but he said he always had Shyam on starting line up because he wanted to earn points from his deadly serves. One thing I want to say is that what Shyam can do with his serves, I can too, what Shyam can't do, I can as well; Shyam's serves are really deadly from time to time, having a similar taste with CK's serves, but Shyam is not consistent, like last game, when we could totally kill off our opponent in one set when we had 24 points, he did a f-ing jump serve and got the serve out, so we had to fight our way back to gain the final point. Mr McCabe however stated that the serving strategy didn't quite work out, but I think that Mr McCabe recognized the problem too late, or maybe he didn't want to believe that Shyam's serving isn't always that great. Mr McCabe said he's making a few changes to the team, like having Justin as power instead of middle, so that the "big three" Sin Lai, Gee man and J-Lei can form the "Great Wall of Yew Chung" on court, so maybe he's hinting I might have a chance in the starting line up, although I doubt it.

Although yesterday was not toally a happy story, had great fun playing goalkeeper before practice though. Since practice started at 4:30 and school ends at 3:05, I was between the posts with ma homies, but playing goalkeeper isn't necessarily fun when the floor isn't grass... but I had a good time nevertheless.

PSAT exams was pretty smooth, maths was easy, english... was challenging when it came to vocabulary, but I think I coped with it, although I won't comment any further until I get the results back.

Well, the PSAT is tomorrow, wish me luck!

    I hate having crushes, really, I really do.  I get my hopes up, the heart flutters, and then there's no confidence to go, "Hey, I like you a lot, is that mutual?"  Rejection is a terrible fear of mine and it's also a terrible hinderance.  I'd like to hope that someday I'll overcome it.  However, with that same hope, I'm hoping that the guy would be the first to "profess" feelings.  A lot of girls go, "Oh my gosh, I'm so old fashioned, he's gotta tell me that he likes me first!"  But they're lying, girls are typically much more insecure than guys, and they are just way too fearing of rejection to try.  I, I am rejection fearing, I'll admit that I'm insecure, but at least I'm fessing up to it.
   
    On a more logical, less whiny and emotional note, I'm preparing for the PSAT on Saturday!  Sure I feel like an absolute idiot to be starting my studying on the Wednesday before... but I just kicked major ass on the PSAT practice vocabulary section... and maybe that'll surmount to something.

    And... I might have done o.k. on my Hon. Physics pop quiz today... which is a real encouragement since it struck me totally off guard.  School started at one in the afternoon even, (crazy schedule this week) I was tuned out to begin with.

    Also... Psychology 101 got cancelled for Thursday, so I have to wait until next Tuesday for it to start.  Makes me sad, but another part of me knows that I could very easily end up hating that class despite my love for psychology.

So Mindsay, I owe you an update.  It's been a week.

Not only have I not been home as much as I usually am, I've been really dizzy lately so I generally have not been on the computer as often.

I guess really not that much has happened this past week, though. On Wednesday, we weren't allowed to do anything in PE. We had to sit on the bleachers. So I sat and wrote this (yeah, I took pictures; too lazy to scan. :P); I even typed up translations for those of you who cannot read my handwriting **coughmagencough**:







Anyway. The day after I wrote all that, my schedule was indeed changed. I am now in Drivers Ed. My mom was happy, lol. On her birthday I had an appointment with the eye doctor, and he decided to dilate my pupils (I hadn't had my pupils dilated by a doctor in years); after that I couldnt' really see for around 4 hours.

I got my PSAT scores back, by the way. Does anyone rememeber when I took those? I pretty much slept through them. But I apparently ended up getting a high score or some shit. I dont' really care, because those numbers are pretty meaningless to me.

The day after Thursday, which would be Friday, I took my permit test in Drivers Ed and passed. So there ya go. Over a year and half after I was supposed to take the damn test, I pass. All without looking at a handbook at all. How about them apples?

Actually, I almost didn't pass. On the road signs portion, I got 100% right, because them bitches are easy. But on the road rules portion, I missed 5 questions. lol. That's the maximum you're allowed to miss. :P

I have more to say, but I really don't feel like talking about anything else. 

So, I took the PSAT.  And here are my results.

Critical Reading: 66
Scored higher than 91% of juniors.
Expected SAT Range: 580-720
Answered correctly 40 of 48 questions.
My pattern of correct and incorrect answers does not provide clear evidence about my specific critical reading strengths and weaknesses.

Math: 66
Scored higher than 92% of juniors.
Expected SAT Range: 610-730
Answered correctly 32 of 38 questions.
I can improve by "Recognizing logical key words" and "Using answer choices to help solve the problem."

Writing Skills: 69
Scored higher than 94% of juniors.
Expected SAT Range: 580-710
Answered correctly 34 of 39 questions.
My pattern of correct and incorrect answers does not provide clear evidence about my specific critical reading strengths and weaknesses.

There you have it.  Me.  As determined by standardized testing.

-Neil