01

Jun

Happiness, and Putting Off Burnoutism

 One week of actual classes, three major projects, a show, a facepainting gig, exams, an audition… and sweet, delicious, beautiful freedom.

 In case you didn’t pick up on it from my reclusive behavior on here, or my attitude in general, I am done. I feel like I caught senioritis, but seeing as I’m only finishing grade 11, that’s a bit inconvenient. Perhaps I’ll just call it spring fever instead, to keep from getting ahead of myself.

Alright, there’s a vent to be had here, but  I have had far too many fun, cool- or at the very least, mildly interesting and bemusing- things happen that I would rather talk about than give a vent that’s been covered time and time again on this blog any more space.

So, things.

  • I had a bunch of life plans. But then I decided to throw them out. Which is simultaneously frightening and liberating. Instead I now have a fall back plan (go live the life of an Indie film with Gabe), and a whole whack of decisions to make sometime next year.
  • I have three more IB projects and then I’m done for the year. The problem is that i have no motivation to do them at this point. I’m not sure where I’m going to find this motivation, since I’m starting to use phrases like “my pre-summer evolution into a burnout”, but hopefully I’ll find some hidden resources at the bottom of a frozen lemonade. Three more. That’s all. I can do this.
  • I’ve started not caring about stuff as much. I’m going to have to rein this in sometime (and by sometime I mean this weekend, so I can finish off those final bitter drops of IB), but for now it’s actually just a huge relief.
  • Summertime is here. I have things I want to do, friends I want to visit, media I want to consume, adventures I want to take. And in less than two weeks, I can.
  • I was introduced to King Charles, and now everything is right with the world. My ears are happy as can be.
  • I found my self esteem again. Oh, yeah, that’s right, I am smart and attractive! Balancing confidence with humbleness is a tricky proposition, but just for this moment I’ll veer to the side of cockiness. Because liking myself is something that has fallen to the wayside for the last…indeterminate, but long, amount of time. Now that it’s back, I quite enjoy it.

 Really, I can’t fully cover everything, even using the beautiful invention of bullet points. There have been a billion things that have happened since I last posted. One big thing was *Dramafest, which was extremely stressful, but at the same time, I am so very very proud of my fellow cast members, and our student directors, who pulled through. I made two big discoveries because of Dramafest. 1) I can make it through a double hell week, while sick, and I’ll only mostly hate myself and my friends (the hate passed, don’t worry) by the end of it. 2) When in doubt, clear your throat before coming on stage. Otherwise, if you are sick and full of phlegm, you risk sounding like Satan.

 The second big thing was TEC, which was pretty freaking incredible. Maybe a tiny sprinkling of life altering. Not changing persay, but a little altering, if I can throw phrases like that around at the mature and ripe old age of sixteen. TEC is a place where crazy Jesus stuff goes down, and it’s hard to accurately describe without making most of the people who read this blog think I’m slightly deranged. Suffice it to say, it was good, really helped heal my relationship with God, and gave me a lot more peace than I originally had before going. Also, I got to be of service to other people, which made me pretty happy. I like being useful.

 I’m so glad the school year is almost over. Overall, I’m happy, which due to all the stress I’ve put myself under, is more than I’ve been in a long time.

 Kaelen

*Speaking of which, shameless plug time!!! If you find yourself in need of a show to watch, please come check out our public showings of Yesterday the Children Were Dancing, and the student written play Juicy. Thursday night, SJHS mini theatre, shows starting at 7 pm. Tickets are five dollars at the door.

11 years ago Short URL Comments

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08

Apr

From sun dresses to questioning my life choices, in one fell swoop!

 Spring is slowly beginning to happen, but with it’s fair share of hanging around like the typical wall flower that it always is. It’s amusing to detach and observe the manner in which my friends and I are wearing increasingly summer time clothing, despite the less than encouraging weather conditions. Somehow we seem to have all subconsciously passed a memo that in order to get the sun to come out we should start wearing sun dresses, causing the strangest, most goose bump filled form of silent protest to commence.

 Along with spring comes the school musical. I auditioned for it (this year it’s going to be “Kiss me Kate”) but never actually went through with the call back. I’m too busy, and at this point (when I already have two scripts to finish memorizing for drama fest) that’s really not something I regret. From everything I’ve heard it’s really unorganized…not to say that I don’t think the people in it won’t be great as individuals, but I have my doubts about the musical as a whole. It doesn’t help that the choir director/head of the music department/momma bear of the school known as Ms. G is on sabbatical, hence not being there for musical. From everything I can tell she seems to be the glue that holds the school’s music oriented side together,  despite the adorable, eccentric, charm that her substitute is overflowing with.

 Because of musical crunch time, half of the people I know are continually busy. Between the musical, general business, IB work, and the fact that most of my friends aren’t good at making plans without cell phones (spontaneity is only so good when you’re the person in the group who no one can reach) I haven’t really been setting times to hang out with many people. The effect of this is that I had a weekend where (excepting a sleepover with Tatyana) all I did was sit at home, laze, and do homework. On the one hand, it was actually quite nice and refreshing. On the other hand, I realized that if that becomes something that is repeated often, I’m probably going to get pretty bored with my life.

 My close friend Tatyana is moving away soon though, so I have been trying to make as many plans with her as possible. It’s been about a year since we first started hanging out, and we’ve gotten really close over that time period. In part, most likely due to the fact that in the group of people we commonly hang out in we are the two people who are the least offensive/still have emotions. The ability to have feelings is bonding, who wooda thunk. Of course the downside to being the two people in a friend group with emotions is that we probably will be the ones least likely to deal well with her moving across Canada. Well, at least just speaking for myself, I’m not going to be any good at it. Bleh.

 It’s scary, because I know that she’s not going to be the only one moving away. Come this fall and Maegan and Julianne, two friends from the same group, are going to be gone, though not quite so far away. Watching people move away is one of those reminders that others are growing up, I’m growing up, and at some point I have to just go live life. The problem is that I don’t know whether growing up means that the friendships I have now are going to be the ones I leave behind with the most ease, or that the friendships I’m making now are the ones that will follow me as I slip into being an adult. 

 How much can I even plan right now? Should I just let things happen, because at this point in my life anything I try to plan isn’t going to count for much in the long run anyways? Or should I carefully structure things, as these next few years will be the base to adulthood? Should I let myself and my plans be influenced by those who are close to me now, or should I be accustomed to leaving friends behind, because in the end that’s what will happen anyways?

Jeebus. I got on the computer to watch Doctor Who, not sure how things got so introspective so fast.

11 years ago Short URL 1 Comment

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23

Feb

Things I have come to terms with:

Or am coming to terms with.

…

Or will die trying to come to terms with.

  1. I will never be able to properly wolf whistle.
  2. My eyesight is always going to be awful. 
  3. This semester is going to be a lot of hard work, especially when it comes to English class. Mostly when it comes to English class.
  4. I am always going to enjoy Austen more than Dickens. Read “North Hanger Abbey” and then tell me you find Dickens more amusing. I dare you.
  5. Marks that are less than ninety percent leave me feeling unfulfilled and rather passively aggressively angry with myself. This is mildly silly on my behalf, but I’ve managed to attain it so far, so I guess I might as well keep it up.
  6. If I don’t get enough sleep, I get very sad and cynical and unhappy. 
  7. I require a lot of sleep.
  8. Hot chocolate is going to make my stomach feel nauseous more often that it will ever make my stomach feel happy.
  9. As awfully shallow as it is, looking nice makes me feel nice. 
  10. The little neat-freak that is in me really likes lists. Especially lists that end with tidy numbers like ten.

11 years ago Short URL 1 Comment

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31

Jan

Venting, with a sprinkling of adorable aquatic life.

With the new semester starting I can feel the usual descent into stress beginning to slowly make it’s way around me and my group of friends, much like a bad cold. Other similarities to a bad cold include a decreased ability to tolerate people and a distinct wish to stay in bed surrounded by comfort food. (The closer to graduation, the more one is affected by said stress/cold.)

My math teacher went on a rant about how Universities are going to be looking at some of my marks starting in grade eleven. This rant took place the very first day back, coincidentally a pretty crazy, long day which made me ridiculously tired. I rather wish she had put off the rant for a day or two, just for the sake of not killing my brain by completely and totally overwhelming it. I wish the majority of teachers didn’t think that scaring their students would cause good marks to happen. It doesn’t really work like that.

In fact, at the moment I’m just really overwhelmed by everything.

On the plus side:

  • I’ve been feeling creative, even if I don’t always have much time to express that.
  • Reading “Love in the Time of Cholera” for English is comparatively painless the second time through.
  • The music teacher who is subbing in while Ms G is on sabbatical seems straight out of some strange, quirky, forties inspired indie movie. She’s adorable.
  • Dolphins are really really really cute. Painfully so. Just look at them.

Image

Have an excellent day free of any “colds”.

 Kaelen.

11 years ago Short URL Comments

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21

Jan

As we all know, it’s exam time. (If you weren’t aware of this fact I’m not sure what sort of god-forsaken rock you’re living under, but is there room for two?) It’s time to study, apply oneself and of course totally not -not one little bit at all not even a tiny ounce- put scads of books interesting and distracting on hold at the library. Of course not. Remembering how much fun reading is all of a sudden right when you’re in the middle of crunch time is something that only a silly person would do. Only an even sillier person would follow through and put book after book on hold, using their extended lunchbreaks in-between exams to (study you say? Nah, what an idea!) pick up said books from the library, maybe drooling slightly with anticipation.

Hah. Yeah. Silly people. Tee-hee.

Of course, the silliest of all the silly people are the ones who walk into the library and ask the librarians if they have any holds in…and before said silly person even has a chance to take their library card out of their wallet the librarian, recognizing them, goes and grabs their books for them without so much as needing to ask the silly person’s name.

Said silly person, having reached the point in their life where the librarians know them by name…said silly person probably just got their week made.

-Kaelen.
Light play 014
PS: light painting is the coolest. As are cats.
PPS: good luck on exams, folks!
PPPS: for what it’s worth, one of the library security guards knows me by name too. We have fangirling conversations about Sherlock. He recommends this site.

11 years ago Short URL 1 Comment

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31

Dec

In Summary

It’s super snowy out, and even my grinch like sensibilities that normally detest the cold white stuff have been laying low. Good job winter, you’ve managed to win me over.

photo 5

Obnoxiously instagramming things is a hideous addiction.

The Year In General:

 Made some pretty cool friends, and got closer with some nifty people that I already knew.

Began to volunteer at the library. Because books and resumes and stuff!

Finished grade ten and began grade eleven, having probably adjusted as much to public school as I ever will. I don’t know how much I’m learning in the majority of my classes as compared to how much I learned while homeschooled, but it’s interesting to see how the rest of the world does that learning thing.

Was in this awesome play over the summer and got to hang out with all these cool people a whole lot.

Was in this awesome play over the summer and got to hang out with all these cool people a whole lot.

Actually made money using my hobbies. Which is a -very welcome- first! And considering that over the course of the year I’ve probably made around $300-$400 just off of ‘doing my thing’, that’s pretty cool, ignoring that it’s spread out over the course of a year. Never did get a job, but if I squint and ignore the math, that’s still pretty cool.

Went to Novia Scotia twice, once with youth group and once with my school’s choir. Two very different trips, but both were great and involved high amounts of snuggling.

Went to TEC, which, if you’re into the whole Jesus thing, I can’t recommend enough. If you’re not, then it really wouldn’t be your cup of tea, but as someone who digs Christianity, it was amazing and I can’t wait to volunteer there in a few months, hopefully giving other people the same  wonderful experience. (side note: I have never been fed so much food as during the weekend I spent there.)

I’ve gotten more comfortable with my singing voice. It’s stil not amazing, but for a theatre kid, being able to not be embarrassed when you sing is a huge relief.

I've gotten a bit better at photoshop. A nice little accomplishment.

I’ve gotten a bit better at photoshop. A nice little accomplishment, though there’s still lots of room for improvement.

Had a ‘we’ve-been-together-one-year-that’s-a-while-that’s-cool’ with my boyfriend. Very nifty.

Despite the predictions of my parents upon seeing how much I was doing, I didn’t have a nervous breakdown, which I probably count as a little bit more of a triumph than  it actually is.

Knit my first full size sweater! …Another one of those things which I probably am counting as more of a victory than need be.

Learned to play the guitar, more or less. Actually, put emphasis on the ‘less’, but still! I can do things, I just can’t do them well. Either way, slowly being able to count an instrument as being ‘under my belt’ is astonishingly satisfying.

Continued to miss all of my west coast family, including the latest addition shown here. (hint, she's the one in the pink.)

Continued to miss all of my west coast family, including the latest addition shown here. (hint, she’s the one in the pink.)

And that’s a wrap. A year and stuff. Weird to think that next time I’ll be typing one of these up I’ll be going on seventeen and close to graduation. Passage of time, aren’t you just the silliest little thing? Happy New Year’s Eve. Go get up to some shenanigans or something.

11 years ago Short URL 1 Comment

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15

Dec

Mad Rush

I used to have time. Tee-hee. What a silly memory that is now.

Don’t mind me, it’s just production week(end), I have to write the vast majority of a commentary in the next forty eight hours, there are still loads of Christmas presents that need me to figure them out, I was sick for far too long earlier this week (Coincidentally, the first break I’ve had in a long time was earlier this week. I think feeling horrible may have been about worth it for the guilt free time off.), IB art is about to get extra time consuming, and to top it all off  there seem to be choir events every fifteen  minutes.

Deep breath.

On the plus side:

  • I think, after all this time, I’m getting the hang of doing stage makeup on guys. The key appears to be babying them like crazy, while you do something perfectly simple like apply eyeliner. Occasionally, the key might also be pinning them down through sheer force. Whatever works for the situation.
  • Christmas break is coming up, sweetsweetsweet hallelujah.
  • You remember that Halifax trip, which I kept mentioning on here, but then never actually wrote about one it happened? Yeah, well, that happened and it was awesome. Good memories were made, instant noodles were eaten, Christmas presents were bought, I took my first picture with Santa.
  • As of late, I may be indulging in the Rent soundtrack on repeat just a little bit more often than normal. Don’t judge me.
  • I took my first post-iact-show trip to Dairy Queen tonight. Apparently this is some sort of initiation procedure I just never really went through, so tonight fixed that, and now I can count as a true Iactor.
  • I’ve heard my English teacher swear twice, casually, in her lesson-teaching-conversation as of late. This is something that requires you know my English teacher (and the full extent of her religious, strict, work ethic filled presence in the school consciousness) in order for you to be as tickled by this fact as I am. Seeing that teachers are indeed human is surprisingly refreshing.

Alright,  I’m going to go do the minimal amount of homework possible for me to go to bed without feeling guilty. If browsing the internet counted as being productive,  holy hades, tonight I was one little paragon. Allow me to leave you with a completely unexplainable gif of  Leonardo DiCaprio with a sloth-head because, really, why not?

sloth titanic

 

Kaelen.

11 years ago Short URL 1 Comment

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27

Sep

It’s Not Like I’m Going to Get Much Sleep Tonight Anyways

…So, I might as well blog and further ensure my sleep deprived state tomorrow.

Thursdays, as I’ve mentioned before (and by that I mean the post directly underneath this one) are always my busiest day of the week. This Thursday was particularly exemplary, including:

  • Getting up and going to school, which is in and of itself always a bit of a struggle, seeing as how it involves “getting out of bed”. In a stroke of “Kaelen is being a big girl” I actually got out of bed when my alarm went off, instead of rolling over and sleeping for an unspecified amount of time until the world looked friendlier.
  • A lunch that included a lot of “I don’t get why this is happening, people confuse me” in the most hilarious-to-my-friends way possible, and “final editing” a commentary that has been stressing me out since a week ago.
  • After school choir until five, where one of the songs we’re going to sing is just remarkably sassy, making me and Maegan feel like independent black women who don’t need no men. Also, we found out that choir is going on a two day trip to a nearby province that I’ve wanted to visit  forever but just never have. I’m actually pretty excited for this, despite how small the trip seems when you compare it with the week long tour of Boston they took last year. (which, sadly, I didn’t go on.)
  • Finally chilling with Tatyana for what may very well be the first time in forever (alright, I’ll admit to the crime of hyperbole, but it felt like that). Multiple extracurricular activities and partial IB do not for a social life make. We sat in my favorite (slightly sketchy) southend park, while I ate some rather underwhelming food court sushi.
  • Iact, where (seeing as we were bereft of both our leads) we played games that involved lying on each other’s stomachs and making noises (I swear, this is actually a theatre kid thing. I don’t make these up.) and something called “mafia” that was basically an interactive story told by Ben where the large majority of us ended up dying in inventive ways. Drowning in cake batter was quite possibly my favorite.
  • Lizz and I headed off to catch the last third of our high school’s coffee house. True to form, it mostly consisted of the talented music kids being talented and the awkwardly hilarious people doing awkwardly hilarious things. Julianne and I discovered that we had both brought mugs that had noses on them… one of those little things that slightly made my night.
  • Once I got home, I had to study for a french test. This went a lot faster than I thought it would, which either means that I’m going to have certain parts of my anatomy handed to me tomorrow during C Block or that core french is just really really really incredibly easy. To be honest, it’s probably the latter, which I’m not saying because I’m an egotistical little snob… but rather because Core French is quite possibly the birdiest of the bird courses, and one that I’m merely taking because you kinda need it to graduate.
  • Though this wasn’t on any to-do list, I am mildly annoyed enough to find it worth mentioning: after all the time and trouble I went through to edit that stupid commentary for what I thought was the last time, I went onto  my computer and realized that I need to redo all the quotation marks, because they aren’t in the correct font. As I have no Word program on my computer, this has to  wait until school tomorrow…Oh, joy. Just when I thought I was done with the beast, something too small to really matter but too annoying for my paranoid OCD to handle had to pop up.

At this point in the night, I mentally flipped a table and opened wordpress. Fast forward to me sitting here, trying to ignore the fact that I really need to start packing for the weekend, seeing as I’m leaving tomorrow after school (no time to go home in-between…cue me awkwardly trying to fit an overstuffed backpack into my locker come tomorrow morning). I’m going off for the weekend with my youth group, to what I believe has been best described as “Hippie Jesus Camp”. I’m looking forward to it for the whole “spiritually refreshing part”… and also because when a bunch of Christians get together to chaperone teenagers for a weekend the general philosophy seems to be “EAT LOTS AND LOTS AND LOTS OF FOOD AND  MAYBE SOME SNACKS AND HOW ABOUT A LITTLE MORE FOOD”. I guess praising Jesus on an empty stomach just doesn’t fly.

No matter your theistic views, I hope your weekend is full of lots and lots and lots of snacking. Because snacking is always a good time.
Kaelen

12 years ago Short URL 1 Comment

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20

Sep

Cinnamon and Nutmeg Actually Go Very Well With Chai Tea

At some point in the last week of my life, I have turned into the sort of person who counts down to the Thanksgiving long weekend while it’s still September.

Today is aThursday. Thursdays are the crazy sort of days where I have school, two extracurricular activities that collectively last over four hours and homework. Thursdays also have the extra drag of not being Fridays, no matter how hard you wish upon a star. (or a slow moving helicopter, depending on your luck)

On the happier side of things, it’s cold enough to wear sweaters and scarfs again (I built up a semi-heat tolerance over the summer because I’ve come to the point where I feel naked without at least one sweater. Needless to say, fall weather and cooler temperature is all too welcome.), and there is a Java Moose that I pass on my way to school each morning that sells fairly inexpensive chai tea. (Java gets bonus points for the fact that they have shakers of nutmeg and cinnamon that you can shake into your warm beverages as much as you please.)

I think I’m slowly getting over my extreme pining for the lazy days of summer. Being busy again is taking some getting used to, but since I’ve discovered that you can do homework in other classes (heeeeello, core french!), saving you from having to do it in nonexistent time at home, my quality of life has dramatically improved.
This is good, because randomly inane stress was getting to the point where my friends and I are reminiscing over our “IB breakdowns”. (for the uninitiated, these breakdown tales usually begin with a story about homework or crammed schedules and end with “and then I sobbed”)
Nobody can say the nerdy white kids don’t know how to have a rollicking good tale swapping time.

Kaelen

12 years ago Short URL Comments

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08

Sep

School Day Ruminations

A grand total of two days of school finished, I’ve come to two realizations:

1) My brain likes to troll me by releasing stress-y chemical things at inconvenient times (which is something you’ve probably realized if you’ve read this blog for any amount of time)

2) I am better at actually doing work than discussing work.

The first day was a bit of an overwhelming attempt at trying to process every single thing we are going to be doing this year at once. Yet by the second day, where we actually began to do a few things and get started on one thing at a time, my brain took a chill pill and I enjoyed myself a lot more.
After two days of class, I’m starting to get a vague idea of how my day is probably going to end up going.

A Block:

 Math with a teacher who is apparently, “A really nice person! She really is! But she can’t teach…and…I’ll just pray for you.” With only one day of review and a fifteen minute attempt at learning everyone’s names under my belt I can’t say where my levels of crazy are going to be. I really hope this turns out to be a good class though, because starting off the morning by learning math from somebody who can’t teach math will get old really fast.

B Block:

Sociology! This class is one of the grade twelve courses that is open to grade elevens as well (Kaelen’s heart did a little happy dance during course selection last year when she found out that some 12 courses were now open to her) and there are way more people that I know taking the class than I expected. I’ve also heard varied opinions on this teacher’s ability to teach…I’ve had him before as a sub, where he decided that the biology video we had to watch was boring, the sheet we had to fill out unintelligible, and as such he was going to nix the sheet and put a different video on using his netflix account.

…Who knows how this could end up.

C Block:

 Last year nobody bothered to tell me that you need to take at least grade ten level french in order to graduate (actually, you need grade ten and grade nine, but since I wasn’t at school for grade nine that one was kinda’ let slide.) which is why I’m now doing grade ten french in grade eleven. Core french has a reputation for being excessively easy, but on the other hand I’m ridiculously incompetent when it comes to French, so I really couldn’t try for much more.

In this class there are quite a few of the niners (now grade tens) from last year who I had in the demonic-niner-science-class-from-hell…AND ALL OF THEM HAVE CALMED DOWN. I’m pretty sure that there must be a certain switch that’s activated by your homeroom teacher as soon as you advance to grade ten, which makes you a decent person who people don’t want to slaughter for never shutting up with the racist/homophobic/sexist banter.

D Block:

 If IB English doesn’t kill me I’m going to enjoy every minute of it. My teacher is one of the more notorious instructors of the school (she once refused to accept a rewrite because it was in the wrong font) and so far everybody in the class is too afraid that we might fall under her wrath to actually act up…or, you know, breathe loudly. As such, it’s one of the quietest classes of my day. I feel like it’s going to be a ton of work (which is something I knew when I signed up for it) but completely and totally worth it. Not just for the possible university credit at the end of it, but for the simple fact that I love English and learning about it makes me really happy.

I also feel that this class is likely to be somewhat ridiculous, as our teacher is quite a hardcore christian who has some relatively (for school) raunchy books to assign to us for our upcoming year. (as you know, I’ve already read some of the books that we’re going to be assigned….can any one say “Love In the Time Of Cholera”?)

D Block:

 There is no way to explain how extremely delighted I am for Pre-IB art. I bought my art journal yesterday (the art journal that I’m going to use until the end of grade twelve…the art journal that is going to be worth a large portion of my mark at the end of everything…the art journal that is going to document my progress for the next two years of my artistic development) and I’m now terrified to actually begin to draw in it. Which would be why it is still in my locker, unmarked, with the pages lovingly smoothed out so the spine can’t crack and the stickers still on.

Because of a scheduling conflict with IB English, I couldn’t actually get into an IB art course, so I’m instead hanging out in the back corner of a grade ten class doing a bunch of non-grade-ten work. Good times. I’ll probably be posting pictures of some of my finished projects here as they get completed over the course of the year.

Much like how I get more and more verbose throughout my post, my excitement for my classes more-or-less gets steadily stronger throughout the day. Didn’t mean for it to turn out that way, just sometimes I get really excited about things and then I write lots. And, by the end of the day, after my IB classes, I feel pretty pumped.

This may change, and at some point I will most likely go through a period of  just feeling stressed after my end of day IB…but for now, I remain Pumped.

Huzzah.

Kaelen.

12 years ago Short URL Comments

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