Toasted wheat germ.

I opened up a letter addressed to me, and saw the "Congratulations!" and my heart sank. Becuase I got into the University of Minnesota - Twin Cities. Which made me SO FUCKING SAD. Because this is my first and my only first college acceptance letter. And it was to the University of Minnesota. I don't even have that feeling of relief, of "OMFG, I'm going to college," because I will never go to the University of Minnesota. Ever. 

People, we are all going to agree: Sara has not gotten into college yet.

I think that Laura's LJ name is very witty.
And I am jealous.







...I meant to end it there, for a sort of brief, meaningful post, but we all know that I could never do that if I have something else to say. Which leads me to bring up the idea, what do you think about my LJ name? Does it feel in any way relative to my own life? How do you feel about your own LJ name?

is not an Emory Scholar (i.e. recipient of a full ride to Emory). Well, fuck those bastards. This is good. Now, even if I get in, I don't have any incentive to go to a school filled with drinkin' fools over another place.

So long, Max.

Well, as of 9:42 p.m on Monday, December 15, 2008 C.E,
according to Facebook and "Yale Class of 2013 - Global"....................
................so far about 100 people who are not me.


And shame on you if you only read headlines and not the actual material.

Welcome to "River at Night."

Sara is going to GET SHIT DONE! *The crowd goes wild!!!!*

Monday 12/15 to Friday 12/19:
Melodies Hell

Saturday 12/20 to Sunday night 12/21:
Do the easy essays!!
-Pomona
-Northwestern
-Harvard (Just fucking submit it already!)
-JHU (don't go to too much trouble for it though)

Before Christmas:
-UChicago!

Before Friday 12/26:
-Princeton!

Before Sunday 12/28:
-Brown!

Before Thursday JANUARY 1:
-Submit more things to YALE
-Stanford!


DOING IT!!!


Sometime soon: Somehow in the least awkward way possible convince Neubert that I should be first oboe for Brahms!

I got a fortune cookie last night.
It taught me how to say "beef" in Chinese.
It also said

"Good news will come to you from far away."

....


I won't be in school tomorrow, which I didn't even plan, so it's pretty ironic. Our bus leaves at 10:30, that's all.
I've been having a better-than-usual time in the city, some pretty cool things have happened.

My mom and I went to Lincoln Center and she just coolly bought some scalped tickets off a guy to see the Nutcracker at the NYCB. Row J. Incredible. I saw the growing tree! And it's amazing how many of the dancing food songs I recognized, just like the first time I sat down and listened to "Le Carnival aux Animals."
Through my cousin Guy, we went to lunch at the first completely certified-Organic resturaunt in the world. Turns out, a buddy of his manages it. So, we walk in, Guy says hi to his friend, and we get the best seat in the house. It seems like there's a whole underground Israeli resturaunt culture in New York, and my cousin's in it.

Found my black heels for Melodies that will make me exactly 5' 6 :) 


So yes, please tell the teachers of classes tomorrow why I'm not present, thanks.

If I've been sounding really depressed lately, it's probably because it's winter.

So, after a lengthy G-Chat with Sean (haven't had one of those in a while!) I've decided to give up on my own happiness. I'll never stop hoping for it, I suppose, but that's the fate of a cynical idealist. Instead, I will still work for personal satisfaction, though it will never be truly realized, and the happiness that comes from making the world a better place. Maybe I'll end up living vicariously through the happiness of others, never achieving personal happiness.
This isn't a bad thing. Sure, it will be depressing at times - indeed, it's depressing right now to think that I'm a seventeen-year old with her entire life ahead of her who has already decided to, in a way, give up on life. But it's also peaceful.

Is this the price that sober thinkers pay?

More like Bloody Friday.
When did shopping become deathly?

  I can understand death as a result of unbridled hate in the form of war and genocide, I can deal with the fact that strong human emotions like love, hate, and fear sometimes most sadly lead to loss of life. But not THIS. This is wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong, completely wrong!

  This afternoon, as my family was driving home from our Thanksgiving stay with relatives, we heard on the radio about a Wal-Mart employee trampled to death this morning in the very town that we were driving through, Valley Stream, NY. He was unlocking the doors and the 5 a.m crowd, more like raving mob, crashed through the doors and trampled the man to death.

  No television or computer, however inexpensive it may be, is worth a human life! All I could do for a few minutes after hearing this was just sit completely still, trying to hold back tears. Perhaps it was the mob mentality that made these people forget their humanity, but I'm willing to say that greed was another factor. Greed in this case being the overwhelming desire for material possessions that our society so condones.

  This event just scares me even more about mankind's prospects for the future. We need to be able to work together, considerately and compassionately, if we want our planet and our civilization to survive. Some things, such as mindless, accidental killing in a rush for a luxury electronic, have no place in that future.

  With all of our advancements, this is what we are reduced to? Hey, here's a crazy idea, why not use the Internet for shopping? There is no reason that an innocent man, just trying to do his job and make a living, needs to be dead right now.

I'm definitely off non-virtual shopping for a while.

So this is for all of you general lifeguards/ex-NHS guards, who actually make up about, oh, exactly one-half of my LJ friends. Today I worked the Saturday 1 pm - 4:15 aka 3:50 pm shift. Around 3:30 a guy came in with a sports bag, and Ben and I groaned because no one appreciates a new person coming in right before closing. However, he walked up to the guard table, opened up his bag, and asked us if he could "hop in the pool and find the hole in my air mattress."

"Umm, sure?"

Random?

So far, it's the weirdest thing that's happened while guarding at the NHS pool.

I'm not even mad or upset that Mrs. Rice played my piece so badly that I had to start over THREE TIMES and at the end sing my first run over a cappella for the judges. I'm actually finding it pretty funny. This is a new one for me, not looking for someone to blame right away in a huff. And I like it. Shall we consider the possible sources of this feeling? Yes, let's.

1. Senior Year - I'm chill (in some things. others not so much). You're chill. We're all chill. [High school] Freshman are the scum of the earth.
2. It's just for fun - I don't need this for anything, I'm just hoping to get some advice on a song so I can sing it a college auditions. No biggie.
3. I'm not competing against Kelsey F. - that girl is the most annoying, aggravating singer/person I have ever met, but she's not doing this. Thus, no desire to prove that ok, she can sing a pop song, but NOTHING ELSE.

Life gets really lonely when the only person you have that cares about you is yourself.

Which adjective best describes me without having a negative connotation to it?

A) Zany
B) Eccentric
C) Eclectic
D) Quirky
E) other

And so this begins. It's not like I'm having my dad read ANYTHING I write for college applications, he'll just frown at it and semi-joke about the army recruiting center.

Tell me what you think of answers/essays!
Examples:
"It's very YOU, Sara."
"You're submitting THAT to a college?"
"Sara, are you okay?"
"Wow, I love it!"
"You misspelled "Tokyo" in the second line."


Yale Short Takes

1) What would you do with a free afternoon?
- Attempt to organize a pick-up volleyball game and end up sitting on the park swings reading a book.
   
2) Name one thing of which you are especially proud.
- In all seriousness, my whistling skills. It makes me unique among my musical peers.
   
3) What two qualities do you admire most in other people?
- Silent leadership and social mobility.
   
4) What do you wish you were better at being or doing?
- I wish that my actions could better reflect the enormity of my dreams.

5) What makes you feel physically and mentally renewed, other than a good night's rest?
- Taking part in any kind of duet, whether singing or playing my oboe.


Essays will be posted as I finish/start them.
MERCI!

is George Bernard Shaw. He is mentioned in This Side of Paradise, and his many quotations each hold utter significance to my life. Of all of his plays I've only read "Arms and the Man," but now I'm hungry to read everything else.

This post was brought on by one quote of his that I saw:

“Life isn't about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself.”

...and it was unimaginably perfect for me. In the two seconds it took to read it, questions that I'd had about myself, and about life, were gently spirited away. Then, curious, I looked up more quotes from Shaw, and every one seemed to speak to me. Some of them can speak to every person in the world.
How 'bout a sampling from the three pages I have compiled:

• “We are ashamed of everything that is real about us; ashamed of ourselves, of our relatives, of our incomes, of our accents, of our opinions, of our experience, just as we are ashamed of our naked skins.”

• “The only man who behaves sensibly is my tailor; he takes my measurements anew every time he sees me, while all the rest go on with their old measurements and expect me to fit them.”

• “It's so hard to know what to do when one wishes earnestly to do right.”

-----------------

And additionally, I found these perfect words of wisdom from Maya Angelou:

“I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”

I have unknowingly made these words the mantra of my life.

I just realized something. Something big.


I may never have this much bathroom space again in my whole life.


With my brother gone, I've got two sinks, two mirrors, a whole towel closet, a separate room with toilet and shower.



Being a kid is so comfortable, have you ever realized? This is the one time in my life where I'll be worry-free, no matter how tough things seem to be right now. After this, it's college, then maybe more school, then a job and being a grown-up. I'm going to have to worry about putting food in the fridge (and even having a fridge), dealing with cramped living arrangements, and being independent in a very scary way. Who knows if I'll ever have a bathroom this size again? My adult lifestyle may not be able to include such a bathroom, ever. Who knows? I could be a millionaire, but I could also end up homeless and trying to get a bed at a shelter every night until the day I die.

I really like having such a large bathroom all to myself.

If you haven't been at a computer for the last 7 or so hours, I forgive you.
If you have, however, COMMENT ON MY BELOW POST.
I put a lot of myself into it, and this is (partly) the reason to have an LJ: to receive acknowledgment of your ideas, whether it be critical or praising.
So DO IT, gosh darn it.
CARE.

And boo you, hypocrisy.

As a rule, I generally don't like science-fiction. The end of the world, machines taking over civilization, life as we know it disappearing - all things that I don't ever want to see happen and can't even stand to read about.
But what if we're already in the first stages of collapse? What if this economic crisis is a pivotal point in human history, and we either have to work together to fix it or see our lives come crashing down around us?
Until today, I thought that my family had financial security. Whenever I asked about paying for college, my parents would smile and say, "You don't have to worry about that Sara. Just worry about getting in." Now, though, my dad's jokes about the army recruiting center are becoming more and more frequent. Not that I would ever go into the military, but what if I had to give up the future that I'd always taken for granted? High school, great college, graduate or professional school, comfortable job doing something I love, and overall living a life that could seem difficult at times, but  would be rather sheltered. Even if I did something like MSF and lived in the worst conditions for a few months, I would still have a stable environment to return to in the US.
What if soon though, upper middle-class isn't enough? What if the only people to retain their lifestyles in the coming days are the millionaires and heiresses? I could still go to college, but I'll be burdened with the financial doubt and fear that so many people who I never understood face today. College loans and financial aid will become the reality instead of absentmindedly applying for a merit scholarship that it would be nice to get, but isn't necessary.
And what if that's the optimistic outlook? I can see Hoovervilles resurfacing, cities of hovels springing up as everyone moves out of places they can no longer afford. What then happens to all of the deserted houses? Are they torn down by the few remaining companies that will control 90 percent of the world's wealth, or will they be inhabited by foreigners who will then proceed to hire the previous American owners as servants? Will slavery return, just instead of blacks and whites, this time it will be Americans and foreigners? Would the world community let this happen?
I know that I'm just letting my imagination run away on this idea, but the truth is that anything could happen when the few aren't willing to do what is best for the whole. There is a problem in America right now, a problem of greed and selfishness. What we need, what I need, is actual change, and change for the better. We need leaders who are willing to set aside their differences and personal intersets for the sake of the American people, and ultimately, the future of the country.