Watch the crazy girl ramble.

I think this article is pretty interesting. When do we actually grow up? I've been thinking about my future a lot lately, and I've come to one conclusion:I don't have a clue. It's a little bit like in Accepted, Bartelby wrote that essay called "I don't have a clue"
But not.
I just really have no idea what I want to do after Hi!School. My parents obviously want me to go to college and stuff, but I don't really i don't know if that's what I want. I could actually see myself being a teacher, but I'm not so sure. I would hate I would rather teach high school or middle school, but. I don't know. I like art and stuff, but I don't think that I'm actually good enough to do anything professionally. I could see myself maybe being a teacher and selling my art on Etsy or something on the side. My greatest fear in becoming a teacher is that I would end up being one of those teacher s who teaches you everything you already know and just makes everything so easy that you could get an A, or at least a B in your sleep. What if I would be one of those teachers who lets certain kids get away with murder? I would feel terrible to be either of those types of teachers, but maybe those kinds of teachers think that they're good teachers. I don't know.
I really have no clue about anything I want to do if I grow up. We're right back where we started.
That makes me think. Have I ever gone through an experience to end up right back where we started? Let's think about that. I'll use eighth grade as the example. Before eighth grade, I'd never had to work in school. Sure, there was a while in seventh grade where I had issues with the math. Before eighth grade, I had never gotten a letter grade below a B in my life. I got two C's in Algebra and there were a few weeks where I was getting a D in Science and had to go to Academic Improvement. Me, girl who prides herself in just being smart, getting a D in Science. The real reason that I got a D was because we were supposed to be memorizing the periodic table, and I can't memorize much of anything. It took me over two years to memorize my new phone number after the fire, and I've never memorized an address besides for my house- even though there were two and a half years when I lived somewhere else. Maybe the real issue here is school smarts versus just being smart. Maybe I'm just smart, or imagination smart, but what really matters at school is being school smart (aka good at school). Are the people who are good at school good at life? I don't think so. There were some kids in my foods and sewing class who had never sewn anything, and the only things that they could cook were something along the lines of popcorn and sandwiches. Neither of those are cooking. There's some people that, if out on their own, would be able to do just about nothing. If you're good at this kind of stuff, does that make you life smart? Do life smarts translate to just smart?
Here's an example: I have a friend who has a very high lexile score (I think it was around 1400). My lexile score is 1245. The average lexile score for someone in ninth grade honors English is around 1100, to give you an idea of what a good score is. Apparently there are some people in my grade who have lexile scores of 200, but I doubt that I know any of them (I hang out with the nerdy people). Back on the topic of this friend with the high lexile. I rarely see her reading, and I never realized that she had that much in the way of language skills. Let's call this friend X, just to make things easier. X herself said that she was surprised by how low my score was compared to hers, considering how much I read. I tried to make excuses about my score, such as the fact that I read very easy books compared to some things my friends read. I also reread things a lot, which probably doesn't do anything for my vocabulary skills (I've read The Diary of Anne Frank like, seven times. I've lost count of how many times I've reread the Harry Potter books, but let's just say that it's a lot.) I have trouble in English too. We're reading The Odyssey, and let's face it, it's kicking my ass. I understand nothing of it. Well, barely anything.
Speaking of English class (See that segway sentence grandma? Was it even my grandma who was the proponent of segway sentences, or was that my dad?). My English teacher brought this up today: Do you like the city where you live? Do you think that, in ten years, if someone asked you if this city was a good place to grow up, what would you say to them? She was saying about how when she was young, she thought that her hometown was a pretty good place. Looking back, apparently she thinks it wasn't really a good place to grow up as she didn't really fit in because of her religion and how long her family had lived there. When I think of this city, I don't like it. I don't think it's a great place to be, it kinda sucks. It has the cons of a small town (nothing ever happens) and all the cons of a big city (loud, too many people, bratty little rich kids, consumerist society). It's odd that I think this, because out of everyone in my grade, I'm one of the more likely people to live here forever. I know that my parents are going to live here forever, and even though this place feels so damn confining, I realize how used to it I've gotten- I've never actually lived anywhere else. How hard would it be to adjust to new surroundings?
Does everyone adjust the same way? At the same speed? I don't think so. I think that adjustment speed is a very individual thing. It takes me a pretty long time to get used to things. Friend X and I were discussing this the other day at quizbowl: We both still think we're in eighth grade. She had said that the novice team from another Hi! School totally didn't look like they were novice, they looked old enough to be in Hi! School. We both chuckled when she realized what she had said, but I think that just makes the point a whole lot clearer. We never really grow up.