Utter Rubbish

My parents are silly silly people. They keep on messing up my ideas of what I want to do with my life.

As the year goes on, engineering -- electronic engineering, more specifically -- is looking more and more attractive. Damn it. It would be so much easier if I could just be sure that I wanted to do all these law and humanities papers which are also very very tempting.

Parent teacher interviews tonight, and it's sort of clear where my strengths lie at the moment -- physics and calculus. Calculus more than physics. It's so much more straight forward than these waffly subjects with their damned grey areas. Plus! No essays. Big big plus. Much prefer an exam where I have to solve lots of equations and things to one where I have to write an essay.

Essays are silly things.

Mum reckons I should consider engineering on the grounds that I'm likely to be one of the very few girls in the class and engineers get paid lots. I do love my parents :)

And, of course, there's the fact that I really do enjoy working out mathematical equations. It gives me a perverse sort of pleasure.

On the other hand, there's Law/ whatever I choose to do in a BA. Lots of essays :P But lots of fun, no doubt, too. That sort of thing really does interest me (well what I'm looking at for my BA more than law: I'm not really sure about law, to be honest), and I've proven that I can do well in that sort of essay. And what with my debating, it seems the natural course for me.

I'm sure there's room in the universe for someone with a double degree in engineering and law >.>

Wow. Honestly. Nationals was rather amazing and brilliant and all-round great. Exhausting, too, but that just adds to the insanity of the adrenalin rush.

OK, first things first. We made it into the final, but didn't win. So, in effect, Wellington Gold is the second best secondary schools debating team in the country. Which is nice, but... Winning would have been nicer :P But I'm happy. My goal was to get into the final, and we did that.

I am, however, very happy about that final. Even if it wasn't our team's best debate (and to be frank, it really wasn't), it had to be one of the best speeches I've delivered as a debater. Which is very cool. That's one of the biggest reasons I enjoy these tournaments: having debates relentlessly follow each other really helps you improve. You can take something away from one adjudication and immediately put it into practice. The same thing happened at nationals as happened at the regional tournament: I came out of the weekend a much better debater.

What's more, it honestly was great fun. There is nothing like a weekend where a group of like-minded geeks come together to do what they love, at a very high quality. I must say, Prem A is going to pale in comparison to the quality of team mates and opposition I've had at nationals. It's a sad thought that I'm not going to debate with Wellington Gold, or have such great coaches yelling at me until I offer more POIs, or actually manage to structure my speeches. As much as it ate up all of my spare time, I did love prepping for nationals.

In other news: I got the mark back for the second assignment of this theology paper! I was so shocked when I saw it that I honestly looked all over the mark sheet to try and find the real grade. Then I burst into tears. I actually did. For I managed an A+...!

And through that experience I learnt that combining an exhausted, sleep-deprived, low-blood-sugar Johanna who's been on an adrenaline high all weekend with an honest-to-God bloody brilliant surprise isn't always the best idea.

I feel like posting :D

Okay, so as I said before, nationals this weekend. Tomorrow, really. We were talking about a few things in light of that today, and someone brought up lucky charms and the like. Now, I've never been one to have lucky charms, but I'm in an odd situation. I was in France for New Years' and over there they have a tradition with something called a "Fièvre". Basically, they bake a cake and put one in. If you find it in your slice then it's supposed to bring you good luck for the rest of the year. Sort of like silver pennies in Christmas pudding but less rewarding in the monetary sense.

Anyway, I won two Fièvres in France. Talking to the people there, they said they put them in their pencil cases for exams and the like, which I thought was pretty neat. So I'm wondering if I should take it with me to Nationals for good luck.

All that made me curious: what do other people do? Do you have a lucky charm or something which you always take with you? Or a before-exam/big event ritual to psych you up? Or do you prefer to place your trust in God, or your own abilities?

So yeah, if you don't know, debating nationals is this weekend. And I'm competing. I'd love if you could come watch, if you're in Wellington. The debates are held at the law school, although I'm not sure where exactly. Here's the timetable:

Saturday 24 May:

9.15AM: Round One: This House believes New Zealand should elect its members of Parliament by FPP rather than MMP (Prepared debate).

11.30: Round two: Same moot, different side

3.15PM: Round three: limited prep

Sunday 25 May:

10.00AM: Round four: limited prep

1.30PM: Round five: limited prep

4.00PM: semi-finals

Things will run over time, of course. I hope to see some of you there!

O'Shea was awesome. Srsly. If you don't know what I'm talking about then basically it's a huge speaking competition between a pile of Catholic schools in the lower North Island area. Hosted in Napier this year. Awesome weather. Awesome times. Awesome "jumping pillow". Not so awesome talking toilets.

I can't be bothered doing a proper write-up, though. Not now. Exhausted. Want beeeeed. Debating nationals next weekend. Fuck.

I do have photos though! And someone else might do a more in-depth entry for you if you're lucky. Or maybe I will some time.

Photos!

Okay, so life is stressful. Why does everything have a nasty tendency to hit at once? It's quite probably my own fault, but I don't like to admit that.

I won't bore you with what's going on in my life at the moment.It's a lot :P I miss weekends! I miss afternoons! I miss free time in general!

And I have a question for you: what would you do if someone told you to meet them at the BP on Molesworth St? (Ignore this if you aren't a Wellingtonian, obviously)

What advantages does having universities of an international standard give society?

The thing I like least, and therefore procrastinate most, about any formal piece of writing (essay, speech etc.) is the introduction

I'm sure you can imagine how inconvenient this is, seeing as one does tend to write the introduction first. It's not hard to like this to my general skills of procrastination.

I mean, the intro's so important! If you start well you should be able to go on well, to begin with. It's your one chance to really grab the attention of your reader or listener. And it pisses me off when it isn't 100% perfect.

I stress over it big time, basically.

And it turns out that introductions are actually one of my greatest strengths! I mean, wtf. I got my first essay back from the Theology course I'm taking over the weekend and that's what the tutor liked most (speaking of that essay, I was 0.1 of a mark away from an A- :( ). I've started impressing the debating coaches (I'm talking about the Wgtn rep team here) with my opening sentence... Which I procrastinate thinking of until I'm standing up there getting ready to speak.

Doens't make much sense, really.

(Can you tell I'm procrastinating? >.>)

Today has been a ying-yang day of maths.

I'm pissed off at the stupid mistake I made in the trig internal today which may well cost me Excellence. Maths is not a subject I want to be seeing Merits in.

On the flipside, I've been accepted into Vic Uni's "Gifted and Talented Programme" for maths -- but may not be able to attend because one of the sessions is during debating nationals.

I really want to go though. I'm such a geek :D

The y13 French class would greatly appreciate if you could become Prime Minister, kplzthx.

Today has been a rather interesting day, full of conversations with random people on the train.

And by "full of" I mean to say that I happened to have two. But let's not worry about the semantics.

The first was with a lovely old lady, who was on her way to a euthanasia conference. I have a feeling that this had more to do with the fact that she was a nurse than the fact that she was old, but it was still interesting 'cause that's what I should be writing about at the moment for R.S. >.>

We talked about lots of things: travel, literature, American spelling (...:P). It's always nice when you strike up random conversations on the train. Train journeys in the sort of weather we've got at the moment aren't the most interesting of things.

The second conversation was of an entirely different nature, and was interesting more for the insight it gave than for its actual content. The conversation went something like this:

Cleaner: "Is it all right if I sweep here? In my country, you wouldn't clean with other people there. But I don't know about New Zealand, and I have to do my job"
Me: "Yeah, sure, go ahead. I don't have a problem with it."
Cleaner: "In my country, in Iraq, it would never be like this. But I think New Zealand is different. I think it must be because of Maori, but I don't speak Maori."

Well, that's paraphrasing the conversation. I don't exactly have verbatim memory.

But yeah, you can see what I mean about insight. I'd say this guy was a pretty recent immigrant, as in a couple of months or something.

That Maori comment is a little odd, though.

So I get on the computer with the best of intentions. I'm going to research the Prem A debate (which is Tuesday. Fuck.), research stuff for French AND for R.E., and maybe even do a bit of research for the cert team's next debate.

As soon as Firefox loaded all my motivation evaporated. It's gone.

I really don't want to write this stupid English Essay, either

Silly school.

So I'm writing the first essay for this Theology course. The essay question is "Were the Gnostics Christian?"

The way I'm writing it, I'm comparing and contrasting the beliefs of the Gnostics to those of the Christians. The Gnostic stuff is easy: I have piles of resources on them through the course book and the Otago Library's online resources.

I run into trouble when I start talking about Christianity. Even though this is a paper on Early Christian History, it doesn't go over central Christian beliefs. That's not what this paper is about. I've got no trouble writing the bits about the Christians (being Christian myself and coming from a Christian family I do, funnily enough, understand Christian views towards God and Jesus); but when I come to referencing? It's hell. I don't have anything. I keep on having to go to the Bible to find things, and that's not exactly the easiest place to look.

Even with all those fancy keyword searches I'm having trouble finding things to back up statements such as The Christian Fathers of the time taught that there is One God, perfect and infallible, who created the world in his image and then sent his only son to redeem humankind , or The Christians believed that Christ was human. Not exactly out-there concepts!

Silly Bibles. And I can't even use the Catechisms because they were written based on the Nicean Creed, which was written later than the time period I'm discussing.

Honestly. Silly Christians.

Well not really but I'm feeling happy now :D

I just Aspired Brown at TV.net! :D And if you don't know what that means then don't worry >.>

In other exciting news, I adjudicated a debate today! Mrs Herder tracked me (and Jess) down in calc, as WGC were looking for an adjudicator for their junior cert debate. And I volunteered.

It was actually the first time I've adjudicated, which was a little nerve-wrecking. I think I did okay though. I also think I was perhaps a little harsh >.> I did concentrate on the negatives, but how else are they supposed to improve?

I gave the debate to WGC, by the way, but best speaker went to one of the Marsden girls. The moot was "That taggers are the scourge of our community" or some such.

So that was exciting :D And the Girls' team gave me an Easter egg. Bribery of the adjudicator ftw!

(Disclaimer: I received the egg after the debate. I had no knowledge of it before hand. I do NOT accept bribes. Don't start thinking you can use me as an adjudicator and bribe me :P)

Oh and I've got a little oboe solo at band too :D

I have a problem. Actually, as I'm sure you all know I have many problems, but I grew a new one yesterday.

What happened yesterday? The McVeagh regional debating tournament is what. The SMC team had varying degrees of success (actually, the only team we lost to was the team that went on to win the tournament) and almost made it through to the semis. We ended up being ranked 5th in the competition.

But! There was another debate at the same time as the semis (same moot and all) for individuals they were interested in. I got picked for that. The moot was That we would sign a free trade agreement with China or some such, which was rather horrible. I don't do economic debates, especially not with only half an hour to prepare.

I must have done something right, though, because I was selected for the Wellington team! \o/

Which means I'll have to drop a few things :( I'm thinking it'll be Sheilah Winn and something else (possible coaching debating: I'm not getting much out of that team) to go, but it's still rather sad. Any suggestions for how to manage my rather hectic timetable?

This is what my hair looked like last night

And this is what it looks like now

The photos aren't great, but you'll all manage :P

Does anyone here know anything about Turkey in the 1970's? If you do it'd be great it you could tell me for our debate :D On TUESDAY.

Being our last year, Athletics Day was much more enjoyable than it has been in the past. It was also much more throat-destroying.

And, of course, I have photos.

( A bit of a rant )

...Is apparently the WAGGGS topic thing for 2008, so in honour of that Caryl, Mary and I wrote a special version of the hymn Brother, Sister.

One verse was not included in the official version due to censorship issues. Guess which! :P

It gets better as it goes on. That said, it's just a bit of fun and therefore not brilliant. Without further ado:

Brother, Sister, let me wash you,
Let me cleanse your dirty socks.
Pray that we may keep this water,
Keep it for the ye-e-ears to come.

Water to make clean your tresses,
Water to-o sate your thirst.
Seventy-five per-cent water,
Water is our mai-ai-ain ingredient.

Water water everywhere,
Bu-ut not a drop to drink.
That's because we live in Africa
Please send us some fo-o-o-reign aid.

If we lived in Afghanistan,
We could instead smoke opium.
But that too requires water
Damn it we are re-e-eally fucked.

Water is our life-giving spirit
Without it we would be quite thirsty.
Water conservation is a global matter
Come let's do-o-o our part.

Normality has returned to St Mary's: there are once again girls walking around bearing the seventh form badge.

The insane part is that it's our year