Friends

Throughout highschool I have made an endless number of friends. I feel very luck to have so many. Even though many of them have gone to college we remain friends and still get together whenever we can. I've gone through some rough times, and without my friends I'm not sure if I would have made it. I'm not one of those people who, being a girl only hangs out with friends who are girls. In fact this year you will most often find me with my friends Colton, Scott, and Tyler. I am the odd one out, and they don't let me forget this. Sometimes it does bug me a little, but looking back on this school year, I wouldn't have had it any other way. Those guys are hilarous, and we've had some pretty ridiculous times. When the Christmas decorations went on sale for 90% off at Dollar General, we bought out the supply of spray cans of snow for window decorating. For about two weeks we snowed two or three peoples cars a day, and sometimes each other. We also bought pool noodles recently, tore them in half and used them to fight with. That was one of the best days of the week by far, maybe even the best days of the semester thus far. People may think it odd that I hang out with a group of guys, but honestly, I'm not too worried about it. We're all friends, we're having fun, and thats all that matters. I'm not saying that these three guys are the only friends I have, or that they're the only ones I hang out with. No, that's not how it is at all. But there are days that if it weren't for these three guys, I wouldn't even worry about coming to school. They've made my senior year a memorable one, and so have so many of my other good friends. For that, I thank you all, and I owe each one of you a huge high five.

Speech

Yesterday was the district speech contest and I had high hopes. Being a senior, I knew that this would be my last year to make state and show everyone what I have learned being a part of the speech team. At the beginning of the season I had a great deal of finding a script. For anything. Having had a great deal of success in Humorous prose all through high school, I wanted to find a great humor script and just kick major but in humorous. I found nothing, and was left greatly disappointed. As disappointed as I was I did not become discouraged. I was the team captain and the only senior on the team, so I had to show my team mates that even though you might stuggle and hit some road blocks, if you have determination you can still succeed. And i did succeed. I threw together an entertainment last minute before a meet and place at two meets with it. Before conference I picked up a simple humor speech, not at all what I was looking for, but I placed at conference with it. Christie and I also picked up an amazing duet script that looked very promising. We did great with it. The duet became my only hope to make state, and even though I have school and work to worry about, I worked on that duet in the mornings with Christie, and worked on my lines alone when I could find time.

I was very nervous yesterday for the meet. I was so afraid that I was going to choke, and let Christie, Coach Lee, and the entire team down. Christie and I walked into the room out of breath and nearly sweating because we had just lugged our heavy table up 3 flights of stairs to the third floor of Perkins County High School. We were first up to speak. We had to take a minute or two to catch our breath and then we were ready to go. This tiny classroom was full. There were people standing along the back wall because there was no more sitting room.

Christie and I looked at each other, checked the judges, and then we began. I was so nervous about my lines I was shaking and felt sick to my stomach. Going first in a round is often very intimidating, but I'm glad we were first. We rocked it. Both of us nailed our lines and performed great. I felt very confident that we placed well and hopefully qualified for state.

At awards we were standing awaiting our medals and all the nerves returned. Christie and I recieved fourth place and did not qualify for state. Now, I know my opinion is a biast one, but honestly I felt as though we had beaten every duo in that room, and to recieve fourth was an insult. Districts is very different than the rest of the season and anything can happen. As dissappointed as I am, I feel as though I had a very good senior season.

Seattle bound?

Ok. So college is staring us all in the face. Its pretty much invading each and every one of our bubbles, and I'm not gonna lie, I'm really kind of scared. Don't get me wrong, I am hardcore excited to get out of the house and make a worthy attempt at making it in the real world on my own. I think I'll be able to handle it, I've pretty much been doing well on my own since the beginning of last summer. But its not being on my own that scares me. Its where I want to go that scares me. I want to go to the Art Insititute of Seattle really bad. I have this evil plan to attend there, get my Bachelors Degree of Fine Arts for graphic design and take over the world via advertisments. Just kidding. Anywho. I've lived in the panhandle my entire life. I've moved 3 times, but never have I once moved out of the panhandle. It's sad I know. I've also always lived in the country. I sort of lived in town this past summer....but only sort of. So a move to the ginormous city of Seattle would be quite the culture shock for me.

I think, however, that the change would be good for me. I mean I want to get out there, see what the real world is like for myself. And, I suppose, if that means diving headfirst into a city i don't know, then so be it. I think that the landscape would be very pretty up there. I like rain so that factor won't be be too much of a problem. Hopefully there will be somewhere that I can longboard. If not I'll go crazy. And I think the music scene up there is supposed to be pretty sweet.......

Anywho, I'm really pretty scared about the whole situation....

The Declining American Economy (halfway finished)

A little over a week ago newspaper headlines confirmed what the American people have been suspect of for months now. The American Economy is in a recession. As I read those very headlines I thought to myself, "Ok, great. Now tell us something we didn't know." The effects of the economy are felt at home on a daily basis by everyone. Families across the nation are having to be more careful and observant of their spending. Cutting spending on vacations, extra luxuries, and minimizing use of fuel, families are feeling this recession in their pocketbooks. Now, the cause of this recession is not the decrease in spending by the American people. No, it started long before Americans stopped spending their own money. This recession that we are currently in began in Washington D.C. with poor government spending.
Ever since I can remember the U.S. has been fighting some sort of war in the Middle East. Currently thousands of American soldiers are stationed in Iraq. Now, if I do recall the issue of oil in Iraq was brought up to President Bush, and he stated that U.S. forces were not fighting there because of oil. We are over there to liberate the Iraqi people from totalitarian ruler, Sadaam Hussein, search for weapons of mass destruction, and help establish democracy in their government. So, what our President is trying to tell us that our reliance on the Middle East for fuel has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that we are spending millions of dollars doing damage control there. I beg to differ. The U.S. is fueled by oil. And unstable governments in the countries of which we get our oil or close to those countries could stop our readily available oil supply. Our dependence on foreign oil is a problem. It is a problem that we have more than enough resources to solve. There are alternative fuels that we, as a nation, could begin using in order to "wean" ourselves from foreign oil. This dependence also causes unnecessary spending on insanely expensive crude oil. It seems to be that when our country irritates the wrong people in the middle east, we pay for it by watching the price of oil per barrel sky rocket. The American government and people must become less dependent on foreign oil if we expect our economy to get better.

Compare and contrast

When I was younger I used to love coming to school. I'm not joking, during the summer I would complain about how I missed school and how I couldn't wait for it to start again in August. During the school year, I would wake up early with ease just to get ready for class. I was always excited about school and something that was going on during or amongst the class. School presented me with challenges, it was my escape from home. Now, however, as a senior in high school I find it more and more difficult everyday to drag myself out of bed just to get ready for school. School has become boring, tedious, a waste of time. I am no longer excited about school because it no longer presents a challenge for me, so I've given up on trying. It is no longer an escape because with everyone in class perpetually gossiping, you can't escape anything. I can not wait to graduate this spring. I am told I will miss high school once its gone, and if you had asked me 5 years ago if I was going to miss it, I most likely would have said yes. But now, now I don't believe I will.

My Thanksgiving.

This one is for all of you who are going to ask me how my Thanksgiving went. I'm going to be completely blunt and honest here, it was pretty much just another day. Except I got to eat pie. I worked all break, which even though I really need the money, it sucked. People are crazy durnig the holiday season. And I'm not just talking about shoppers here. Employees at your friendly local Target can get a little crazy as well. Me being one of them. Try getting food for 10 impatient cutomers all at once....by yourself. The person who was supposed to be helping me was stolen by the floor team. Damn them. I literally was running around back there trying to keep everyone happy. No joke. Not once have I ever panicked back there in that little hole in the wall they call Food Avenue, but Friday I did. I just wanted to sit down and cry. But I made it through, barely. So just so you know, everyone should be a little kinder to food service employees. We work hard trying to make you people happy so have a little patience once in a while. All weekend I was running on no sleep and Red Bull. It wasn't a bad weekend. Like I said, just another weekend I had to survive.

Awkward Turtle defined.

Alright so i'm going to be honest here I don't really know what it is or why it is what it is. So stop doggin on me about it. But instead of the real definition, I'll give you mine. So the awkward turtle is something I learned during speech last year, but I didn't really start implementing it until this summer. You see I seem to be really good at getting myself into awkward situations and conversations, usually I only make the situation worse. Well, whenever one of these situations arises I just throw up the awkward turtle so that way everyone around is aware that Tessa is feeling awkward. That's it. Sorry I can't help you understand better but that's all I got. :)