So here I am. I am back after a long period of not writing, and I have brought a new blog layout and style with me.
It is Summer once again, and I am back at my summer job. Once again I'm working with bats, and I'm in the process of getting rabies shots that will let me work with live animals! This is exciting. Right now I'm doing work with analyzing pictures of wings with a high school volunteer my age. I'm having a lot of fun with it, even though I'm only two days in.
I love being on the 'cutting edge' of science even in a small way. It is interesting to note that the cutting edge is made of a lot more duct tape and zip ties than one ever imagines watching the discovery channel. Labs? Not the shiny white places that you have been led to believe. Offices? messy, filled with all sorts of odd things, from bags labeled 'skeletons,' (no, really) to comics, to origami bats. Or plush ones. Or wire ones. Or paper ones. There is a certain theme in the lab I am working in. I occasionally make a game of counting how many bats I can see from the place that I am sitting at any given time. The number is often in the twenties.
In terms of writing: the project is going well. I am now writing eight hundred words a day, which feels a little crazy since it is not november. I have 72162 words, not counting today's. That is, I suppose, pretty respectable.
Recently I have been working on a story about a pair of girls who go on a trip at the end of their time in high school. they split up on bad terms at the end of the summer, and do not talk for fifteen years. The story takes a break there, and picks up with the girl who walked off. She had decided to go on a trip to find her friend. I have more than twenty thousand words on that story, and I am pretty excited about where it is headed. I also write nonfiction pieces that are reflections on myself and my life pretty regularly.
Finally, on the academic front: I have finished Junior year of high school. Finally. It was long, hard, dreadful some might say. But I finished it, and I passed everything, even getting a solid B in Physics. I have signed up for five AP courses next year, and I have summer homework in five courses, including German four but not AP Statistics. Senior Year will be an adventure to say the least.
I have decided that I am not so sure about engineering, but that I might like to major in English literature, after loving my junior research paper. I wrote about feminism in Shakespeare's play, Cymbeline. Have I mentioned that I love Shakespeare? I do.
I have done some college visits, and right now Smith and Mt. Holyoke are my favorites. Who knows where I will actually end up.
