Stuck in Quarantine Part 6

Today I received a call from my mom not to long ago and it was a call about the long awaited ACT score from the test that I took back in February. The ACT is a large part of arguably the biggest stressor amongst teenagers so the anticipation is rather great for today. Another large part of why I anticipated today so much is because that happens to be the very topic that I chose to write my junior theme on. As I became more informed about the standardized testing industry through my junior theme today marks a very important day for my future due to the way the testing situation has changed for me and all of my other fellow juniors. The ACT I took in February was the first actual ACT, but unlike the usual scenario for where I live, coronavirus has likely cancelled all standardized tests for the remainder of this school year (through July). This means that the one score that I received could be my deciding factor for colleges, forfeiting my ability for a potential super score opportunity or the ability to build up my overall test scores with one attempt. In order to combat this issue, some universities have announced that test scores are optional for the next year at the very least. I found this funny because this happened to be one of the solutions that I talked on in my Junior theme, I just did not expect the issue to be combated so soon, also I did not expect there to be a pandemic or school to be cancelled but here we are. So I am going to go find out my scores and this is my blog post, thanks for reading.

Stuck in Quarantine pt.5

Spring has always been a special time for me, since I have been born there have been two primary reasons but as I’ve grown up I have added a few more. Today I will go over what I look forward to in spring how how this one has been forever different. Since I was a little kid, something big has always came to me come April 23rd each year, and that was my birthday. My birthday always hyped up the spring season, slowing down the month of April at a rate that didn’t seem possible and this has continued until this year. My birthday is tomorrow and the month of April has flown by at the speed of light, not looking to slow down anytime soon. April this year was going to be different, and not because of quarantine. April this year was supposed to be packed with events and be one of the greatest months to date. I made varsity water polo and hoped for a excellent season to come, hoping to put a years worth of skills to use, unfortunately as of yesterday, the IHSA has officially cancelled the state tournament ending any potential chances to thrive with this years class and losing a prime year of potential recruiting. On top of that I was going to experience my first prom which was going to hopefully be amazing, experiencing it with many great people and going out and having the time of my life, unfortunately the event that was going to happen Saturday is likely no more as it becomes another victim to this virus. Something that continues regardless of the virus but isn’t as special this year is the gradual changing of the season that slowly lifts the weight of seasonal depression off of mine and many others shoulders. The end of the school year coming and the depression still remains. Yes time is flying, but the joy that should be coming along with summer is very absent. It crazy to think that instead of having the problem of making countless plans to go out with friends and not having enough things to do, we are now finding that to be our lone desire, go out and do anything. We are starting to see some nice days, but when going on the occasional bike ride or playing basketball is all you have to, it makes it a whole lot hard to find the pure joy that you desire.

Quarantine Pt. 4

Quarantine has brought all sorts of new habits and today I talk on another one. I have been able to spend more time at home, finding out more stuff about my house that I spend a small amount of time in if life were to be functioning normal at the moment. As a kid with divorce parents, splitting time at multiple houses has never been easy but quarantine makes it even more unique. We have been continuing our normally parenting schedule which involves a two week schedule of me moving me, my younger sister, and my younger brother back and forth from my mom and my dad’s house. My parenting schedule is unique, we’ll start today, Thursday April 9th for instance, I woke up at my mom’s house but after the e-learning day is over I’ll pack up to go and stay at my dad’s place until next Tuesday where I’ll finish the e-learning day at my dad’s place and then sleep at my mom’s place, then next Thursday I’ll have dinner at my dad’s then comeback that night and sleep at my mom’s. I will stay at my moms until next Tuesday when I have dinner at my dad’s and return to my mom’s to sleep again.  Then that Thursday will mark the end of the cycle and I’ll stay at my dad’s again. I tell you (the reader) about this because I find myself in a very different situation as a majority of people who are quarantining at one place the entire time while I still find myself moving a decent amount of times versus staying at one place which seems to be the “norm”. With the constant moving I am able to find a small system to get all of my stuff done, differing from my average workload at home which is normally minimal as I stay after school a majority of the time to get my work done. Quarantine has presented the challenge and an opportunity in the form of building a habit for doing work and being able to study at home, something that has been inconsistent for me throughout my high school lifestyle. I have been able to establish a environment were I am able to study and get all of my work done at home. I am moving between my moms and my dads today and I want to see if I can consistently keep this habit which has had trouble in the past. At the moment I have all of my class work laid out that after I’m done with this blog post I am going to have to reign in from all four corners of my basement and confine it in my backpack yet again. Quarantine has been unique and I have yet again been able to find I nice new habit to keep.

Stuck in Quaratine Pt. 3

Quarantine has brought something that I do not get to often during the school year: SLEEP! With my early bird classes and a need to get to the early bird shuttle before sunrise, my amount of sleep I was getting before quarantine was not optimal. I woke up at 5:45 am on an average day to get myself showered and ready for another day of school. I often didn’t get home until 9-10pm due to the timing of Water Polo both club and high school. Although the high school season started right before quarantine, allowing us to end practices closer to 7 or 8, the effect it had on me was yet to wear in. My body was on a scheduled timer, telling me to get to sleep at exactly 11:00pm every night, no later, no earlier. In quarantine I have greatly altered my sleep schedule, experimenting in habits that were nearly physically impossible if I wanted to function during the school day. I have found myself staying up tell 12am or as late as 2am playing video games with friends. I have set a soft bed time at around 12am, but I have often gone over it like I would if it were to be a rare sleep over party with the boys. The other night I told myself I was only going to start the movie Goodfellas, but I ended up watching the entire 2.5 hour Scorsese classic, finding myself finishing it at 3am. I enjoyed it though, there was lesser consequences for staying up tell 3am and I felt revitalized of sorts when I woke up, still having enough energy to go through my day. The movie also brought all sorts of foreign feelings that I have welcomed with the pandemic. The movie grasped my interest as I watched in off my phone in my bed, something I haven’t done in years. I was also able to use some of a friends advice in decoding Scorsese’s symbolism that he uses in the movie. My favorite most recognizable use of symbolism was the use of silhouettes, and how they could foreshadow the characters bad actions that they would commit a few moments later. My favorite example of it was the entire series of events during the killing of Billy Batts, from when he was insulting Tommy to when they killed him inside Henry’s nightclub. They knew that Billy Batts was a “made man” meaning he was 100% Italian and sponsored by a member of the mob. Being made was a sacred tradition, essentially a confirmation into the mafia, giving a person one of the highest honors known in the mafia realm. By killing Billy Batts, it put a heavy weight on Tommy, while Jimmy and Henry accompanied him to bury the body. They drove out to an undisclosed location in New York and buried the body and this is where the symbolism began. Throughout the scenes the men were picture in silhouettes, with a distinctly red background giving off a bad omen for what was to occur further down the line of the movie. At the end of the scene we see a shot of Henry, and right before the transition we see a dark silhouette over his face before a bright red flash on his face and a instantaneous transition into the next scene. Up to this point in the movie we saw a nearly entirely successful Henry Hill thrive in life, knowing almost everyone in the neighborhood in which he resides, watching a powerful uprising of this man into the life of a mobster. He treated people with respect and held a strong image of himself, doing things the right way (in the name of the mob of course). After we saw the red flash we began to see Henry and his fellow mobsters began to fall and show flaws in their lifestyle. Henry began to reject advice from those who helped get him there and he fell deep into one of the infamous killers of the mafia: drugs. I took notice of the use of silhouettes and also unusually bright “shadows” over characters to attempt to predict what were to occur throughout the movie. This became a great interest of mine over quarantine and although it has been limited to one experience thus far, it has been a memory grand enough to share over my blog.

Stuck in Quarantine Pt. 2

Quarantine has continued to bring interesting aspects of my life that I either haven’t seen in years or haven’t seen at all. Those aspects revolve around tasks that come from staying at home. The pre quarantine life left me rarely having time to do anything at home and now the roles have reversed as school is no longer where I spend the majority of my life. It brings back memories of when I spent longer amounts of time at home when I was a little kid. I spent more time at home as a kid because, well, I was a kid and I had nothing on my platter. Except in those days I lived down in the city, across the street from a park with endless possibilities of activities that I can do. Trapped in the confines of my own home nowadays marks a different era, a different way to find that dopamine release my mind is always after. Electronics have taken over my livelihood in the habits of quarantine, and what I like to do, although I may want to do something out of the ordinary I always find myself procrastinating whether or not to do it. I have found myself multitasking by having a video on my phone going and playing video games at the same time. The videos have often been the “This is not happening” series from Comedy Central on YouTube, the new Netflix original Tiger King, SNL, or just classic stand-up comedy. On the other hand, or part of my focus for better wording, the video games I have been playing quench the multiple different desires my brain puts in place. I have been playing games such as Minecraft the creative sandbox that allows my brain to shape whatever it wants, in survival mode of course. I also found myself playing loads of madden football, blowing out teams and having loads of fun doing it. Lastly, and easily the most important of the games I have been playing in my opinion, I have been playing Grand Theft Auto V. I have been playing the online version of GTA V with my friends on nearly a daily basis now as I look for the best way to feed my inner extrovert. Asking all of my friends if they’re online in hopes of being able to have fun socially without the in person aspect. We have been driving around tanks, blowing up cops, driving around fancy cars, gambling at the casino, running heist missions, messing around in our high end apartments, and much much more. GTA has became a virtual real life crime simulation that has yet to receive its state warranted quarantine order and I am definitely grateful for that. My life has had desires to venture out and try things such as makeshift mini golf in the house, but I have yet to execute that, but who knows what could be up on the next couple of blog posts, only time will tell.