It is done.

Assignment Book

whats finished is highlighted.

as of wednesday night/thursday morning:























as of monday night:























as of saturday night:

a few things, since its been a while

--i spent five weeks at governors school and it was so good. i cant even tell you. i have new friends, mary alice, elizabeth, rachael, meredith, ann tyler, sarah beth, alex, heidi, jordan, everyone. my religious studies teacher is out of his mind. i got As. i played kind of a lot of tetris. i love everyone.

--i went with kristen to see nathans band play at the new daisy. they were really good. tommy scudders band played too and their violinist blows my mind.

--i slammed my finger in hatties car door last night going to midnight harry potter. it throbbed like hell and it still hurts. but harry potter was amazing. i mean seriously. i thought the fourth was good but this was a miracle. luna and bellatrix were perfect. i want neville to kill her.

--my english 1010 online has four weeks to go. its coming along with really no problem. the mcs policy, however, has decided i need 1010 and 1020 to make up for senior english, so yesterday i started 1020. it is a real live class 530-730 MTWR. it is boring and i will not like it, but it is only a month long. i have to keep saying, next summer ill be free, next summer ill be free.

--i have given up several things for the month of july, or more accurately july7-august7. i am sort of tired of feeling gross all the time.

--today i went to the dentist and for the first time they mentioned the tooth thats been wrong since i can remember, and if we can afford it we will get it fixed. i know its an aesthetic issue but it has bothered me forever and i want my teeth right.

--i have until next friday to reread the fifth and sixth books. i was thinking of trying to do them all but with two classes theres just not time if i want to see anyone between now and then.

--everyone please come home soon. too many are out of town.

i am home. i am tired. i have been awake since approximately eight o clock yesterday morning. i have six hours of college credit and about eight or nine new friends.

write please

Sara Stephens
Governor's School for the Humanities
G218R Browning Hall
The University of Tennessee at Martin
Martin, TN 38238

(this is really the right address now. it was wrong before but not anymore.)

hows it going? hows it gonna go?

[the following is a jumble.]

im really glad this isnt spring break because i would feel jipped. this week has jetblasted on by. i dont even know what all ive done. i just got back from about 25 hours at lauren huddlestons house. we watched at least six movies i think. im listening to a lot of damien rice and modest mouse, an unlikely combination but that is how my summer is going, hot and fast and sweet and electified! i bought a dress and i need to cash my government money so i can get more more more before sunday. so little time! yesterday i got a voicemail from troy asking me to counsel at the shore next week. today i have to call and tell him i cant because i have to go to governors school. i know i will love it there but im afraid i will miss out on counseling because of it. there are still three more chances but what if thats not enough? who knows. morgan left and we have six and a half weeks apart, our longest separation since we were reunited in sixth grade.

the summer will be exactly what it needs to be. everything everywhere all the time all at once, and thats what i want. im not worrying, just thinking. planning, looking forward, looking up and around. i need to start packing, its a long trip.

I NEVER HAVE TO GO BACK TO HIGH SCHOOL EVER AGAIN. NOT EVER.

for posterity

saturday was prom. no one really knew exactly what we were doing all afternoon until morgan made some executive decisions and everything worked out. at five-ish andy and annebel and cameron came over for look-pretty-for-mommy pictures, then we went and picked up michael and then morgan, whose dress was a huge puffy white wedding dress that was amazing. we all met eileen and will, martha and ryan, and bekka and newman at pete n sams in a party of 12 and ate and then everyone but eileen and will got to prom earlier than we should have probably, at about 840 and it started at 8. annebel looked so beautiful. prom was as great as i hoped even though there was no punch. we had a booty circle and danced on the chairs and stayed mainly on the edges of the too-small dance floor. other than my party i saw mainly kristen, hattie and preston, nathan and jesse, and eric some. the highlight, however, came only shortly before the end of prom, when i danced with chi zhang to knuck if you buck. oh what a time! we were the last people to leave and the lady cleaning up said "come on, partys over."

we again didnt know what we were going to do but we decided to go to ryans dads in harbor town. i took annebel and cameron home and met the rest at marthas and off we went over the high bridge and around the corner. we stayed up late and ryan made eggs and we all mostly fell asleep during the life aquatic, about 330.

at 8 ryan was up already because i guess he hates us all, and we got up except for bekka and took a morning walk most of the way to the other end of harbor town and back and i didnt wear shoes. when we got back we went by the pool and stuck our feet in. ryan and martha and michael swam for real but it was too cold for me. bekka joined us and newman left and we went to the arcade for breakfast/lunch. eileen and will joined us. after eating we crossed the street and tried on silly things at american apparel. then we dispersed, and that was prom.

"i regret to announce, this is the end."

today was the last day for the seniors who dont have to take exams. so i wonder who did i see today i will never see again? is this ridiculous? or who will i see at prom and then never again? who will i see next friday and then never again? there are 2400 people at my school and four or five hundred of them are running off to disappear just like me. who will be forgotten in a year or ten? who will forget me?

i want my friends to remember me but im afraid they wont. no matter how close i am to them now will i look behind me and see we were friends for only a year? will they? of the seven of us, five have been friends since middle school, and two we just recently picked up but i love them. i dont want to be a footnote in marthas and ryans memories in a decade. the former i knew only in passing before this year, the latter spoke to me only once before this year, but we have spent the whole year in plays together. both of them i know every day.

will we keep in touch, is it true? will you all be my friends from high school i see sometimes at holidays? will i send you cards at christmas or will we be together? the concept of college is beautiful and necessary but once jonathan larson said, "what binds a fabric together, when the raging shifting winds of change keep ripping away?" and there you have it. right now we are all in love with each other or at least i am in love with all of you. i am in love with at least the six rest of you and at least four or five more and when we go away where will we go? how many of us will settle in little memphis and how many need to get out and stay out? i dont want to recognize the possibility that we will not all always be exactly like we are, but we wont be.

please, my friends, my darlings, keep loving me when i am gone. please if you love me now let there be a little place for me always. i cannot breathe without you and i need to know you remember me. i know that the greatest impact i will make on my high school will be leaving it. but what impact have i made on my friends? will i be mentioned by name in your memoirs? will you be in mine? when josh sigler is graduating, when he is writing his high school days at the end of them, will i be in the letter? i dont know.

i want to make a list: remember this from high school. i want to make a list but i dont want to have to make a list. i just want to remember. but i am so afraid i wont, so here is the list.

remember this from high school:

my friends, my very best friends, the ones i will always love, i am in love with them all and they are not in order: morgan, eileen, bekka, ryan, newman, martha, hattie, kristen, mercer, annebel. my friends, the ones who got me by: lilla, josh, chris, lena, sean, lane, huddleston. the friends i did not have: amelia and mouse, who left me too early and against their will. how i spent my time: novus, the ergolytes, moved, trezevant manor my first job, kelly green, bang bang youre dead. the teachers i loved: ms kitts, mr munter, ms lafon, herr sturgis, mr cartwright, mr stephenson. the teachers i hated: mr smith, ms douglas, ms haughton, mr whitehead, ms sugarmon. the places i went: lakeshore, florida, the rope swing, the river, mpc, harbor town, otherlands. the horrible things: exams, dialectical journals, julius caesar, eileens 16th birthday party, losing at state, losing amelia. everything else. dance parties, wrestling, the summer of amelia, choir, michael ingersoll, the camry, the volvo, sadness mixes, ROME and ROAM, early mornings, birthdays, the warm air and the grass, matt birdsong, the spaniards, late nights. watching americas next top model or having pillow fights at bbyd rehearsal instead of rehearsing. learning math from ryan before kelly green rehearsal. everything about who is kelly green. sunburn, latin convention, thespian conference, the ani difranco concert. prom. popcorn and ovaltine. everyone i know.

this is it. the end. the finish. the destination. the next step toward independence, the next step toward being alone. my friends, please, if you love me now, remember me later. please, please, please remember me.

"unprecedented president"

is what i named my teddy roosevelt essay on the APUS exam, which was about 30% information and 70% "TR IS SO GREAT" because come on, he so is.

on friday i took the biggest test ever and when it was over whizzed on out of that building like a cat on ice, whatever that means. i took morgan and we whizzed on home for what else but popcorn and lost. i took her home to get a haircut but wouldnt you know it picked her up again that night and we went with brett to cks. i had a waffle i probably didnt need but man it was good. mfox and suzi were there and when we left we had to stop by my house to get an insurance card but ended up staying and watching harry potter and blood drips on newsies square. i took brett home and morgan and i went to sleep in my room.

she woke up before me but i got up too and we watched more lost and i took her home and took a walk and had annebel over for probably the second-to-last precal attack ever. we got very very frustrated and no one was in the house and annebel said "we have to get out of here" so we got in the car and drove and drove. we went to the rhodes part of midtown and drove past some friends houses. ryan was on his porch and i waved. we went to harbor town which is over a steep bridge and i never even knew it was there. there is a park by the river but hardly anyone was there, and all the houses are big and bright and lovely. we found a frisbee but we have no skill with it. when we left we had to skip otherlands to get home for dinner and more math. i guess we got some done. i took her home at ten and went to sleep early because i was tired.

this morning i woke up at eight hurting all over and went into the bathroom and stayed there. then i had breakfast and was still hurting all over so i took some pills and went to get gas and mail some letters and get my mother presents. i got her the golden compass and a rufus wainwright cd and drew got her chocolate and coffee. after lunch mom and i went prom dress shopping. we went to oak court and searched dillards, macys, charlotte russe, banana republic, and a store i dont know, and we found nothing, so we went to flashback, garbos (which was closed), and the place that used to be moondance, and found nothing, so we went out to wolfchase and went to its macys and dillards and found nothing, and went to jc penneys and found a lot. so i got a dress, and i like it, but it needs to be hemmed.

now i am home and i had a lot of cereal and i yelled at annebel on the phone because i guess now that calculus is my only source of stress it sort of explodes when i get into it.

ten days left ever.

buble

Dragonfly out in the sun, you know what I mean
Butterflies all having fun, you know what I mean
Sleep in peace when the day is done
And this old world is a new world
And a bold world, for me

Stars when you shine, you know how I feel
Scent of the pine, you know how I feel
Yeah freedom is mine, and I know how I feel
It's a new dawn
It's a new day
It's a new life
For me

And I'm feeling--
good!

influential person essay, for ms wexler

As humans we are sometimes told that we are products of our surroundings, infinitely influenced by the environments in which we go about our little lives. Well, my surroundings are and have always been Morgan, so it must be that I am a product of her. When we met we were two years old, and when we part we will be two hundred. Living always within the reach of her sweet arm, I have no choice—and want nothing more—than to be shaped by her presence.

I take pride in, and admit shamelessly, my decidedly upstanding morals. Whatever they tell their parents or imply to their teachers, I know without doubt that most high school students at all levels are involved in drugs or alcohol or both; I am not one of them. I have grown up watching Morgan, who knows exactly the difference between having a glass of wine at dinner and not remembering what you did last weekend, and I have followed her. In the first four months of her life, before I was born, she must have learned all the wisdom on the earth and grown in mental leaps that take others decades to navigate. She and I don’t need any chemicals in us to have a good time; we have each other and plenty of hours of anything at all.

Because Morgan will hold my hands, I have survived high school. In the roughest weeks of teeth grinding and dark circles, she is awake too, and in the shadows of early morning, every step she can still take, I can still take. Every hour she can muddle through, I can muddle through. We are so bound that no boy scout could unlock our knots, just as no chiseled diamond could chip us away. We are earth and water. If she dies, I die.

Morgan exceeds me in all things except my love for her. I feel like a poet except when I read her perfect prose. I feel like an actor except when I watch her against the black background of a stage. She has led me into both of these passions, and in both she has risen above, but still I hang on; she will not let me fall, I am small but not left behind, I am complete and only myself or any self at all in the grasp of her tiny hand.

in 87 hours i will be taking the apus history exam. in 90 hours it will be over.

this week is so so so so so so so so bad. i know it. next week though. oh man. awesome.

may day

this is a list of foods that taste good but make me feel horrible after i eat them. i will not be eating them in the month of may. this is a commitment i dont know if i can keep. but i want to feel better.

bagels
ice cream
chips
muffins
pasta
fried foods of all kinds
rice

"bang bang i wish you were all dead"

is probably what the judges put on our comment sheets at state. we got fifth place. out of five. lauren said "we're not here to win, we're here to do a good job." but since we got last i guess we didnt do that either.

but its done.
over.
forever.

and i am not relieved.

dance party was last night which was nice for mollifying the melancholy. we boogied pretty hard and had a little fight and in the morning lounged on blankets in the yard and fought with sticks and rolled around on scooters and skateboards.

i was so tired of bbyd but now its over i really dont know what to do with myself. i mean, its been five months. i mean, i am really, really sad.

wish i had a boy to kiss me better and wrap me all up in limbs. wanna hold my breath in his neck and close my eyes and fall down and feel safe.

personal statement one, for ms wexler

When I am tired and busy for weeks and weeks I dream over and over about my teeth falling out. The internet says that that indicates a sense of powerlessness, but I know it indicates a certain type of fear, the creeping kind that always gets at me when there are not enough hours in the day and I feel like I’m not getting anything accomplished. I always wake up shaking with my hands clawing at my mouth.

I hate when I try to say something beautiful and it just comes out as facts. I wish everything I said fell out like water on rocks and was beautiful but usually it isn’t.

After grad school I want to build wells in Africa for a year, then spend some time teaching kids in Namibia, then marry a man like Anatole and move back to America to teach college in Arizona or New Mexico until I’m old and deaf. If I’m successful, my campaigns for saving Africans and promoting proper grammar will outlive me.

In the summer of 2005, I got up at six in the morning to protest “Love in Action”—a program that tries to convert (mostly unwilling) gay teenagers to heterosexuality—because I know that God loves everyone.

My middle school principal said no when I tried to skip the eighth grade, but now that I am skipping the twelfth grade he is saying yes. If he had said no again I would have done it anyway because I hate high school and I don’t need it anymore. College is what I need now and I know that beyond any doubt. My friends pout and ask me why I’m leaving them, and I say, “because I have to.”

When I get letters from universities telling me about how exciting it must be for me to be beginning to think about college, I laugh. I have been thinking about college since the fourth grade and actively searching since seventh.

No one will ever love me because I have a huge head. That’s probably not true.

I can’t strike a match.

My fingernails are soft. I know the sign language for “secretary.” I taught myself how to make an omelette. Before I die, I want to play Little Red Riding Hood in Into the Woods. I can’t dance but I do anyway. I love yellow roses.

I’m trying to define myself for you, College, because I want you to know what I’m here for. I’m here to study creative writing because the only thing that I know I will always love is words. I’m here to study history so I don’t repeat the mistakes of my ancestors. I’m here to learn every language I can because the only way I can be happy is if I go everywhere.

I am here because every time a teacher tells me I’m being prepared for the real world, I know that either I’m already prepared, or I’m already there.

gifts

in no particular order...

college gave me 2 more k.
mr brown gave me his approval.
eileens mom gave me a pretty stellar recommendation.
amelia gave me hope for humanity (ie, to see her this summer)
ms wexler gave me a useless project.
my mom gave me a hint that could mean she is buying me a car.

letters

-i sent beth ryan an email letter asking her to write me a recommendation to counsel.
-i sent eileens mom an email letter telling her all the great things about myself so she'll write me a good recommendation to counsel.
-i got a big hefty letter from UE asking me to sign up for a meal plan and a dorm and summer orientation and to get a physical.
-i sealed the letter to UE with my housing application and meal plan form in it and will mail it tomorrow.
-i sealed the letter to UE with my summer orientation registration in it and will mail it tomorrow.
-i found the letter i tried to send lakeshore with my counselor application in it muddy on the ground in my yard because the storm knocked it off the mailbox before the postman came.
-i completed the counselor application letter again and glued in my pastors muddy signature with an explanation and took it to the post office today.

on a different note, i need to call danielle, lora jean gowan, steve may, and ray chandler, and convince them that i am morally sound and well-rounded and responsible enough to counsel their camps. i also need to do three precal homeworks and correct my test, tell mr stephe whether truman was a war criminal, and take a shower.

six more weeks and then some responsibilities ill enjoy.
ideal summer schedule (* = confirmed):
may27-june2: counsel treehouse 1
june3-july6: governors school*
july8-july14: counsel jr high 2
july15-july21: counsel jr high music/drama
july22-july28: sr high treehouse*
july29-august4: counsel elementary 4
august15-august21: florida*
august23: COLLEGE*

i just got sent the letter i wrote myself at lakeshore last summer. it couldnt have come at a better time.

feet

today i got an envelope from evansville. is was very big. inside was a purple folder. inside that were several letters and documents, the first of which started with "congratulations!" and the second of which also started with "congratulations" but then went on to eventually say "academic scholarship worth $12,000.00 per year."

i have submitted my nonrefundable admission deposit, securing my place in the university of evansville freshman class.

this is for real.
this is confirmed.
this is big.