Prom Intensifies

I know everyone's talking about prom, but whatever. It's my first prom. I'm allowed to be cliché. I've made at least three shopping trips, had a three-hour appointment to get my hair dyed, and made arrangements to pick up friends and maybe even have a nice dinner before we arrive. It's going to be two hours of exhilerating fun- I haven't been to a dance since middle school, after all, and who knows what you're actually supposed to do when you go to those things? Does anyone actually dance? I sure don't know. I'll probably spend a lot of time standing around holding a cup of ambiguously flavored punch, but at least there'll be people I know and like to talk to, likely just as awkward as me.

But I'm not going to my school prom.

I'm going to the LGBT+ prom that Time Out Youth organizes every year, this year housed at the Van Landingham Estate. I feel infinitely more comfortable going there, as it has a much less strict dress code, allowing me to wear something that's not a ridiculously expensive dress, and as an added perk tickets are over fourteen times less costly than the school's prom tickets at $5 ($10 at the door). There's going to be food, friends, and as many flamboyantly dressed people as I can handle. 

I'd say it's going to be a good night. 

Day of Silence, Mark II or However Many of Things With This Title I've Blogged Before Plus One

The GSA meeting yesterday was a huge success. I managed to sign up people for table duty and create both a video and an announcement promoting the Day, and we still had time left to eat all the cookies people brought. I love being so engaged and productive, even though the GSA tends to be largely a social club, at least we can be corralled into doing things when it's necessary. 

It just hit me this morning that this is really happening. I'm really doing something. I'm really putting myself out there and people are going to see and I'm ready to face them. It feels good. I'm so excited. A week from today, something that I made happen is going to happen.

That said, if you're reading this, Monday and Tuesday of next week at lunch are the sign-ups, and on Friday everyone participating is going to meet in the MPR to get their palmcards and duct tape for the day. It remains to be seen how many people it's going to be- I'm hoping it's at least fifteen- but it's still happening, and I made it happen.

I made this happen. I'm allowed to be proud. 

Having a Voice

My voice is a powerful tool, and when I write I know I'm more eloquent, powerful, and skilled than when I'm speaking directly to someone, especially a group. I have the space to edit, rephrase, and clarify before I actually release my words to the world. I hope that these words have an effect on you, dear reader, and I hope that you respond to them as you feel compelled. 

I first seriously started to write in my freshman year, when I took the Creative Writing elective at my school. I loved it. We wrote a short story every day, only a page or so from a small prompt, and we talked about them and read each other's stories. The teacher encouraged us to write diverse, personal stories, but always the goal was to have fun with what we were doing. The entire class was entirely stress-free and very fun for me. I've kept up my story-writing ever since, mostly through a personal blog and transformative works, and I've made some of my best friends through sharing my writing with the world.

This year, though, in AP Language and Composition, we've had to write an awful lot of practice essays for the exam. These past few weeks, we've been pushing hard, especially on the opinion prompts, in which we are given some background on an issue, a quote, or a question about the nature of an abstract concept. I love having this opportunity to give my feelings- especially when I'm graded well for my ideas and the strength of my conviction. We write about the power of books (great but double-edged), the value of competition (more harm than good), the importance of nationality versus individuality (individuality encompasses nationality if you want it to, but nationality sometimes suppresses individuality). 

If I may flatter myself, I'm a pretty good writer. My experience has given me vocabulary, eloquence, and the kind of rhetorical skills you can't get out of a book. Using these skills is the great joy in my life. I have my school to thank for the baseline- but I also give myself credit for taking control and building my own way to recognition. I have my own kind of power. I just need to keep using it.

I know not all schools offer this level of rigor, or even writing classes at all. There's plenty of untapped skill out there in people who don't have opportunity or time to write as they might want to. It's hard to make something and to put it out there without compensation. I may never be able to make a living off of writing my stories; that's a fact I face and I will defy it if I can. I may even never formally publish my writing; providing well-written, diverse stories for free through the Internet is part of a new movement I'm a proud part of already. I can't predict the future, especially while I'm still so young and I have years ahead of me to pick up and drop careers, hobbies, commissions. I want to live my life proud of who I am and what I've done; that's all.

World of 7 Billion

I am very tired.

I think, at this point, most students are very tired. It's been a strange winter, and everyone says junior year is the hardest, but no matter what year you're in, it's always going to exhaust you. Even if you genuinely love learning, even if you have a passion for your subjects, the whole school institution stretches people, students and teachers, thinner than they have any need to be. The short timeline of the latest project- about a week- has been stressful, on top of all the other stresses. It's better that I worked alone- communication, quickly and comprehensively, is always difficult- but I'm still not quite satisfied with my product. 

If I had more time, I might be able to summon more to put into the video. I know that's what everyone says, that if there was only more time, if only, if only, if only, things would be better. The hope is that, in the future, there will be more time. I know that some regard it as an expression of indecisiveness or laziness, but that's not been my experience. Truly desparate people, struggling with difficult, human things, wish for more time. 

Well, now it's done. Now, on to the next thing, and the next, and the next. We'll see what happens. We can't know now. Isn't that always how it goes?

Service Via Video

We've been doing a lot with video production these past few weeks, with our charity work and  all the filming that our group's been doing. It's been a difficult process, made less smooth by circumstances, but we've been getting it done. I'm a little apprehensive for the next video project that we're doing for this class, but it'll be better, and even if it's not my favorite thing in the world, well. It's a skill, one that I can maybe use later in life. I've been learning patience, too, with how slow actually putting together things is turning out to be. We have so much interview footage, but we need more B-roll footage, or the video's going to be boring- something we learned from the teachers and while rewatching our footage. So much complication for something only 2 minutes long. 

The process is more important than the actual product to me, though. Learning how to make a good video is better than making something perfect and having no idea how. Don't get me wrong, it'd be great to have an awesome video to submit and to give Davidson Lifeline. It's just less important in my eyes.

Passion in Motion

On the DigCit field trip yesterday, I learned a few things. I learned a lot about what all the organizations we visited did- especially the Rotary Club and the Ada Jenkins center- and got a new investment into local charity. I especially connected with the Ada Jenkins center, since I have family that runs a very similar center in Brazil, where underpriveliged people can get the medical care they need but probably wouldn't be able to get otherwise. I also loved going to the Cornelius Animal Shelter and getting to play with their animals. There's a story my dad likes to tell about how we got our pets from the Charlotte Humane Society, and it's mostly my fault, though the dog is his. My family has also volunteered at and donated to the Angels and Sparrows soup kitchen before, so it was good to be there and see how it's changed. 

On top of all those specific things, though, I saw just how interconnected all the work that those organizations do is. They have a lot of workers in common, and often they serve overlapping communities. It seems to me that some people just have an inclination for service work, and they give back to the community however they can, even among vastly different organizations. 

I'm sure when I grow up that I'll give back to the community as much as I can. That's a habit ingrained in me by my parents and my school, and they've both allowed me to develop my own individual passions while setting a baseline for the quality of work that needs to be committed to.

That 'service learning' is a valuable skill and part of one's personality, at least according to me. I'm glad that LNC is implementing it as something they can do, but I think that students could be doing more, if they all could have the same opportunities as I've had. 

Let's Have a Holi-gay Party!

The regional GSA meeting was super fun! There were a lot of groups there, fifteen or twenty, and a lot of them were newer, but they all had really cool representatives. There were a lot of great ideas thrown around, too- like having the titular holigay party or having a bake sale with rainbow cupcakes, etc. 

One thing that struck me is how lucky I am to be in such an accepting school. One of the groups who came to the meeting, from Lake Lure Classical Academy, have had a very vocal uproar against "the gay club" and all clubs have been suspended while the board "[seeks] legal counsel on club protocol'.(1) It is illegal, as far as I know, to specifically ban a GSA from meeting, so we'll see how that pans out for them. I just hope hatred doesn't come out on top.

One thing that the GSA is doing is assembling a list of MOGAI authors and books to put up on the English Honor Society's bulletin board, so that's awesome. A few that'll likely get up there are This Book Is Gay by James Dawson, an author who recently came out as transgender (2), and one of my personal favorites, Honor Girl, by Maggie Thrash, which is a memoir. We also have our own bulletin board, but what's going on that in the near future is as yet unclear to me. Still, it's something to think about, and I hope we get a wider sphere of acceptance from the school.

1) http://www.charlotteobserver.com/news/local/article45081705.html

2) http://www.autostraddle.com/award-winning-best-selling-ya-author-james-dawson-comes-out-as-a-trans-woman-313744/