It’s good to be home. There’s always so much to be thankful for; sometimes I forget that. Like this break—kinda scary that tomorrow is already Friday!! Like the whole break has gone by; and then I remember that some people just started their break today (Northwestern, UChicago-ish) and then it’s like… oh—I can live with that 
.
And for me, this break came at just the right time—even with so much progress being made at UIUC, I was on the verge of total collapse. Insanity rules in those times, my recent entries show that—no time for reflection even. But FINALLY—in this Turkey Day lull I can finally look back and try to make sense of it all.
What’s there to make sense of?
There’s times when I feel like I’m afflicted by a lingering, unsatisfied need—almost like a depression; something that’s so deep down that I forget about it in my hectic life. But at moments, like now, where I can sit down, ignore the flashing IM boxes, (shh!!! im thinking!) and wonder what I’m still missing in life…
Where am I going?
And then sometimes…
Haha—I just read sleepyshih’s xanga, lol, and I just had a
minor epiphany! attitude change time! Even things that seem bad can be reasons for thanksgiving–So thanks be to ALLL!
Anyway, yeah, I had an awesome time visiting North on Tuesday along with about 40 other folks, and I realized how much I missed the place. Not just the many awesome teachers I’ve had and the friends that I still have there, but I missed everything from the bureaucracy of the school, evading the narcs during lunch trying to get to the lit center, detentions! (the teachers actually care, even if they don’t know it!), walking in to a random classroom and waving to the few people that I know (which I did often senior year), just poppin’ down next to a table, to free just wandering around all over the building at lunch… there were some good times at North, and some not-so-good times but all of it, I missed. After the HUGEness of college high school seems so small, and homely; lol—it’s like being in a constant embrace of warmth.
By the time I got there, it was almost the end of 4 th hour, and Rohit had already gotten kicked out twice trying to get inside (front and back entrances). Ridiculously stupid, we return, so happy to be back and all the outer perimeter security can says is “no, we have too many of you lately, go away”. It’s not like we’re disrupting classes, or bothering teachers! Of course, this had to be remedied; I thought of alternate entrances—and moi, being sly as ever decided to sneak in with the wall climbing kids. Mr. Pour gave some funny looks (‘do I know you…?’) which I did not return as I walked in, trying to be as high schoolish as I could. I was still sneaking as I got to the small café when out of nowhere, Jon ‘Einstein hair’ shih tackles me with “JOOOOOOOO!!!!!”. Lol—and began the insanity. The end-of-period bell rang, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen so many people that I’ve missed at once. In college, it’s a fairly rare joy to see a familiar face, but at Noth, the barrage was overwhelming, I could have talked to each person for hours, but… all I had was 6 minutes.
The teachers are definitely different to you when you’re not their student anymore. As Biggs said, “you guys leave as boys and become college men when you come back”—lol, as obvious as that may seem, speaking as a non-student is much more… personal? I always wondered what it’d be like to meet up with teachers outside of school, get to know them as individuals (they can’t always be so harsh!), get to know their stories…
I had a fun time, complaining with Mrs. Wilverding about the draconian narcs who feel they’re on a moral crusade to keep college kids out (oh, funny story—Rohit was talking with Mrs. W. when a narc, apparently on the hunt for college students ’that don’t belong there’ comes up to him, asking ‘are you a student?’ He says “not anymore.” And then the narc takes his arm, and pulls him away, saying ‘you have to leave NOW’—AS he’s talking to wilverding!). Then I talked about the retarded “red zone” of which Mrs. Elenbass had NO idea. (“I always thought it was some kid’s school project”.) The bureaucracy of the school is just too funny to not be amused. Lol—Mr. Farrell was pissed off at Motorola’s backing out of sponsoring National Science Bowl this year, and he STILL seemed sad about us not going to D.C. last year. “I still think it would have been nice if we went? Don’t you think it would have been nice? Too bad our school couldn’t work something out.” I did try to have him look on the bright side, tough work cheering up a disillusioned teacher.
At this point, I decided it was better to get a bona fide visitor’s pass sticker, rather than pretending to be a student (as Mr. Farrell suggested I do). I asked Mrs. W, if I could get an “appointment” to talk with her, apparently that’s the only reason good enough for us to be there, and went to the front desk. And OMG, here’s the one thing that DIDN’T change: the absolute retardedness of the narcs. She tried to kick me out saying that there were too many visitor’s over the past week (“I don’t know why you guys would want to come back here…”), and when I told her I had an appointment, she said there was “no one in the science office”, and calls on the next person in line. Fifteen minutes and ten people later, she finally comes back to me and asks again why I’m there, and THEN looks up the school directory and calls the office. She spends another 5 minutes complaining to Wilverding about how the science office never follows procedure.
I could go on, but that pretty much encompasses every major event…
OH, I GOT IN A YEARBOOK PHOTO, and I am “Xander Skyrien” in Naperville North’s Model United Nations! 
[Shall append more later]
The front page of a person’s Facebook 
