Quote of the Day

“Parkzer, I feel miserable.”

“Why? What happened?”

“I achieved a 1 on my AP Chemistry exam. 0____0 “

“LOL ACHIEVED?”

That was part of a conversation that I had over instant messaging with one of my good buddies, the one and only, Benjamin Chow.

What I’m Watching

After receiving a recommendation from a friend, I watched a movie titled Mean Girls earlier today. Not only did my friend recommend the movie to me because she thought it was funny for me to watch a chick flick, she also thought I would like it because of my interest in a human’s function within society.

Mean Girls features Lindsay Lohan, who plays Cady, a girl that moved to the northern Illinois area from Africa after her mom decided to enroll in university for ten years. The move came with some tough transitions, the primary one being Cady’s switch from being home schooled to attending a public high school.

After Cady’s first few days at school as a junior, she quickly learns that the student body is heavily divided into a variety of subcultures. Two of her new friends explain the cliques to her, emphasizing their importance. They also introduce her to the Plastic group, a trio of girls into fashion and physical appearance. Not long after, Cady finds herself mixed in with the Plastic group, and at the same time, acting as a spy for her original two friends, now identified as part of the art group.

Things take a quick turn when relationship and academic issues start pushing themselves into Cady’s life. Because of the boy she likes, Cady is rapidly separating from the leader of the Plastics. Because of her involvement in two completely different social groups, she is rapidly losing friendships all together. After the public debut of the Burn Book, everything goes wrong.

I think that Mean Girls is one of the better movies that I’ve watched. Not only was it entertaining, it also presents an issue that many people can relate to. I would recommend this movie to pretty much anyone, even the guys that think they’re too tough to watch chick flicks – if they don’t like the storyline, at least they’ll like the actresses.

Question of the Day

A lot of my friends that know me in person and went to the same high school as me know that my college admission decision was made extremely late. For an extremely long time, when people asked what college I’m going to, I had to respond with “I don’t know yet.” Obviously, we’re well into the summer and, obviously, I know what college I’m going to go to now. So, I decided to answer this question today: “What undergraduate college are you going to, and why did your admission decision take so long?”

I am going to the University of Wisconsin-Madison in Madison, Wisconsin, USA.

As for the reason my decision was made several weeks after everyone else got their admission decisions, the primary reason was due to the University of Wisconsin-Madison Admissions staff rejecting the ACT scores on my high school transcript.

In Illinois, at the high school I attended, it is mandatory for all juniors (11th graders) to take the ACT in-school. The results of this test is combined with another test called the WorkKeys test and yields a score for the Prairie State Achievement Exam. Obviously, I participated in this examination just like everyone else in my graduating class. Because this test is taken in-school, the results of this test are printed on the high school’s official transcript.

Unfortunately, the University of Wisconsin-Madison, unlike many other schools, does not accept scores on high school transcripts as valid. Upon receiving the scores on my transcript, the University of Wisconsin-Madison Admissions staff contacted me, stating that they required official scores sent directly from the ACT testing company. The worst part was, the admissions staff notified me of this discrepancy after the final applications were due.

Because there was a misunderstanding with the admission procedure, and because I took responsibility for overlooking a portion of their website stating that all ACT scores must be sent directly from the ACT company, I was given extra time to resubmit my scores, under the penalty that my admission decision would arrive late. I accepted the offer and sent in the request to the ACT testing company to send my scores directly to the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Even though I had already been accepted to a few other colleges, I didn’t want to tell anyone which colleges these were; I learned from experience that the more information I distribute, the more it tends to mutate. I didn’t want random rumors being made and spread, so I told everyone that I still did not know where I was going until I was sure of the decision from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Immediately after learning that I was accepted, I stopped answering everyone’s questions with “I don’t know” and started responding with “University of Wisconsin-Madison.”