For those of you who don't know, Bella and I will both be Juniors this year. Sadly for us we live in different states so we cannot be Juniors together. Junior year is known by many to be the WORST YEAR EVER, a distinction that is only multiplied by the fact that I go to a crazy college prep school that firmly believes in its lifelong goal of giving its students stress ulcers. I know it's somewhere in the school motto. I just know it.
Anyways, the first day of school in Elementary and Middle School is a really happy day where you go to all your classes and do fun activities and get to know each other playing the name game. Not so in High School. These are the big leagues! Everything you thought you knew at the end of last year has been magically wiped from your memory and you traverse the loud, confusing halls in a daze.
- Fun Fact: This is actually my first time going back to a high school. So it was my first non-first-day-ever. Exciting stuff. Also a bit less exciting.
This year, the biggest difference is that almost all of my classes are going to be awful and hard and I'm freaking out and they assigned homework the first day and ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh
Ok I'm back. Every teacher wants to know things about their new students. Who are they? What do they do in their spare time? What are their strengths and weaknesses? And what better way to find those things out than through a questionnaire?!!! YAY! Because every student likes to think of adjectives to describe themselves, or even worse, answer the vaguely worded question: "Who are you?"
I think no one says it better than Olympic swimmer Ryan Lochte.
Let us all keep in mind that he is an international figure who has given hundreds, if not thousands of interviews. If that's the best he can come up with, I don't know what you expect from me.
One question got me thinking though. It was an average, run of the mill, "What is your passion/ what do you love?" I didn't give it too much thought and just jotted down "running" to fill the space because it's easy. I run three seasons a year! Of course I'm passionate about it, right? Nahhh. I kind of hate running. But also it's the best.
Later though, when I was on my team's 5-mile run in 97* heat, I did not love running so much. At the end of the run, my team met on the beach to stretch and jump in the water, and that's when I realized. One of the things I love most in the world is the beach!
I'm lucky enough to live in a place with miles and miles of lakefront with gorgeous (yet sometimes pretty sketchy) beaches. Puzzle that one out and try to guess where I live!
I went to the beach with my best friends yesterday, and it was one of the best times I had all summer. Not just for being with friends, because we lazed around my attic a lot too this summer. It was rivaled only by my time on the beach in Spain, where I would go and read a book for hours or go on walks and swim with my (sadly much older) cousins. Wow. It's been a very parentheses-y day.
The beach is the best! Which is why it's so important to save it. Next time you go to the beach, please pick up your trash. Or if you're there and see a piece of trash lying near you, be a good person and throw it away. Don't just stop there! Take reusable bags to stores when you remember, or if you're going to multiple shopping destinations just get a bag from the first store and fill that with all the things you can. I understand that it's not always possible not to use plastic bags, but avoid it when it is! Plastic bags look suspiciously like jellyfish from underneath, which may not be a problem for us but is a huge problem for our friends the sea turtles. Green sea turtles have a diet consisting of mainly jellyfish and seaweed, and when they unwittingly take a bite of a plastic bag they often choke to death or become caught in the handles, thus also dying. Despite conservationists' efforts to release more baby sea turtles into the wild every year, populations are dwindling as sea turtles slowly die out. I don't know about you, but I want this little guy to have a future.
Do what you can to reduce runoff from your lawn by not using artificial fertilizers, because that facilitates the growth of blue-green algae, an algae incredibly harmful to swimmers and lake inhabitants alike. Also, ride your bike places! Not only do bikes run on human body fat instead of expensive and environmentally harmful gasoline, but riding a bike every day is guaranteed to give you nicer legs by the end of the month. Fact. We can't let our beaches get gross and polluted!
I love the beach. What are you passionate about?
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