Well, today was the much anticipated last day of school, marking the end of my third year of high school. It’s kind of scary to think about the fact that I’ve only got one year left until graduation comes around. Interestingly, though, this school year seemed to whiz right by, especially compared to my sophomore year, which I eulogized in a similar post one year ago. This year was certainly academically harder and more hectic than my sophomore year was, but this year seemed to be much smoother and less controversial than sophomore year was, and it might be that I’ve finally started to strike a balance between school and my other commitments. However, I thought that I’d do like I did last year and write a blog post looking back at this past school year, but this year’s post should be somewhat nicer than the one I wrote a year ago.

This year, I only had six classes (compared to seven in sophomore year), but the rigor of these classes went up a couple of notches. After doing Pre-Calculus and AP Statistics simultaneously during sophomore year, I jumped right up to AP Calculus BC this year, bypassing AB (BC is actually the same stuff as AB plus a few additional topics). I also had a second AP class and an Honors class (no AP exam but GPA is calculated like an Honors class): U.S. History and Spanish 7-8, respectively. I did, however, avoid the craziness that would have been AP English by dropping down to CP (and given how hectic my schedule ended up being during this year, it’s a good thing that I did that!). My science class this year was Physics, and this year I joined my school’s orchestra for the first time.

Now that I think about it, the total rigor of my classes this year would probably be comparable to last year, although not having to take PE anymore has been a big plus. I had a balance of challenging classes and less challenging classes, and I think I’ve done well. Both semesters will see me with an A for all of my classes except Spanish, which gets a B. Still, that’s a 4.33 GPA for both semesters, not bad.

What did change this year was the fact that my participation in extracurricular activities shot way up. I’ve blogged before about how my freshman year (2005-06) was really stressful because I really overextended myself that year and wasn’t prepared for the increase in expectations that high school would bring, which is why I significantly stepped down my extracurricular participation during sophomore year–and sophomore year still ended up to be stressful in many ways. But this year, I did a lot more.

My PTA commitments saw a major spike this year, most notably because I served as one of two student representatives on the California State PTA Board of Managers. In addition to giving me a number of things to fill up any slim chance of having free time with (and giving me many more e-mails to have to write and respond to), this position resulted in me having to travel to attend meetings–from a four-day orientation meeting in Sacramento in July to Thursday-Saturday meetings in October, January, and March in Long Beach, Riverside, and San Jose respectively, to a whopping six days at the Convention (and pre-Convention meeting) in Long Beach in late April/early May. And yes, each of those meetings ended up taking me out of school for at least a day or two. But nevertheless, I’ve thoroughly enjoyed being able to participate there this past year, and was accepted to serve as a student representative for another year (plus next year, there’s going to be five student reps on board!!!). In addition, I served on my local PTA Council as Parliamentarian (which I will also continue to do next year), and I’ve been really active in PTA’s Flunk the Budget campaign this year. (Anyone at my school can tell you that I’ve been wearing a “Flunk the Budget” button faithfully every day since March.)

I did a third (and final) year as Peace Club President this year, which was exciting because this year we saw a surge in club membership, finally rounding out to 59 members, almost three times as many as last year. There has also been a significant increase in the amount of participation from the members this year, and as such, we’ve been able to do some great things. For example, when we did our second annual Cards for Soldiers event this past year, we got 203 cards that students made and we sent to soldiers overseas. Next year will be the election season, which holds some exciting prospects for some activities that we’ll be able to do, but at long last, I’ll be stepping down from my President position to let someone else take on the job, which will definitely be interesting to see what happens.

A major, major activity that I took part in this year was Sojourn to the Past, which will probably go down as the highlight of this school year. Interestingly, I did not even know that this thing existed until we saw a presentation about it in History class on September 28th (which, interestingly enough, was my 16th birthday), but I was interested, and after going to an informational parent/student meeting a few weeks later, I latched on to it. I ended up fundraising for the entire cost of the trip in about a month, thanks to a scholarship that I got from Peace Action of San Mateo County and some very generous donations from family and other people whom I work with (volunteering a lot can have its fringe benefits!). Sojourn was a wonderful experience that I documented in my series of Sojourn Diaries, and it’s definitely something that I’m not going to forget.

This year has not been without difficulties. I can probably guarantee that the average amount of sleep that I have gotten over this school year has been less than 8 hours per night, and I did have to pull two or three all-nighters this year. However, I’m proud of what I’ve been able to accomplish this year, and am somewhat surprised that it’s already over; it seemed to go by a lot faster than last year did.

Anyway, summer is now here, and so as I did last year, here are my goals/plans/projects for this summer:

• China Tour, June 3-13 — My school orchestra will be going on a 10-day (plus an extra day for flying) tour of Beijing, China next week; I’ll be blogging the itinerary for this trip tomorrow. I’m hoping that I’ll have a good time, which will likely be the case if I can keep myself well-fed.
• Boys State, June 21-28 — I was selected by my school to be its delegate to Boys State, which is like a mock government thing that will be taking place in Sacramento. Again, I’m looking forward to that as well, but will be better able to think about it after the China tour is out of the way./li>
• Summer Reading — I’ve got one summer reading book for English plus two books for AP Government next year.
• Clean my room! — Strange that this was on my list of summer plans last year! But all cleaned rooms have a tendency to become unclean, and mine is once again in desperate need of cleanup.
• New Podcast — I’m really interested in starting up some sort of a successor to PreviewCast, and will be hopefully able to accomplish this in July.
• Get Some Photos Online — I still haven’t organized my Sojourn photos from last February, and I’ll likely be getting a number of new photos from my upcoming trips. I want to get my act together and get them up on Flickr this summer.
• Spend Some More Time with Family — Pretty self-explanatory.

Summer is now officially here, though it’s not really going to start feeling like it until all of the things in my busy month of June have gone by. After that, I do admit that I don’t have as significant of a list of plans as I did last year, but I’m sure some things will come along to occupy me for those six weeks in July and August before school restarts again.

Nevertheless, here’s to the end of a pretty good school year and the beginning of what will be an adventurous summer, at the very least.

Tags: 2007-08, goals, highlights, look back, plans, school year, summer, trips