The braggart complains

After reading Dan’s blog today, I decided that I also wanted to share some of my high school grades:*

Mainly because I was a genius.

I’ve never been an overachiever though. And I’m far from a perfectionist. Anyway who has ever worked with me on anything as probably heard me utter the words, “Whatever. I give up. It’s good enough.” Throughout high school I relied on a solid method of procrastinating until the last possible minute, starting assignments with enthusiasm only to say, ‘Whatever, it’s good enough,” when I was nowhere close to really being finished, and then relying on my expert bullshitting skills to ace all my classes. (This is why you’ll note that my math marks are barely passing, and my math 30 is conspicuously absent—I never took grade 12 math because it’s difficult to bullshit your way through algerbraic equations in the advanced math class, especially when you’re slightly dyslexic with numbers.** But you’ll have note the exceptionally high English grade—the highest mark in the 2002 graduation class. English is what bullshitting was invented for.) And when my bullshit skills failed me, my charm and winning smile always got me what I wanted. And when even that didn't quite work, I was always good at crying.

My mom always told me that I should seriously pursue a career as a spin doctor. Due to personal ethics, I refuse to lie about anything, but I have definitely perfected the art of the white lie, or just flat out working around the truth. After watching Thank You For Smoking last night, I sat back with a smug grin on my face and the thought, “I could do that.” (Well, except for the part where Nick was a tobacco lobbyist, because I wouldn’t be down with that.) And anyone whose ever had a debate with me can attest to that—my favourite role to play is the devil’s advocate, and I have a hard time forming opinions because I like to play to all sides of the stories. Pick the right one, and you’ve got yourself a golden white lie. Because there isn’t two sides to a story; there is a whole grey area surrounding it, and that grey area is my favourite place to be.

Bullshit is also not getting me through journalism school. Yesterday I was at school for 8 hours without a break, and today I was at school for 11 hours, with only a 45 minute break to grab some sustenance. My eyes were bloodshot by the time I got home. I’m working harder in school this year than I ever have before.

It’s all because now that I’ve decided that I don’t care about journalism anymore, I have to try to get As in my classes so that I can get into graduate school, whereas before my marks didn’t matter at all.

The irony of this isn’t lost on me.

In other news, my weekends and Saturday nights have turned into baking and cooking extravanganzas. On Saturday I made cookies.

And a white chocolate rhubarb coffee cake that isn't much to look at, but was delicious. It dissapeared in less than 24 hours.
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*I could only share some for security purposes. The Alberta education system uses grades as "passwords" which is also why I blacked out some of the numbers. Also, to explain to all the non-Albertans out there, 10 is grade 10 level, 20 is grade 11, and 30 is grade 12. At the end of our grade 12 terms, we are required to take Provincial Diploma Exams. The PDEs are a province-wide standard of testing, and worth 50% of our final grade, so I guess it's comparable to taking SATs. Also, check out all the little "Hs" for honours.

**I was only allowed to graduate because I completed my French 30, which, for some reason, is a substitute for math. I also graduated with 120 credits. I only needed 100.