Every summer, I make a mental list of things I should do; never once I have I done much on this list — or, at least, the productive stuff on it. This time, I hope it will be different, because I have four months of summer (assuming I’m going to UCLA this fall), and my summer school is only a night class four days a week. That should give me plenty of time to accomplish the things on this list:

* Clean my room and closet: reorganize the books and movies and whatnot, get rid of the shit I don’t need, put into storage the stuff I’m too sentimental to throw away.
* Read as much of my physics book as humanly possible. I’m four chapters into it, and vectors are kind of boring but necessary, so I need to get through this if I am ever to do well in a physics class (which, by the way, I haven’t really taken yet).
* “Normalization training” — watch many movies and listen to much music in an attempt to become more “cultured” — plus learn random facts about history, science, language, etc., so that I may someday be a viable contestant on Jeopardy.
* Keep up with watching Jeopardy, every single evening; get used to giving answers in the form of questions.
* Since I’m ditching the MCHS Delta site and MCHS Key Club sites, I should work on the American Med Inc. site for work, as well as the layouts for this blog.
* Get rid of MySpace…someday…maybe…? I’ll do it once I find a better means of contacting those I care about most; Mandy’s the only one so far with a facebook, and Erissa and Tonka still update their xanga sometimes.
* Buy a new stack of DVD-Rs, burn copies of Operation 007 on them, and mail a copy to each person in my graduating class. If that’s not possible right away, figure out how to put it online (veoh.com most likely) and email everyone the link.
* Read! I’ve got so many goddamn books, yet I’ve actually read very few (either required reading or books related to web design). I’ve read almost twenty stories in The Decameron by Giovanni Boccaccio, but I’ll read Animal Farm or something else after that.
* Write! Start writing more blog-rants on things that I find interesting or worthy of discussion, such as my “diversity” and “education” rants. In fact, I could probably write a whole paper about the disintegration of this country’s elementary and high school educational system.
* Write other stuff! Perhaps I can take a shot at fiction; I’ve had a story in my mind for the past couple months, and I can take this opportunity to get it out on paper (or in Microsoft Word, which is more convenient for me). I think I suck at writing outside of essays and rants, so I’ll end up never finishing the story or, if I do, ever letting anyone else read it. But, it’s an exercise for myself, as well as my poor attempts at drawing (which I should also practice).

I doubt I’ll get most of this done — perhaps I’ll watch a third of the movies, and if I’m lucky I’ll finish half of The Decameron before losing interest — but at least my goals are written out this time. I may even print this out as some sort of checklist, so I may refer to it when I think to myself “summer is boring…”

I've decided to make a few changes to my life, the biggest of which is that I will not be as big a liar as I have been. I am, for the most part, honest with my friends; however, I cannot recall a day in my life that I did not lie or hide something important from my own parents.

I completely understand why they do not trust me, but they're giving me this one chance to prove myself to them, so I've got four months until I head off to college before I can make it up to them. I've already begun, so they know pretty much everything I've been up to last semester.

Yes. I told them everything...EVERYTHING.

Much to my surprise, they were not as angry as I expected. I guess they realized that, after what I did to jeopardize my future, there's nothing worse than that. So I broke one of their major rules and practically got away from it because my poor academic performance and lies about it far overshadowed any other rule I have broken.

At this point, I'm just glad I get limited Internet access, but someday I'll get my laptop back and return to my normal life. For now, I'll be busy with summer school, reading, teaching myself physics, watching movies, spending time with family to built a better relationship with them, and (possibly) hanging out with friends who went to high school with me.

Within a week, I will graduate high school.

The thought of leaving this second home of mine has haunted me deeply ever since everyone around me began to count down the days. Now, there are only five days left of school, and I'm scared now more than ever before.

A few weeks after I graduate, I turn eighteen.
About three months after that, I will move about three hundred and fifty miles away from home, to UCLA, where I will attend college.

I know I really should be excited about all of this -- I mean, I just had prom a week ago, and it was one of the most amazing nights of my life -- but everything is happening so quickly that I simply don't know how to handle so many changes at once.

Am I ready to take on the real world? Am I ready to be an adult, independent of my family and home?

Luckily I have four months of summer to figure that out, but it's a thought that will vex me ever so terribly throughout this time.