Graduation, SAT, and pony. · 12:43am Jun 6th, 2015

Tomorrow marks the day that, two years ago, I made my account. Today is also the last day of school for me. As I type this, I'm also listening to my high school's graduation ceremony. It's pretty hard to believe that the people whom I've been looking up to for years – since middle school – are finally graduating and, by this fall, will be gone and spread across the US. I'll never see the majority of them ever again in my life and, as the valedictorian said in his valediction, "We will never be gathered in the same room ever again". It's even harder to believe that I'll be walking across that stage next year and that I'll be splitting with my own peers. Dang, that'll be tough.

Actually, next year will be very weird for me. I've always had that group of people, all of which I've considered to be more mature and just... above mine, to look up to or get advice. Who knows what I'll do when, in Science Olympiad, I'm expected to be the leader. When the freshmen ask for help, I'll be whom they'll be turned to. I actually liked being able to say, "That's [senior student's] job to get the builds there. Ask him for the transportation management." Now, not only are the seniors gone, but it's my job to replace them. Even worse, by this time next year, I'll know what college I'll be going to and, in turn, have a general idea of where I'll be the next few years, maybe even decades.

The main reason that I'm posting this blog post tonight rather than tomorrow is because, at the exact time I would have been making my account two years ago, I will be taking a four hour test – that's right, the SAT. I'm actually very nervous, because it's my first time taking that test. I've taken the ACT, but it took me three tries to get my highest score, which actually had a section drop four points, pulling me down. Earlier this year, I managed to score a 216 on the PSAT, which likely put me above the cutoff for NMQST in my state (hopefully), so I'm taking the SAT in anticipation of that. The reason why I'm taking it early is because I intend to take the SAT II tests in Physics and Math Level 2 later my senior year, which caused a logjam of dates to work with. It's scary to think that my life may be dependent on those four hours. The only thing calming me down is some advice I found online: "Find the appropriate balance between calmness and arousal.”

One shining point that's keeping me positive, however, is that I'll be done after this! Summer break is here, and, of course, I'll be celebrating with those who have graduated this weekend. Past that, episode 100 for MLP is coming out! I'm very pleased to see that Octavia has a speaking role now, as well as the other ponies. I can't tell you how long I've been waiting to see a background pony episode. The only thing that would make it better would be if Octavia was actually an interesting character, though it's more likely that the writers would play it safe and have her be very vanilla without many notable traits apart from those already established from the fandom.

On actual pony stuff that I'm involved in, there is only one that I would particularly point out, and that would be JawJoe's unreleased story named Monsters, (blog post found here). In past stories, he's put in a lot of work, and I'm very eager to read this one. Other stories that I'm looking forward to would be Aragon's works. Like anyone else in school, he's getting past exams right around now, so it's almost guaranteed that I'll have something funny to enjoy (unless he fights another panda). And one last author who's going through exams right now would be NCMares. This isn't for his story, which may or may not be updating soon, but his amazing art some of which I've featured on my profile.