reflecting

I've been meaning to write this post for a while but I kept putting it off. Looking back on my CTY experience, despite all the little things that went wrong and my mopiness during the first week, I really did have an amazing time. I enjoyed my class, the people in my class were ridiculously awesome, and it was still CTY. Although it was hard to go to a new site for my last year, it also made it easier to let go. Even though I am starting to forget certain parts of CTY and by my last year was on the verge of somewhat outgrowing it, CTY will always have a special place in my heart.

-Danielle

P.S. I have a feeling that people probably stopped reading this a while ago but I'll post this anyways

P.P.S. It just occurred to me that I still have a ton of blog posts I wrote on my phone and never put up. Maybe I should get around to posting those sometime....we'll see :).

Nevermores

It's plural, so that makes it a different title, right? Right?

So we've hit the end of the line, basically. Most of the nevermores here have been with me since my first or second year of CTY, and together we've grown up emotionally and physically. Well, except for Tomi. She never grew much physically : P jk jk I love you, Tomi! But anyways, the thing is that these are the people who stayed constant in my life. As 'real life' friends change, the people at CTY were always there for me. Every time I saw them again, it was a snapshot of another year of their lives. The beautiful thing was that even though we all changed a lot from seventh grade to now, the gleam in our eyes has always been the same. Deep down, we all share this common bond- no matter how much we change, we will all care about each other because we were borne of the same shared experiences. We're connected because we've been through so much together, and I kind of love that.

Sorry if that didn't make much sense, I'm tired.


-Dex

Full Circle

I feel like my last week is incredibly similar to my first week ever of CTY. I'm doing the same thing where I heat ramen with boiling tapwater, I'm feeling a bit like a loner in my hall, and I get the same vibe as that first first week. It's poetic, in a way.

My hall is falling apart. People are accusing each other of theft and it's really not cool. There's so much dischord. People are threatening violence and it's just ffffffffff. Pretty frustrated right now.


-Dex

The Beginning of the End

It struck me that we have three legit days of CTY left, and then I will be done forever. Since nothing really happened today, I thought I'd give credit to some of the people who made CTY great, in roughly chronological order.

Ryan Crout: A nevermore on my hall in my squirrel year. Taught me the CTY spirit.
Zombie: I don't remember this kid's real name, but he made my first year hilarious. Slept through the fire alarm, mostly.
Declan Kennedy: My first roommate, and a brilliant one at that. Sidenote here to thank Katie Leu for making him adorable and Emma Manning for teaching me to spell 'roommate'.
Maggie Ginoza: Always, in my opinion, the best of us, she just makes CTY run way smoother thanks to her great people skills and maturity (yes, Maggie, I know you'll snicker when you read that). Moreover, she's a great person and a great friend and I wish I was closer with her.
Jane Sadetsky: She provides me with a bit of affection whenever I need it, and that makes my life so much better. Honestly, she's great, even if she does drown hypothetical puppies.
Lizzy Hardwick: Basically she kept the CTY that I loved intact. Only now that she's gone do I realize how huge of an impact and how vital she was here. We miss you, Lizzy.
Danielle: Honestly the best friend I've ever had at CTY. She's compassionate and forgiving and smart and amazing.
Molly: Oh man. She's really adorable. End of story. (It strikes me that she must have a last name..)
Jackie Allegra Choi: I could devote a whole post to her, so let me summarize: She's the only person I've ever met who made me believe in myself. You have no idea how great that feels, confidence in yourself. Plus, she's sort of been my closest friend forever and is just awesome incarnate.
Jeremy and Nicole: I don't know these kids, but the way they dance gives me hope for the future of CTY.

Really really sorry if I forgot someone.



-Dex

Nevermore

Some thoughts on being a nevermore, courtesy of Seasons Of Love.

It hit me for the first time that this really is the end. And weirdly, I'm okay with that. I miss the people there like crazy, but I do not yearn for CTY the summer program. I realized that most of my friends left last year and that it wasn't Jason Boring or Dane or Karen Weeks or any of those wonderful people that made CTY great, it was my personal circle of friends. Now there's a new era of those friends, and I won't be involved in that- I'm a relic of an era gone by. But that's okay. I cash out with Jackie and Danielle and Maggie and everyone that makes life worth living. I don't need CTY any more because it's already given me its greatest gift-the people I went through it with. However, that's not to I didn't feel a little pang of sadness up there, swaying to the dying final chords of Love and realizing this is indeed the end of the tour.

-Dex

Brief Apology, Japanese Gameshow

So the Internet just decided to favor me again, so my last week's worth of posts are out of order. I'll fix it when I get back. Also, my charger decided to hate me last night and thus there was no post for yesterday. I apologize, basically there was a dance, some traditions disintegrated, yeah.

Today we had a new Mandatory Fun activity, Japanese Game Show, run by the illustrious Dane, along with Richard, this new RA who is the David Levithan to Dane's John Green. Also, he seems like a pretty awesome guy, so I hope he sticks around.

Anyways, Japanese Game Show was an amalgamation of several ridiculous activities (my favorite was Space Invaders) and was generally awesome- Olympics Day done right. Luckily, our hall joined forces with Amber's hall for our uberteam, which was great because Amber's hall contains Maggie Ginoza, noted athlete and all around awesome girl. We also had Casino night, only of note because our hall's codeword for scamming was "Operation Spilled Curry", which just made me smile.











-Dex

Fourth of July

So I set off a smoke alarm while attempting to make a poptart. I'm in shock.

So today in the olympics we were Canada. Canada. Just for once I wish we could be a legitimate country. We made a massive Canadian flag, but it lost to South Korea. Pandering to demographics much? Anyways. The olympics caused me to arbitrarily hate this Irish RA for reasons unclear even to myself. Long story short, we got 6th place, not bad; we have a giant Canadian flag in our hall, excellent; and I had to pay churro $5 for duct tape, bad.

Oh, I actually do like my RA. He's cool and has a sense of humor. I approve.


-Dex

Balloon Volleyball

I am going to spend this entire post describing the single worst activity I have ever experienced at CTY. "Balloon Volleyball" sounded innocuous enough- how could you screw up throwing a balloon into the air?

As usual, CTY surprised me. How do you screw it up? First, put the activity in a girl's dorm; that way there's lots of unnecessary logistics. Next, make the ceiling really low and spiky, that way it's both impossible to play volleyball and easy to pop balloons. Finally, modify the "rules" to incorporate chairs. I mean seriously, how does that make the game any better? Oh, and throw in a decimal scoring system just for kicks.

Waste of an hour of my life.

Capacitors, Resistors, Frustration.

So this should've been easy. Solar cell, transistor, diode, motor. Easy.

Three capacitors, two resistors, and six jumpers later, I began to question the validity of that statement.

So I realized I haven't talked too much about the class yet. Basically, it's easy, something I never thought I'd say about a CTY class. It's nice, not having to kill yourself over the class, especially nevermore year. It's really tangenty, but that's okay. Study halls are usually devoted to watching the world's longest prison break movie, "The Great Escape", for reasons still unclear to me. (Seriously, we must be like 4 hours in and they haven't really escaped yet...)

Labs are entertaining and quite reminiscent of NoHoRoBo. Unfortunately, this means my poor soldering skills are on full display. Ah well.

So yeah. Easy and fun. Pretty excellent.

-Dex

Katamari Damacy

Categorically amazing activity. Premise: Children pretend to be inchworms, cats, humans, and horses. Other children run into them with playground balls. Chaos and hilarity ensue. Mostly, I was confused on how an inchworm moves. Also, there were no clear cut winners, losers, or even any clearly defined rules. I salute Dane for putting effort into making every activity he does fantastic. It's what makes CTY incredible. Fantastic activities make for good days. Today was a good day. My posts are shorter when I have less to rant about.


-Dex

The Great Escape, Dischord, and Twilight

So in study hall, we've been watching this movie, "The Great Escape". The premise of this movie is an American platoon trying to escape from a Nazi POW camp through tunneling. It's three hours long, and eventually 3 out of 250 prisoners escape, and 50 people die in the process. It was hardly a "great escape" and more like "the categorically worst escape ever". And what does this have to do with Electrical Engineering? Your guess is as good as mine.

On a brief sidenote, my hall argues with each other a lot, more than a hall should. Ah well.

Okay, third topic: twilight. Dani, Merzhad, and I are reading the love story of the decade. It is immensely entertaining. My favorite thing about it so far is that Bella decides Edward is a vampire before he ever says so. Also chronic abuse of sometimes fictional adverbs makes for epic lolz.


-Dex

Mandatory Fun

Because in the world of CTY, "pool party" equates to "play scrabble for three hours without a pool in sight".

Okay, it's not that Movie night is bad. I can definitely see it being great fun, but my cards never wind up that way- invariably, I end up in an awkward situation, far from the screen (so I can neither see nor hear the movie), and I'm usually on the fringe of a group, functioning as a wind shield. But that's just my experience and I'm sure lots of people have fun.

However, the hour before the movie where we rate hastily-constructed RA costumes is tedious and unnecessary. There is no reason to give us some arbitrary leftovers from RA heaven and pretend that it's a fun activity- just play the movie and give us an extra hour of hall time. We can amuse ourselves, promise.

-Dex

week 1

alright I promised Dex I'd post by the end of the week so here goes:

remember when I said I hope it gets better? it hasn't, not really anyways. class has the potential to be interesting but a lot is review and I feel like I haven't learned as much after the first week as I had in my 3 previous sessions. my hall is...okay, my roommate may or may not hate me and my hall is sooo young so I've just been hanging around by myself lately. also, I started and finished Paper Towns and went to the bookstore hoping to find Looking for Alaska but no luck :(. what else...? I didn't have the greatest time at the dance, I hung out with my friends a little and then couldn't deal with missing the dances at my old site with all my friends and I was overwhelmed with sadness and convinced that everyone here hate me, so I went to watch the movie. they kicked us out 30 min before the end and I rejoined my friends. not soon after American Pie happened. as soon as it started I started crying, not tearing up, pretty much sobbing. every oldsite call out that didn't happen was a sharp pang, I couldn't help but think, "so this reaally is cty but why does it suck this much? Emma and Lizzy and dillon (they have all been at all of my previous sessions)?" and so I continued to cry and dance and shout along until it was over.the whole nevermore thing hit me too, I realized that it was my 3rd to last dance ever, 3rd to last American pie, my 3rd to last week had just ended. I felt so empty. I feel so empty.

I promise a happier post tomorrow, today was better I don't have time to write it tonight.

-the second half of dexielle

Forever Young ft. Jay-Z

This post will be painful to write.

Bear in mind that I've loved CTY dances for a long time. This dance, though, had none of the magic. I felt lost. I wandered around during stairway trying to find someone, anyone, I knew. This isn't my CTY any more. It belongs to the new generations, and that's fine, but it hurts to see the new generation run roughshod over the old traditions. I doubt end of the world will survive based on what I say today. This bears a none too close resemblance to CTY.

Why yes, I am histrionic.


-Dex

Did that kid have pants on?

^Direct quote from Dane. The best way to break rules is to break them so flagrantly that people are shocked into disbelief long enough for you to make your exit. For instance, today a kid sprinted between Dane and I, who were chilling out in a hallway, without pants on. By the time Dane asked if he was wearing pants (he wasn't) he was gone. The only way to more flagrantly violate the rules would be to use banned Internet to write a blog or something.

Sidenote, my hall is pretty okay. They're all nice and some of them are pretty funny. Also, I made friends with the shy girl. And another girl in our class has a sonic screwdriver. I.... I might be in love. (Not really.)

Also, Pixellated Dust, who are you?
-Dex

A Confession

Laptag creeps me out. Seriously. For a couple reasons:

A. Restraining thirteen year old girls.
B. Sometimes there are certain people plying who lack common sense. If someone is getting away from you and the only way to stop them is to basically pull their shirt off, don't do it. Just don't. It's completely inappropriate, legally sexual harassment/assault, and the person being randomly exposed just feels violated.
C. Everything is just so sexually charged. Let's be honest here. This is like rape in game form and yes, I know we're sexually repressed, but this is not the way to do that. Honestly, RAs are much less likely to disturb a couple than they are a massive group of screaming people. It's stupid, it's awkward, and with people you don't know or people with no sense, it becomes extremely risky and really close to sexual assault.

Why do we do this?


-Dex

Show sneaky are your ninja skills?

RA typos are amusing. Today's funniest moment:
Molly: "How many times have you hit yourself?"
Me: "Enough to never have children again."
Everyone: "/Again/?"

Anyways. It's worth noting that the iPod I'm blogging off of is now being held together with duct tape, as the back has come unglued. Excellent.

I've now discovered there's another shy girl in our class, and hopefully I can help her become less shy too. It feels like a good things to spend nevermore year doing, setting up the next CTY leaders. Of course, that's not to say that I'm not having a good time too, just that I'm trying to do other stuff that's more positive for people who aren't me.

So today someone posited the idea that all CTY relationships are born out of desperation. While I agree some of them are, we're not all desperate losernerds. A lot of us are socially competent in real life, and writing us off as desperate nerds with no prospects is a little insulting. Or maybe I'm deluding myself and I do have no options.

-Dex

Stone, stone, where do you roam?

(The title is referencing a rather stupid icebreaker game, the lyrics of which are now embedded in our collective heads)

So the girls in our class, all 3 of them, seem pretty sweet, so that's good. I woke up this morning (feels like a week ago) and tried to take a shower. Unfortunately, Pancho seemed unaware that Loyola showers have two, alternating settings: freezing and scalding. Much cursing ensued. (In my country, showers do not do this!) Pancho also had the following dialogues:
"Pancho, you have bedtime meds."
"No I don't!"
"Yes you do."
-
"I have breakfast meds."
"No you don't."
"Yes I do!"

Oh, health office...

The thing about the first day is that you see how everyone interacts with people that they aren't forced to (i.e. their hall). It's where you see who's going to do fine and who you need to help along. No one should have a sucky CTY. I think I'm going to have a mediocre one, it seems, but I realize there are people in my hall that could have really bad experiences. I'm not going to let that happen.

In other news, today I floored a kid while blindfolded. :D

-Dex

day 1

sorry I wrote this a couple days ago and am now posting it.

cty blog 1, day 1
I feel so old. my hall has more 12 year olds than 15 and 16 year olds combined, I am the oldest one on my hall and I'm not a fan. I knew nevermoreness would be hard, and I realized that it meant that I'd be the oldest age there, 16, but I never realized how you everyone else would be, this has to be my youngest hall of all my 4 sessions at cty, the average age is probably like 13.5 maybe 14, which, while 14 is the median age, it is only so if one is a 5 year freak, which my hall seems to have plenty of. this is not to say that youngsters should not enjoy cty, they should, but when a nevermore starts to isolate themselves because they seem to have nothing in common with the much younger generation is when I start to get a little frustrated,I feel as though my only option is to barricade myself in my room and text. normally, as was the case last year, I would embrace the newcomers
and teach them all the wonders and traditions of cty but I'm burned out, I'm new to this site, I don't know how to get to the dining hall or the bookstore but due to all of my past cty experiences I know how I should feel at cty, happy, and I have yet to experience that emotion this session, I hope it gets better, I really do.

-the latter part of dexielle

Location:camp

First Day

First day is unsurprisingly nervewracking- it's where you find out where your dice have fallen. Your RA, your hall, your classmates- the curtain is lifted and you react with glee or horror.

Thusfar, I'm more on the horror side. Squirrel hall is not ideal, but the overwhelming level of new people combined with precious few of the old guard makes me feel alien, a relic. CTY was the people, and they're gone now.

But that sounds rather defeatist. It's still CTY, after all. It's just a new generation. Part of my jaded attitude, of course, comes from the fact that my frame of reference is 09.1, where basically everyone who had ever mattered to me was with me, and there supergroup composed purportedly of PCTYDers but actually of everyone I loved. (Of course, PCTYD is much catchier, though, so we went with that.) So it's possible I'm just sad that there's not a bunch of people I have a preexisting bond with. We'll see.

-Dex

An introduction, an explanation, and most importantly a test of iPod blogging software.

Somehow you have found your way here. Hooray! Another hit!

As promised in the title:

Hi. I'm Dex. I'm one of the two titular nevermores, and tomorrow I leave for Loyola Marymount University for CTY. CTY, for the uninitiated among us, is nerd camp. While teenagers with sense sleep through summer or make money or build relationships or whatever it is that teenagers do, some of us take college level courses and live in dorms. Usually, chaos, love, friendship, and hilarity ensue. Occasionally, some learning goes on, or so I've been told. Mostly, though, it's about children with varying degrees of social retardation learning to be social, and ordinary nerds doing extraordinary things. I'll be chronicling the hijinks at LMU (where I'm taking electrical engineering), while my coauthor, who will reveal herself shortly, will regale you with stories of Johns Hopkins University, JHU.

So, what the hell are we doing here?

CTY is 19 days long, according to Jackie (I myself cannot count past 10, so I do not guarantee this number). We hope to provide a day-by-day glimpse of two completely different CTY experiences. By day-by-day, I mean whenever I can get access to wi-fi. My coauthor, however, has an iPhone, so if she doesn't do a post every day, she's just being lazy. I make no guarantees on how well this will work, but we're going to try.

-Dex (I'll sign all my posts like this so you know who's writing what)