<p>Today is the last day of my junior year, widely said to be the most important year of high school. To me, it was also the hardest yet. The year started out a venerable disaster. I failed my AP English test the first day, could barely understand a word my Japanese said, and started chemistry-a class that encourages students to get in touch with their pyro sides. To top it off, I had to learn to juggle a whole bunch of ECs, prepare for the eminent arrival of a Japanese exchange student, and learn how to carve 5 hours a week for Aikido into my schedule. If I had a time machine at that point in my life, I can almost guarantee to you I would had gone back in time-and, in the absence of the actual device, I attempted to walk to different path to the same result. I tried to drop English, flirted with abandoning Japanese, and wished for a way to drop my exchange student -because, really, how could I talk to her? If the rest of year was going to be like this, I seemed dead on my feet.</p>
<p>As the semester progressed, though, things seemed to improve. My English grade proved quite salvageable indeed, my exchange student quite kind, and my Japanese comprehension capable of improvement. As a fringe benefit, hosting introduced me to the huge Japanese program at my school and the many benefits and opportunities it had to offer. I even learned to juggle my various activities not so much by slowing the pace but be simply getting used to the pressure cooker, always on the move turn my life had taken. With the generous assistance of my parents, I built a system of club meetings after school, Interact events and riding on the weekends, Aikido at night, and, of course, homework everywhere in between. My fuel was the two goals I held in my head each day: to keep my 4.0 and graduate magna sum, a sort of silent slap in the face to all the people that had doubted me, and to make it to Friday, which I soon redubbed “Joan of Arcadia Day.” When I walked out of the semester, I had my 4.0, a new found admiration for Barbara Hall, an entirely different take on philosophy and theology, the opinion that Flannery O’Connor was just slightly insane, and the mistaken belief that the second semester would surely be easier.</p>
<p>No tests greeted me the first day of school in January, but it would have been properly foreboding if they had. I found my new AP Art History class (recommended by countless other students as “easy”) to be blessedly homework free, incredibly interesting, and devoid of any breathing room. Our grades were to be determined by four tests, a handful of quizzes, and one or two optional assignments per grading period. The message was quite clear: mess up once and that may just be it. It was a message I took to heart, hoping that it would not apply to me, but the second grading period it did. The 79 I received on my Renaissance test placed me right back in the familiar panic mode. I calculated what I need to get an A in that class and then worked hard to achieve it. My thinking pattern was exactly this: I got through English, I better get through this. Lucky, through much stress and tears and worry, I did. In fact, I made it through all my classes. Thanks to final exemptions, when I walked out of school today, I carried with me the 4.0 I entered with. It seems small and I guess it is in the scheme of things, but I know what it means now, all the work and stress, and doubts. It is time spent reading books and looking up pictures, doing math homework on the way to the dojo, practicing kanji countless times in an attempt to ingrain the patterns into my hands, and countless other things I did.</p>
<p>This year was the year I received a kanji name and the year I went from barely having the courage to utter “Ohayou” to giving a speech in the tongue of the Rising Sun. It was the year I captured the Interact High Point Award and started dressage. It was the year I learned that Japan Bowl pretty much means giving your life to sensei and the year I learned how much wrist twists and pressure points can hurt. It was the year I learned exemptions rock and that the administration really doesn’t care enough to get me out of a burning building. It was the year I learned television can be art, the year where Fridays became a watershed event, the year I learned that I write best in second person, and the year I truly pondered God. It was great; it was horrible; it was everything in between.</p>
<p>Now on to apps, college, and whatever else next years brings…</p>