Why So Studious?

Your names are good but I am not sure about Joon as a girl's name. I feel that Min Seung is good. I was going to say Min Seong, but apparently that's a guy's name. How does a single vowel sound change the entire gender? (a rhetorical question, of course, since such a thing is common enough in French. Sad face) I also like Min Young, if you're not opposed to sharing a name with our favorite tiny heroine. Other names I thought of just now:

NaRa
Seong Ah (or Seung Ah, whichever you prefer)
Seon Ki (you can spell it Sun Ki if you like)

Anyway that's about it. I don't think you should really settle on a name until you've found somewhere that can tell you what they all mean. Because the meanings are important too.

I was not aware that pouring boiling water on weeds was a practiced method for getting rid of them, but I guess it sounds legitimate enough. But why not use the same kettle for both home and garden uses? After all, boiled water is boiled water, no matter where it was boiled. I'm sorry that I didn't hear about this kettle debacle sooner, so I could have returned the one I have to Mor Mor. Even so, it's a bit junky, since it's rusted in a few places and has a small leak where the spout meets the pot, so I rather think she's better off with a new one.

As for the far future, I have probably thought about that around three times in my entire life. I am too busy worrying about the present/near future. And trying to think about the far future now doesn't really get me anywhere. If I stick to my present path, chances are that when I am thirty, I will be teaching at a school somewhere. If I'm smart, I'll have gotten my Master's by then and maybe I'll get to teach at college. If I'm stupid/poor/busy, I will probably be teaching at high school. If I happen to come into a lot of money by way of the New York Times bestseller I will have written, I will be lounging at a cafe in Brussels, planning out my next novel. See? There are just too many factors at play here. I'm better off deciding what to do directly after I graduate college.

I was very stupid for not doing any homework over the weekend. I mean, I guess since I was at home I didn't really have much of a chance to do it, but still. I should have at least thought about it. Anyway, I didn't realize until Monday morning that I had a huge load of homework to do and a lot of writing as well. Basically between then and now I haven't stopped at all. I had a choir concert last night which was good, but it really interrupted the flow of everything else I had to do. After I got back from it, I did reading and literary analyses until midnight and then got up at seven to do some more before heading out, and for three of my classes I wasn't finished with the reading until five minutes before class started. It was pretty crazy for a while.

There was one real injustice, though: last Thursday my World Literature teacher assigned us to read Kafka's The Metamorphosis, which is only 40 pages and funny to boot. Even though I had already read it for Western Civilization last year, I made sure to read it again (I read the last few pages before class while shoveling food into my mouth at lunch) and come up with three intelligent questions to ask about it during class. And then I got there, and the teacher, without any kind of assessment of who had done the reading, said, "Out of all the 35 people in my earlier class, only seven had done the reading. Rather than get mad and yell at you like I yelled at them, I'm just going to cancel class and tell you to go read it now, because when we come back on Thursday we're going to discuss the crap out of it."

I admit, it made me mad. I worked really hard to be prepared for the class, and then I get there and he flakes out on us because he assumes we haven't done the work (well, a lot of people hadn't done the work, but is it really right to reward them for it?). That class makes me mad sometimes.

It's okay that you don't know whether or not you want to go to college. The cool thing about America is that college isn't something you have to prepare your entire life to attend. I mean, you do have to prepare by getting through high school and stuff, but compared to other countries there's a little more wiggle room as far as these kinds of decisions are concerned. And you don't even have to go to college right after graduating, either. It's quite normal to take a year or two off of school if you want to save up some money or see if you can survive in the working world without having a degree. In fact, I would actually encourage something like that, because if you find out that you can make your livelihood without higher education, then more power to you. And knowing that you can pretty much do anything if you set your mind to it is half the battle.

Okay, I am going to go rest my body for a short time before diving back into homework. Tomorrow I am meeting a girl named Yoon Sun and asking her all about Life In Korea. I hope we can both be enlightened.

-Amy

(actually I don't know if Yoon Sun is really a girl. The gender was never established in the email, I just assumed girls are paired with girls. I guess I'll find out tomorrow)

(stupid neutral names)