Graduation 2012!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Woooooooohoooooooooooooooooo!!!!!!

So I graduated yesterday^^
22May2012 6pm at UOP's b-ball stadium.
Was far too tired to post but I'm here now.

My speech was a hit. Apparently, all of my friends eyes went really big. It was totally unexpected. Every time I practiced, I had a monotone. Everyone was trying to show me how to yell and it just wasn't working. -____- They all said that they would just clap while they would try to stifle a laugh at my failure at trying to be excited. But I proved them all wrong. I was the loudest one. My speech was continually described as one of the most animated ones. My gov. teacher said that it was one of the best speeches he had ever heard. I think it's because he knows my personality and the way I delivered it was....not my personality at all.

All of our speeches were really good though. The salutatorian, Melissa, was about the movie "UP" (man I hope that's right. Mr. Bott taught us all about quotations and underlinings but I don't know whether movies are underlined or quotations -___-') She was able to talk so slow. Not slow but she's known for being a fast talker so we were impressed she managed to slow it down.
Mine was just totally unexpected.
The other valedictorian, Natsumi, mentioned Rack City and that's all I really heard.

We were soooo nervous beforehand. Well, we were only slightly nervous. Then as time drew closer, me and Natsumi got really scared. Melissa wasn't scared. When we all walked down into the place where we would be entering the building, that's where we got scared. We were all freaking out. As soon as we walked out though, I don't know about them, but once I got to my seat and had to wait so long for everyone else to come out, I wasn't that scared anymore. It was a long wait since we were the first ones coming out. Then we got called to come on stage. It was nice looking out at our class. The seats up there were suuuuuper comfortable. The only thing bad about being up there is that we couldn't see the faces of whoever was speaking.

I love Melissa. She was the first speaker. There were two podiums. During rehearsal earlier that day, they told us that we were to speak from the side podium. We were complaining among ourselves because we wanted to be at the center podium. When it came time to do the speeches, Melissa walked up to the center. Since she did it we had to do it also, otherwise it would've looked awkward. We're really glad she did.

Aaron said that the people behind him were sooo dumb. They thought Natsumi's speech was entirely centered on Rack City. They thought Melissa was dumb for trying to tie in our high school lives with UP and they thought I was just dumb. :/ They're entitled to their opinion but just saying, when I made a reference to the SOPA Act, they thought I was referring to soap.

Our class managed to graduate at 90% with 270 graduating out of a possible 299. I didn't think it was possible. The year started off with us at a graduation rate of about 67% Really good turnout.

We managed to actually start the ceremony right on time. All I can say is that we better having to arrive two hours early. The graduation also was quicker than expected. We were done I'm pretty sure before 8.

Being a co-valedictorian, I got some special privileges. We didn't have to pay for extra tickets. All we had to do was ask. Funny story about the tickets though. My mom is going crazy always asking for sooo many more tickets. I ended up asking for 33 extra tickets (what do you want, I'm Filipina). I could tell the principal wasn't liking it. He ended up giving me 30. The next couple of weeks, he kept asking me to make sure I had enough tickets. I said yea. Then things got crazy. We needed extra tickets because we forgot to invite someone and then we didn't need one because someone couldn't come but then he was able to come at the last second because he got the time off of work. I ended up asking my friends for tickets. Then during the rehearsal, I got the 15 original tickets. Both me and Natsumi felt kind of bad. We asked for sooo many tickets because we thought what he gave us was it. We didn't know we were still getting the origianl 15 that everyone got. So I ended up having extra. We felt bad because other's were struggling with tickets, but we were like "we'll never have this opportunity again. We're speaking, we want people to see in person" Our remorse ended very quickly. Having so many people invited though, I still don't understand why I couldn't spot one person for 30 min. at the end of the ceremony.

I didn't get a chance to see everyone because some people left early but I was told everyone invited was there. ^^ I'm glad.

Some of the things that sucked about graduation:

-Two hours of standing waiting before we could enter
-The band wasn't great
-They didn't play our Senior Song-I don't know what happened. The song we chose was "Good Life" by One Republic but they changed it to "For Good" by Stephen Schwartz. It wasn't a bad song, it's just not the song we picked.
-we had beach balls and the crowd booed when they were taken away just as someone's name was called to receive their "diploma"
-we didn't actually get our diplomas- what you see in the pic is us getting our diploma holders, we had to go to school today to get our diplomas
-Gowns made it suuuuper hot
-Couldn't find my family afterwards for about 30 minutes-we couldn't have cellphones so I borrowed from someone, I tried calling soooo many times but never got an answer. after wandering around, I finally found them. I asked why they didn't pick it up. I was told my bro. had it. I asked him, he said he had his earphones in and didn't hear it. I was ready to kill.

Other than that, graduation was a blast!


Look at me. Got on my blue NHS sash, my white MESA sash and my Pinnacle medal which you can't see. Also have my curly hair with my blood nails. Look how happy I am!!!! Up there getting my diploma holder. Don't ask me who the man is though, I don't remember -_- whoops.

Valedictorian Speech ^_^

So I sent my speech to Mr. Bott last Friday. I checked my e-mail all weekend but received no response. Then today during Calculus, I realized that I was checking the wrong e-mail. During second period, I went on the computer and saw that I still didn't have any response in my inbox. You don't know how freaked out I got.

When I got to class I asked Mr. Bott about it. He told me he really like it. He said he was sure he responded as soon as he got it and was surprised when I told him I didn't receive it. He printed it out, wrote his comments and gave it back. Those comments made me feel very good ^^

And now, here it is

_____________________________________________________________________________________

Superintendent Toliver, members of the Governing Board, Stagg faculty, family, friends, and Class of 2012!

Hi. My name is Sierra Brandt and I would like an applause when I am finished.

The past couple of weeks, people have been asking me what I was going to say to everyone. Well, after weeks and weeks of thinking and planning and preparing, and being too stubborn to ask for Ms. Duangsawat’s or some other teacher’s help because that would be just too easy....I came up with nothing. Sorry. :(

So I went to Madison Sadler, and she told me what NOT to put in my speech. Being the great friend that I am, I was going to not listen to her advice at all and put everything she warned me against in this speech. I also asked Mikeala Axton for help and all she said was to tell everyone she was going to the University of Wall-mart. So now with no basis for a speech at all except for…Wall-mart, I turned to every student’s best friend-Google! Oh Google, how do I love thee? Let me count the ways.

Though tonight is supposed to be about us, we should first stop and thank those who helped get us here.
Parents, thank you for your love and support.
English teachers, thank you for teaching us English.
Science teachers, thank you for teaching us Science.
History teachers, thank you for teaching us History.
Other teachers, thank you for teaching us other.
Math teachers….math is really hard.

Right here is where the speech becomes more serious. Aaaaaaand I lost half of you.

Most of us walked onto this campus as freshmen. Though people always told us that high school goes by fast, we knew that graduation was light years away. Sitting in Ms. Duangsawat’s freshmen honor class, graduation was not even a dream. It seemed so far away we didn’t even bother to think about it. And now, here we are.

Our class has faced many challenges to be here tonight.
Some of us had to catch up on credits.
Many of us had to work hard trying to balance school with either a job or a sport. Possibly both.
Others of us had difficult AP or honors courses to deal with which took up countless hours of studying.
Also this year, ALL of us had to face that dreadful day when Wikipedia protested SOPA and didn’t work for a day.

After years of waiting for our chance, tonight is the night when we will all finally walk across this stage.
Tonight is the night when we will all be commended for our hard work.
And tonight is the night when we will all be able to call ourselves Stagg High School, not students, but Graduates.

Though we are being congratulated for our accomplishments of the past, please remember that this is not the end. I’m just the first speech.

OK, so my three minutes are just about up. Google said to end with a bang so people will remember me. Ummmmmm kinda weird but if Google said I need a bang, I guess it’s alright. I mean you can always trust what’s on the internet right?
So here it goes.
Explosion! Boom! Onomatopoeia! Class of 2012! Thank you. :)

_____________________________________________________________________________________

Whelp, there it is.
Now for the comments.
From "So I went" to "math is really hard" there was a line to the side that said
I love all of this
The only problem he had was my reference to Ms. Duangsawat's freshmen honor class. He said I would not make the reference that specific, esp. since most of your fellow grads did not have her as a freshman. You could just say "sitting in our freshman English class...
This was pretty much his only problem.
At the end, this was what he said...
I like it. It probably is more light than what we typically imagine a valed. speech to be, but I don't think that's a problem. It makes its points and will keep the audience interested, I'm confident. Like I said to you, though, this kind of humor will demand carefully crafted timing. Just make sure to rehearse it a great deal.

I'm sooo happy that it is approved of. Now all that's left is the hard part...
REHEARSING

Love Hina!

Though I started this a couple of weeks ago, I'm just posting about it now. It's ecchi and usually I don't read that but I've been hearing so many reviews, I had to see it. It's actually really cute and I like it a lot.

The chapter I'm reading just taught me what a shiro itten and a kou itten is. Basically they mean harem and reverse harem. Reading it though, I'm just like kou itten, story of my life. It seems that I get along with guys much easier than girls. I get along fine with girls, but for some reason, I just have a lot more fun hanging out with guys. Don't know why but whatever.

If I were smart, instead of reading this or blogging about it, I would be studying for my AP gov. test....which is tomorrow. But I'm not that smart. -___-'

On a lighter note. Mr. Bott gave me back my speech today and he really liked it. He literally put a bracket on part of it and said "I love this" I have never seen that before and you don't know how good that felt. I feel sorry for Natsumi. Everyone has said mine and Melissa's were both good and funny. Natsumi was trying to go for inspiring but her's turned out boring. Poor Natsumi :(

Once Upon a Time Season Finale

OMGOMGOMGOMG the feelings. No one understands how I feel right now. I can't wait. I need more. Rumplestiltskin I love you. I cannot believe what he did. Well, actually I can but still. Soooo amazing.

Please return to me soon :(

Grad Ticket Mishap :/

Ayyyyyyyaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhh.

Sooo much trouble. today, me and Natsumi went to Mr. Parks to receive our graduation tickets. He only had 20 available for each of us. I still need more so he asked me how many so he could give it to me tomorrow. My mom is so confusing. Instead of just telling me a number, she breaks it all up. Your getting 15 originally plus 5 for going to school for CST's plus I want 13 extra because you have 7 members of your family and blah blah blah. I could not handle hearing that many numbers after taking the AP Chem test and preparing for the AP calc test. My brain was completely fried. When Mr. Parks asked, I thought I only needed 5 more. Turns out, I actually need 13 extra. He is not gonna be happy when I tell him that tomorrow -__________- I'm sorry.

Mom, why couldn't you just say we needed 33 tickets!!!!!!!!!??????????????
Ay, headache.
Also, grad speech is due tomorrow <(v.v)>

Valedictorian Speech Process -____-'

So, I have to give a 3 min speech for graduation. Three minutes isn't a very long time, but this is still soooo hard. I want it to be good and memorable but all I can think of are lame things and cliches. If I put funny in, then there's a chance people may not laugh, or even worse, I'll start laughing and won't be able to compose myself. This is due to my English teacher by Friday. I think I'll be waaaay too tired to work on it tomorrow. I've known about it for a while, but I've been studying for AP tests.

Monday was the chem test. That was a bomb. I'm confident I got a 2.
Today was the Calc. I am just soooooo dead. I mean, I'm confident in the mult. choice and the non-calculator free response but the 2 calculator free response. <(-__-)> I don't wanna talk about it.
Tomorrow is the English test. Ironically enough, this is the one I am most confident in. English is my worst subject but I believe that I can pass this test. And for that I'm happy. ^_^

Tonight, I will be trying to do my speech because if I wait to do it all tomorrow, it'll be all bad, and I don't want that because this is actually kinda really important.

Why is it that hours and hours are put into this and the outcome is only a measly three minute speech. Life doesn't make sense!

Koibumi Biyori :)

Also called A Perfect Day for Love Letters.

Pretty cute. Just a bunch of short little one shots. All of the stories are pretty cute though. At first it's confusing but you get used to it. Wish there were more but I guess it's fine ^^