So Many APs

On Sunday I'm going to take the TOEFL test, and Monday is the first day of school. I still have several AP summer assignments to complete. Yeah, I probably didn't manage my time very well earlier in the summer. It's summer after all.
Honestly I'm really worried about my classes when school starts. I don't know if I can handle four AP classes. Maybe it's my lack of confidence, because people say they think I have the ability to do it, but I can't help but feel a bit scared. Sometimes I'm unconsciously perfectionistic and I spend too much time on one assignment. I spend a really long time writing an essay if I want it to be good.

Sometimes I just worry too much. And there I go again. 

A Truly Introspective Analysis of Myself and Writing

My life as an anti-social dorm student with the descent into my own little world has taught me something: being alone does things to people. For an introvert, loneliness is an incentive for brain activity. When you’re metaphorically brain dead around other people, the absence of such human matters regenerates your brain cells again. Ironically, I do feel trapped by my own thoughts and feelings and want a way out from time to time. The truth about being introverted and growing up is, well, you don’t always have someone to talk to.

That’s when I understand why people write. Writing is having a conversation with someone whom you know so well because they are nothing. It is the simplest therapy. You try to translate your feelings into words so you can give them an explanation. I also found that writing fiction is a form of sharing. You share your existence with your characters; they in turn offer you their adventures.

I envy those with generous imagination, and at some point I told myself that I should try to draw a comic one day. Comic is a wonderful thing because it combines writing and drawing, which I am better at. To come up with a complete story, with an actual ending and all, has become a challenge I constantly poke myself with.

Stories simply don’t come to me. Characters do, however, and I’m stuck with vivid characters that I don’t know where to put them.

I think in pictures, and they don’t always translate into words the way I want them to. That doesn’t mean I don’t ever think in words. As nerdy as it sounds, I have imaginary conversations in my head with my good friends all the time. Somehow I’m always more eloquent in my mind, but that’s beside the point.

Although I am still having trouble coming up with a plot, I hope my characters will one day inspire me with their wonderful (not so wonderful, more like morbid) personalities. Wish me luck, guys.

Project GRIEF

I had been working on a series of artworks around a central theme for a contest, and I finally finished it on Tuesday. I felt surprisingly little satisfaction, but that might be because I still have tons of work to do.

My mom told me about the contest around May. The contest was held by the Taiwanese Palliative Care Association, asking for comics or illustrated stories about “loss” and “grief” for teenagers. The topic seemed interesting to me, (and the first three places receive money), so I decided to give it a shot.

Because both of my parents work at the hospital, death isn’t an unusual topic for us over the dinner table. I grew up listening to them discussing their patients and the patients’ family members. Still, during the course of the project I could only imagine what it feels like to have someone close to you passing away. After all, the saddest thing that ever happened to me was when my cat died. My mom, on the other hand, lost her father when she was thirteen. She told me she simply felt pointless for a very long time.

I asked her, “So, when did you get over it?”

She said, “I don’t think I ever did.”

example page

Based stylistically on three collages I created previously, the series continued using magazine cut-outs as medium. However I incorporated paint into the new ones while in school. Because I liked the result so much I painted every piece after that.

The new project was in storybook format. Writing in Chinese, especially elegantly without being pretentious, proved to be way more difficult than I thought. My mom ended up helping me with the writing.

The title of the project was, translated literally, “Loss and Pursuit,” which sounds somewhat stupid in English. (Project GRIEF was actually the working title)

Working on this project was time- and energy-consuming, but I think I learned a lot. Besides, I also need a few more artworks that can be potentially used in my college application.