The closer and closer we get to 2017, the more primary source documents we will have to explore in our understanding of the past. YAY! As a historian, that makes me all giddy inside.
This year, I was able to acquire new female friends by finally choosing to communicate with them. My social skills (slightly) improved. I could only really talk to girls if I didn’t like them in any way (as in wasn’t crushing non-stop on them at the time).
Anyway, I’m not going to name names, but I was quite invested in various females this year, sadly. There was a girl I was mad crushing on at the time, but so were many other guys. Turns out she just got attention from all of us, and I felt used by the end of that situation.
I also had various classes including Lockhart (whom I didn’t really like, she was kind of mean), European AP Schirmer (She was an awesome teacher, Isaccson (he slurred a lot…. “If you don’t finish the lab… you’re not going to have time… to finish the lab”, and Magana (who was a good spanish teacher, but somehow I got an A-). I also had Math with Campbell/Batte, which wasn’t very fun, at all. PE was a drag as well, I suck at sports! I hate sports! I’m not a jock! I remember there was this one guy (Vinh Dumbo Nguyen) that was pretty annoying and teased me all the time in PE. Good thing the height of his career is now over, after he won ABDC.
I continued my legacy of making study guides for everyone this year (including the wonderful European AP, my first AP class ever)!
Here are some random people I encountered on the daily my Sophomore Year:
Bradley Robinson, one of my PE Buddies.
Chris Pham and Sonny Hoang, AP Buddies
Hiep Tran, William Tran, and Christian Garcia – pretty sure this dumb picture was taken in math class
Earth Hasassri in the library modeling
Eden Mai & Jonathan Elizalde, BFF’s for life?
Jaime Ferrey & Sazzy Aguilar, who is now in England
Jamal Eid, no idea where he went.
Jerick Galang, Justin Belanger, & Earle Tabula, avoiding my camera
Jose Franco, who is now with BK in Texas.
Juan Perez, what a troll
Kennedy Tran, no idea where he is now.
Lina Thach & MacKenzie Escobedo
Ross Durand, teacher of the year?
Brian Vo, still one of my favorite buddies.
Mr. Murray, whose class we always went to in the mornings.
John Isaccson, one of the most awkward teachers ever. I think he only lasted one year.
Vu Trinh, who sadly moved after this year
Sonny Hoang, Earth Hasassri, & Justin Bouavanh
Kelley Gleeson, Rebecca Goia, Tan Trinh, Megan Reed, & George Tello. In English Class.
Tran Tran, one of the first girls I spoke to.
Vi Vu & Eva Wong – the lawyer of the year now.
I uploaded a few videos to my Youtube channel this year, which fully shows the high extent of my boredom:
This year, my sister was president of the Volunteers of Orange County. Under her, I saw leadership first hand and was able to take over subsequently my Junior Year. Anyway, since they’re short, I’m going to start going over various community service projects I went to this year. The only actual “social thing” I did this year outside of school was attend community service events. This is probably why I still enjoy community service events to this day, because it was a good way to keep me entertained outside of the house, while simultaneously feeling good about helping others.
OC FOOD BANK: Here we packaged foods and goods for poor people. It ran much like an assembly line.
There’s my evil sister, right there, ordering her slaves around.
ENVIRONMENTAL NATURE CENTER: At this event, we did nothing! We came at a certain designated time, and they didn’t even have a project for us to do. I hung out with two Mexicans that day… OH! And we got free lunch too, (for doing nothing, must I remind you?)
As you may be aware of at this point, Juan & George were the two Mexicans I hung out with that day, people I still see periodically up until this point.
Community Action Partnership of California: We sealed boxes this event. Why? I don’t remember. I’m going to assume it’s for impoverished people in need yet again.
I met Nam Ho, my sister’s future HUSBAND* at this event. Jerick & George were also in attendance.
Here is us, pretending to work at this event. Oh, and Jerick saw his random friend here at this one event.
HOLIDAY PARTY: The next event we had was a “party”. Well, essentially we had to create a party for visitors. I’m assuming they were impoverished people. Yeah, and I remember I got to finger paint, or something like that.
Huntington Beach Tree Society: We got to plant trees in hard, hard manual labor at this event.
This is a picture of me not working.
This is a picture of Jerick ACTUALLY working.
SALVATION ARMY CHRISTMAS WEARHOUSE: Here, we got to sort gifts by genders for… let’s say, impoverished people.
Here I am, in a box, as you might be able to tell on your own.
Here’s another person in a box, just to exemplify that I’m not a freak.
Here’s a picture of me and George (NOT located in a box).
Mission Accomplished. Those look like X-mas bags. Does that make us elves, per-se?
Back in the day…
Not sure why I’m standing like that awkwardly in the front.
UCLA TOUR: We toured UCLA, my dream school. Suffice to say, I didn’t know I would get rejected two years later. Oh well.
I remember on the bus ride there I sang songs the whole way through. It must have bugged everyone on the bus.
Jerick & George & Howard.
When we actually got there, we were led into a strange dungeon…
We met in a crowded room. In a basic synopsis of the day we got a tour of the school – got to eat in the dining halls, got pizza for lunch, and went straight home. For some reason, I recall the food being the best part. Everything else, not so much.
AND THIS, is the group picture we took. Oh yeah, we got folders too! I never figured what I did with mine. Oh well.
RONALD MCDONALD HOUSE: We essentially cleaned the house for disabled people. Umm, we didn’t actually get to cook, but we did participate in various fun activities. After, we camera whored the place for memories sake.
Work. As you can see, I’m not in the picture.
Then we started taking pictures, lots of pictures. I’ll only show a few for space sake.
The last VOC event of the year, which is probably the best one, was the the Orange County Aids Walk. I always have fond memories of this “walk”. Although others ran it, I essentially WALKED It.
Anyway my sister drove us to University of California, Irvine, where the walk would essentially take place. There, we had Jack in the Box for breakfast, and boy was it delicious!
As you can see, attendees of the event was myself, Howard, Eva, Jamal, Jerick, George, and Brian. (at least for VOC club anyway).
Anyway, I don’t have any pictures from the actual walk. But we did walk it, we got free stuff, and essentially we relaxed for the rest of the day.
We had lunch at KFC.
This was quite a unique KFC as you can tell. It was connected to a TACO bell. But, I don’t like Mexican food so we didn’t exactly eat there.
Next we just sat down and hung out – the new VOC cabinet for next year anyway which was:
President – ME
Vice President – Howard
Secretary – Jamal
Historian – Eva
Treasurer – Jerick
Little did I know this club would be the starting place for something new, and dramatically improve my social relationships my Junior Year.
Oh Yeah, Jamal was playing with condoms and blowing balloons up with them.
Here we are, just sitting around, relaxing.
Jerick often went to my house this year and we hung out quite a few times. Here’s a few pictures for memory sakes.
There’s me, using my computer, just looking at pictures with my dial-up internet access.
And that’s essentially Jerick waving his hand at the camera for me to stop. Oh well.
I also took lots of pictures for my myspace back then. I can’t forget at the time my obsession with MySpace. The “Top 8” was a popular thing, and I remember only putting friends on My Top 8 if they put me on theirs. Oh, how funny the Internet is sometimes. I also remember getting emo several times throughout the school year resulting in me deleting my Myspace and then re-creating it again a week or two later.
And yes, that is me doing a push-up, or attempting to and failing. Same difference.
I have also an attached an article of Howard’s summarizing European History in comparison to FACT, which was definitely my favorite class this year, and ensured my love of history.
Sooooo, which year do you think is harder? Freshman as a FACT student or Sophomore as an AP Euro student? Well John thinks FACT was certainly more difficult. Now for those who agree with him, I will change your mind after you read this (hopefully).
FIRSTLY , there is the matter of NOTES. Students are responsible for taking individual notes. True that in FACT there are 3 classes to take notes for, BUT teachers write them on the board AND we only take like half the period to do notes and rest is pretty much classwork time. In Euro, however, Ms. Schirmer lets you take notes on your own and you can write whatever will help you. No teachers making you to write unnecessary information that you already know (right?), and best of all, YOU’RE NOT GRADED ON IT! Sounds good, right?… NO! To pass the class with a DECENT grade and to be able to do well on tests, you MUST take GOOD notes, for example: Minh’s. 95% of the things Schirmer says in class is very, very, important, while in FACT, half of the things are meaningless (:p j/p. a little more than half). This means you must take notes from beginning of class to end of class.SECONDLY , there are the matters of HOMEWORK and CLASSES. When I speak of “homework” from Schirmer’s class, please take it LITERALLY because there is absolutely no time in class. On the other hand, in FACT, the teachers are kind enough to allow students to do homework in class. This means (while you’re in Euro) more of your personal life being taken away while in FACT, you’re just spending the teacher’s time. So now, let’s count the hours of homework on an average night. For Euro, we have Shermans, Notecards, and Kagan (which I doubt you guys do consistently anyway :p). On average, its about 5-10 shermans, 20-45 notecards, 30-50 pgs of kagan depending on the chapter length. That is at LEAST 7 hours, meaning 5 shermans, 20 notecards, 30 pgs of kagan unless you’re one of those people who do them hastily on the last night. Not to mention, there are essays, books, and other assignments as well. Most lessons are done within the time frame of 1-2 weeks, most times only 1 weekend. For FACT, you only get like 1-3 hours of homework every other night or so AND in Bio/English you can turn it back in for credit you couldn’t get. This in turn affects how much hours of homework you get from your WHOLE schedule. Euro is about as much work as all 3 FACT classes (history, English, bio). Now, there’s 5 more classes to add to euro while in FACT there were only 3 other classes.THIRDLY , there are TESTS. You may think that 3 tests are incomparable to 1 AP leveled test? If you thought so, then you thunked wrong. The chapter tests for FACT comes once in awhile, AND the teachers work together to try and keep the tests APART or away from the same day. In euro, however, there is a test almost every other week due to the speed (will be discussed later). Teachers in FACT *almost always* take a day to review BEFORE and AFTER the test, but in Euro, we don’t review at all. We just go over the test. Studying for 3 tests harder than studying for 1? BEEP NOOOO. Firstly, the tests are separated so it kinda evens it out. Secondly, the Euro test is COLLEGE leveled, and this means a lot more studying because of the enormous amount of information acquired. But, you might say, if we take good notes and do well on homework, shouldn’t the test be easy? No. The tests are unimaginably hard, meaning you have to write every word that comes out of Schirmer’s lips, which is impossible because your writing speed is no match for her talking speed. No breaks unless she takes a drink. Reading the text book 10 times won’t help either because some of the information can be only acquired from outside studies or come from her lectures but did not come due to lack of time and excessive annoyances and talking. John LE Tran who studies 2-3 hours for every euro test gets an average of a B. In addition to that, he makes study guides which means going over the information AGAIN. It’s a wonder how John can get a B.FOURTHLY , the speed of the AP class cannot be compared to FACT in any way. European history covers from c. 1450-Current. This means: INTELLECTUAL/CULTURAL , POLITICAL/DIPLOMATIC , and SOCIAL/ECONOMIC information from the past 600 years from ALL OVER Europe. In FACT, *puts on sarcastic voice* you do 3 billion years of history in your FACT Timelines, WOW !!!You are expected to know hardly anything and there is very, very little information compared to Euro. In Euro, you learn about monarchs, revolutions, changes on the face of the continent, wars and their causes, treaties, all the political/military leaders, and the effects of the person/event. That’s just for political/diplomatic. For social, you are expected to learn about: human rights and their developments – men, slaves, and women rights, social classes and their changes, changes in the economy, different government types and where they came into existence are most prominent, and the people who started all these movements. On the intellectual/cultural counterpart, there is the matter of religion, developments in science and learning, inventions, and art and the people who contributed to these. *Please, again, take note that we learn about all of this from all over Europe, not just one place.FINALLY , there is the matter of sleep .I know how much you all love sleep :] .Does Schirmer know? Apparently not. (j/p).If you have read the paragraphs preceding this, you could figure out that Euro TAKES away sleep. FACT does too, but a lot less than Euro. Lets take ME for example (conceited I know ^_^).Last year, WITH games (2 hours), AIM (the whole day), and television (1-2 hours), I slept on an average of 11 everyday, rarely 12. This year, its 99% of the time PAST 12. Lets not forget that I only play about 1 hour of games, 1 hour of TV, and away/not replying most of the time on AIM. There’s a big difference.In the end, Euro is definitely more stressful and difficult than FACT (in my opinion). *This document was written to provide MY point of view and is not meant to harm anybody else so don’t take any of this offensively. Also, anything that you may find rude is just a joke.This was written on the request of John Le Tran who is about to copyright my article with his name >=(.
