Graduation

So it’s official!!!! Yesturday was my graduation. I am now…well, not a college student yet, not until the fall, but neither am I a high school student anymore. It’s a bit strange. Even stranger, it’s my birthday today. So the day I graduated was the last time I was a 17 year old. I stopped being a high school student and became a real adult at pretty much the same time. It was like the universe was telling me I was ready to make a difference.

But then, I don’t feel any different. In fact, today is like any other day (except that my facebook is getting filled with birthday wishes and graduation pictures).

So, since I have time since I’m forbidden from going to my school as my underclassmen are taking their last day of finals, I thought I’ll share my graduation with all of you.

Lets start with…the graduation practice (this post might be jumpy). I barely made it on time, which was good because if you don’t show up…well, you can’t walk the stage later that day. It was funny though. A friend of mine won the award “most likely to be late to graduation” as a senior award…and she was 15 minutes late to the graduation practice. Our Vice Principal was using her mic to call out her name to make sure she was there…and was getting awfully worried when my friend didn’t show up. Haha. 🙂

Then I had Panda Express with my friends for lunch. Which was nice considering it wasn’t the WHOLE group of friends…but just the four of us close friends. My friend Mario and i are going to the same community collge (same some moolah) and are probably going to the same UC afterwards so we know we’re still going to stick together. But my other two friends are going straight into UC schools- one got a full ride to UC Merced, and my other friend is aiming to be a doctor at UC LA. So yeah, probably the last lunch we’ll have together.

Then I came home to this:

my sister decided to carry me

And this:

showing off our muscles

And then transformed to this:

Don't I look so grown up? 🙂

Backstage, I waited an hour so I won’t be late for graduation. I had an awesome cap:

My cap. I actually messed up the first time...luckily i had an extra cap

but my friends’ were pretty cool looking too. One had an arrow sticking out pointing to her, another had a clown on her hat (which was perfect since she’s such a clown), another had a pokeball (cuz she’s asian like that! lol).

That hour of waiting went on super fast. When I heard the music I reached for my friend’s hand. We held on super tight with held breaths. I had butterflies in my stomach. My friend in front of me during the walk twisted her ankle though because she was wearing these REALLY HIGH high heels. So warning girls: don’t wear such high heels. They are not fun.

Then the ceremony went by fast. I felt like crying, but as soon as I felt the tears coming, the speech became funny. I love my c/o 2011.

Then…it was over.

And now it’s today and I’m 18.

If you guys want to hear more, I could go in more details. But i figured you probably don’t and would rather just see pictures. So here you go!

I feel so loved by my family!

know your words: writer’s vocab

if you're going to pick at words, it's fun to use chopsticks. 😉

So I was talking to other wattpad writers on chat and I threw in some words I figured most writers would know about such as beta and agents. In return, I get “LOL…i have no idea what you are talking about…”

It confused me. How is it someone doesn’t know what I am talking about? But then I realized I was just a freak who goes on way too many writing blogs, picking up on words others aren’t even aware of. So here’s my list of words with their definition. Hope you have fun with it, and if you have any other words you’d like to add to the list, place it in the comments!

Writer’s vocabulary (in no particular order):

MC: short for Main Character

Character: the people who is in the story

Secondary character: people who are not the main focus of the story, but helps the MC. They are characters who you know just as much as the MCs, but they don’t hold the storyline

Throw away characters: characters that don’t hold much significance but are there. EX: a waitress at a restaurant

love interest: the person the MC is in love with/ has potential to be with the MC in a romantic way

love triangle: when the girl has to pick between two guys to be with

Incest: when family members are in a romantic relationship

Shonen-Ai/Yaoi: BoyxBoy love

Shoujo- Ai/ Yuri: GirlxGirl love

foreshadow: to show or indicate beforehand, suggestive of what is to come

Telecasting: can be confused with foreshadowing, but really, instead of hinting at something to come, you are practically screaming it at your audience. (EX: Little did Mary Sue know, her life is about to chance.)

Mary Sue/ Gary Sue: characters that are all the way around perfect. A replacement of the author- someone everyone wants to be because she/he is perfect and has no problems whatsoever in getting what the character wants

Agent: a person who is hired to try and help you sell your novel to a publishing house (they do more than that, but this is the gits of it)

Work shop: conventions where authors get together and tear each others novel/chapter/story apart

Beta: someone who edits your works over the Internet. Someone you may not meet face to face, but acts pretty much like an editor

Editor: depending on the type, they are people who edit your work. They find the inconsistency of characters, find plot holes, line edit, etc. They are your best friend

MG: short for middle grade; books that are written for middle grade schoolers in mind

YA: short for young adult; books that are written for teens in mind

Rom-com: short for romantic comedy

Active voice: When the verb of a sentence is in the active voice, the subject is doing the acting. Ex: Steve loves Amy.

Passive Voice: shows action done to a person or thing Ex: Amy is loved by Steve.

CP: short for crit partner

NaNoWriMo: short for National Novel Writing Month where the goal is to write 50k words of a novel in one month (November)

Self-Published (SP/ Self-pub): books that are published, not by a publishing house, but from the authors themselves. You could usually do this through Createspace or places like LuLu

Revision: keeping what you originally have in your first draft, but changing it up a bit. You may switch the format, move scenes around, rework the dialogue, etc, but the characters and plot is pretty much the same

Edits: finding the little mistakes like grammar and spelling

Rewrites: when you completely start a-new. It’s like writing fan fiction of your own story.

Big Q: Has other names, but it stands for “The Big Question.” It’s the question that encompasses the whole book. EX: Naruto, the manga. The Big Q is whether or not Naruto is going to be the best ninja around.

I’m positive there are more words that could be added to the list. I mean, a lot of words. These are just the ones that pop into my head.

I really hope this was useful. 🙂

Do you have any more words to add to the list? Say so in the comments!