Technically speaking, everyone of the class (over Fall Break) had been assigned to read a book written by Patricia Cornwell. Reason being, her novels are about law enforcement cases and by reading the novel we could come to an understanding of how these things, sometimes, go down -- the hours worked, the toll it takes on the investigators/forensic scientists, analysts, and medical examiners and so on and so forth. I, technically, chose to read Scarpetta.

I never did.

The synopsis of the novel I found was incredibly short, five lines or so, and I couldn't find much online information (I was using shortcuts because I procrastinated to the point where I wasn't going to read it, as I had found a more enticing novel to stick inside my brain). I wrote an 11 page report on this novel without so much as turning a page and working off what I gleaned from a very basic, short synopsis I found online.

The end result?

My rough draft (the one before we write the final draft) received a 400/400 and now I do not even have to do the final draft as, according to my instructor, there's very little to improve upon. To be fair, the basic idea behind the assignment was to be able to compare and contrast what is real and what is not, along with understanding how the characters behaved and why certain things happened. Personally, I have this record of receiving grades such as this for work I hardly put effort into, at least with essays, and I've even received an award from my school for one (I know, right?). Anyway, I'm not advocating this type of work ethic, but rather just gloating that my screw up turned into a success.

Part of me wanted to read the novel for reading's sake, but I just can't get into that genre. I find it, largely, depressing and sometimes painful to read through, and it just doesn't entice me as much as other novels do. Problem was, I found a novel that fit my niche tastes and that overtook my reading time (until I had to read 104 pages of 1984 in one day...).

But man, it feels like this year is going by so quickly. It's almost the second semester for my school, all of my notebooks are about to need replacing, I've already read two books for AP Lang and have done more than 10 case studies for AP Psychology, along with plenty of experiments. Maybe it feels like this because I joined a club? (Something I've never done before). Gives me something to look forwards to every week, and everyone there is really kind and fairly inclusive, plus my favorite art teacher (he let me experiment a lot when I was in his class, with ideas and stuff) lends us art supplies on occasion. I'm a bit saddened by how the posters are defaced and torn down, it's really disrespectful and incredibly rude towards those who spent their time to make the posters in the first place. (For reference, we've had five big posters -- one for each wing -- and only one remains, because I super-taped it to the wall after someone tore it down. We've had twenty fliers taped up as well, which were quite clearly torn down). I just wish there weren't people like that at my school, but there's nothing anyone can really do about it besides ignore and just fix things up.

I suppose I just wish my fellow high schoolers were a bit more mature and grown up, rather than behaving like a gang of ten year olds.

However, we (of the club) designed a new poster that will likely be laminated and hung up where a security camera can watch it, so if someone were to tear it down, we can figure out who it is and hand them over to the administration (this case falling under destruction of school property). It's a pretty poster though, an incredibly colorful puzzle put upon a white piece of cardboard, with all sorts of designs around it of every color they had in the art supply room. I just have a picture of the puzzle portion, but it's a pretty large file so I won't put it up in here.