Fuck the plague--poison ivy is killing me, and it's spreading everywhere. A week ago, it was just at the bottom of my right shin, near my ankle. Now it reaches from my right knee to where it started, and it's on my left leg, too, in pretty much the same region. And it's on my right arm, AND it's on my left ear. And there's one more spot- a particularly annoying location in the crotchal region...not going any further.

IMSA has taught me a lot of things that it didn't intend to in the first place. First of all, I'm glad that I've finally gotten the FUCK out of there. Problem-based learning DOES work, but IMSA, for the most part, doesn't actually advocate it. What it tends to advocate is leaving you to do the problems without fucking telling you remotely how to even start going in the right direction. We can't SOLVE the problems if we don't have any background, you dumbass teachers. We actually have to have some information in order to figure them out! Oh, and one of the problems shouldn't be "figure out what the homework is YOURSELF because I'M NOT GOING TO CLEARLY STATE WHAT IT IS AND WHEN IT'S DUE!" THAT is not what they mean by "PROBLEM." They meant "problem" as in "MATH problem," not "problem" as in a conflict you go through in your life, like not knowing when to fucking turn in your final paper! THAT does not encourage learning. That encourages stress!
The lifestyle was ridiculous. The days of most students can be broken down into five categories: going to school, after-school activities, homework, socializing, and sleeping. Going to school pretty much takes up the first part of every day, so let's forget about that one when determining how to organize one's day, because that's a given.
So, most people's days go in one of the following ways:
1) The lifestyle IMSA seems to encourage: after-school activities, homework, sleeping, with limited socializing.
2) What most IMSA kids end up doing: after-school activities, socializing, homework, then limited sleeping
3) What I tended to do: Little or no after-school activities, socializing, homework, then time for sleeping

There was so much stress and homework that it seemed there was little time for anything other than homework. So if you wanted to sleep, you had to give up socializing, or vice versa.
Fuck that. Seriously.
I wanted to go hang out with people but they were always busy! I wanted to get to know people better but I couldn't.
Well, that was half of it. I wasn't proactive enough, and I regret it.
And I judged people. I found out at the end of the year that there were some really cool people I never really got to know. I thought they wouldn't be nice people but I was wrong. Oh well.
So now I know that I need to be more proactive in getting to meet new people and to get to know those whom I've met. And I know that I shouldn't assume things about people as much as I did. And I know that "problem-based learning" is largely an excuse for teachers to sit on their asses and watch kids learn things themselves without doing their jobs themselves. I've also learned that teachers who know a lot and are highly respected tend to not really give a shit about what grades they give to the kids. Teachers whom you think are the coolest as people might be really bad at teaching--there are some which are really awesome people but are crappy teachers. Yeah, there's integration by parts and oxidation-reduction reactions and eukaryotic cells--but I think that stuff is more important to learn than all that science and math stuff.