I put my school uniform on this morning for the first time in three weeks. After a long vacation, during which I was so distracted that I had no thoughts of school, wearing it felt so strange.

What was even more strange was the fact that I woke up, did not hit the snooze button even once, and actually got up on time. My usual routine is to hit snooze a few times, then turn the alarm off entirely, sleep a few more minutes, and finally wake up in a panic, realizing that I have to be out of the house in fifteen minutes. I follow that routine religiously whether I had four hours of sleep or seven. All I want to do is push off that moment when I must confess that this thing called school really does have control over my life and I must get up or be late. (Despite this attitude, however, I have not yet received detention once this year. Let's see if I can keep it that way until the end.) This morning, on the other hand, I woke up and was actually excited to go to school. I was sick for a few days, so I don't know, maybe it affected my head a bit.

I got to school and kept up the enthusiasm for a couple more hours, thinking, "Yay, let's learn! Haven't done this in a while. Missed it a bit..." And I really do enjoy learning. I like learning new things, delving into interesting topics, acquiring knowledge and a deeper appreciation of the world around me. (As long as it has nothing to do with mathematics or the Spanish language -- I can do very well without those.)

I don't know if this is a constant thing and I just didn't really notice it before, but girls complain A LOT about school DURING class. I mean, it's nothing new that girls check the clock and count down the minutes until the end of class or until lunch time, but what I realized today was that they were actually saying in class, loud enough for the teacher to hear, "I want it to be lunch time already!" This mantra was repeated countless times throughout the first half of the school day.

What surprised me was my reaction. The first thoughts that came to mind when I heard the girls sitting around me wishing for lunch time was, "Oh, shut up. You just had a long vacation, I think you can survive two more hours. It's not like you don't eat in class while the teacher isn't looking, so instead of whining right in my ear, why don't you pay attention to the lesson? Maybe you'll learn something." Of course, I did not say it out loud because some of my self-preservation instincts are still intact, and they were loudly yelling at me not to rebuke a full class of loud teenagers. I knew from experience that voicing my opinions would only result in more yelling on their part and ringing eardrums on mine, so I kept quiet.

What I did notice, however, was that I have come a long way since elementary school and ninth grade. I wasn't interested in learning (unless it was a topic of my choice) and the more time my classmates wasted, the happier I was. Now, though, I feel angry at them for wasting time in which I could have learned so many things. But they don't see it that way. They're just focusing on how to survive until the bell rings, signifying the beginning of lunch.

On a broader level -- until you're in a certain position, you never really know how it feels. You just see things the way you want to see them, and your only explanation for differing opinions is that the people are crazy. In this case, though, I've been on both sides at different points in my life, so it's interesting to compare. (I am VERY glad though that nowadays I am more interested in learning than in counting down the minutes until the end. But once again, this does not apply to math or Spanish. I freely admit that I count down the minutes most anxiously during those classes.)

So those are my thoughts for today. Throughout the day, I often think of topics I want to blog about. Sometimes I write them down in my journal or on paper, and sometimes I just forget about them.