Bye bye AP Tests

We're finally done. Ok I still have AP Lang tomorrow but I am going to just wing it because I am a fob and one night of cramming won't refine my linguistic sensibilities. In retrospect, Calc AB was ok, APUSH was pretty hard, Bio FRQ was ridiculous, and Chem was pretty hard. At the beginning of the year, it seemed that the year would never end but time's been moving pretty fast now that I think about it. Now we are ready to be seniors. Scary.

Dining in the Dark last Friday was amazing. We were expecting around 100 people to show up and got about 260. We started running out of tables and chairs so the extra guests just dragged tables and chairs from some other rooms and formed their own communities. Props to Peter Kim for getting volunteers for the event. Without them, serving the food for that many guests would have been impossible. I stayed in the kitchen for most of the event. The volunteers and I formed our very own child-labor assembly line and prepared the dishes. I was the bread and butter guy and damn good at it. But really, serving food for 260 people was much more time-consuming than I thought. I was standing there with bread and butter for what seemed like hours, and then someone came in to say that 75 guests still needed to be served. We ran out of meatballs but I think it worked out all right.

The best part about the event was the talent show. Peter and An delivered an awesome performance. It was actually my first time seeing Peter play the guitar and I thought he would look funny but he looked natural. An's voice really surprised me above anything else. I don't think most people are aware that An can sing damn well. What I will always remember is that during his rendition of What a Wonderful World, a blind girl in the audience just stood up and swayed to the music, despite her mother's chiding. A blind girl and a choir director sang after them, and they were amazing too. Just an awesome experience overall.

When I look back at my experience at Oxford, one thing I will definitely remember is eating lunch by the basketball courts. It started in either seventh or eighth grade, and we the original founding fathers of the sacred playground are still upholding the tradition. I remember about two weeks ago, the basketball courts were shut off so that new courts could be built, and I felt like a displaced refugee. The basketball courts are our natural habitat. There are many memories from those courts that I cherish: Peter Kim breaking Jun's ankles in seventh grade, Alan Nguyen going through a week of shooting superstardom, Chad being Chad. Good stuff.

Recently I've been wondering about whether or not I really care about other people, whether there are common characteristics in people I do care about, and what my motives may be for caring. Because the act of caring is strangely linked to my psychological health, I've been questioning my intention. But I think I can safely say now that acts of kindness I do for others are inspired only by the act of caring. I wonder what the origin of all that is. Whatever it is, I'm glad humans have it.