farewell, indian summer.

Autumn is long gone but the heat remaining in the last day of November has resurfaced. Spring of 2014 in Southern California is no ordinarily time period. Unlike many years before in the Los Angeles area it is unreasonably hot. 102 degree highs and 80 degree lows is what we're having right now -- but, wait, pause... This is not a weather blog. It, though rather lame, is my introduction to my reemergence. (By the way: Like always, I am not sure how often I will blog after this yet I feel that I will be trying harder to keep up.)

Similar to the suffocating heat plaguing SoCal (L.A., Southern California) right now the thought of blogging has been reoccurring since my last post. I did, in truth, forget about this blog. A high school senior, now, I have been faced with scholarships, college application, extra-curricular activities, leadership positions, stress, stress, and more stress. And, I focused so much on all this because it is those activities that have put me where I am today. What I I pushed ahead of my passion for blogging at its height is what has given me a stable present. (Holla, at a valedictorian and full-ride undergraduate student.) So, please, bear with me in bringing you all to speed with me in the past year so that I don't sporadically mention things later on that no one will recollect:

...

In this past year, a lot has happened. I visited South Korea, Maine, Ohio, Iowa, Northern California, and I'm hoping for more places by the end of 2014. I have applied to 30 schools -- rejected from five, no decision from two, wait-listed from three (Brown, Amherst, Williams), and accepted to 20 (including USC and UCLA). Ultimately, I have committed to the University of California Berkeley as a Regents' scholar, a distinction given to the top 1.5% of applicants and I will be graduating as first my high school class. I also have contributed to the Huffington Post Teen, Her Campus, and MTV. #productivity

I did miss blogging but experiencing this all came before sitting down  to write. In not writing I realized the importance in just admiring where you are in a moment; but, I also have realized that sometimes taking time to document will preserve memories for the future.

Expect me to document my college experience in these next four years at Cal. I may not note everything but I will be sure to keep you all at my side as I start a new chapter of my life. With thirty four days until my graduation I am becoming more nostalgic for the past and more invested in preserving what is happening now. I will share my upcoming Prom, Graduation, and whatever I can spend time to discuss on the way.

Go Bears and Always Yours,

the last summer.

     Toes tangled in the sand as the waves teasingly kiss the shoreline. Hair tossed by the wind as you speed down abandoned highways. Teenage laughter heard in the distance, a clear indicator of one too many drinks. Alarm clocks boxed, hidden away until the next season. Summer, summer, summer: one of the best, sometimes the only time we can get away from it all and just live. Unless of course you are, or were, taking classes like me.

     Classes + Summer Break = <your own interpretation>. Haha, though this is my last high-school summer vacation and I spent it completing academically rigorous work I still don't regret my decision. Everyone hates working deep down but it's enjoyable when your're growing as an individual from it. It may have been seven weeks of assignments, but it was also seven weeks of memories, of free knowledge (and food), of improving myself. Also, the classes were held at the University of Southern California (USC, USC, USC~) so.....

     Despite me spending seven weeks in lecture halls and classrooms, I still have twenty three days left of break left. Beach time? Not really. Things that come in hand with the last summer include: AP homework, college entrance exam studying, college applications, scholarships, etc. Thus I will still be able to enjoy myself but it will have to be while I'm reading The Kite Runner. (Which isn't all that bad actually.)

    I guess a California perk is that I have a good selection of places to go and still be productive; but, anyone can do that anywhere so I'm being a total American/Los-Angelino. 미안합니다! (Sorry!) So , the point is, now I'm just trying to balance all I have to finish in the next three weeks while having fun (and blogging more frequently). Thank you to all 140 of you who still have subscribed to my blog throughout these past two inactive years. I'm trying now to get to reading and checking up on all of you since I'm 24 months behind. Leave me a comment of how you've been doing if you can too!

what we measure up/down to

How to Make Your Own Oscillating Adolescent

Ingredients:
1 female child
2 tablespoons of dreams
1/2 cup of the past
3 teaspoons of aspiration
1 cup of misfortune

Steps:
1) Sift your child with a mix of characteristic spices and stop when the kid has developed a personality.
2) Mix the others ingredients, all excluding misfortune, together on a medium setting for 6-8 years.
3) Once done, place the mix in the outside world at 350 degrees for 2/3 years.
4) Remove the kid from society after the said time and examine for teenage characteristics.
5) Check to see if the now teenager has become angsty and place in a plate of expectations.
6) Generously pour misfortune on the teenager and let sit for another year or so.


I didn't have this whole recipe in mind when begging this post but decided that it would be fun to create; though, the recipe doesn't flow as much as I anticipated it represents how I feel. As of now it is D-DAY 7. Seven more days till the SAT and a bit more and I'll be done with my Junior years of high school. I've wrote and said this hundreds of time by now yet truly I'm excited and so, so scared for my final year of high school. Taking the SAT finalizes everything even more as it represents all I have worked for in school and converts what I am/what I know into a four digit number. Based mostly on this number and others will my future be decided within a matter of months.

All I can do now is try to out my best forward. I've taken my other exams so left is the dreaded SAT and my finals and all I can do is try my best. What I measure up to can I only hope to be what I see of myself and what other do. I feel as if I'll be betraying others hopes if I end up measuring down to something not expected. (But with hope only being able to get one so far I'm scared more. Truthfully, I know that I'm going to tear up once I receive my scores because I know that I have potential, we all do, but I've wasted my all on things that don't matter.)

George Eliot wrote that "it;s never too late to be what [one] might have been" and I'm wishing/hoping/dreaming that it's true.

- Zaynab

time lurches forward

I think that wherever time is concerned there can be a unanimous decision on it moving too fast without us. We really can close our eyes for a second and reopen to an hour passing.
I think within the time I've been missing in action from iLowlife has blurred by so fast. It's unbelievable that the months I dreaded to pass have already gone.
I now think that time unknowingly passing is what living is all about. Though I still have no firm grasp on the concept, paying little to none attention on how much time has passed is a part of getting through everyday -- but I could be terribly misconceived, I did see The Great Gatsby yesterday.

It feels uh-mah-zhing to be writing to you all. I really don't want to again dwell on how much time has passed but rather on how much we will read about one another in the future. Slightly being hypocritical  I will go back to say that the past me cared too much on what happened seconds and the me now is in live with what is in the now. (Not making much sense, but flowing to me.)
The me now is the same iZaynab as before but, as noted in my January post (is it May already?), I'm now appreciate more and am aware of more. (It may be from all the Starbucks drinks I've had within this year.) I could elaborate on not much happening but that would be lying. In the time I have been missing I've: participated in a study tour that visited South Korea in late March (which I promise to share with you all), taken most of my college entrance exams, lost and gained many friends, pushed my physical limits with sleep deprivation in the name of studying, been accepted to programs (like the one this summer at USC and last year at CSU Chanel Islands and UCLA), grasped what I want to do in the future (future Psychiatrist, hello med school), and had a taste of living.

This is probably to much all at once, so I plan to slowly share big things that have happened while giving room for the present. As I adjust back to blogging bear with me.

Most importantly to note: I've finally changed the URL of this blog. 'iLowlife' has finally become 'hello zaynab'. Maybe not a world ending change  but significant. This change, hopefully, shows that I'm done associating myself as a lowlife and as a indiviual and let's cross fingers that my trill-ness remains without having to to type like this: "iSaw the Great Gatsby, and iShed sooooo many tears."

Other than this I have to mention the Great Gatsby. Like, the book was perfect and the movie made me just so emotional that I was constantly wiping tears. Not from the sadness of it all, oh god no. From how they stayed true to Fitzgerald made my heart ache. Recommend it to all.

Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgiastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that's no matter--tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther.... And one fine morning-- So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past."

- Zaynab

PS# I hope everyone likes the new design. I thought, "Hey, new blog name should means new blog look." So that meant a new template as you see now, much is still under construction though. : )

the evolution of us.

ev·o·lu·tion Noun /ˌevəˈlo͞oSHən/ 

Synonyms:
noun: development, growth, progress

Definition:

1. The gradual development of something, esp. from a simple to a more complex form.

Well, the point of this point is that I've evolved a lot in these past four years. With my senior year nearing on the horizon, I can't help but look back on what I've accomplished and done in the last few years. Looking back on my experiences I noticed that my blog has evolved right by my side. Sorting through old photo's I found a collection of all my old headers and I felt the need to share them with you all.

As I navigate through the blogopshere it's blatant that much has changed. Some blogs have hallowed out, their owners gone for weeks than morph into months and years. Others still glowing with the same ambiance as they did when starting despite the lack to attention toward them. While some blogs, like my own, have been revived for the final and definite time around. Noting all this I now see that we've all changed in the time of my absence, or rather: we've all evolved.

Evolve.. It has a nice ring to it. Not in a Pokemon manner, not that many of us have leveled up with out experience with blogging. We have all evolved in terms of our experience shaping us for the better. Really, I guess I am trying to explain that we all have reasons to stop writing, priorities that urgently beckon from the real world we loose ourselves addressing -- that happened to me multiple times. Not that blogging and reading is something I would gladly forget but something that falls in importance with senior year growing closer.

1. • 
     

It's Kind of a Funny Story

Everything is always hard to put into words.

iReally have been needing a change here and so iChanged something: the Header ~ ヽ(；▽；)ノ

iHope you all like it as much as iDo currently. Gosh, What have you all been up to currently ? iHave been lost in my own mind, at the hospital, & in school. So iHaven't been on the inter-web for quite a full while, excuse my absences.

Um ~ iJust finished reading IKOAFS by Ned Vizzini and iThink its brilliant. It gave me a new perspective about life and the meaning is still sinking in. Ah, I'm trying to start writing and blogging again; but, I get blocks every-time iTouch a computer device. So I'm trying to try my best.

My AP classes and activites are dominating all my time now. iHave a interview tomorrow and AP Study sessions after-school on Wed, Thu, & Fri. : D They're fun but iDon't enjoy walking home around 5. Oh, I'm applying for this 3 day program at UCSB (which seems amazing). So I'm trying to finish up my personal statement because theirs a few weeks left. iReally want it to be moving so I can be accepted, so its getting my full attention today. (I've read some really tear-jerking ones so it's quite hard with my own topic.)

So that would be it. iHope you all have lovely Valentine's Day tomorrow.

“She’s never where she is,” I said. 

“She’s only inside her head.”

— White Oleander