the life of chao(s)

Hello Arcadia YDA,

I regret to inform you all that I will be resigning from my position as Activities Director.  Due to the unprofessional and unsubstantiated behavior of Ms. Patterson towards me, I have regrettably decided to resign from my duties. 

I will offer a brief explanation because I believe that you all deserve a legitimate reason for my absence:

In the beginning of the year, I offered Arcadia YDA the opportunity to volunteer in a campaign for governor.  Fortunately, I work for this campaign, and as the Activities Director, I felt that it was necessary to inform the club about possible volunteer opportunities outside of school.  I know that all of you are politically active students, and working in a political campaign is the best we can do to directly influence politics at such a young age. 

An issue arose because Ms. Patterson is an avid supporter of my candidate’s rival.  Although Ms. Patterson assured me that “Democrats can always get along” and that we were serving a higher purpose, she proceeded to launch complaints at the school administration level, and even called the campaign I work for and my boss, in an attempt to prevent me from giving you guys the opportunity to work in a political campaign.  She told the school and the campaign that I was attempting to “derail club meetings” and told them I was a “troubled kid” who needs to be controlled to prevent further “damage” to her club.  In essence, she told my boss that I needed to be removed from the campaign, and she told the school that I must never be given the opportunity to educate students, and that I must be watched very closely.

I hope this was not how I presented myself to the club, and I apologize if this was the impression that you received when I talked to you about Mayor Newsom.  I thought that giving you guys the opportunity to work in a political campaign would help our club achieve its purpose, and help ourselves reach towards a common goal. 

However, for Ms. Patterson, it was more important to protect her own selfish interests and pride than to serve a higher purpose for a club for high schoolers.  I guess this only confirms the legitimacy of the saying that “politics is a dirty game.”

I will continue to serve in the Newsom campaign (my boss disregarded Ms. Patterson as a crazy woman) and help Democrats across this state and nation succeed in politics and beyond.  I hope that you will all think about the betterment of society, before you consider your own interests, and despite the events of the last few weeks, I truly hope that Young Democrats at Arcadia High School will be a success.  However, for the time being, I am unable to tolerate the actions and presence of your club advisor, thus I hereby resign from my position as YDA Activities Director.

Thank you all.  Good luck this year, and let us all unite towards a Democratic purpose!

In the words of the late Sen. Kennedy: “The work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives, and the dream shall never die.”

Once again, thank you all!

Bests,
Ray Chao

Now today, I was supposed to have a nice, leisurely trip to the beach with my swim team, with a little bit of swimming and running thrown in for training. It was far from that.

So I get there, and coach Jeff is there with another one of the coaches on our team (Ben).  Now, apparently, Ben is like a former Navy SEAL or whatever, and knows all this stupid training crap that they do, which is really intense and whathaveyou.  Since Navy SEALS do a lot of training at the beach, and we were at the beach….they decided to make us train like a Navy SEAL.

First off, we strip down to our speedos and Ben (the Navy dude) yells, “RUN TO THE WATER, GET COMPLETELY SOAKED, AND RUN BACK.”  I come out of the ocean drenched, and see Ben standing there with his finger pointed at the ground: “NOW ROLL IN THE SAND, AND GET COMPLETELY COVERED.”

gross.

So I rise from the sand drenched in saltwater, and covered in sand, with sand in my eyes, hair, crotch…

We then begin our mile long run down the beach in the wake.  Every 300 meters, Ben yells some kind of exercise, and we have to get down in the wake, and do them, while counting out loud like a douchebag training for the army.  For example, we had to do pushups in the wake, which is kinda hard because you have to hold your breath every 10 sec. when the waves come over you, and you have to stay in position while the waves are washing over you.  We did sit-ups, push-ups, and these weird things called “dive bombers” which work your core.  We also lied on the sand in the wake, and had to hold our breath while there was water washing over us…while keeping our feet 3 inches above the water level.

We crawled on all fours in the sand on both our stomach and our back, did lunges, and “mountain climbers” (remember middle school PE?).  One of the hardest exercises was doing suicides from the sand, into the ocean and back out onto the sand. Basically, we lay down in the sand, then at Ben’s command, we got up, sprinted into the ocean until our head was submerged in water, then we ran back towards the beach, and rolled in sand, then lay down again for the next one with no rest.

Keep in mind that we are running in between these exercises, and slowly making our way down the beach.  After about a mile, we started our swim.  We swam out past the pier, then swam along the beach for about one mile, then swam back into our camp area.

After the swim, we did elimination sprints.  Basically, we started at one line lying on the ground.  After Ben said go, we had to jump up, and run about 100 yards to a line of sandals/flip-flops.  The problem was, there were only 30 flip-flops for 32 people, so every round, 2 people would get eliminated to do more training crap.  I made it to the final four, until I was eliminated by some annoying-ass 13 year old.

By now, I was about to collapse, but no we weren’t done yet! The last thing we had to do was swim out in the ocean for about 1/3 of a mile, then swim across the beach for about 1/4 of a mile, and then swim back into the shore for 1/3 of a mile.

Yes, it was tiring as hell, and I’m sore, and dirty, and disgusting, and I think I’m getting sick, but that was one of the most fun workouts I have ever had.

kaypeeee:

:D

HARROOOOOOOOOO!!!!! :)

shitty-ness:

• C- on my APUSH test
• C- on my AP Calc test
• got yelled at multiple times by coach Jeff
• daily arguments with mother
• conflicts with sutro and ASB (club chartering)
• the administration decided to wage war with me because of ms. patterson (fuck you ms. patterson)

on the bright side:

• I have a homecoming date :D
• IM GOING TO THE BEACH TOMORROW!! :)

But overall, this was a horrible week. I’m so disappointed in myself about grades and stuff, and I really need to step it up.  Ughhhhhh. hopefully next week will be better, and hopefully the beach makes up for it all!

17 pages for 2 chapters.

wtf.

I talked to Irene today about how so many people change so much in high school. It’s just sad at how much a high school life can affect a person.  This is not to say that I haven’t changed, because I know I have, but for some, its as if you don’t know the person anymore.

I love high school, and I know I will miss it, but I’m looking forward to the maturity of college.  By then, people can act like civilized adults, and there won’t be any stupid friend drama or crap like that.

THIS IS GOING TO BE SO AWESOME! ITS LIKE SPEECH TO THE NINTH POWER! HELL YEAH! :)