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Well, I can hardly believe it but Mini-me's freshman year of high school is drawing to a close. Where the HELL has the time gone? When did she get this grown?
For those not in the US, Mini-me is fifteen and finishing grade nine; I think the UK equivalent year is year four. (![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
azdesertrose counts backwards, upper sixth, lower sixth, fifth, fourth.) She's one of the older students in her year because she has a September birthday, and the cutoff for starting school is 1 Sept. (In other words, to start kindergarten, you have to be five years old on or before 1 Sept.)
For those who don't know or don't recall, she's in a film and TV production program at the local magnet high school for the arts.
Friday night was the film/TV department's spring showcase. I missed the fall showcase because I missed the memo about it. :D It didn't matter very much; none of her work was in the fall showcase. It was too early in the program for her to have done much on the productions, and she missed a lot of the fall because of the whole seizure mess, which has now been diagnosed as epilepsy. But there was a chance that some of her work might appear in the spring showcase, so I was eager to go.
Sadly, nothing she worked on was selected for the showcase, which disappointed her greatly and, one might even say, pissed her off. She told me that at least two of the productions she worked on were good enough or could have been made good enough in time for the showcase, but they were passed over for productions led by upperclassmen (11th and 12th graders--that would be lower and upper sixth form for the Brits on my f-list). She was not a happy camper about that, and I tend to agree with her. I think the showcase ought to showcase the work of all the students in the department, not just the upper two years.
The showcase was very good; there were a couple of very short public service announcements and educational clips, and then some longer short films with story lines. There was a very funny short film about a girl suspecting her boyfriend is gay, very tasteful and well done but hilarious. There was also a short documentary about people with muscular dystrophy, co-directed by a student in the department who has muscular dystrophy. There was a very sad short film about a boy haunted by the ghost of his dead girlfriend, who died in a car wreck after they'd had an argument. The sad film was supposed to be followed by a short romantic comedy that we only got to see part of because it was filmed on the shiny snazzy new HD camera and they haven't quite figured out how to operate it fully yet. The sound kept fading out while they were playing the film off the computer card. (I'm assuming the card was something like the SD card that goes in a digital still camera to store the pictures you take, but for all I know about digital film making, it could be something else entirely.)
Mini-me has decided that she's going to do an independent documentary (such projects are encouraged by the department faculty) on epilepsy, since she has it and it really is a poorly understood illness. She said all her classmates see is her falling out and having seizures and getting to go home early, when there's so much more that goes with it. The hospital and doctor visits, the tests, the unending medication regimen and the constant tinkering with meds and dosages to get her seizures under control, the worrying about having a seizure at a bad time (not that there's ever really a good time for one), the disappointment over not being able to get her learner's permit and learn to drive until her seizures are under control, the experience of having a seizure (which is pretty scary from how she describes it; she's relatively conscious during her seizures which is not always the case with epileptic seizures), the worrying that a seizure could kill her if it didn't stop or if she fell in the wrong place. There's really a lot to it, and since she knows it firsthand, I bet she can make an excellent short documentary about it.
She thinks she wants to go into forensic anthropology as a career now; that's about the tenth career choice we've seen, so we'll see if that actually happens, but that would be a cool thing for her to do. I'll support her career choice whatever it is as long as it involves at least a four-year degree. I'd love to see her go to graduate school, which I haven't yet made it to, but she'd be the first person in our blood family to get a graduate degree if I don't beat her to it.
I'm proud of her for making it through this year; with the seizures and everything, it was a toughie. And I can't wait to see her make that documentary.
For those not in the US, Mini-me is fifteen and finishing grade nine; I think the UK equivalent year is year four. (
azdesertrose counts backwards, upper sixth, lower sixth, fifth, fourth.) She's one of the older students in her year because she has a September birthday, and the cutoff for starting school is 1 Sept. (In other words, to start kindergarten, you have to be five years old on or before 1 Sept.)For those who don't know or don't recall, she's in a film and TV production program at the local magnet high school for the arts.
Friday night was the film/TV department's spring showcase. I missed the fall showcase because I missed the memo about it. :D It didn't matter very much; none of her work was in the fall showcase. It was too early in the program for her to have done much on the productions, and she missed a lot of the fall because of the whole seizure mess, which has now been diagnosed as epilepsy. But there was a chance that some of her work might appear in the spring showcase, so I was eager to go.
Sadly, nothing she worked on was selected for the showcase, which disappointed her greatly and, one might even say, pissed her off. She told me that at least two of the productions she worked on were good enough or could have been made good enough in time for the showcase, but they were passed over for productions led by upperclassmen (11th and 12th graders--that would be lower and upper sixth form for the Brits on my f-list). She was not a happy camper about that, and I tend to agree with her. I think the showcase ought to showcase the work of all the students in the department, not just the upper two years.
The showcase was very good; there were a couple of very short public service announcements and educational clips, and then some longer short films with story lines. There was a very funny short film about a girl suspecting her boyfriend is gay, very tasteful and well done but hilarious. There was also a short documentary about people with muscular dystrophy, co-directed by a student in the department who has muscular dystrophy. There was a very sad short film about a boy haunted by the ghost of his dead girlfriend, who died in a car wreck after they'd had an argument. The sad film was supposed to be followed by a short romantic comedy that we only got to see part of because it was filmed on the shiny snazzy new HD camera and they haven't quite figured out how to operate it fully yet. The sound kept fading out while they were playing the film off the computer card. (I'm assuming the card was something like the SD card that goes in a digital still camera to store the pictures you take, but for all I know about digital film making, it could be something else entirely.)
Mini-me has decided that she's going to do an independent documentary (such projects are encouraged by the department faculty) on epilepsy, since she has it and it really is a poorly understood illness. She said all her classmates see is her falling out and having seizures and getting to go home early, when there's so much more that goes with it. The hospital and doctor visits, the tests, the unending medication regimen and the constant tinkering with meds and dosages to get her seizures under control, the worrying about having a seizure at a bad time (not that there's ever really a good time for one), the disappointment over not being able to get her learner's permit and learn to drive until her seizures are under control, the experience of having a seizure (which is pretty scary from how she describes it; she's relatively conscious during her seizures which is not always the case with epileptic seizures), the worrying that a seizure could kill her if it didn't stop or if she fell in the wrong place. There's really a lot to it, and since she knows it firsthand, I bet she can make an excellent short documentary about it.
She thinks she wants to go into forensic anthropology as a career now; that's about the tenth career choice we've seen, so we'll see if that actually happens, but that would be a cool thing for her to do. I'll support her career choice whatever it is as long as it involves at least a four-year degree. I'd love to see her go to graduate school, which I haven't yet made it to, but she'd be the first person in our blood family to get a graduate degree if I don't beat her to it.
I'm proud of her for making it through this year; with the seizures and everything, it was a toughie. And I can't wait to see her make that documentary.
