Christine

"We do not need magic to change the world, we carry all the power we need inside ourselves already: we have the power to imagine better."
-JK Rowling

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May 15, 03:45 AM
Harry meets Dumbledore... on Omegle
  • I was Harry, and the other person was Dumbledore.
  • (Real Conversation completed around 10pm 5/14/10)
  • Dumbledore: Tell me, Harry, have you any children?
  • Harry:
  • Yes, I do. James Sirius is at Hogwarts now and Albus Severus will be starting in September. Lily though is still too young.
  • Dumbledore: Albus Severus? That is what you named your child?
  • Harry: Yes, I did.
  • Dumbledore:
  • WTF?!?! WHY WOULD YOU DO THAT?!
  • I HAVE LIKE TWENTY OTHER NAMES!
  • MOST OF WHICH ARE NORMAL!
  • GOOD GOD, MAN!
  • GINNY DIDN'T HAVE A SAY IN THIS DID SHE?!
  • Harry: Well... erm ... no
  • Dumbledore:
  • NOT EVEN SEVERUS LIKED THE NAME SEVERUS!
  • DIDN'T I TEACH YOU ANYTHING?!
  • Harry:
  • but if we'd named him Arthur, he would have been too interested in muggle toys
  • Yes but Severus was the bravest man I ever knew.
  • And I feel I owed it to him.
  • He died to save me and the entire wizarding world
  • Dumbledore:
  • You couldn't have named them James Severus and Sirius Albus?
  • Seriously?!
  • Was that really so hard?
  • THIRTY POINTS FROM GRYFFINDOR!
  • Harry:
  • At least I didn't name him Scorpius or Hugo
  • Dumbledore:
  • Is this really what happens if I leave you kids alone for nineteen years?
  • Harry: Unfortunately, sir.
  • Dumbledore:
  • Hasn't anyone noticed that everyone's names are so ridiculous that they're constantly called by their last name?!
  • Harry:
  • Well... erm... yeah
  • I thought it was just because the Potter name is "famous" now
  • Dumbledore:
  • No!
  • No one ever once called Hagrid "Rubeus" and he was waaay before your time.
  • Didn't you pay attention in History of Magic?
  • Harry:
  • Well... no.
  • But Hermione did
  • So she should have come up with something better than Hugo.
  • Dumbledore:
  • At least she didn't have to steal anyone else's name.
  • And, knowing you three, it was probably Ron's idea.
  • Harry:
  • Why yes. The girls (Hermione and Ginny) left us two to pick the names.
  • Dumbledore:
  • Pregnancy horomones do crazy things...
  • All right, I have decided.
  • Ten points from their parent's house per child with a stupid name.
  • Lily is all right.
  • Harry:
  • Oh no... Gryffindor will be losing before Albus Severus enters Platform 9 and 3/4
  • Dumbledore:
  • Cedric gets minus fifty from Hufflepuff for turning into a sparkly vampire.
  • Plus another ten because his daughter's name is "Renesmee"
  • Harry:
  • I do approve of those deductions sir.
  • Renesmee is arguably worse than Albus Severus. At least I didn't combine mine (Alberus or Sevus)
  • Dumbledore: That is true. Maybe I did teach you something after all...
  • Harry: You taught me so much more than spells and naming though, you taught me about the true meanings of love, loyalty, friendship and bravery.
  • Dumbledore:
  • That is very true.
  • You came to me, an angsty young wizard, and left a slightly older angsty wizard.
  • You have a long way to go, Harry Potter.
  • I can only hope I helped you learn how to pave the right path.
  • Harry: Thank you sir. I do try to control my anger at times.
  • Dumbledore:
  • Remember, if the time should come when you have to make a choice between what is right, and what is easy, remember what happened to a boy who was good, and kind, and brave, because he strayed across the path of Lord Voldemort.
  • Harry: Yes, I'll remember Cedric Diggory, sir.
  • Dumbledore:
  • Youth cannot know how age thinks and feels. But old men are guilty if they forget what it was to be young.
  • Harry: Professor, you always have had such wit. Someday I aspire to have a fraction of the inspirational quotes you have.
  • Dumbledore: When you have seen as much of life as I have, you will not underestimate the power of saying awesome things all the time.
March 21, 02:22 AM
#Creepers
  • Christine: oooh yaaay stalking. Though that is more like googling skillz. Cause I'm not stalking the producers or anything. Unfortunately.
  • Me: I need your computer skills in general.
  • Christine: Okay, at your service...
  • Christine: You're definitely not creepy. And that's definitely not what I love about you.
March 15, 12:39 AM
Rejected...

I just need to get this out… okay?

Today has been a … difficult day.  Since, sixth grade I’ve always wanted to attend MIT.  This was before I knew what I wanted to major in, before I even knew anything about the application process, before everything basically. So while I knew I had a slim chance of getting in and despite the fact that, recently, it’s slipped off my top choice list, it still kinda hit me hard, reality check, ya know?  Personally I think this sets a precedence, because MIT’s admission process was the smoothest so if I didn’t get in there, I definitely didn’t get into Brown or Princeton, which is sad and depressing and blah blah blah but the sooner I start facing that the better.

But really MIT is doing me a huge favor, if you think about it.  I think.  Because the past three years I’ve done nothing but whine about how I wanted to return to of all places, Random-Small-Town, Indiana.  And I’ve been accepted to the engineering school there.  It’s no Ivy League, but I feel like I could be myself again there.  It’s a nerd school.  I’d know practically everyone in town.  I could see my best friend again.  I could teach Sunday School to all the kids I knew as infants.   I could visit all of my old teachers and thank them for everything they taught me.   I could be a counselor at the camp I grew up attending. And best of all, my Dad’s current University is its “Sister School”  I’d get $30,000 a year automatically plus a merit scholarship and lots more.

The only thing I fear, is tha that if I attend “Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology” everyone will always ask “Where??” because it’s no Ivy League.  And for some reason I think that I’ll only get the job I want someday if my boss knows my school without looking it up.  Which is totally silly.  It’s like some pride thing.  I want everyone at school to think “Oh wow, look at Christine headed off to an IVY LEAGUE”… as if that would somehow restore my self-confidence or something.

On a related note, not getting in makes me feel like I’ve let everyone down who believed in me:
-mom, dad, Liz, my grandparents, My best friend Savanna,  Henry, my friend Charlie at church, our preacher, this kid in my Math class who thinks I’m some super genius, Ms. Kay, my freaking Orthodontist who I don’t even like…

But then I think back to Rose-Hulman.  If I went there, I could start school 5 weeks early and do this “Fast Track Calculus” class where I’d end up in Calc 3 by Freshman year.  But most importantly I’d STILL HAVE TIME TO HAVE MY LIFE.  I’d have time to breathe, think, smile, talk to you all… which is something you can’t guarantee at an Ivy League.  I watched Steve Jobs’ speech at Stanford’s commencement and one of the things he talked about was “connecting-the-dots” and how it’s impossible to do on the way up.   I’m no Trelawney, and I have no idea what opportunities will or will not open for me at Rose-Hulman and what challenges I’ll face  but I do know that I’ll be ready and willing to embrace them when the time comes.  Someday I’ll look back and be able to connect the dots to see exactly how I got to the, then, present. 

“I may not know it  / But these are the moments that / I’m going to remember most yeah /Just got to keep going”  Yeah I did just quote “The Climb”


“Everything’s going to be alright in the end, if it’s not alright then it’s not the end” 


And with one final statement I’ll leave you: I don’t want to become like The Dursleys or Jason from “The Truth About Forever”.  Those people lead some predictable, orderly, structured and BORING lives.  Good stories spring from people who face challenges and overcome them.  So I guess it’s time to begin my story.

December 16, 08:40 PM
My Holocaust Final

Writing this essay today left me totally inspired so I thought I’d share it with you and maybe spread the awesome.  IDK I just know I love Holocaust class.

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In an essay of no more than 1,200 words: (a) analyze why it is vital that the remembrance, history and lessons of the Holocaust be passed on to a new generation; and (b) suggest what young people can do to combat and prevent prejudice, discrimination and violence in our world today.

Last Monday I had the privilege of meeting a Holocaust victim who had survived Auschwitz and many other concentration camps.  He showed us the scar he still had from when his number had been tattooed onto his arm and he talked about the nightmares he still has at night from his horrific experiences there.  Though these details made the Holocaust certainly seem more real and vivid to me in a way that merely reading about the Holocaust cannot accomplish, one specific story that he told stuck with me.

While he was imprisoned in one of the Concentration Camps, two other prisoners, who had been working in a factory producing bombs, succeeded in blowing up a gas chamber.  Immediately after their discovery the two girls were hanged.  Though this story was only mentioned briefly in passing, it had a profound impact on me.  I try to consider how much courage it must have taken to go through with their plan, knowing that they would eventually be discovered and knowing that when they were the punishment would be hanging.  Surely they knew all of this and yet they went through with their plan.  Unlike many of the other prisoners who gave up hope and gradually receded into death, these two girls fought until the end against their captivators.  While others around them struggled to wake up each morning, they planned, putting all of their strength into their mission.  I wonder what the other prisoners thought of the stunt.  Did they find it inspiring, did it encourage them to keep fighting the struggle to live?  Or did it remind them once again that there was no escape, that both the strong-willed and those who gave up reached the same fate in the end?  I have to believe that their bravery inspired many, at the very least the few that were spared that day when the Nazis were one gas chamber short.  But while I can’t speak for the witnesses of the action, I know without a doubt that it has inspired me.

The day I met the Holocaust survivor, as a group we learned about “The Pyramid of Hate”.  We discussed the simple ways that prejudice and hatred prosper from a seemingly harmless joke, to discrimination, to violence, and finally to Genocide itself.   It was scary to consider but is definitely true.  Since returning from the trip, I’ve noticed too many jokes about race, religion, and sexual orientation that occur everyday in the hallways of my supposedly diverse High School.  When directly confronted, I have spoken out and told some of my friends that using “gay” as a belittling adjective is certainly not appropriate, for example.  But far too often I ignore many other equally harmful jokes. This is wrong.  I’m not acting any different from the Germans during the war who sat back in ignorance while their Jewish neighbors were forcefully taken to gas chambers, to work camps and to death.  The same trick that made millions of Germans sit calmly while their neighbors were rounded up is used today. While most people have enough innate compassion inside of them to make them opposed to slaughtering millions, millions in Nazi Germany and millions today do not have the conviction to speak out against prejudiced jokes and this is why a public understanding of the Holocaust is essential. Everyone alive today needs to know not simply that the Holocaust happened but why it happened.  If more people realized that the Holocaust was a direct result of unchallenged prejudice maybe more people would work to stop the spread of hatred and the next generation could be raised in a world free from Genocide.

With Holocaust Survivors still living today as witnesses and the tremendous amount of primary sources from the period available today we really have no excuses.  One way that Holocaust education has helped improve my school and our surrounding community is the club we started a few years ago.  Triangles of Truth is our way of showing that learning about the Holocaust is not enough when prejudice and hatred still exist.  Selling cardstock triangles each bearing the name of a unique Holocaust victim, we use the money we make from their sale to help victims of Genocide in Darfur today.  We’ve raised $32,000 so far and have spread our program all across the United States and even into some parts of Canada. In the process of helping with the club, I have learned a lot about the thousands who die every day in Sudan and all the different ways we can help. I am very active in the club and for awhile I felt proud and even a little boastful about the fact that I dedicated so much time to such a charitable organization.  However, if despite my awareness of both the Holocaust and Genocides which occur today, I still allow hatred and discrimination to reign, I am contributing in a small but still significant way to a future Genocide.  I’m not the most outgoing, talkative, person but I still have a voice and I need to use it to speak out against any kind of intolerance that occurs around me.

The two girls who blew up the gas chamber had everything to fear from their method of speaking out against their situation and yet they still followed through.  I am privileged to attend a school where the worst that can happen to me if I voice my disapproval for a racist comment is that I might be laughed at for taking something meant to be humorous too seriously. I have nothing to fear and yet I cringe away from too many opportunities to show people around me that some jokes are not funny.

“Silence is golden except when it kills” declares a shirt that members of Triangles of Truth sometimes wear.  There are many types of silence.  While the world does need to wake up to the violence that occurs in way too many countries today, America needs to wake up to the nonviolent acts that can lead to the genocides,

In the half-year I’ve spent so far in my Holocaust class I’ve been taught so much.  Not simply statistics about the death rate at the camps, but I’ve learned so many ways to take a stand against Genocide and other acts of injustice.  Perhaps if my whole school were enrolled in this course, our cultural-tension issues would be resolved.  Without the lessons of the Holocaust, how can we entice others to learn from the “Pyramid of Hate”?

In a few years, the remaining Holocaust Survivors will be deceased and it will be on the shoulders of those who heard their stories to keep the world from forgetting about the tragedy and the others that occur today.  Future generations must not forget about the Holocaust.  The message of tolerance that it spreads is vital for a new generation to grow up in a world free of Genocide.  Those of us who have heard must stand up and speak out

“Never Again” but only when we are willing to put forth the effort it takes to mean what we are saying.

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