Yeah, I won an award… but it’s just a piece of paper.
But if I lost the piece of paper tomorrow, I would be pretty sad.
I think I can speak for most of us when I say that no one really cares about the senior awards. In fact we probably all forgot that it was a thing. When I first saw the email for it, I thought I was just going to receive an award for honor roll or something irrelevant and so I didn’t plan on attending the ceremony. I’m glad I did though because I received an award that meant a lot to me and that award was for Multivariable Calculus.
I initially thought and a lot of other people probably thought as well that these awards don’t really mean anything. The only meaning they really show was that you were just a kid who still tried during spring semester as a senior.
Even though things might’ve not gone the best for me in terms of schools this year, I still sweated my ass off when it came to the multi exams. I was still doing study sessions and spending a lot of time preparing for them and even when I stopped doing the study sessions, I barely procrastinated when it came to studying for these exams. At some point, I felt like I wasn’t doing it for the grade, but it just felt good to stay on routine and just work towards something for once. I found a lot of joy in doing what I was doing. Keeping my mind busy and knowing that my efforts had an equal return on investment. Yeah, maybe grades didn’t really matter but I wanted to cling onto some form of hope and belief that I would make it out some day if not in high school.
There was probably a moment where I just wanted to be recognized for the efforts that I put into doing things even when there was no external meaning attached to it. Yes, it’s extremely attention seeking but I wanted just at the very least a bit of recognition. I wrote about something similar to this in a past post but I think the idea of just staying disciplined even though there was no meaning was the actual meaning I was looking for. To find a purpose for once in high school.
That’s why when I was called up for the Multi award, I was really proud of myself. A sense of self-fulfillment reached me and just a smile lit up across my face. A sense of pride and hope that my future didn’t end here. Yeah, I might’ve been completely aura mogged in that moment but I didn’t really care. I was just proud of myself.
This might be the only way I could describe it, but coming from months of disappointment and sadness, I was finally happy for myself.
During the middle of the year while preparing for a study session, I started to think, “Why am I doing this? What fulfillment do I gain from this? What difference would it have made if I never did all of this?” All of that doubt was answered by a simple piece of paper. Even if it was only one piece of paper and not five, I was happy as shit.
Next Post: Who are We? (6/25/26)
Photo of The Day
I went to the gym with Stanley and then met up with Kenny to go to my house to start working on decorating our graduation caps. This is what you call high cortisol arts and crafts. I attached an image of us starting to work on our graduation caps in my attic. Stanley probably banged his head at least 20 times on my 5’8 ceiling btw. We’re planning on bedazzling our caps but most likely won’t get to it until tomorrow since designing it is taking us a lot longer than expected.
Performative Frank 
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