23 may 2026
May 22, 2026, 9:19 pm. Oh big surprise, I haven't touched this blog (or tilde.town at all for that matter) in months.
Anyhow, baba booey, I graduated high school precisely a week ago. Also turned out I got a few of their local scholarships; they don't amount to a whole lot, but it's nice to see considering I put my heart and soul into those essays :)
Okay wait hold on, dear God, I haven't touched this thing since February... alright, I have a lot to fill y'all in on.
I received my scores from the February ACT, and I got a..... 35. Good to see, but not there. At the very least, I did get a 36 on that math portion... Won't get any scholarships from that alone but that's still a win in my books!!!!!! I took the ACT once more in April, and it just went plain horrible, got another 34 and not a very good 34; I got 32 on the reading section which is the worst I've ever gotten in that section. The good news is that they were offering test information releases for that testing sessions (finally), which meant I received a scan of my answer sheet, the test booklet, and a document that shows me all the questions I got wrong. At this rate, it's doubtful I'll be able to cram in another testing session at my university during the summer or something, but if I do, I'll have the best last chance physically possible.
Thing is though... when I downloaded all that stuff from ACT, the answer key seemed to hvae a bunch of caret marks where there should've been answer letters. And below, it gave a caption that said:
A caret (^) indicates the question was a field test item and was not scored.
I was kinds confused about what it meant by "field test item," so I looked it up. Get this: About a third of the questions on every ACT test are actually questions used by ACT (a private corporation, fun fact) as diagnostic questions to figure out what kids are good at and how to make better tests. That's all well and good, but WHY DON'T I GET TO SEE IF I GOT THEM WRONG?? Even worse, while I do have a scan of the original bubble sheet in its entirety, the copy of the test booklet (with the actual questions and everything) was edited to remove all of those questions, so I can't even re-assess those questions MYSELF!!!! I get that those questions aren't scored, but when you're in the test room, you don't know which are scored and which aren't!!!
So yeah, probably no 36 ACT full ride. Oh well. But I did get something close.
I don't know if I ever talked about the university I'm going to. I'm going there for music composition, and while they aren't really counted among the best schools for music composition, their composition department just so happens to be backed by an absolutely filthy rich philanthropist. Not to say the department would be a complete dump without her--their normal music department is very respectable alnog with their faculty--but it wouldn't be far-fetched to say they would be severely crippled without her funding and influence.
The good news is that, miraculously, despite the fact her and her husband are more or less billionaires, she isn't actually an overbearing asshole! Crazy I know!!! There are good ones out there apparently!!! And I know that because, after interviewing with the composition department around late February (which, I should note, did not include the philanthropist), turns out I won the full-tuition scholarship funded entirely out of her pocket! (Well, it's more likely interest from some or other fund, but still--it's money she voluntarily decided to put in my pocket rather then her own.)
So yeah, with that one scholarship alone plus the few other scholarships for my ACT score, I've essentially reduced university costs to those of a community college, which surprisingly my parents are happy and willing to pay. It could be anywhere from $1000 to $6000 per year deficit depending on what we include, which is not bad at all. Depending on what scholarships and work I get during college, I don't think the gap would be impossible to close completely.
In other news, I gave California guy my phone number in a letter and we texted for a while, although me mailed me a letter back essentially saying "Yeah that was cool but texting is not communication". And I mean, as weird and redundant as it feels to continue writing letters when we have SMS, to be fair, I talk way differently through letters than text messages, so I guess I really can't blame the guy. I haven't sent a letter in months and I should really get back to it.
Also, California guy (I guess that's his name now lol) gave me reading homework: On the Road by Jack Kerouac. Apparently a somewhat divisive/controversial piece of literature, either genius or absolute plotless garbage depending on who you ask. I'm in the midst of The Catcher in the Rye right now, but I might have to abandon/postpone it so I can fit in Kerouac in time. I'm not a slow reader per se, but I'm just brainrotten enough to the point I leave books sitting for potentially months at a time. Need to fix that.
On the topic of books, I went to a "local" Walmart; turns out The Creative Act: A Way of Being by Rick Rubin is "mainstream" enough to appear on Walmart shelves (next to all the smut lol) so I picked it up behidn the absoutely NASTY price... like dawg, I know I'm used to thrift store stuff and I'm going to end up buying college textbooks for $100+, but NO book of that size should cost 22 WHOLE US DOLLARS...
They need to put Quan Millz on these shelves fr, gimme some REAL literature...