Why I Love Prom (And Why It's Okay If You Don't)

Director Dr. Tim Gott gets down at the Gatton Academy Prom.

This past weekend was the rite of passage for many upperclassmen at the Carol Martin Gatton Academy of Mathematics and Science in Kentucky: prom.

According to the whiteboard on the front desk, we were to leave for the Alumni Center, where our prom was taking place, at 6:45 pm since apparently snacks were starting at 7:00 pm, but prom didn't really start at 7:00 pm on April 14th, 2014. It actually started a lot earlier.

It started with a young girl watching a slew of Disney Channel Original Movies dealing with school dances, playing ridiculous amounts of online dress up games, and asking her seventh grade best friend if in the event they didn't have dates to prom five years from then, they would go together as friends. Before, that young girl had superficial ideas of what prom would be like.

But while that younger me had the wrong ideas, I still love prom, but it's not just because of the dress, the hours you spend on your hair and makeup, the flowers you may or may not get, having a date, taking a God awful number of pictures, or any of that.

It's because it's a school-sanctioned last hoorah with your closest friends before you move on with the rest of your life. It's about dancing (poorly or not) to the line dances you knew in elementary school. It's about singing to "Livin' On A Prayer" while you wait for your nails to dry with your best girl friends. It's about watching two juniors play ping pong in their gown and tux before going to take pictures. It's about the cheesy selfies. It's about singin'/screamin' at the top of your lungs to whatever songs they are playing at that moment. It's the moment you walk outside and see all your classmates and you think to yourself "Wow, I never knew how beautiful/handsome everybody was." It's about swaying side to side in a giant circle with a group of people who became your second family. It just has everything to do with the people there with you.

While your back may be sore, your feet may be bruised from not keeping your heels on, and your "waterproof" mascara formed circles around your eyes, it felt like it was worth it to me. As I am on the last leg of my senior year--as well as recovering from all the pizza I ate and washing all the hairspray out--I can't help but love it all. I had fun. I was always told that prom was about preparing and to be let down when it actually happens. But for me, it was different. Maybe the little girl in me would've been disappointed because it wasn't magical, but it was fun. It was what it's supposed to be. And it was great.

However, I realized before this past Saturday that prom wasn't for everybody and I understood that. I still understand that. Big rooms with small dance floors and close bodies aren't for everybody. Some people don't like dressing up. Some people just aren't comfortable with it. But you know what? That's okay. Because there's nothing wrong with that. You are no better or worse a person for hating/loving prom. I just love that you've been along for the ride, even if you weren't there for the flashing lights.

A Semester on Infinite Loop

My name is DJ and I have a coding problem.

While everyone else would watch hours of Netflix, play guitar, or do some kind of sport thing, I find my face lit up by the bluish tint of a computer screen while I not-so-mindlessly hammer in code that really has no real purpose other than to waste time.

As I sit back down as everybody else is Procrastinating Coders Anonymous mumble "Hi DJ," I should probably give you some background.

I'm almost locked into my dream school. I spend a decent chunk of my afternoons helping juniors troubleshoot their Mathematica and another chunk of that looking for my Differential Equations book.

And I have the worst case of senioritis ever and it sucks.

How do I deal with an increasing workload coming from Cherry Hall (English 300) and an increasingly terrifying game of Russian Roulette at Snell (Physics 256)? I code. I make prototypic character (literary not the primitive type) in C++ and rosaries for Catholic friends in Mathematica. I would cry, but at this rate it might end up being in binary. 

All of this combined, it feels like I'm stuck in my own loop:

while(haveSenioritis){

 semesterEnd = false;

} 

And it doesn't look like haveSenioritis is going to become false anytime soon.

At the beginning of the semester, Tim, the director of the Academy, told us that we were going to blink and suddenly this semester would be over. Beth, the residential life head honcho, told as that the days were long but the weeks and months were short. Right now, I don't really believe them. I feel myself trudging along and while there are some highlights, it feels like the days never end, Saturday is eons away, and there are amounts of work that I need to do that are in that limbo of "pressing" and "non-pressing." I'm stuck in this infinite loop until the universe realizes that time standing still is a bad idea and gets its act together.

I know that I'm not the only one and the world doesn't revolve around me. I know that the semester will end and I will probably get ridiculously nostalgic and wonder where it all went. Until then, I reserve the right to angst. Because angst is a part of growing up, and while I'm legally a "grown-up," I'm not done yet.

So, my fellow Procrastinating Coders, I do have a problem, but maybe coding isn't so bad. It's just the sheer quantity of it. I can't code myself into having a glorious GPA or a good time. Maybe at one point I'll realize that I might be a high school senior, but I'm only just that. I'm still a sophomore in college. I'm still not legal to drink. I've never paid taxes. Coding is just a coping mechanism, like eating Nutella with a spoon or aggressively cutting paper. While it may not have the physical health risks, this isn't healthy. I should probably stop at one point.

But I'm still stuck in this loop and until some external method gets sucked into the loop with me and breaks it, I'll be stuck waiting for the BSOD at the end.