People are discouraging but sometimes that's good. You know, I gave up my "dream" of becoming a pharmacist after some indirect convincing from a few people such as my friends and guidance counselor, who I spent half of my lunch period talking to. I actually went to get my schedule for next year straightened out but somehow, a discussion about my future surfaced. I guess they're right about the fact that I shouldn't pursue something that would probably not even interest me in the future. I have no idea what I was thinking when I had decided a few years back that pharmacology is definitely what I want to major in. Ehh, I still have some time to decide everything over but the thing is, now that I've let go of pharmacy, I don't know what else I really want to do with my life. I mean, I have billions of interests but I'm not sure if they're what I'd make a career out of. For instance, I love history and English but I mean, I'm not sure if I'd major in those subject areas. Heck, more than half my schedule consists of intense history and English classes, completely outweighing my math and science classes. I actually would consider those areas but the thing is, my parents wouldn't appreciate it very much. Yeah, yeah... I know I shouldn't let my parents decide my whole future for me but I don't want to do something without their approval. Ugh, I don't know if I should be willing to sacrifice my happiness and fulfillment for theirs. Hmm, I can always think of other alternatives such as social working or even becoming a lawyer, but as I said before, I still have plenty of time to decide. I just need to come up with some ideas however vague they are.

I'm avoiding the pile of neverending and time-consuming work that I have to get to eventually. Yes, later. It amazes that my hermit self hasn't stepped out of the house in such an annoyingly long period of time besides for school. I think it's been a whole week, wow. Oh well, in five mere days I'll have all the time in the world to do whatever I wish. I want to socialize by meeting up with friends, possibly catch a movie or two, spend time with family, watch hours of TV, which is something that has become quite impossible to do these days, and surf blogs. Oh, and it slipped my mind to mention that I'm going to California from the eighth of April to the twelfth. Woohoo, five whole days on the other side of the country! Should be quite an experience if I do say so myself. My family will be staying at my dad's khala's (mother's sister) house in Los Angeles.

Then the next two months will be full of rigorous SAT studying and all that jazz. Fun, fun, fun. I won't fail to mention that a large part of my weekend did consist of SAT studying! Sigh. I do have a long way to go. Insha'Allah though.

Five more days until bliss, or should I say, spring break! I need this time off more than anything else in the world. Sigh. Earlier today, I actually registered online for the SATs on the fifth of June, something that I've been procrastinating to do for God knows how many days. I don't know, I guess the anxiety was holding me back from collecting myself together and actually taking that step, lol. Just please, please, please include me in your du'as! I would forever be indebted to you. Seriously. Pray for me, okay? College has been on my mind more often than not lately and sometimes I just get so freaked just thinking about it. What if things don't work out as I anticipate? What if I end up being unhappy with my major? How will I even decide what I want to do? I have no clue whatsoever. Well, I have a slight idea but I don't know if it's really my thing. Insha'Allah, Allah (swt) will make it easier for me.

Anyway, life's been going smoothly, alhamdulillah. On Monday morning, I went to guidance to record my schedule for senior year. The classes that I'm taking are as follows:

AP European History
AP Spanish V
English 12 Honors
Advanced Math
Business and Personal Law
Women's Studies Honors
Environmental Science
Holocaust and Genocide Studies

I'm trying to decide between Holocaust and Genocide Studies and journalism because I'm not sure if taking three history classes would be too wise, lol. Insha'Allah, I hope next year goes well. I expect it to be the most academically challenging though. Blahness. Science should be cake though... haha, I'm taking an easy to handle science class on purpose so the load is lighter on me! Ahh, but the AP and honors courses will be a heck of a lot of work to handle.

This week has gone by amazingly fast and I am ever so thankful for that. It's depressing the heck out of me that I have absolutely nothing to look forward to for this weekend after so many eventful weekends. Hmm, maybe something may come up but that's highly doubtful.

The past weekend was great though. I attended a presentation at the New York mosque about these ruthless killings and it basically consisted of a bunch of speakers who made speeches pertaining to world issues and such. I figure I should have made a speech or contributed at least something, but there's always next month. It's roughly a program at my mosque that takes place once a month in which a specific topic is chosen for different people to speak about. Sounds interesting, doesn't it? Saturday was actually the first day that it took place and I have a feeling we'll be keeping up with it, insha'Allah. I'm looking forward to speaking next time since I need to open up more. I think they're going to take copies of these speeches and put them in a newsletter kind of thing.

Then on Sunday, my family went back to New York to my cousin's house. What can be better than going to New York two days in a row? Nothing at all. I had a fun time bonding with my cousins. I wish I saw them more often than I do now.

I want to move back to New York more than anything considering New Jersey bores me. I think it has to do with the fact that New York is where my cousins are, whom I am extremely close to. They never fail to disappoint me. My friends here in New Jersey have, for lack of better words, drifted away from me. I mean, I still talk to them on a regular basis but our friendships are no longer intact. I've tried to mend ties more than once and frankly, I don't care anymore because there is no formula for friendship. It's either there or it's not, and in this case, it's not.

Don't you hate it when someone that you strongly don't want to talk to instant messages you out of nowhere? Argh, I'm sick of coming up with the usual lame excuses in order to avoid the person. It makes me feel somewhat fake, although I'm anything but fake. It's not that I dislike the person, it's just that I have absolutely nothing even remotely productive to talk about with her. She always makes the rudest comments about nearly anything that comes out of my mouth. She's definitely not the type of person that I'd choose to associate myself with.

I broke my I-will-update-every-single-day promise. Oh well, it's not like I was going to keep it anyway, lol. I usually have these short blogging frenzies that last a week or so and then slowly fade away, only to return a few weeks later. You all must have realized that by now unless you're oblivious. I've always been horrible at commenting, regardless of the fact that I read all entries. I guess I'm not who would be considered good with responding. That would explain the severe lack of comments that I've been recieving lately, haha. Anyway, soon it'll be a whole year since I became a part of this blogging world that we like to call Blogistan. Wow, a whole year! Time is slipping through my fingers like sand. Soon I'll be a ninety year old hag. Whoah, I just scared myself.

How will everyone that I know react? Am I qualified enough to answer the questions that may come along with it? Someone had once said that we are Islam walking. Will I be able to handle that? Am I even ready? Hesitance and uncertainty raced through my mind whenever the subject of hijab was brought up, whether by other people or myself. I was aware of the fact that I was going to begin in the near future, or at least, that was what I repeatedly told myself. Every single day, I would brush away thoughts concerning hijab for another time, a time when I wouldn't be so doubtful. A time when I would have a better understanding of what Allah (swt) requires of me. This continued for years.

One evening in the summer of last year, after I had completed my Isha prayers, my mind somehow drifted into thoughts of hijab once again. However, this time, for some odd reason, my incoherent thoughts did not travel in endless circles that avoided the issue altogether. I was a fifteen year old who should have embraced hijab exactly six long years ago. Why had I not done this? Was it really as complicated as my mind made it out to appear? I reflected on this for a long time during that one sitting. I asked Allah (swt) to give me an encouraging push. Not a long while after that, a strange motivation mustered within me and I finally decided that I had shoved this crucial responsibility away for too long and I was not about to do it again. I was going to start.

I walked over to where my mother was and proudly told her about my decision and asked her for her views. I noticed how her face lit up and beamed as she started explaining to me that once I decide to do something unusually positive, I should start on it immediately without the slightest delay. That actually deterred the edginess that had previously began to settle in.

I am now sixteen years of age and it has been a little over a half a year since I started observing hijab. I have to admit that it is the most important choice that I have ever made in my life and things have definitely been for the better. I have the opportunity to clear misconceptions and misunderstandings whenever the need arises, which is an excellent way to give dawah. My friends never knew about the true meaning of the headscarf until now and they completely respect me for it. A few of them are even beginning to show an interest in Islam.

To me, it is not simply a "piece of cloth" as many like to conveniently call it, but rather, it gives me a sense of identity and guards my modesty so that I am not a slave to society and the endless vanity that surrounds us. While most girls my age are conforming to what society expects of them, regardless of whether or not it’s healthy for them, I can be free of that through my self-worth and closeness to Allah (swt). At least now I can determine easily who my true friends are, and those are the ones that accept me regardless of whether or not I cover.

My only regret now is the fact that I did not start to cover sooner. Nevertheless, hijab has become a part of me, a part of me that I can never imagine myself without. Allah (swt) has answered my prayer.

One. Two. Three. Not one, not two, but three attacks in a span of three days. The death toll in the two cities in Iraq has risen to 271 and estimates of the wounded range from 300 to more than 400. Are a person's beliefs a reason for them to die? When will this stop? What disappoints me more is when people actually praise these disgusting acts of hate and violence.

Believe it or not, I've been in the school choir since freshmen year. Yeah, three years in a row. However, I'm certainly not signing up for it next year, and I strongly don't want to be in it at the moment, but I have no choice since it's a full-year elective. Not only have I completely lost interest in it, but I actually gave up listening to music back in November or so. I never really talked about it until now because it's more of a personal thing, I guess. I reached to a conclusion about music based on what I read and researched because there was no way that I was going to quit without looking into it beforehand. What I did come to discover brought me to quit listening to it altogether, and for the past four months or so, I haven't put on a song on my own accord. Initially, I hadn't thought that I'd stick to the promise that I had made to myself, but surprisingly enough, everything came out different from what I had predicted. I'm usually not good about these kind of things.

But anyway, my choir teacher's in love with me for some odd reason that I've never came to understand, and probably never even will. I have a feeling that me leaving choir will be a big disappointment to her, and I feel extremely guilty thinking about that. Not only that, but a bunch of my good friends are a part of it and I guess you can say taking choir for the past three years shaped me into the person that I am. I'm not sure if that makes sense but it does to me. I guess I have to put these little reasons aside and look at the bigger and far more important picture.

Today was the second day of the HSPAs, and I believe I did fine. At least, the exam was considerably easier for me than I had previously thought, so yay for that. For the first part of the test, we had to write our interpretations of a picture, and everyone that I know wrote the most morbid stories ever. I guess the picture itself could be percieved as morose and morbid or whatever. On the contrary, my story was as optimistic as ever since I turned the whole meaning of the picture around, lol. I was surprised with myself. Anyway, I'm going to have to make up yesterday's math portion of the exam since I was absent. Sigh.

I must get started on my homework! Oh, I got my algebra test back... an eighty eight. I didn't even make any mistakes! It's just that instead of putting my answers with commas in between them, I wrote them separately or something like that. It's hard to describe, but I really don't think she should have taken off so many points just for that, considering I had the correct answers. Eh, whatever.

Wowserz, this is my third consecutive day of updating. My day was terrific (when do I ever use that word?) although I was slightly disappointed with what I recieved on my chemistry test, an eighty nine percent. I really thought I had done better considering the fact that I had put such an incredible amount of time and effort into it... I skipped a night of not going to the mosque and afterwards, even regretted missing the lecture. Oh well, I guess the grade's not too bad, and my average did increase by a lot. Now I'm awaiting my algebra quiz grade. Sigh. I hate school. Honestly, I'm really not a perfectionist. Well, some that I know well may argue to that but I know for a fact that I'm not. Of course, I like things being a certain way that I want them to be but I'm not obsessive about it or anything. I just expect more from myself.

Remember that friend who I mentioned in my last entry or the entry before that? I seem to have forgotten. But anyway, her and I began to talk normally with one another. That includes laughing together and whatnot, so I guess it's all good. Hehe. I was starting to get worried... I hate the silent treatment.

I have this friend who's contradictory in every way possible when it comes to religion so sometimes it's rather difficult when I talk to her. It's not that I mind, because I really enjoy talking to her about it and attempting to clear her misconceptions. More often than not, we talk about religion, but especially lately, it seems as if I'm talking to a wall. She's actually a practicing Christian, but she questions a lot about her faith and religion in general. She believes in Jesus but thinks that a lot of stuff that goes along with the Bible is fabricated, which of course, it is. She also believes in evolution. I explained to her that that's really just contradictory to the concept of creationism and Adam and Eve. She agrees with that, but still leans towards evolution. A little while ago, I sent her a website that highlights the reasons as to why the evolution theory cannot ever be actually proven and yata, yata, yata. I think it would be pretty helpful. Well, anyway, she started talking about how every religion in the world says that people of other religions will go to Hell. I started going on about Islam and how it's different because that's definitely not what Islam states about the people of the book. Although she believes in heaven and hell, she also has the idea that reincarnation is very much possible. Actually, not even heaven and hell, only heaven, and that everyone who's deserving will have their own personal hells. She also brought up a lot of other points and I think that if I work on it, I can maybe get her interested in Islam and have her see the reasoning in it. Of course, I'm not going to try to impose my beliefs on her because that's something that I absolutely detest and don't understand.

It's already March. Where the heck did February go?!? It seems as if it had just started yesterday. I think I'm getting old. Oh no. Anyway, I shall be back later, or whenever I feel like it, which may be never. Haha, just kidding! I think I'm addicted to my blog again! Isn't that wierd? Okay, I'm off the wall kind of hyper right now and it's starting to scare the friends who I'm talking to online at the moment. It's rather amusing if I do say so myself. Anyway, I better be going.