Happy (Belated) Fourth of July! + President Arjay Finale

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Hello, everyone. Saturday was the Fourth of July, AKA Independence Day. Happy (late) Fourth of July to all! As you probably know, this is celebrated all across America for it is the day that the Declaration of Independence was adopted by the Continental Congress. This, of course, led to the birth of the United States, independent from England. Normally, it would be celebrated with fireworks and barbecue parties. It still is... without any precautions by those who aren't practicing keeping themselves and others safe. But with precautions by those who are. Or, just not at all in the places where public fireworks got canceled and no one invited you to a barbecue party so you just have to barbecue some chicken yourself. Or eat a veggie burger if you're vegetarian, I suppose. 

On Saturday, I started out on the Fourth of July by going to a half-capacity beach for the second day in a row. Some people clearly, blatantly didn't care about social distancing and this concerned me, but seeing as my family still was careful and also didn't speak face-to-face with those people, our risk is... significantly less. Later in the day, we started watching a pre-recorded form of the Broadway musical Hamilton, which had arrived on Disney+ a day earlier. Apparently, it was supposed to release in theaters as a limited-run next year, but seeing as many people will be at home for Fourth of July this year, and since The Mandalorian Season 2 won't arrive until October and with The Clone Wars being over, Disney obviously needed a way to get people to not cancel their subscriptions yet. 

I chose to make this post, despite it being a day late, not in order to write two paragraphs, however. You should have known that that is never the case. Instead, I intend on it being the finale to a... 2? 3? Actually, two... a two-part story that I last wrote about 2 years ago that was based on my real-life experiences on my middle school's student council. It started out recounting the time I lost (http://www.arcabaran.com/2017/06/make-this-blog-great-again.html), and then the time I lost but the entire situation was a big meme so it was ok (http://www.arcabaran.com/2018/07/making-my-school-dank-again-story-happy.html), and... now, ladies and gentlemen, the long-awaited conclusion of the Memewalker Saga that literally no one asked for: The story of my student council experiences in 8th grade, which I didn't get a chance to write about last Fourth of July, as well as my last year ever (or at least I'll have to wait a year... you'll find out why), in 9th grade. Let's begin! 

I started out my 8th grade student government career as being the vice-president of the grade (relegated to a non-president role for what seems like the billionth time). ...And... it was pretty great, actually. If I had been school president, then I would get to do the announcements every morning, first through the loudspeaker, and then later on in the year once livestreams became daily (*cough cough* remember this from ages ago?: http://www.arcabaran.com/2016/05/i-got-on-news.html), then through live video. 

This, I admit, would have been great. But I already got my fair share of getting to do the announcements, twice, when the actual school president was absent. This happened twice. The first time, I got to have a blast starting out the announcements and surprising (and delighting) everyone with a "TOP OF THE MORNIN' TO YA". The second time, a lot of kids were in a field trip for an elective class, leaving only about 25% of the honors students remaining (including me), so I got to announce Minecraft's 10th Anniversary(!) In fact, I even uploaded part of that live stream to YouTube, and you can watch it below or at this link!: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YPJDkLOM2d4 

That singular moment was probably the highlight of my entire 8th-grade vice-presidential experience. However, I also had a great time participating in planning events and filming skits and making Rick Roll the 8th-grade graduation dance song, as usual. 

But then... the start of high school came around, and it was as if Thanos had snapped. Only 1% of my friends from middle school were still with me, and none of them were in any of my classes. The entire world felt... different. Wait, that's because YouTube started its problematic COPPA system. Nevermind. 

Anyways, I think the way I applied to be on the student council sort of embodies the goofy and clumsy nature of my 9th-grade year. I had no idea when to apply. In fact, I didn't even get to apply or know I had to until 15 minutes before the due date. So, I rushed into a computer lab, clickity-click-clacked a good election speech, printed it out, scanned and sent a form to my mom for her to give a virtual signature, and then dashed to the office to submit. I gave my speech a few days later. I already know I'm pretty decent at public speaking, which I think most influenced the fact that I was one of the only 8 (or 7, I forgot at this point) kids in my 70-student freshman class that was voted to be an official elected member of the student government. Yay.

The reason I was looking forward to student council the most this year was that at the start of that year, in fact, in around May of 2019 (close to the end of my middle school graduation June), a friend of mine who maybe has worked on a collab story here with a sibling who goes to the high school that I would be going to this year showed me a video of a student film produced by one of the student councils. Despite not appreciating the majority of the anime references in it except for those I've seen in YouTube comments (again, I'm not a weeb; the most anime I've ever watched was literally nothing), I did appreciate the meme presence and the general fun and humorous nature of it. I already had an impression since a few years prior that the school I couldn't wait to go to was filled with fellow people of meme culture such as myself. Turns out, I was wrong. 

Anyways, if you've been looking at my blog for a bit, you'll know that A.) I love writing and telling stories, B.) I have a sense of humor that usually permeates much of what I write, and C.) I like appearing in videos, make them all the time, and have acted in some skits. Well, no one in my council really knew any of these things, so the roles of writers and actors were snatched up before I could do anything about it. It didn't matter anyway, since the film was never made, due to... you know. We couldn't film on the school campus anymore, so the project was canceled.

But I still did have some fun in 9th grade as being an elected (non-president, yet again) representative of my grade. I got to be a judge of a Halloween costume contest where I dressed up as one of my particularly infamous (in a good way for the majority of my school) teachers whilst sitting on the judging panel and witnessing some particularly strange moments of "wait... that's not even a costume. He just printed out a picture of Jimmy Neutron and stood up calling himself the Holocron Keeper". 

I'm trying to remember another unique moment I got to have this year as an elected representative, but... seems that's it. Once the pandemic hit, all of our events moved online and a sweet-sweet Clash Royale tournament was born. All final, I enjoyed my experience and would definitely do it again. So that's what I planned to do; do it again. I tried to get re-elected, prepared a nice speech with "I have spoken" as my last sentence, and... I didn't get re-elected, so this will be the first year that I haven't been elected as something on my school's student council ever. Four years was a good run, though. I made plenty of memories and meme-tastic moments. I'll still be able to volunteer to attend meetings as a "citizen" or something, so there's that. But fortunately, now I won't be sent emails asking me where I've been on the rare occasion I forget about meetings due to studying for a test or quiz happening in 20 minutes' time. 

Anyways, this post sure is delayed, but then again, I've got posts that I haven't published in nearly 2-3 years, so this is quite minor. I hope you enjoyed reading this. My revised "summer plan" (http://www.arcabaran.com/2020/07/my-summer-2020-blogging-plan.html) is that now I think I'll make a minimum of 5 posts per week, and potentially take the weekends off if I feel like it. Also check out my little brother Onur's first new blog post in a few months: https://omegaonix.blogspot.com/2020/07/what-happened-to-operation-nose-in.html I'd deeply like to be able to finish editing and uploading one overdue vacation vlog video per week, as well, but I don't know if I'll be able to do that all the time due to having a remote online summer program I'll be attending next week. I'll see how it goes. Until next time, this is Senator Arjay, signing off. Stay safe.