school, studying, and why i want to change to ubuntu

18 Jul, 2025

school ugh...

Starting my last year in high school, I've been trying to act a bit more social nowadays. It's like, I've always lived under the overwhelming weight of my shyness that I've done barely no ECAs. In my ECA portfolio, I have accomplished so little, and in my academic portfolio, I don't really stand out much. Look, I can be a good student if I try, but seldom have I touched the margin to be an excellent student.

There's nothing much special about school; I honestly care more about the pursuit of knowledge than the pursuit of grades (although one is held much higher in esteem; I'm sure you know which). School has been like a train. Never slowing down. And here I am, perhaps near the designated station. Life has been going so quickly; I remember so little of everything.

As I'm trying to socialize more, I've realized something. Other people are quit boring. No offense, but I find myself a bit (or maybe a lot) more interesting than these idiots. Sorry. I won't, however, say that to their faces. I'm not interested in getting in a fight, and I'd like to keep a low profile. Despite the fact I'm trying to socialize more, I'd rather stay quiet most of the times. There's a beauty in quietness, a sort of divine holiness. A cleansing feeling when one listens more than one speaks.

reading in the library, yay O(∩_∩)O

After the orientation, I decided to go to the library and read. Ever since I was little, I've always followed the group. If the group was going somewhere, I'd follow them. If the group was running up and down the stairs, I'd do that too. If the group wasn't reading a book, I'd put mine down and stare into the blankness of space and let my daydreams define my time. But, nowadays, I've had a more who-cares attitude. I couldn't give a damn of what someone thinks of me. I have no interest in their life or what they're doing. I'm only interested in what I want to do. And, after the orientation, I wanted to read something.

I wanted to find something on Nietzsche, but I couldn't find the philosophy section. The school library is small, so I was confused why I couldn't find the section. Anyways, I decided to pick a classic. To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf. I've always wanted to read one of her works, and when I saw her name on one of the covers, I picked it up almost immediately.

The book was old, but didn't seem much used. There was a bookmark inside the book saying the old name of my school, so I knew no one had touched this book for a long, long time. None of the pages had any creases of any page bookmark—that stupid thing people do by folding the top corner of the page and using that as the bookmark; could someone please get them a piece of paper instead?

The pages were yellow and had these small yellow dots around the margin. The paper felt rough, and the font was a bit small to my liking. It was a Modern Penguins Classic, so the book cover was nice as usual. It was some picture of a pretty woman in a beach, if I remember correctly. I read the back excerpt, and skipped the introduction because that was like twenty/thirty damn pages long. The introduction itself must have taken at least a quarter of the whole book. My God, I just wanted to read Woolf, not some literary jargon by some literature professor. I decided not to borrow the book, because that's just another bother. I hope no one has borrowed it yet when I may pick it up the next time.

There really isn't much at my school library. The internship is boring and feels like factory work. I tried to leave during the eleventh grade, but the librarian has me in a net; most students don't have library-like personalities like me. By that, I mainly mean quiet.

study talk

I used to be a hard-worker, but now I've been seeing a flaw in that. Honestly, why do the hard work if there's a shortcut? Not only would I save more energy and time, but I could spent the extra time doing fun stuff like reading. Or listening to people speak in French. Or maybe taking a walk in my apartment because the city outside is a hell.

That's why I've taken a more feasible approach to studying: study less, but achieve more. I promised myself I won't do that stupid note-highlighting or read the stupid freakin chapter again right before the exam. Now, I stick to a new rule. I call it:

Quiz it and space it.

That means I focus now most of my time on (a) practice, and (b) spaced repetition. For (a) I usually just do the textbook's questions with online resources. For (b) I use Anki; using Anki is nice but I had to spent a lot of time modifying it as the UI has always disgusted me, especially that stupid Arial font. If I do have a question, I search it on YouTube or ask ChatGPT/Copilot. If I message a teacher, I'd either not get a fast response or receive an unsatisfactory answer. Yeah, it took me some time to realize the teachers in my school aren't good. Almost all teachers aren't. The greatest teacher, I have realized, is myself for my own student needs.

Life has gotten a bit lonely. Since orientation, I have seen how much I have grown from my past self, and how different/awkward I am compared to the other students. I don't have social media, don't read the news, ain't a fan of small talk/video games, and spent most of my time reading or writing. I still haven't gotten that tabletop box-easel for my painting! Ugh, why is the delivery system here so terrible?

memories of the past ✍️(◔◡◔)

I had some relatives come to the house some days ago. They came at night, and I was prepping to go to sleep. It was just nine-thirty and I knew most of my country's youth did not have such an early bedtime. My relative was telling his son how good it was I had created an early bedtime and how much it was going to help me in the long-term. The only thing I was thinking about the time to his comments was how boring the morning is. It really is boring. Sure, the early daylight is pretty to see (because of all that nice calming blue), and it is very quiet, but it feels so lonely and dead. Isolated in a sense. Like I'm the only one awake in the world. Most of the times I enjoy it, but sometimes I don't. The boredom of everything can seem tasteless to some, but I've been trying to get used to it.

I remember once telling a friend everything in life is a distraction to make sure we all don't realize one very important thing about life: it is boring as hell. Perhaps meaningless, but I'm not nihilistic. I'm what I call a theologian absurdist. It's something I made up, I believe. I'm pretty sure I've never seen the term ever in anything I've read or listened.

This means I believe in God, but I also like to think of life and the universe as meaningless. The world merely is and nothing more. Might as well just have fun hanging around instead of spiraling into a severe depression. I find this theologian absurdism calms me a bit when I have psychotic episodes/panic attacks. It's not a nice thing to be mentally ill.

eh, ubuntu?

There are a few things on my mind at the moment. The most pressing one is learning how I can self-study properly, because textbooks give me trauma. Another thing on my mind is my idea to move to Linux later, perhaps after a month or two. I've settled on Ubuntu, because that was the only Linux distro¹ I seriously touched on when I was a kid. I used the one by Fedora or something, but I didn't like it. Felt too vintage and old for my taste. Ubuntu was more like my taste. Minimalistic, a bit like a Mac, and customizable.

I've gotten tired of Windows. I'm sick of automatic updates, and my computer has gotten quite old. Windows doesn't suit my digital minimalism needs. There's too much on it, and about half of it all is just a distraction. I'd also like the ability to control my OS to my will, not the other way around. Windows feels restricting, Linux feels a bit DIY (which I sorta like), and Mac sounds too capitalistic. I'm thinking, however, of keeping Windows still on my system. I'm not just wasting an entire Windows subscription I paid for.

I spend like half of my entire time each day behind a laptop screen. I might as well just change the screen a bit to fit my needs if I'm using it that much. Windows doesn't let me do too many changes. Ubuntu, however, might.

I've been using Windows for a little over half a decade, so such a change like this might have big impacts. I was thinking of doing it slow. If I rush everything, I will be the one who suffers at the end. I've given myself about two months to make the permanent change. I might also change to Firefox, because Edge has grown so annoying these days. Who knows? The future is always stranger than fiction.