Quick disclaimer to anyone reading this blog: I'm so sorry for all the spelling and grammar errors. They probably will not be getting fixed anytime soon.
I was feeling a bit miffed today because a few people in the group chat were talking about receiving their post-program OPI scores, and I had yet to even get an email. Yesterday, Amanda sent a screenshot of her email that said her transcript was ready, and now I'm getting text messages from people with their OPI scores.
Korey mentioned that the email he received came from some woman, which meant the email was not coming from American Councils. This made me think that perhaps my email went into spam instead of my inbox, so I did a quick check there, and sure enough, there it was.
Drum roll......
A D V A N C E D L O W
I was so excited because that was the score I was aiming for, and I actually got it. I was more shocked by my pre-program OPI score though because I scored intermediate high, which doesn't make any sense at all. I had to real bad listening comprehension problems, and I had been out of practice speaking for almost a year. I really thought my Chinese would have regressed some since I scored intermediate high immediately after I returned from China the first time.
Maybe I have a good retention rate?
I wanted to move the email from my spam to my regular inbox, but somehow, my dumbass managed to delete the email instead, so then I lost it. And of course, I was in class, so that meant I'd have to go hunting for the email later.
And then, another idea occurred to me: I should try and use the link Amanda sent and see if my transcript is ready. It actually worked, and around 1:00 PM I got to see my final grades. I got an A+ in drill 2 (speaking) and a B- in drill 1 (grammar). I would have liked to make higher than a B- but considering how much I struggled with grammar, I'm not too mad about that.
What I am slightly annoyed about is not pushing myself to move up a class because we were talking about our OPI scores, and I scored in the same range as some of the people in the 401 class. Granted, my grammar wasn't as strong, so there's a reason I wasn't in the 400 level classes, but if I had actually pushed myself and hadn't been so afraid of moving up, I probably could have jumped up to 301. Oh whale, hindsight is 50/50.
But, I'm glad I stayed in 300 because I love my classmates.
I'm really glad I've kept in contact with my CLS friends because I didn't really talk to my NSLI-Y friends post-program--at least not like I do with my CLS friends. Hannah and I text pretty much every day, and we've video called each other at least once a week. We've even got plans to see each other during winter break, so I'm super excited for that.
I think the funniest way I've kept up with my friends is via Runescape. Other than Snapchat, Runescape is my main form of communication with Korey. Also, I totally caved and ended up paying for membership, so rip my bank account.
It's interesting, because recently, I've been reminiscing about a different summer program that I did back in 2015, and I forgot how close I used to be with that group of friends. We used to do google hangouts pretty much every week, and we texted each other every day. We even had a reunion during winter break. There are so many parallels between the friends I had there and my CLS friends.
The other day, Hannah, Korey, Kevin, and I all managed to video chat with each other despite being in four completely different timezones. The biggest time difference is 15 hours, and yet we made it work. Granted Korey had to take the L by waking up at 7 AM, and Kevin had to stay up a little later (Hannah and I got off easy with a 9 AM and 5 PM call time), but the fact of the matter is that everyone was willing to do it and do it again.
The only thing that makes me sad is thinking that eventually we might drift apart. I was super close with my gov school friends, but eventually, we all stopped chatting every day, and after about 6 months conversation was almost dead. I know eventually the four of us won't be conversing as often, but I hope we continue to talk to some degree. I really lucked out with the group of friends I made on my program.