Notecard Experiment

Notecard Experiment - Prologue

This is an experiment that I'm going to act out on myself. Yes, myself, because who else is going to want a stake in this when it first starts? Or want a stake at all if this goes wrong?

Every day of my junior year in high school, being 180 days for the Illinoisian that I am, I will wear a 3 by 5 notecard around my neck on a blue lanyard. The notecard will say a quotation, the author, and a number. The numbers don't mean much, just when I wrote them down compared to another card. Earlier numbers mean I wrote those first, later numbers etc.

There are surprises in the set. Some cards will have more than one quotation on it. There might be a comment written under it on at least one. And I've prepared two special weeks in advance where for five days (since I'm in school five days a week), there will be a subject for the week and all the quotations are about that subject.

I don't feel invincible going into this. In fact, I feel down-right nervous. There's so much that could go wrong. I didn't use this quote in the line-up, but I love it so much and it fits right now: the nail that sticks out the farthest gets hammered the hardest. Forget about getting whispered behind your back, as everyone always is in a small town school or a big city's, that basically happens at any school you go to. No, my problem is that I'm going to put myself up to be stared at by 1,200 people and their 2,400 eyes. This is not an experiment for the faint of heart, a stage I'm still not sure I've quite out-grown.

I also have to consider the school dress code. Because this notecard hanging from my neck, it can now be considered a part of what I wear. But luckily, I have studied my school's handbook and as long as I don't have any quotes with curse words, illegal drug, smoking, cigarette, other tobacco products, alcohol, alcohol products, any device not legally usable by high school students, violent or threatening statements, nothing provacative or suggestive (yes, meaning in THAT way), or anything offensive mentioned, I can do this.

I removed two quotes with curse words in them early on, even though I had pre-emtively censored the curse words considerably, but it's the threatening statements part that concerns me. There's one I really wanted to use by Lemony Snicket that can possibly perceived as a threat, but then again might not. I hate the feeling of censoring and censoring down which quotes I'm going to use, it's a little bit like giving in to avoid being hammered, while the whole point is to stick myself out to risk getting hammered in the first place. I've censored or just plain old not used quotes for this, not just those two first ones. I removed another two quotes by Fredrich Nietzche, because of him being a contoversial figure, but I've also just cut out quotes for being said by famous-enough people. I want these quotes to be relatively unknown quotes, by not necessarily well-known people, because there's no point in using quotes that have been repeated over-and-over to everyone...and frankly by that time, they've become annoying, no matter how pure-intentioned the message.

180 quotes. 180 days of school. At risk of ridicule and a possibly unamused assistant principal. Any one of those assistant principals, in face. My school has three.

It's time to take on the experiment. This is...The Notecard Experiment. Only I'm going to leave it without the "The." Facebook used to be called The Facebook, so this can just be Notecard Experiment.

Tomorrow starts chapter one...