Thanks. This is a really good idea. During that good year I had, one of my most passionate teachers was my English teacher, which was partly the reason I liked that year so much (that subject had been ruined for me before). My English class now basically consists of worksheets and vocab. books, but I suppose they still can't take away the value of the literature :)
1. My grades are A's and B's. They've gone down recently out of apathy but they're still not bad. I know they're important to college, but grades are something I just abhor because I feel they really diminish the value of learning the subject. Like I said though, they're "decent": I've had no C's, and the lowest GPA I've had is a 3.17, which is mediocre, but it's tough to make myself care. Really it's just a matter of extrinsic vs. intrinsic motivation for me; I try to motivate myself to do better with grades because there's supposed to some benefit later on of getting into a better college and all that, but I'm just more motivated to do other things like learn programming languages or typography or how to play the drums, or just read. Probably a typical teenager thing to say, sorry.
2. A few, I could 'network' more as some people above me said. I guess I've been aversive to that because it seems that's the only thing most of my peers want to do. If that'll make it more enjoyable though, I'll try...
"Networking", as generally understood, involves going around and schmoozing lots of people, collecting their business cards, etc. If you're an introvert, like most geeks, this is torture. Instead of building shallow relationships with lots of people, I recommend building deep relationships with a few. Find a small group working on some activity you're interested in, one where you'll have to take on some role other than "alpha geek"--maybe writing for the school paper or acting in a play, or something like that. The small group makes it more tolerable to an introvert and the shared activity means you're not just socializing for the sake of socializing.
