Appeal?

[cherrysk8fan.livejournal.com]

Name: Caitlyn
Age: 19
House you were sorted into: Hufflepuff
Link to original application: http://www.livejournal.com/community/platform_934/140460.html#cutid1
Are there any questions you would like to elaborate on?
Explain why you feel misplaced in your current House! I had originally had reservations about being placed in Hufflepuff even before being sorted; that was the one house where I just didn't feel I would belong. I originally felt that my slow acceptance of others was not keeping with the nature of Hufflepuff House, and I stand by that original statement and have since personally shed more light on it. While I do see many of the traits that some people stated led them to put me in Hufflepuff, I feel that traits that I didn't emphasize or even didn't describe are the ones that give me such an uneasy feeling about being in Hufflepuff. I think two of my negative traits that I failed to describe on the application are the main reasons I don't feel comfortable: impatience and an unfortunate, though thankfully only occasional, sense of elitism.
"Those patient Hufflepuffs are true..." I am horribly impatient...I can't wait for anything, ever, from broad things like "I can't wait to start college" (and literally meaning it, for two full years) to little things like being too impatient to wait for the water to come out of the little spout in the refridgerator door and instead going straight to the sink because it's maybe 20 seconds faster. (How I wish I were kidding!) I'll almost always have to look up the results to a skating competition that's being aired on tape delay that night, even though I know full well I would rather be surprised, because I just can't wait the extra four hours or whatever to watch the competition "live." Or, even just last night, when my brother just would not surrender the ethernet cable from his XBox so I could connect my computer and I basically made a nuisance of myself because I just could wait until he finished his "one game."
The second part, the bits of elitism, I think I didn't address in my application because at the time of filling out the application, I had just been recovering from the effects of some really stupid comments I had made about a close friend's college, saying that that the school wasn't that difficult and that anyone could get in, and some rather snide and nasty remarks about a girl I know who goes there who is not particularly intelligent and whom I have other personal issues with...clearly I hadn't been referring to him, or many of my friends that go there who are all great people and most definitely smart, and I know it's a good school, but I somehow wanted to confer in my eyes or something that I was going somewhere better, and I didn't think about how my witty little remarks would really hurt someone I care deeply about. I hate thinking about that chunk of myself because, obviously, it's not a flattering trait, but it is something that definitely contributes to a feeling of misplacement in Hufflepuff, which I view as such an accepting and loyal house.
What would you see in the Mirror of Erised? Be exact with your descriptions! This is such a difficult question! I suppose what I would see is the stereotypical "having it all": the extremely successful career as the editor-in-chief of a top magazine, living in a nice apartment in the city (whichever city my job is in, it wouldn't matter too much there), and a happy marriage to the person I love, because ultimately, that is what I desire for my life. After living in a small town all my life and graduating from a small high school, where sports and popularity meant everything and talent and intelligence meant little, I want to break out and prove that the "geeks" can come out of our school and become intelligent and very successful adults. It probably sounds extremely shallow, but I kind of want to go back to my high school class reunion in ten years and be able to prove that I made so much more out of my life than is expected from a graduate of our high school...and, okay, that even though I was just the brainiac who spent four hours a day in the journalism lab, who didn't go out and party and drink all the time, who wasn't a pretty popular cheerleader type girl, I had made a lot more of my life than the ones who thought they "had it all" in high school. How you could see all that in a mirror, I have no idea, but it is, after all, magic!
What makes you unique? It would have to be my curiosity about...well, everything! That is the trait that drives me, more than anything else. It certainly drove me to my choice of college major and future career in journalism. I am unique in that I always desire to find out more about everything, even things that didn't necessarily interest me to begin with. I read a huge variety of books, I try to take in movies or plays that will expand my horizons, I take classes that I know will stretch my capacities. For example, I am absolutely no athlete, but I love to watch figure skating, and so, I took an ice skating class this winter...it was a major challenge. I wanted to try it out, see how things went, and turns out, I loved it (and wasn't too terrible at it)! Or, as another example, I'm definitely not a "science person," but I took an Honors geology class because the class (Intro to Earth Systems) was something I didn't know a lot about but that intrigued me just a bit...and even though I generally don't care for science, and even though I had to concentrate more than I probably would have had I just taken a university general science course, I really enjoyed it and I feel like I took a lot away from it: I'm glad I took it. I hate it when I don't understand something, it absolutely drives me crazy...like, I went to see "Kingdom of Heaven," because it looked good, but afterwards, I was thinking more, "Man, that was confusing, I have got to learn about the Crusades, I don't know what was going on," rather than just going with the flow of the movie (or, you know, discussing the merits of one Orlando Bloom). It just made me more excited for the European history class I'm taking in the fall, because I'll be studying the Middle Ages, and then I will be able to understand where the movie was going. I have literally spent hours at a time on the Wikipedia online, starting off looking up something I need to know and just clicking on all kinds of connections to see how everything ties together. I want to travel and see the world, learn about and experience different cultures...I hate it when I don't know something, so I always push to find out something more and dig deeper, and I love learning something new and trying something different.