Week 2 Celine

I’m in Florida now visiting old friends and it’s really interesting; I feel like nothing has changed, and yet everything has changed. Being away in Massachusetts has given me my own experiences and helped me grow as a person, and yet as soon as I came and met my friends again, it feels like nothing has changed and no time has passed. I’m sad that my time with them had to come to an end though; saying goodbye is bittersweet. I hope I can see them again.

Week 2 Laura

I consistently overestimate my ability to enjoy books not written for a modern audience.
It makes me wonder how often I’m unknowingly setting myself up for failure whenever I talk about how
excited I am to read Dante’s Inferno, or how the Iliad is superior to the Odyssey and the Aeneid. I enjoy
framing myself around the names of classics as though their fame could shroud me. How much of my
mind is based around promises I’ve made myself to love what seems natural?

Week 2 Grace

I like to think that in life, we aren't given challenges that we can't overcome. Whenever I am faced with a tough situation, I remind myself that if I couldn't handle it, I wouldn't be dealing with it. Even if this isn't actually true, it helps me get through whatever I am faced with.

Week 2- Nick

I hate doing research papers because I have too much time to complete it. I never start it early enough, and never end up having enough time.

Week 2 - Meghana

I've been reading up about the American presidents, and it turns out that Andrew Jackson - yes, the incredibly racist and violent Andrew Jackson - never had any children of his own. Instead, he adopted them, including one Native American orphan, Lyncoya. After massacring his family during his attack on the Creek tribes, Jackson had come across a baby on the brink of death. Feeling what he called "unusual sympathy", he brought the child home with him. While Lyncoya did grow up loved and cared for, he was treated more of a pet than an actual child.
It got me intrigued. How would it feel, to be adopted by the very man who killed your family? How would it feel to be raised like them, and having to deny your own culture? Would you be able to move on from the trauma, or would that knowledge haunt you for the rest of your life? Would you feel indebted or resentful to your family?
It sounds like a very complex (and very interesting) character study to write.

Week 1 - Meghana

1) Every object in the world is essentially valueless. There's no fixed way to determine or measure "value", after all. It's a subjective trait. We determine it's worth based on our experiences with it. That includes people, too. So, are we valueless as well?

2) If you don't spend your money, someone's going to spend it for you. {If you don't make the most of what you have, someone will reap all the benefits}.

3) People have little habits in their speech, body language, etc. Where do they all originate? What causes someone to cover their mouth when they laugh or scratch their neck when they're lying? How big does an event have to be in order to impact you so subtly for the rest of your life?

4) It's really hard to write under pressure. Like, REALLY. How does adrenaline stifle my creativity, but make me super productive elsewhere?

Week 2- Priyanka Maudgal

Art is amazing. It's always manages to pull me away from anything. All the stresses melt away when I pick up a brush. I'm glad I pursued art. I remember one night. I'm desperate to leave my math problems, the tedious work boring me. And so, I do the smartest thing... I take pencil and instead pencil to paper, I go right to wall. I sketch out a pair of lips using some techniques I saw on YouTube. A curved line is produced & I work from that. Curves, lines, shadows, highlights. I'm engrossed & amazed at the final product. What's even more fascinating? Even more mind boggling? What was seemingly a 5 minute sketch break turned out to be a 45 minute drawing... It's funny how even now when I work on pieces, time escapes so easily from my mind when I put brush to canvas. 

Week 2 Leila

I went on a college tour where I sat in on a sociology class. The lesson was about culture, and the professor told us that food is a part of culture. She said that sushi is is considered a high culture food and McDonalds is low culture. But I eat sushi and McDonald's. You can buy $2 sushi at 7 Eleven, and you can buy $15 burgers at fancy restaurants. Our cultures are so complex and intertwined that it is impossible to sort a food to one class of people. Maybe cultures were easier to distinguish a long time ago, but people today indulge in all ends of the cultural spectrum. Designer brands sell sweatpants. Kids come to school wearing their $100 Jack Roger sandals paired with their dresses from thrift stores. I just don't think culture is as easy to put a label on as sociologists would like it to be. Saying that sushi is eaten by high cultured people and McDonald's by low cultured people might make their jobs easier, but it does not capture the full picture of the society we live in today.

Week 2 - Caroline D

This girl asks me, “is a black bear black or purple?” I tell her, “I think you answered your own question.” The girl looks at me confused. I say, “A black bear is black because black is in its name." She replies, “Nah, I think they’re purple.”

Week Two Mehlhorn

Turns out my book has been lifted from my English room. Ordinarily I wouldn't be mad because Amazon exists and I can have another copy within seconds, well not really seconds, but you understand my point. This one, however, I found at a used book sale over the summer, so she's got character. My teacher informed me on what had transpired that fateful class period. I told her he could keep it until he was done. God if he knew it was my book he probably wouldn't have even looked at the front cover let alone read it end to end.

Week 1- Ali

1/28/19

Today I saw empathy. It poured out her eyes and dripped down her face. It melted off of her and radiated deep within me making my heart burn. I wasn’t a fan but it was powerful. People like that either make you think everything is fake or everything is deeply real. It makes life whack.

Week 1 Grace

I often think about why I am the way I am. Specifically, I think about why I am so quiet. I so badly want to speak my mind and voice my thoughts, but there's something along the way that stops me. I've been trying to figure out what that thing is and have come to the conclusion that it's fear. I'm just not exactly sure what that fear is.

Ol1ive

It is a rule universally acknowledged that once a man becomes a father, his sneezes exceed a tolerable volume and evolve into an earth shattering mist of mucus and screams.

Week 1 Samiul

I thought about myself. No surprise. And I thought whether I have achieved something of value with myself. I haven't. Maybe Samiul Akbor is a figment of my own imagination. I am just a mere dream. It is something I can hope for every night. But, when I wake up, nothing has changed. My reality is still a reality, not a dream.

Week 1 - Elise

The first thing people say after a death is "what if...?". "What if she had not been in the fast lane on the highway?" "What if she didn't take that flight this morning?" "What if I didn't call him while he was driving?" People think about how many things could have changed the outcome, and bring back the person they love. Yet everyday, these "what if's" occur. They weren't in the fast lane. She missed her flight this morning. I decided not to call him. Even though some things may happen that you are not fond of, they could have been a "what if" and saved someones life - so think positively.

Week 1 - Eric B

I drove my friend to Derry, NH to meet a guy who was selling him a car, which took over 30 minutes. When we got there the guy wasn't there, and on the drive back I blasted through a 3-way stop sign intersection and almost hit an old lady in a Toyota Corolla. We laughed about how it would be funny if it wasn't us.

Prisha Week One

The stars shine very little. Sometimes I wonder whether they once looked brighter. Even when all the lights are off, those glowing specks seem so very weak, like the life was sucked out of them and humans used it to make artificial light.
Sometimes it feels like the rest of the universe is dying with us.

Week 1 - Sophie Zhu

To most, the time of sleep is a time void of color. Yet they have not seen the way the sky pulsates in shades of yellow and orange in the odd hours of the night, like a dragon trying to break free of the heavens. The only yellow they see is the artificial glow of a street lamp, and artificial hope that pushes a way their demons. Little do they know that true light is right above them. The canvas of the heavens have never been truly painted with ink. Even at the darkest of times, shares of blue show hope for day. Or rather, day never ceases. Who are we to define day and night? How can we, after seeing all the stars in the sky? 

Week 1- Priyanka M.

I was listening to a self help book. The first chapter was titled, "[eff] self improvement". Although truly vulgar in it's name, it brought up a good point. This point was to realize while you can go about bettering yourself, know there are some limitations you'll have no matter what. Somethings will always hurt and others, like depression, are genetically installed in some of us. No matter how many collages, affirmations, or prayers you make, these things and many more in life can't ever be prevented or 100% "fixed". It's a cruel, pessimistic way to think about it, but the author brings up that this means we should work with what we've got. Don't strive for normal, but rather, look at the achievements made despite your struggles. You don't have to hit rock bottom to know you can strive for goals within your standards. Also, this author thinks a bad f-word in this world is "fairness"...

Week One Mehlhorn

My father is very perceptive when it comes to me. He can always tell when things aren't going the way I had hoped. When I wake up in the morning and head into my bathroom the first thing I do is look up into the mirror. Recently, I have been looking up to find a sticky note stuck to the mirror. Since I go to bed on the earlier side, my father will write me a note before he turns in for the night and will stick it onto the mirror in my bathroom so that it is there in the morning.
Finding those notes always reassures me that everything will be alright.

Week 1 - Caroline D

The phone rang. It kept on ringing. My classmates and I didn’t feel like answering it. We figured our teacher would come back soon. The phone rang again. Our teacher was still not back yet. When she did return and I told her the phone rang twice, she picked it up and found there weren’t any new messages. Who knows who it was that was trying to call my teacher so badly. We’ll never know.

Week 1 Lamarre Anderson

Sophie: “Death is in the hands of the living.”; Concept, from ShanaStoryteller’s a terrifying clamour of trumpets: Funerals are for the living; Also: Sunflowers.
Why would someone request sunflowers for their funeral, when they're not around to see them bloom? What is the significance of the flower; to create your own memories, or to remind everyone of you? Lazy days with your brother getting lost in the field of sunflowers, when the sun was out and you smiled so brightly. You left me in those sunflowers.

Week 1 Laura

I still remember when I shook someone's hand in earnest for the first time. It wasn't just for a playground deal or to imitate adults, but as an actual honest to god introduction to an adult that didn't quite understand how to interact with children. I thought it was wonderful, I was growing into my playground idea of an adult.

Week 1 Leila

A freshman at a college in Boston said to me, "People say they can't sleep their first week living in Boston because of the sounds of the cars in the city. That wasn't a problem for me because I'm used to the cows in my backyard." I laughed because I thought she was kidding. She wasn't.

Week 1 Zach

When I was in Boston the day of the Patriots parade, I saw this young mother alone standing with her baby in a stroller. She was on the phone talking to someone. I saw her look up at a building where there were many construction workers on top. She started waving and I heard her saying "I see you up there! You're in the corner hiding!" I looked up at the building and saw a construction worker on the phone in a corner looking down at her and waving back.

Ol1ve

"Ted Bundy is so hot."
"Who's Ted Bundy?"
"I don't know but he has a show on Netflix."
Said by two girls in the bathroom sharing a Juul.

Week 1 Celine

I really love the idea of graduation and being able to go to college to learn about things I actually enjoy without feeling like my freedom is being snatched away, but I can’t help but wonder about what would come afterwards. Yesterday at my friend’s house, I couldn’t help but notice the communal environment of their family (her mom and three other siblings were also home). Knowing this friend, I expect she will grow up to raise her own family and try to live up to being a dutiful mother and wife, and yet somehow I cannot as easily imagine the same for me. If anything, not having my own biological kids would help with the overpopulation problem, and the thought of settling down in a long-term monogamous relationship doesn’t appeal to me. I want my freedom. I would be totally fine with vagabonding around for a few years. Maybe I’m just a natural lone wolf. The pack is not my calling. Besides, solitude won’t kill you.

Week-1 Quatrocchi

Empathy and pity are a fine line. It is easy for someone to perceive something as pity that is meant to be empathy.

Week 1 Carter

At a rest stop off the highway, I stop to get a sandwich at the Common Man grill. One of the workers there says to the other, "Hey, good job!" The other nods in thanks, then cocks his head at another employee, a younger lady turned away from him working at the same grill station. The two workers share a laugh at the expense of the third - I assumed they were mocking her, but about what, I didn't know.