olivia davies week10

 I love shopping. It’s one of the few things that make me happy. There’s something about going home with a brand new outfit, and walking through school or around town with it is an otherworldly feeling. My confidence skyrockets. Clothing is a significant factor in how I feel that day. If I love what I’m wearing, whether it’s super comfortable or stylish, my mood is better. Clothes are a great way to express yourself.

Sakthi C- Week 10

 In one week, school will have let out and we will have our winter break. Christmas is in nine days and the New Year is in 16 days. I cannot wait till Christmas and winter break in general. School has been a bit stressful and a break from school would be greatly appreciated. However, as excited I am for winter break, I am a bit sad that I will most likely not be able to meet with some family and friends for the holidays. Every year, my family has celebrated the holiday with family and friends but this year we are unable to because of covid. Overall, this inspired my day because it reminded me that in a week, I will have a week and a half off from school.

Week 10- Beatriz Ferreira

 I like the concept of giving away what we don't need anymore. Sometimes donating is the best option, and it is good to know that we've contributed to someone's happiness someway. I'll always think that the simplest things are the best ones. A toy that is in the corner of our room could be one's best memory.

ern cragg - week 10

 College is taking up so many of my thoughts recently. There are a lot of things I want to do like redo my room or by certain things but I stop myself because I feel like it's not worth it because I'm just going to be leaving soon. I'm excited to leave nut it's a strange realization. 

Kate Barnes- week 10

Last night, I had a dream that I had jet black hair. Everything else was normal. The only difference was that I had jet black hair. I have dreams like these a lot. They’re very realistic, except for one part of them that didn’t actually happen. So I find myself mistaking my dreams for reality a lot.

Tess Acabbo- Week 10

 I love the holidays, especially Christmas Eve. My whole family comes over and I make a special dessert for everyone. We always have so much fun. It was always good seeing family that I hadn’t seen in a while. Unfortunately, it will not be the same this year, as fewer people will be able to come. Although it will be different, I think I’ve had to learn over this time that we have to make the best out of whatever we can get. 

Melanie Duronio - Week 10

There is always something so beautiful about the first snowfall of the season. Although I’ve never been a huge fan of winter, mostly due to the ice and cold, I’ve always admired how pretty the world looks under a light blanket of snow. Winter has a more subtle type of beauty, one that requires you to really look closely. I love the way that the sunlight reflects off of the snow in the afternoons, and how the evenings paint the entire landscape in a lavender glow. And the Christmas season only adds to the beauty, with twinkling golden lights. The first few inches of snow always remind me how beautiful winter can be.

Jane Edison - Week 10

One of the most underrated hobbies and or activities is coloring. Why did we all stop doing it so often as we grew up? It is so cathartic and relaxing. I still have a couple of mandala books that I color in every once and awhile, but why isn’t it commonplace for teenagers and adults to color frequently? I think we need relaxing activities like that more as we get older than we do as children.

Patrick Zheng - Week 10

I remember learning about a photographer who put flowers underwater and shot ink at them to get really colorful and abstract pictures, which gave me an idea; I think it would be interesting to zoom up really close into a scoop of ice cream and get a extreme close-up all the little granules of ice crystals that make it up.

Paige Stephan - Week 10

I often try to improve my hand-drawing skills by using my own hand as a reference. Sometimes, I will take pictures of it in certain poses and positions, and other times, I will sketch it from life. I have found using my own hand to be more helpful than looking at photos from the Internet because I can actually get a better sense of how certain aspects of it work. However, I am worried that because of this, I will have a more difficult time drawing different types of hands. Lately, I have been trying to vary what I draw more, and this is a difficult obstacle to overcome.

Week 12 - Erin McEwan

 Outside, the world is covered in a layer of white. The snowflakes flutter through the air in the wind, and they never stop coming down. The layers of snow get thicker as time goes by. I wonder when it will ever stop and we will be able to see the ground again.

week 9 valerie wilhelm

 

1. Today I shot my first short film with my friend that was not specifically for any school assignment. I have been getting more and more interested in filmmaking so I decided it would be a good idea to start filming whenever I could. It's something me and my friend are passionate about and we enjoy doing.

Week 9- Sakthi C

 In two years, I will graduate from the school of Westford Academy and hopefully be heading off to college. The thought of losing all my friends that I had made throughout my childhood scared me. Would I ever see my friends again? If I were to stay friends with my closest friends, would they still stay close to me after I visit them from college? This idea of going to college had frightened me greatly. Suddenly, all the memories I had with my friends started to hit me. I started to laugh as I though of some funny ones. After a series of thoughts, I had finally decided that I need to make the most out of my friendships in the next two years because the chance that I will remain close with my friends after going to college is very unlikely. The best I could do in these next two years is create more memories with my friends. Overall, this inspired my day by making me realize the importance of my friendships.

Week 9- Beatriz Ferreira

 There is something beautiful in how peoples' different backgrounds affect their personalities. It is amazing how an experience can shape the way a person sees the world and how a traumatic event can make us stronger. It is also interesting how we learn from experiences and are able to help other people who are going through the same thing we did. It is almost like an endless cycle.

week 9- tess acabbo

 I love pictures, being able to capture a beautiful moment. I like candid photos when people don’t notice the picture being taken. So many photos are taken so professionally where a person is faking their emotions just to make the photograph look well. I love it when I am taking photos of my friends that they don’t notice and I can see the purest smile ever. Pictures can be so beautiful, they capture moments in time. The only true way to grasp the moment is to see the candid photo, that was not a planned photo. 

Kate Barnes- Week 9

 One thing about being isolated like we are because of the virus, is that the things that used to seem so normal are now so special. Like having a conversation with a stranger, making a new friend, or meeting someone that you’ll never speak to again. Being kept away from life really exposes you to the beauty of it.

week 9 erin cragg

 I cleaned and reorganized my room today for the first time in a while. I really like reorganizing things because I feel productive and put together. It's relaxing. I used to dread cleaning my room as a child, it's interesting how much things have changed. 

jane edison - week 9

 With Christmas around the corner, I am definitely stressed over what to get as gifts. The way in which each person I buy gifts for has individual and niche interests never fails to interest me, and I do actually love it. I love the idea of people and their hobbies, their little idiosyncratic interests. I think that’s what makes gift-buying and gift-giving so enjoyable. The individualism and uniqueness of what people like always makes me smile when it comes to shopping for them, because when you get it right, there is no better feeling. Giving is always greater than receiving, in my opinion.

olivia davies week 9

My sister got tarot cards from our neighbor. She offered to give me a reading with excitement. Of course, I allowed her, for I was curious as to what the universe wanted to tell me. But, another part of me wonders if it truly holds meaning, or if it’s all just fun and games. Do we really possess psychic powers as humans? They say we only use a percentage of our brain. What else are we capable of?

Patrick Zheng - Week 9

Learning about drug addiction in psychology reminded me of Brave New World, "soma", and the internet. The internet is a convenient source of instant happiness and is an escape from the burdens of the world around you, but once the crash happens, you’re now worse off than you were before. 

Paige Stephan - Week 9

The more I think about the characters that I create, the more I find bits and pieces of myself and other people I know or have known in them. It is definitely a subconscious thing for me to incorporate these types of details into them, as I am usually not directly thinking about it while I am jotting ideas down, with a few exceptions. I usually do not realize this until it clicks afterward that I had taken a particular trait from a character or a person I like or am familiar with. I find that it is easier to write what I know, and this particular phenomenon really reflects that.

Week 11 - Erin McEwan

 The birds surround the birdhouse, desperately trying to get some seeds. The snow keeps coming down, knocking them off the house, and towards the ground. They continue to look for seeds on the ground instead.

Kate Barnes- week 8

 I was thinking about fashion and how it cycles. My mom says that pretty much every fashion trend comes back around after thirty years or so, placing us currently in the 90’s. Unfortunately for me though, my mother didn’t save any of her clothes from back then for me. This made me think of putting all my clothes in a bag or something so that my daughter can have it. For when “The 10’s” come back.

week 8 - valerie wilhelm

 Christmas this year is gonna be different. Usually I get together with my extended family, but because of corona we can't do that. So this year it's just going to be me, my parents and my sister. It’s kind of sad and I definitely miss my family and hanging around on the holidays.

Week 8 - Sakthi C

 The first day of December had finally arrived. I was extremely excited for the beginning of this month because this is the month of Christmas and the end of the year 2020. This year of 2020 has been horrendous with the pandemic and the restrictions it has put on everyone. I realized that we had only had one day of snow during this winter which is unusual. Usually we would have had a snow storm of at least 3 inches and above, but this year we haven’t had any sort of those storms. This overall brightened up my day as I was excited that the month of December had finally arrived.

Melanie Duronio - Week 8

One thing I’ve always looked forward to at the beginning of each Christmas season is putting up my family’s Christmas tree. We’ve had the same faux tree for years, ever since I was a kid, as well as boxes and boxes of ornaments to decorate it with. I always feel so nostalgic picking out the ornaments and hanging them on the tree, and my sister and I love to compare our homemade ones from when we were kids while arguing good-naturedly over who’s look better. Looking at the tree has always made me feel happy, especially when it’s all lit up. It makes me of all of my past Christmasses and reminds me of why I love the Christmas season so much.

Week 8- tess acabbo

 I love to meet new people and make new friends. There is something so fun about finding what you have in common with someone else. You get to do new fun things together and talk about things that you never talked about with other friends. Meeting new people helps you discover so many things you never even thought about, they give a different perspective on everything. 

week 8 erin cragg

I don't often remember my dreams when I wake up but when I do, they're usually very vivid. Sometimes I can't tell if they were dreams or real life. I've always been fascinated by the meanings of dreams. What is your subconscious trying to tell you? 

Jane Edison - Week 8

 I wish that I was born in a different era. Specifically the romantic era, or victorian. I like to think that I would attend great balls with extravagant dresses and drink champagne until the small hours of the morning still draped with my pearls. I feel like life was so much simpler back then.

Olivia Davies - Week 8

 Fake positivity will always be worse than real sadness. As humans, it is crucial that we feel our emotions the way they are supposed to be felt. We should never dwell, but we should instead allow those negative thoughts to pass. When we suddenly become sad, is it healthy to put on a fake smile and listen to uplifting music? Or should we let ourselves cry and listen to Frank Ocean? I guess it all varies from person to person, but bottling up our emotions will never be beneficial in the long run.

Patrick Zheng - Week 8

I have two lights on my desk. One of them has a yellow-orange tint, and the other has a blue tint, so it always looks like my face looks blue and orange. Orange and blue are opposite colors on the color wheel. Orange is an extroverted color and blue is a more introverted color, so I thought an orange and blue face is sort of symbolic of how everyone has an extroverted side and an introverted side, and these two forces act in different ways in different people, creating different personalities. 

Paige Stephan - Week 8

I am working on creating a new list of names for characters that I like. I feel as if the one that I created last year is outdated, and have decided to sort it in a similar way to the last one, mostly by the character archetype I associate with them and the particular vibe I associate them with. I have definitely noticed my taste in names for characters shifting over the past year. Whereas when I created the first list of names, I tended to prefer more elegant, rare names, now, I tend to steer clear of names I consider to be "more fancy" and mostly stay within the bounds of names that are not very rare but I still consider to be pretty. I am planning to add more categories to this list and hopefully use them in a story sometime this year.

Week 8- Beatriz Ferreira

It always feels great to help others. Just by being kind, we can make people smile. It really gives us a sense of purpose in this life which most of the time is what motivates us to keep going. 

Week 10 - Erin McEwan

I can’t believe it’s already the last month of the year. This whole year has gone by too fast because of the dramatic changes everyone had to deal with. Staying home the majority of the time has literally caused time to fly.

Week 7 Journal- Cam.O

Every year it feels like winter gets pushed back into spring. It snowed the day before Halloween but has barely snowed since and as someone who likes to snowboard it gets frustrating. Hopefully, after time we will get our early winters back.