3. Burrata

  Is it possible that when we write about memory, we actually corrupt said memories? In the Northwestern Now article “How Your Memory Rewrites the Past” by Marla Paul, she utilizes the well-known yet potentially unrealistic idea of “love at first sight:” she contends that it is rather a “trick of your memory.” This feeling of “‘love and euphoria’” is in fact conjured in the present by the brain, since it attributes those emotions to what one should have felt when meeting the partner they choose to spend the rest of their lives with. If the memory of meeting someone so important to us can be distorted just a few months later by the mind, what’s to say our other memories are safe? Indeed, memories are “built to be current:” they adapt to our current situation, and we may remember things differently at different periods of time. If that same person who felt “love at first sight” got divorced a few years later, the same memory might eventually become vastly different.  Apparently,...

The Fountain of Diana and Actaeon. Caserta, Italy. ( Credit ) T his poem is inspired by the Roman myth of Diana and Actaeon . While hunting, Actaeon witnesses Diana, a virgin goddess, naked as she bathes in the river with her maids. As punishment, she turns him into a stag, and he is eaten alive by his hunting dogs. In this poem, Diana has been reverted to her Greek counterpart, Artemis. Enter Artemis and a Maiden . Art. [to maiden ] Don’t listen to the wind, little girl— and cover up, I can see your  chest. Maid. [places hand on breast] Yes, I am a virgin. why do you  ask? Art. Little girl, don’t let the wind fool you—take one more step  into the mud child, your head is almost   bent. I have decided for all of us that we cannot let this stand—must not give in to the whims of man. Tch, no, don’t act like you know better. See these walls? They are meant to  protect us. See the canopy of these pines that scrape your skin? They are meant   to correct ...

    An iconic sign off. Credits: Dara Smith   Thank you, American High English 11AP. Thank you for teaching me how to be an imperfectionist. The great and also scary thing about this class is that nothing I made was ever perfect. With each assignment running on a tight schedule, I have realized the value of letting things be—forgiving my mistakes and respecting what I cannot control. Learning to calm the butterflies in my stomach when things don’t go my way is a difficult but ultimately rewarding act of self-care. Thank you for introducing me to such impactful literature. I truly enjoyed every book we read this year, although I will admit that Beloved was a difficult one to get through. Toni Morrison, the way you manipulate the English language never fails to perplex me. Can I talk about summer? I feel happy when I think about things that await me. First and foremost, I am HITTING THOSE Z’s!! It is frightening to me how many days this year I would trudge through my class...

“One last time.” It has been a year! A full year. After all the AP tests, I recently enjoyed the musical, Hamilton , and I noticed how in “ One Last Time ,” Washington emphasizes how “the nation learns to move on.” And I think that line is so core to our identity. It is important that as a society, we are able to move on from one thing and onto the next because growth only happens when we keep pushing forward.   Looking back, it is almost insane to see how much time has passed since the beginning of the year. Junior year, put simply, was a rollercoaster. The kind that exists as the ultimate thriller like X2 , where Six Flags themselves call it “downright scary.” But in every thrill, there always is that anticipation which is what causes the most remembered moments. The waiting, the build up before it finally happens and once it does, it makes everything worth it. The feeling of emotional catharsis after that huge test or presentation is what lets me keep on going.  One of...

  Jaycee Snelson Week 16: The Blogger Experience As this is our last blog we will be writing in AP Language and Composition, I decided to look back over all the blogs I wrote this year. To start with, let me share some of the statistics of our blogging journey. Over the school year we have written a total of 16 blogs and between 48 to 64 comments. We blogged about identity, America, power, and memory, all of which we had a wide range of topics and interpretations of.  Over these array of blogs I have experimented, to some levels of success, with my writing style and types of blogs I wrote. I experimented with poetry, more factual/scientific blogs, and personal stories full of descriptive detail.  I found that I loved the rhythmic, lyrical, feel of the blogs I wrote with poetry but that these were the blogs that took me the most time to craft, due to the amount of debate over every single word I used to make the piece flow the best. The factual/scientific blogs were also f...

  Just this weekend, my 20-year-old Toyota Camry XV40 stopped working. The engine broke down while my mom was driving on the highway, and we had to get it towed. The mechanics say there are only two options for us now: pay $5000 for repairs, or sell the dang thing. XV40’s already had two repairs in the last two years, and my parents have gotten tired of having to fix it so often. Soooo we’re selling. I knew this was a long time coming, but I’m still sad that our car’s biting the dust before it even sees me graduate high school. Just one more year, that’s all I’m asking for! Alas, some things are not meant to be. My parents bought the Toyota when my brother was two years old. To say it’s been around for a while would be an understatement: this thing has lived my entire lifetime and then some. All of my memories from grocery shopping, vacations, and long road trips were made in this car. Everything I’ve been through, it’s been through right along with me. For example, I have always c...

  In second grade, I attended an after school program called 芳草地, Green Grass. I met many of my current friends at Green Grass; it’s kind of a weird core memory I share with all of them, even though it’s so distant now. In honor of this quarter’s theme, I will share a list of things I remember from my time there: 1) It had six classrooms. The entrance is an open room with a wood floor (think ballet studio but without mirrors). The first classroom was the largest, where the younger kids stayed. The classroom then leads into a narrow hallway—I can’t remember if it was painted green or yellow. 2) At the end of the green/yellow hallway was a plywood bookshelf. This is where I read Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets for the first time. It was also the first time I ever stole a book without telling anyone. 3) Lights off, rows of long plastic tables, a printer paper laid out, me squirming in my chair while trying to multiply 11 and 11. I kept forgetting to add a zero for the tens pla...

Last weekend my mom made a joke that out of the two daughters she had, not either of them have the same body type as hers: a size 0 pant size with small hips and a small waist. I don’t think she was trying to shame me and my sister of our body sizes, but a crucial factor to her situation was that she was severely malnourished in Vietnam because she didn’t have a lot of money growing up. So why is being skinny and underweight the social standard and why is it more rewarding societally? Aside from my mom’s unrealistic expectations for her daughters, it’s interesting to see how body types in general have developed over the centuries from ancient times until today. My mom when she was in her mid twenties. As we have seen today in fashion magazines and in media in general, the beauty standards for women are to be skinny, but also… curvy. They need to have a small waist, but have bigger legs and bigger breasts. I’m sure most of us have heard of the hourglass figure. The image of perfect beau...

I hate that my memory is so selective. I hate that I can remember exactly what I said in that embarrassing conversation a week ago and not what the integral of an arctan function is. I hate that I can remember exactly how it feels to get your first D on a high school test and not what the name of that song playing on the radio is. I hate that I can remember exactly where in my notes I wrote about a specific topic and not what it said. I hate that I can remember exactly how it feels to sprain my ankle while playing soccer and not what I needed to buy to make sure I didn’t run out of it. I hate that I can remember what a sour grape tastes like and not what the ice cream I had in London tasted like since it was genuinely some of the best ice cream I have ever had.  I hate that I can remember exactly when I lost that really important thing but not where I lost that really important thing. Yet, I love that I can remember how it feels to bite into a cold piece of watermelon and not how i...

  “What is a legacy? It’s planting seeds in a garden you never get to see.” The above line is one of the lyrics from Hamilton, a 2016 Pulitzer Prize-winning musical. In this particular song, “The World Was Wide Enough,” time stops for Alexander Hamilton (Lin-Manuel Miranda) moments before he is shot by Aaron Burr (Leslie Odom, jr.). As Hamilton “[glimpses]” death, he sings a final goodbye to his loved ones, thankful that America has become “a place where even orphan immigrants / can leave their fingerprints and rise up.” I never got the chance to elaborate on this genius quote during my POAS presentation in March, so this blog is me making up for it :) The metaphor of a legacy being akin to trees is poignant in many ways. First, it shows that legacies grow, as exemplified by many innovators who only gained recognition posthumously. Vincent van Gogh, for instance, was largely unappreciated during his lifetime, but his art is now displayed in museums around the world. What may start ...