6. Leopards 2024

My last day in Hawaii! My summer memories are flooding me as the weather warms up, and I am excited to enjoy a break from school.  Last summer, I went to Hawaii with my family and had a lot of fun exploring different tourist locations. Our rented room had a beach right next to it so one of my most memorable moments on the trip was walking down the beach with my parents during sunset and talking until it became dark. There were also really unique flowers on every street. When walking back from the beach afterward, I remember seeing these beautiful plumeria flowers that were scattered all over the sidewalk. They had white rounded petals and a saturated yellow gradient on the inside. I also remember visiting a populated beach to go snorkeling. It was one of my favorite experiences of all time. I remember seeing about 2-3 turtles in the water and I even saw a humuhumu fish or a triggerfish which is a black and gray fish that has two bright yellow strips its back. This fish is famous f...

A memory is only a memory when the moment the memory captures has ended.  May 31 encroaches closer and closer by the day. Which seems highly impossible, because it was just yesterday I was taking in the sights of the unfamiliar classroom in Portable E, the millions of rhetorical analysis essays I would accomplish and hundred books I would read unbeknownst to me at the time. Everything happened so quickly—this year, high school, and frankly life in general. It’s too soon for it all to become just a memory. So, is this it? The end of yet another year I'll constantly look back on longingly, desperately wishing I could go back? The end of junior year? The truth, that I’ve been avoiding, is that nothing really lasts forever. Even memories, which supposedly promise us an everlasting keepsake of the moment, will still fail us one day or another—we forget. The ever-expanding universe, a symbol of infinity, will still one day collapse on itself, will one day end. Does it mean there’s no val...

Honestly, I've imagined this moment, but I never really thought about writing it out. Wow, well for starters, we're here! We're at the end of the year! We're FINALLY at the end of junior year, and I'm fighting tooth and nail to keep the junioritis away. 48 comments, 16 blog posts, and roughly 8000 words later, all of us are writing our last blogs.  We've finished the AP Lang exam (YAYYYYYY 🎉🎉🙏🙏) and AP season is two days away. I can't be more eager for it to hit 1pm on Friday and to finally be done with all my tests. Every other week, I struggled with coming up with blog topics but this one feels somewhat self-explanatory. I think it's basically a given to reflect on what I've gathered from blogging this year.  Now that I think about it, I was pretty self-conscious while writing my first couple of blogs. I was really worried about what the topic would reflect about myself, how others would judge my writing style, if no one would like my blog enou...

I know you all will miss me as you should, but in loving memory of me (because I'm the best), I shall bless you all with my final blog, which I shall nickname the banger blog. I really enjoyed being able to spend all this time with you guys this year writing blogs and seeing what you guys had going on in your lives or seeing what you were interested in, and of course you're very (no.) welcome that I was here to keep you company as I know that you all loved my presence in your lives.  As much as we have stressed about APENG this year, I would like to say congratulations to all of us, and especially one of the greatest people in the class this whole year who obviously did the most...me! Thanks for this moment, it is so much bigger than me. First I'd like to thank my friends, my family, my loved ones...  As we wrap up this year I'd like to hope that all of us did not fail the Beloved test and that we will slay on the TTTC test that is coming up, the VFA final, and the oth...

Photo from Google I was told that junior year would be especially difficult and that most of my time would be spent doing homework or studying fo r tests ( here is an article about it). I thought so too at the beginning of the year when I looked down at my schedule and saw multiple APs. Now that I look back at my junior year, however, I will not remember junior year for being rigorous and time-consuming but rather for how much I grew over the year and the new memories I made. I admit that I did have to spend a significant portion of my time focusing on schoolwork, but instead of preventing me from doing other things, it made me realize that time is a privilege and that I would not always be able to expect to do whatever I wanted with it. I started to spend more quality time either by myself or with others, whether it involved biking to Coyote Hills on a trail, taking long drives with my brother, or spending more time with my family. I used a lot of my time to relax instead of grinding...

I can’t believe I am writing my last blog of the school year! I think this momentous occasion deserves applause (insert clapping sounds). After two weeks of AP testing my brain is so mentally exhausted—I can barely think of a topic to write about this week. So, I will rant and write whatever comes to mind right now. To be honest, I thought this whole blogging assignment would be annoying when it was first introduced. After all, it’s just more work that I have to do on top of other homework assignments and projects. As time went by, however, I started to find value in writing these blogs. I love sharing my ideas with people who are similar and different from me. The blogs serve as an outlet for me to be vulnerable and rant about my troubles and worries. Writing blogs has allowed me to reflect on my identity and the memories that I have made in America and beyond through the power of language.  I’ve also enjoyed reading everyone’s blogs in the two cohorts that I’ve been in. All o...