6. Bratwurst 2025

As junior year comes to an end, I would like to take the time to reflect on the experiences I have had this year and the memories I have made. At the beginning of the school year, I was constantly stressed. After only experiencing the workload of one AP class sophomore year, I did not feel prepared to face the wrath of four AP classes. The gazillions of annotations due each week, blogs, current events, and timed writes all thrown on me at once was overwhelming. AP Lang felt like the work of seven classes combined! Semester one seemed never-ending. However, it wasn’t all that bad. Small moments, such as watching the little 3-5 year olds I teach dance to kill it on stage; Thanksgiving break, where my dance team met up for Friendsgiving ; and my birthday, when I spent almost four hours in a trampoline park with my friends have made the semester memorable.  Then, semester two came around. I remember being anxious over the fact that AP tests, finals, and the SAT were all approaching in...

Some memories from junior year have changed the way I approach my life.  Most of these treasured memories are not anything out of ordinary. Some memories appear so mundane, like boring files hidden at the back of our brains, but the emotional weight they carry in my life is underestimated. Just a week ago, I went for a walk with my mother in the early hours of the night to walk our dog, Bailey. The weather was that of a perfect summer night: warm and calm with the slightest breeze. As we walked through the neighborhood and conversed with each other about our lives (the feelings of accomplishment of the past few days, mulled over sadness, the realization of growth), I could not help but feel like the luckist person to live the life that I am living. I was overcome with such an unexpected, overwhelming sense of gratitude for the opportunities I have been given, the friends I have made, and the experiences I have lived. As my mother and walked home in peaceful silence under the stars,...

As this school year goes by and junior year is slowly coming to an end, I’ve been reflecting on each memorable moment. Something I recently started doing this year is taking long walks with my best friend, Yogita. It started with a short study date at Fremont Food Hall in Fremont Hub, which turned into a 5-hour gossip/laughing session, and ended with our bellies full from the deliciously cheesy corndog and matcha lattes. We sat there half locked-in, chatting about recent events and how we felt occasionally. By the time it got dark, we decided to take a walk around the newly renovated neighborhood. It was only supposed to be a short 5-minute walk to digest everything we munched on, but before we knew it, we had walked for almost an hour. It was those deep conversations we had with each other about life and our purpose, as well as funny jokes about school, and controversial topics that we may have disagreed on, that still stick with me today. That first walk we took together holds such ...

  Looking back on my junior year, there are definitely some memories that I hold deep in my heart and would wish to cherish forever, but also some that I really want to forget. The anxiety-filled nights cramming with only coffee in my system, finally being able to sleep and having to wake up an hour later for school: Some of it definitely wasn’t fun. Sometimes I just remember the bad parts of the year, but that is primarily due to the phenomenon of selective memory, or selective amnesia.  The condition of selective amnesia is not just merely remembering what you want to and forgetting everything else, but can also extend to higher degrees of intensity, like forgetting major milestones or decisions in their life. This is not only subject to age, but can happen to anyone anytime. The main cause of selective amnesia is emotional influences, mood swings or a constant switch of emotions can directly lead to a lack in the storage of new information: Simply, stress can lead to you le...

When I look back on my junior year, I see a flood of amazing memories. I’ve learned so much, I’ve made so many new friends, and I’ve had so much fun. A part of me wants to relive junior year. As I wrote in my last post , I’m not ready for summer to start. I want to continue learning, continue making new friends, continue having fun.  But I also realize that I should take a step back.  Welcome to Suju's, which has been my home for the past 6 months (Source: Yelp ). During junior year, I felt sleep deprived, overworked, and overstressed. I had no time on the weekdays (play rehearsals would eat up most of my free time), so I would spend my weekends at Suju’s, racing to finish all my work before Monday morning. At one point, I even kept a log of how much time I spent at the coffee shop. Over the course of 14 weeks, I logged over 140 hours at Suju’s (the actual figure is probably much higher—I forgot to log my hours on a good number of days). All that time, I was working on my POAS...

  Do you ever freeze while writing because your mind wants to think up a powerful line? As I am writing my last blog with some sense of melancholy, I feel obligated to fulfill the second prompt of the two prompts we were given each quarter…“Language.” So, reflecting upon my writing journey in Blogger (and just in general) seems like a fitting way to end things.