Uncovering It All

Why aren't I traumatized enough?   This question ran through my mind as I began to think about the topic for my personal college essay. Looking back, it's definitely a little crazy that I wished for something that could negatively impact me for maybe the rest of my life to happen to me, but what's shame when you're desperate?      Although I finished my essay a while ago, when given the opportunity to edit it in class, I revisited it. And, when I did, I became thankful that I didn't have anything to trauma dump about to an exhausted admissions officer. Why? Because I realized they don't care. They don't care about how my grandparents died when I was just a baby and how it affected me, they don't care about me splitting my head open because my older sister accidentally kicked me into our family gaming console when I was just a toddler, and they certainly don't care about my struggles with my identity after alienating myself with the hijab, because to

  The OGs: To Jess, thank you for making me laugh at the most random things. I swear, your humor and joy were only too easy to fall into, even on days when I wasn’t feeling my best. And, thank you for allowing yourself to be subjected to countless jokes made by Aly and me about your childhood photos, as we got to poke fun at you. Your ability to change things from serious to comical always made me cheer up, and from you, I’ve learned that I don’t need to always take myself seriously, as being lighthearted once in a while never hurts. To Aly, thank you for telling me the craziest stories about your life. They were always so entertaining and helped distract me from the boring lessons about allusions and motifs. I of course cannot forget to mention your numerous sessions of retelling your dreams to me. The randomness, craziness, and tone you used to narrate your nighttime slumber never failed to amuse me. Also, shoutout to your chaotic and out-of-pocket (yet equally hilarious) sentenc

        Whether it be our own actions or witnessing others doing it, we've all seen it. Cheating. It's societally been viewed as a terrible and downright vile act to do, but you won't generally won't see many students breaking a sweat when doing it. After all, what's guilt when that gorgeous grade gets you to where you wanna be? I mean, in the competitive area (or should I say arena) of college applications, it's only survival of the fittest. Watch out for yourself or fall down into a role where others won't spare you another look. And not even just society, but also friends, family, and even yourself. These intrusive thoughts screaming at the idea of failure are probably all any student who cheats hears when they might pull out the good ol' Chat GBT when they want just one  answer to a difficult question on a homework assignment. But it's just like the psychology of the foot-in-the-door phenomenon explains, someone may do small acts of cheating that

       I always found it funny that our opinions are asked for when answering an argumentative essay. I mean come on, you're seriously telling me you care about a burnt-out 16-year-old's opinion and feelings on something that they don't even care about? I'm literally betting all of my grades that not one person who will be grading my essay for the 11 AP English Exam cares about what I have to say about anything. I obviously understand I have to do it if I wanna secure a good score, but that doesn't mean I don't see how pointless it really is. There's so many reasons why writing an argumentative essay is unnecessary, and I will share two of them in this blog post.      First off, let's chat about the prompts that we're expected to answer. You're really asking me to share my opinions about politics, the environment, history, and just about anything else when I don't have the faintest clue as to what I'm even writing about? Like just a few d

     You know something that's really bad for us? Revenge. It's not just bad, it's downright evil, but we don't really care about that, do we? After all, we're not trying to go through our lives taking hit after hit. Otherwise, what's the point of even trying to do better and rise up when you can't even get up off the ground? I'll answer that for you: there is no point. But, if we remain fixated on trying to get back at those who did us harm, we'll undeniably end up losing, whether your desired outcome unfolds. If you put so much of yourself into something that won't help you gain anything permanently, you'll lose a part of yourself. And this idea is acknowledged time and time again in anything that portrays vengeance. Revenge isn't worth it, we know that, but many of us still seem to seek it, even though we know it's technically bad. There are various motivations fueling someone to do it, but a big one is satisfaction.      There are

   Imagine this: you’re a four year old who’s a ball of energy, wanting to run around and waste your days playing with those you tolerate. One of your favorite things to do is listen to music, and your family decides to film a video of you lip-singing to a pop song that contains one too many swear words, including the N-word, that really shouldn’t be in a child’s vocabulary. Nonetheless, you have all the words memorized , and smile proudly at the camera in your face as you let the words come out of your mouth. Then, your family decides to post it, which is another problem in itself, but that’s an issue for another day. Now, you can’t read, because again, you’re only four and a literal child. So, fortunately, you can’t understand the comments on the video of you lip singing that went viral telling you all sorts of vile things.    This is really what happened to a four-year-old who was posted in a video on the internet. While she’s lip singing, she mouths the N-word, obviously unaware of