5. Ravoli 2025

“When was the last time you’ve been to New York?” asked my friend. “About a decade ago.” I replied. Hold on. A decade ago? A decade ago I was seven. That’s when I was in first grade. I remember everything from a decade ago. I can’t believe that I’m now able to describe moments in my life in increments of a decade. A decade is 10 years! 10 whole years! When I was nine years old, a decade was longer than I’d been alive. Fifth grade seemed ages away. When I was in ninth grade eleventh grade seemed ages away. Now that I’m looking back it feels like I was nine years old just yesterday. As we get older, it feels like time is flying faster and faster. However, time cannot go faster. It’s a governing principle of the universe that there’s 60 seconds in a minute, 60 minutes in an hour, 24 hours in a day, 365 days in a year. So why does it feel like time is flying faster? The reason for this phenomenon has been studied extensively. Some propose that as you get older, your responsibilities accumu...

 I still remember a time when graduating was a million years away. However, with senior year approaching I can’t help but think about all the memories being in  high school as granted me.  Graduation is one of those milestones in life that feels like both the end and beginning of something big. I often think back to my first days at American. I was so nervous walking through the unfamiliar path while looking at unfamiliar people. Everything was strange and new, but with time these strangers became my closet friends. These school walls have seen my triumphs, inside jokes, heart breaks, and shared meals.  What makes graduation so bittersweet for me is not just the ceremony. It is the realization that this chapter is closing. I am the type of person that has never liked change, and although this school has costed me many nights of sleep and countless stressed out days it is something that is so ingrained within my life. Giving all of that up seems so s cary. At the same...

Sunset before driving home from work I don’t separate my past by years. There’s too much contrast between the beginning and end of each year to classify them in the same era. Instead, I separate it through the seasons and events. For example, Summer 2024. The vibe of last summer felt perfect. I remember getting off of work, driving home towards the sunset, with an immaculate music taste blasting throughout my car, rolling my window down and feeling the breeze graze by me, cooling my face from a full day in the sun. It was moments like this that truly made 2024 summer memorable. Another example being Winter 2022-23. Again, just the vibe at the time is something I constantly reminisce about. The music that was popular at the time was amazing, with artists like D4VD , SZA , and Fifty Fifty releasing amazing music that year. School at the time, while then feeling quite typical, now seems surreal. I know a lot of people don’t look back on their freshman year too fondly, but I do. School wa...

Hi? I haven’t gotten far since I last wrote to you. Classes, friends, day-to-day, they are all the exact same. I suppose that might be because I haven’t written to you in months now. Each time I think that I should write something down, I convince myself that it is not necessary. Why put down every thought that comes to me in passing or write down a summary of a banal day? In fact, I’ve gotten quite good at doing it just in my head. I guess I have gotten used to keeping lots of things in my head. You don’t want to hear a list of that--it is long and monotonous and composed of plenty of unimportant idiosyncrasies that are best left far from pen and paper.  In other news, prom is coming up! All of these big life events one after another, and I just keep thinking to myself how it will all be over soon. I will be the senior that those freshmen look up to. I will be wearing black as I go to a night rally. How this can be, I cannot begin to fathom. I would like to confidently say that I ...

Since this is our last blog, I have, naturally, been thinking of endings. In no contained way—my thoughts are characteristically scattered and I find some sentimental bull in the smallest of things, like that time when I was fourteen and I could no longer wear my favorite blue dress because I thought I had both the skills and the wikiHow smarts to turn it into a really cool shirt (I did not) and to this day it lies around my house shredded into scrap pieces of flowery cloth that fray out at the sides. I constantly tell myself I’ll make a headband, or a napkin, out of the pieces, and never ever do. But they’re so pretty, I can’t bring myself to throw them away. The last time I wore that dress, I didn’t know it would be the last. I think I should’ve taken more pictures wearing it outside, even though back then I was so self-conscious I hated to take pictures of myself (now, I joke that I have a “high tolerance for embarrassment”). And I should’ve worn it to meet friends more, and hell, ...

  Image by GettyImages “7 times 4, 7 times 4, 7 times 4,” I repeated over and over in my mind like a mantra. It was second grade, and the class was reciting multiplication tables, one by one. The voices marched closer, and finally, it was my turn. I stood up with a confidence that only a seven-year-old could have, opened my mouth, and proudly blurted out “7 times 4 is equal to 24.” The whole class erupted in laughter as I shrank back into my seat, wishing I could disappear. I wanted to rewind time and make sure that everyone, including me, forgot that this ever happened.  Throughout my life, I have had my fair share of embarrassing moments. Some louder than others, like the time I announced the wrong answer in front of my whole class, and others more private but still humiliating nonetheless. But just because they were uncomfortable, are they worth forgetting? Embarrassing memories, as awful as they may feel in the moment, has a strange way of teaching us lessons that we wou...