| The school year, this strange year, is at an end. Quintus is off in quarantine in Shanghai. Before he left for home, he wrote this “goodbye.” By Quintus Ni Let the wind blow; let the rain fall; let years change; quietly stay in the fleeting time; fearless to the world’s vicissitude. To the end of mountains and seas, the most unforgettable one, in dreams, there you are, keeping your faith. In a delicate world, with your promise to me, you held up the sky above your head, muttering to yourself with a few thoughts, constantly seeping, the sea of hearts from outside of the world. Now I am, looking at the sky blue, with drops of tears, waiting for the wind, yet fascinated by the wind, facing the shadow, but feeling dizzy because of the shadow. I’m sad but the sadness won’t decrease. I’m missing someone, but that person hasn’t come back. Looking back again, the road is far. Holding on to the broken dream, I still won’t let it go. A hot heart, with hot feeling, through the dreams of youth. Standing in this secular world, even if the mountains are high, I must see it all. I am not afraid of thick snow, long autumn rains, waiting for the warm spring, spreading the sun in summer, until once again into the covered, left edge of the dream. Hold a pot of tea, standing under the eaves. Look away at the falling leaves. Quietly watch the change of clouds. Carefully listen to the breeze, ringing through the screen window. Life’s hardship and honor become nothing important. However, in the dreams who would know time has a limit? Flying flowers scatter like smoke. In the hot air above the tea, even memories are like wisps of smoke. They emerge then disappear, gradually fade out, down the long road. When the scent that flows into the bone marrow is swallowed, from time to time there come waves of bitterness, like those deep and shallow memories, suddenly bright then suddenly dark. When I’m not paying attention and shaking the body of the cup, the tea leaves rise and dance, float and sink, trying to find their position. Perhaps it’s because they are not resigned to the calmness. I repeatedly stir the bottom of the cup. Isn’t life like this, go back and forth, until the water is clear, which can be known by one glance. But the life always twists and turns, when the world washes away the dust, purifies, creates a completely sober self, not because we lose too much, but try to find a best balance point that belongs to oneself in this lifetime. We are often walk in this world, afraid to be stung by this world. I suddenly no longer ask the truths. The fragrance of flowers is slightly light after the rain. Facing hesitation, counting the torments, beside helplessness, listening to the heart, in the end one discovers, the life of a person is nothing more than being ordinary. Looking at the tea turning over and over, around for a few circles, and back to the original point of purity. The truth is, after growing up, looking back, it has long been destined that people’s lives are like a process of running around a circle. The Last Editor: Katelin Slosky |
Good Morning, Doreen
Graphics by Doreen Yuan
Awakening Editors: Quintus Ni & Katelin Slosky
Wake Up
The differences of waking up during quarantine vs. before quarantine:
By: Chelsea
Under quarantine–
- You don’t have to worry about getting up to go to school anymore;, you can sleep in until the class starts.
- You feel too lazy to get up, so you decide to stay in bed until classes start online.
- You don’t have to eat your breakfast anymore because you don’t waste energy running around the school campus anymore.
- You can be half awake when the chat starts.
- Your lack of energy to do things will make you bed-ridden all day.
Before quarantine–
- You have to get up after your alarm wakes you, or else you’ll be late for school.
- If you are too lazy to get up….well, you don’t have much of a choice but to get up to go to school or else you’ll miss a whole day of class.
- You really need to have breakfast before school or else you won’t have much energy for the entire morning.
- You can be half awake during classes in school, unless there’s a test due at the end of the class.
- Even if you are lacking energy, you still have to drag yourself to the end of the day.
I think we can all relate to this to some degree.
Awakening Editors: Quintus Ni & Katelin Slosky
Selkie
By Renée
poems,
paintings,
petals,
sealed with a kiss.
you slowly drifted into me,
but once I was sure,
I crashed into a soft ocean,
where all I could think of was you.
Awakening Editor: Katelin Slosky
Honeybee
By Renée
how lovely it must be to walk with your soft hand in mine,
down an old beaten path,
where the only sounds we can hear are the songs of birds,
and our own laughter.
imagine,
to sit under an old tree together,
watching the world pass by us.
there might be an ocean,
or a stretch of boundless land,
keeping us apart my darling,
but never will you be far from my mind.
Happiness Editor: Chelsea Xu
Doreen’s “Happiness is . . .”
Animation by Doreen Yuan
Happiness Editor: Chelsea Xu
The Definition of Happiness
By James Zheng
So, happiness. What would be the definition of it? A state of feeling content? Achieving an ultimate goal of life? Or an existence, void, a nothingness that is unreachable? Well, this should be an open-to-opinions question. At least we know that happiness is sometimes dependent on other things.
I think, learning about happiness is based on each individual’s perspective. A thousand readers could visualize a thousand different Hamlets; a thousand individuals could also visualize their happiness in a thousand different ways. And, I think, happiness is primarily and mostly decided by one’s condition; not only that, it is also decided by desire. If you compare a wanderer and a millionaire, the difference is quite transparent. By talking about desire, it is divided into the short-term desire and long-term desire; one could be the wish for a random gift, and another could be the ambition of buying a house in Beverly Hills. One thing that is permanently the same about these two types of desire is that once you fulfill them, they would stack up. New desires would spring up. If you really bought a house in Beverly Hills, would you find your happiness there? All you have is a material presence that makes you content for a while and nothing else.
Schopenhauer has said, We cannot obtain true happiness, all we can do is reduce suffering. And he has also mentioned that most of the time suffering is driven by desires; once you fulfill these desires, you feel content yet there will be another one. If you are unable to fulfill the desire, you only feel the suffering and powerlessness. Despite Schopenhauer’s pessimistic view on happiness, I think that we could obtain happiness in some ways. Indeed, true happiness can not be acquired, but what if each individual truly spent time contemplating his life: what I have and what do I truly need for happiness? When he finds out that answer, he may find that he doesn’t need a large pack of money but just a warm family. Is happiness a material object? Or, is it a pursuit, a goal of life?
In conclusion, happiness is more a self-decided matter. Some people choose to follow their heart, while some choose to follow the reality; the difference is that one is to seek what one genuinely wants to forge happiness and another one is to find things for satisfaction that are not always for the purpose of happiness–like feeding your family. It doesn’t matter which form your pursuit of happiness takes, just slow down a second, and ask yourself, “Is this what I wanted?”
Happiness Editor: Chelsea
Doomsday
By Renée Vazquez
noun,
the last day of the world’s existence,
a time or event of crisis or great danger.
so many people thought up great stories of doomsday,
terrifying monsters,
intrepid survivors,
extraordinary natural disasters.
none of them believed that a deadly disease from the same family as the flu
could bring the world to its knees.
All we have to do is stay at home.
Meanwhile fires raged,
caused by us.
Meanwhile storms brewed,
caused by us.
Meanwhile corruption festered,
caused by us.
One might expect any one of these to be the cause of doomsday–
difficult to fight,
a reflection of our own effects on the world–
it might’ve been more poetic.
But all we have to do is stay home.
Then again,
even that may just prove too much of an indignity to some people.
Doomsday Editor: Doreen Yuan
If a Mummy Can Talk . . .
Scientific Reports published a study that describes engineering the voice of Nesyamun–an ancient Egyptian priest and scribe . . . by combining his 3D-printed mouth and throat with an artificial larynx and using speech synthesizing software.
What long-ago sound do you wish to hear, if you could engineer a way. Would you choose the voice of a loved one or important historical figure, the sounds of an extinct animal or by-gone technology, or perhaps simply the everyday sounds of a different era?
*”. . . if I could choose a sound, I would do something selfish and choose to listen to my past self. It is hard to be satisfied with life’s work sometimes, but if I looked back and listened to what a FOOL younger me was, I’d laugh at him and remember how far I’ve come. Alternatively, what did George Washington sound like?”–Luke Langlois
*”I wish I could hear the voice of a dragon, even just a mythical symbol…But I believe that voice must be very spectacular and unparalleled!”–Quintus Ni
*”One sound that I would like to hear again would be the sound of the lower school. Even though the drama could be terrible (and it was terrible) I would give anything just to go back. I miss my friends. I miss playing tag. I miss the immaturity that came with bliss.”–Katelin Slosky
*”I would listen to dinosaurs that have never been heard,
I would listen to birds and animals that have long been dead,
I would listen to the voices of leaders of the past,
I would listen to my grandfather sing.”–Renée Vazquez
*”The voices I want to hear are the voices from Alexander Hamilton and George Washington. After hearing ‘Hamilton’s’ voice from the musical I wonder what the actual Hamilton would sound like. And I’d also like to hear George Washington’s voice too since . . . he had wooden teeth.”–Chelsea Xu
*”When my mother was a child, she lived in a place where there was no fast transportation. The airport was just built. The houses were short and not solid, but there would be no earthquake, because we were in the basin. Every time I do my homework by the window at noon, she can hear the distant peddling sound downstairs and the sound of hammering: “dingding tang, dingtang…”. Dingtang is a kind of maltose with sticky teeth, which is very cheap, but it can recall her memories. I would like to hear that voice, which will bring me back to my family childhood.”–Doreen Yu
*”I want to hear John Von Wolfgang Goethe’s voice, I am exceptionally interested in his way of being both a philosopher and romanticist because most of the philosophers I have known so far would not step in the romantic realm. Reading his work Faust is like reading a compilation of Shakespeare’s poems, the way he writes and how his quotes sound most of the time makes me feel like Goethe speaks like a combination of Victor Hugo and Arthur Schopenhauer (one is a romantic writer, one is a pessimist philosopher). I would really want to hear his unique romantic way of speaking.”–James Zheng
Why I am Disappointed in the College Board
Editor Quintus, as one of his last tasks of the 2020 school year, assigned the Blog Staff the theme “Awakening.” Luke finds he’s had an “awakening” regarding the College Board’s handling of this year’s AP exams.
By Luke Langlois, AP Student
If you are a long-time reader, you would recall that I wrote a post a while ago encouraging students to take AP courses for a variety of reasons including (but not limited to), the challenge, the thrill, the actual learning, and college credit. While I still encourage students to take more challenging courses, it is because of the teachers and your peers, not the College Board. I have never been one to call out the College Board for being a greedy nonprofit (and trust me, there is plenty of that out there) because, at the end of the day, they tend to put out a strong product. Undoubtedly, these examinations favor society’s more affluent, but, for the most part, they accurately reflect how successful a student will be in college or a student’s AP course knowledge. This year, however, has been an awakening for me regarding this organization. The AP exams this year are, simply put, a poor way to measure a student’s course knowledge. Here’s why:
- A year’s worth of coursework CANNOT be accurately assessed in 45 minutes: If you are not in touch with the AP system, exams usually last three hours, and even then, the accuracy of the assessments are questioned. Due to this year’s pandemic, these exams have been cut down to 45 minutes. It almost seems comical when I write it down. Imagine condensing 180 days (or more) of instructional time to 45 minutes, or the equivalent of one class period. That is BONKERS and makes these exams so much more “luck” based. We all have weak points, and sometimes questions on assessments just don’t click with us. We answer the question, and we move on, but there are always other questions to make up for it. Not this year. If a student does not “click” with a particular literature or rhetoric passage, suck it up! If a student blanks on one calculus concept, deal with it! And, in the case of some APs, a student could be completely inept in huge chunks of the course and still get a good score for knowing how to do one part. How does that accurately measure whether you deserve college credit? Literature, for example, is testing only a prose passage. Does it matter if I read any poetry? Nope!
- Students abroad are having to take the exams in the dead hours of the night: Ever taken an exam at 1:30 a.m.? AP students in India have! Students with parents who are in the military or work traveling jobs not only have to take an AP exam in a completely new format, they have to do it at freakish times. Any test-taking guide will tell you that half the battle in a test is being comfortable with your environment. Yet, students around the world are having to disrupt their sleep schedules and take these exams tired. I understand that there are security concerns and thus the test “MUST” be administered at the same time. Would it have been so difficult for a billion-dollar organization to create a few more test problems (a test of 45 minutes, no less) to let these students take their tests at a reasonable time?
- Equity issues are exacerbated and preventing cheating is much more difficult: Imagine having to open the AP exam and upload your responses, whether it be typed or photographed, on your mom’s old phone with a barely functioning operating system. Unfortunately, this is the only device in your modest house, a house where finding a quiet place to take the exam is impossible. Now, imagine taking the exam with your phone to photograph and upload, your laptop to display your notes, and your desktop to display the prompt inside your sound-proof room on top of your spacious desk. The College Board does offer limited accommodations, but there is nothing that can truly close this gap. Now, this is intertwined with the issue of cheating because it would be incredibly easy to hire someone else to take the exam for you. I went through the security checks and, trust me, it would not be difficult to bypass that. On the same note, what happens if one of my parents is a calculus teacher? Perhaps they would be ethical, but we all know that parents have paid half a million dollars for SAT advantages; why wouldn’t a parent give their kid an advantage for free? This year, the teachers are able to view the exams, allowing them to see if the work matches the student, which may be able to counteract this to an extent, but that is certainly not foolproof. As far as student-only cheating goes, the College Board has said that there are systems in place to prevent it, and they claim to have recently caught cheaters. But, in reality, the College Board would need impossible levels of surveillance set up to truly prevent cheating. Indeed, the federal government would not even have the Constitutional authority to do what the College Board claims it is doing. It may be a minority of students participating in such devious activities, but I assure you it is enough students to ruin the integrity of already shoddy examinations.
- Exams are still full price: Each AP exam costs $94. That means you are spending over 2 dollars a minute to take an AP exam. Such value!
Look, I could go on (I did not even mention the problems students with learning differences are facing trying to get accommodations), but I hope you are awakened to at least some of the issues. The administration of this year’s AP examinations has been a serious misstep by the College Board. I do acknowledge that they are in an incredibly difficult spot, with a majority of students polled saying that they want to continue with the exams, but so much could have been done. When an organization essentially has a monopoly on the testing market, we should hold them to a higher standard.
Awakening Editor: Quintus Ni
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