-
December birthdays are overshadowed by the holidays
•
At first glance, it seems that being born in December would be a lot of fun, but you would be very mistaken. Once Halloween ends, everyone and their mother starts celebrating Christmas. Even though I do enjoy the holiday and all of the fun it brings, I would enjoy having my birthday separate from…
-
The war in Gaza is not complex
•
I have always been proud to be Jewish. But at the age of 14, I had to reckon with the fact that my Jewishness could be stripped away from me if I announced an opinion deemed wrong by other Jewish people. In 2021, I learned about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict for the first time. I…
-
The goodbye that I never thought would come
•
From the age of two to the age of six, I shared a room with my sister. We lived at my grandparents’ house for the first three years, and she had the top bunk. Most of our nights were spent in my mom’s room with the pink walls. My grandma and grandpa would tell…
-
Why is everyone so scared of sincerity?
•
With the Oscars just around the corner, inevitably it is another year where Jimmy Kimmel gets to stand onstage and talk about how much he hates all the movies that are nominated. “Wasn’t ‘Oppenheimer’ long?” he asks the grinning audience of celebrities and seat-fillers. Long gone are the days of celebrating movies at the…
-
Column: Sephora kids are the product of social media
•
As long as humans have existed there have been trends. From rainbow looms to the Sephora craze of today, there has always been something for little girls to compete in. Believe me, I am not innocent of judging someone based on silly trends. I remember sitting in the elementary school play yard, trading rainbow…
-
Column: For Auld Lang Syne
•
“For Old Times Sake,” I had told myself, amid a long-winded contemplative breath. I anticipated what would lay on the other side of that door-the entrance to my estranged father’s home. After leaving home at 15 years old, three Christmases passed without seeing my own father. While trying to rekindle a relationship with him…
-
The choices we have to make
•
I am 16-years-old. I turn 17-years-old in five months and 20-years-old is starting to look closer than it ever has before. College is just around the corner and I thought I had the perfect plan set out for myself: I would go to a 4-year college, get a tattoo apprenticeship while I pay off…
-
Managing Media Consumption
•
I have often filled the idle moments of my day with a steady stream of incoherent digital stimuli that have left me feeling empty and useless. This is because my attention is being focused on things that I do not care about or enjoy. This damages my schoolwork, but more importantly to me, it…
-
College applications make me cry
•
Bam! That’s the sound of my face hitting the floor at the start of senior year. But what caused me to fall so hard? Well, it could be the college application process. It could be the instantaneous return to IB homework. It could be the new job I picked up to save up for…
-
Learning to live without her
•
My whole family loves Young Frankenstein, not because of Gene Wilder, but because of my mom’s impression of the monster horrendously singing “Puttin on the Ritz.” Every time the song came up, she would make herself and the rest of us laugh with her strained, goofy, out-of-tune singing. That impression is one of the…