Competing Against Time

"In the short time I have remaining, I offer you a draw."
              "In the short time I have remaining, I decline."

It's an exchange I would often hear tossed around at chess tournaments as a child. One player, usually in a clearly inferior but not immediately losing position would offer the olive branch, almost always to be turned down by the opponent who insisted on finding the win. Following this exchange, a peal of hushed laughter would ripple through the crowd of on-lookers as the players continued their anxious scramble against the clock. It's an interesting consideration: what do we choose to do with the limited time we are offered? As humans, our whole lives seem to be a race against the clock. While other species have learned to find peace with their biological timing mechanisms, humans are continually striving to fit more into 24 hours. To make matters even more complicated, while we are all assigned some definitive expiration date, there's no good way to determine when that expiration date will come -- like the carton of milk stuck at the back of the refrigerator, no one really knows their "best by" date. And in between the then and the now is an endless litany of daily deadlines and due dates, the end of one chapter of life and the start of the next. A common side-effect of this never-ending race is a constant sickly sweet feeling of nostalgia and a grinding fear that you should be making better use of your time. So, is there really any way to know for sure how well you are utilizing your time? It's a question that is always on my mind, more so lately. Anyone that knows me knows of my ironic penchant for tardiness in combination with a hyper-sensitivity to the concept of time. I obsess over last days -- the last performance of the school musical, the last day for seniors before graduation, and the last day of school. I'm the person that writes the page-long notes in the yearbook every year, the friend that spontaneously texts sentimental messages in the group chat... and, I'm getting better at changing my perspective, trying to focus on the firsts instead of the lasts. But it's difficult to not swing in the opposite direction, to stop my expectations from ruining my new experiences.


In chess, the players that are able to cinch the wins out of time pressure situations are the ones that are aware of the time left on their clock but are not intimidated by it -- the players that manage to focus on the position rather than fearing time. It's a lesson that I am still learning both in chess and in real life.

Using "Woke-ness" to Hide Weakness: How We Might be Exploiting Social Awareness to Get Attention

In the world of high school, rumors fly fast and texts fly faster. Social media posts circulate like birds searching for prey. When you're seeing the same people for 7 hours, 5 days a week, for 4 years, trust me, everyone knows everything. Which makes it even more critical to craft a seamless persona for yourself -- an identity guaranteed to carry you to the top of the social ladder. High school has it's own economic system, and while you are busy engineering this personal identity, everything is fair game for currency: from the number of compliments you get on your outfit, to the number of likes on your latest Facebook post, to the number of people on the guest list for your party. And, when you live in a privileged upper-class American suburb, you can add one more item to that list: your perceived "woke-ness".

According to the Merriam Webster dictionary, the term "woke" refers to a person's social awareness. A little more research shows me that the term has roots in African American Vernacular English (AAVE). Since it's emergence into popular culture, the word has taken on a specific significance to the BLM movement.* (Just this small bit of information alerts me to the fact that many people, myself included, are guilty of appropriating the word as well as the culture surrounding it).

As with most teenagers my age, my first introduction to the idea of social awareness came from Twitter. Increasingly, teenagers are turning to social media and their peers to gain information about social issues and current affairs. My high school experience, including the time I spend on social media, has opened me up to a new level of acceptance and tolerance for my fellow human beings. My interactions with other teenagers, both from my school and around the world, have forced me to reconsider and begin the journey of educating myself about themes as wide reaching as feminism, gender fluidity and norms, racism, and mental health, just to name a few. I have no doubt that my introduction to these topics has made me a better person, a person more willing to consider the world from someone else's perspective. Yet, lately, I have been thinking a lot about the uglier side of "social awareness", the side that causes us to brandish our "intellectual superiority" and put down people who we feel are not as "woke" as ourselves.

When you live in a safe, wealthy community that emphasizes hard work and higher education, it is not difficult to maintain a level of social sensitivity. But what happens when we come face to face with the very issues we preach about on social media? How often could you walk through the halls of my high school, hearing the same girls who retweeted a feminist tweet ten minutes ago, now slut-shaming another classmate? I will be the first to admit that teenagers have done, and are currently doing, amazing work for social causes. But when social awareness becomes the new "cool", hypocrisy is bound to exist.

I believe in the power of my generation. I believe that we are a generation of do-ers and risk-takers. I believe that we truly can change the world . But I also know that for us to be successful, we must continue to listen to each others stories. We must be willing to invite others to the conversation. We must make the effort to continually learn, continually evolve. Above all, we must not fall into the trap of letting our progressive values serve simply as medals to advance our status.

*https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/woke-meaning-origin

Dressing for Success -- Reducing Stress by Taking Charge of the Little Things

If you've noticed me walking around the halls at school lately, you've seen that I've put some serious work into my outfit game. As in, I haven't worn yoga pants with boots for almost 2 weeks. As in, I pulled out a blazer and a dress for school today. And so lest you think I've decided to spontaneously redirect my career aspirations from medicine to fashion (it wouldn't work, I have terrible color sense), I thought I'd take a minute to explain myself. One of the things I've learned in the past couple years is that there is no way to control the timing of our lives; there is no way to say, "Wait a minute, I have 10 tests and quizzes and the SAT the week before finals." Stress is a by-product of our inner hustle and the inevitability of timing, but how we choose to deal with stress can determine how well we emerge from the situation in the end. I've learned that prioritizing mental health and state of mind is one of the greatest tools to combating stress. For me, this means dressing nice and feeling comfortable in the clothes I'm wearing. When I wake up in the morning and pick out a nice outfit instead of just pajamas, I set the tone for the rest of my day. It makes me feel confident and in control of something, even if it is small. I've also been trying to take charge of other areas in my life that might cause avoidable stress: not being late, for example (it feels pretty good), or creating a clean, refreshing work environment in my room (still a work in progress). It's important to note that feeling confident in a situation is highly personal. While for me, it might mean dressing nicely, for someone else it could mean feeling confident in their sweatpants and sneakers or being more aware of their nutrition. What's important in the end is being able to ground yourself in the idea of "yes, I can do this. It might be hard right now, but it will work out in the end." I'm a firm believer in the self-fulfilling prophecy; I believe that our results depend heavily upon the attitude with which we approach a situation. Reducing the unnecessary stress factors at points of high stress in our lives and gaining a sense of self-control are essential to managing stress. And so although it may seem like I'm being extra with all of my over the top outfits, trust me it works!

La Vie Sans Regret

I haven't been able to write much over the last few months. I have struggled to put pen to paper in a way that felt real and authentic to myself. I've had to grapple with the idea of my own ignorance, my identity in a world that is so much bigger than I will ever be able to fathom. And I have had to allow myself to feel and experience things in a way I never have before. In short, I have felt inadequate to hold the power of words and temporarily turned over the responsibility to people far more capable of wielding them. I have fallen asleep sobbing to the words of angelic artists with scratchy voices. I have devoured literature -- eaten up the words of times and places so very different from my own. I have become a thousand and one different people while struggling to find myself. I've reopened the lines of my faith, dusted of the old wall-phone, and had some of my most genuine conversations with God. On the surface, the last few months have been perfect -- a pristine collection of events lined up in exactly the right order. In reality, the past few months have been even more beautiful than that -- they've been a messy journey of growing up, being raw and vulnerable, and, above all, continuing to learn even when I feel like curling up into a ball and hiding. And I've learned the hard way that it's okay to validate my feelings and emotions, that it doesn't make me a selfish person and in fact it might make me a better person. With these lessons in my backpack, I'm moving forward into 2017 with a commitment to live life without regrets -- to be bold and loud and honest and to allow myself the time to soak up the everyday miracles around me. My whole life I have planned this perfect trajectory calculating how far I am from where I think I "should" be, but I want to learn how to set myself free. I want to learn to be silly and reckless and "Y.O.L.O." every once in a while, even if the statistic probability of success is low. I want to learn to laugh without regrets because, like my dad says, without laughter none of this is worth it.

Loneliness and Loyalty

Loneliness and loyalty. It's so easy to get these words twisted in your brain, the prickly thorns of loneliness hidden behind the roses of loyalty. A promise is a dangerous word. It means you will be there for someone no matter what happens. It means you will not let them be lonely. And I think loyalty is like a pathological disease. Once you catch it, it spreads to every aspect of your life and soon you are loyal not only to your family, and your country, and your favorite sports team, but also you are loyal to the group of strangers you sit next to on the bus everyday and the barista that makes your coffee every morning: black with just the right amount of sugar. Because what else is life than pledging ourselves to valiant and worthless missions. Because through our loyalty we ease the pain of our loneliness and surely it is as effective at curing the achings of the soul as opium is at easing the ailments of the mind and body. And soon we begin to crave it, this desire to attach ourselves to a purpose higher than our own and who cares if the last relationship didn't work out when you can fling yourself into passionate love with the boy you met at the bar, hand him your heart on a string with a sticker that says loyalty because it feels so much better to have a stranger holding your heart than no one at all. And what if all of our promises are just that, the whispers of a lonely mind that is scared to finds its way through the darkness alone? What if loyalty is a dirty trick they played on us to make us feel like they needed us? What if I have already signed my soul to you and you don't even know I exist?

Trapped between Selves

Is it possible to annoy yourself so much that you can't even stand yourself anymore? When the girls in math or the group project partners are bothering you, you can ignore them -- ghost their messages, let their calls go straight to voicemail. You can rant about them behind their backs and subtweet them on Twitter. But what do you do when that person is the one person you can't get away from: yourself? Every thought, every action, ticks off something inside. But there's nowhere for that madness to go but inward, and it feels like ripping yourself apart and putting yourself back together, all at the same time. You try to drown out that voice, your voice. You're so careful. You put on headphones before you go to bed. You text everyone you know because it is so lonely not being able to talk to yourself. And every time, eventually, you patch up your differences, kiss and makeup. But each time you wonder, what if it's different this time?

Candles

Have you ever thought about what makes a good candle? When you walk into a candle store, the candles lined up on shelves and tied up in burlap bows, how do you know that the candle you choose will be a good candle? Not only should it "smell" nice or "look" nice but also should truly possess the qualities that make a candle worth owning. I decided to make a checklist for the next time I go candle shopping. A good candle will spread light and warmth simply by existing. A good candle will bend and sway to invisible forces but not be overcome by them. It will serve selflessly because only through sharing its life will it ever be really useful. A good candle sees with an unprejudiced eye yet will soften the edges of anything that asks in its glow. Artificial lights are harsh and scrutinizing but a candle asks no questions. A good candle has self-control. It does not become emboldened by passion nor consumed by ego like its wild cousin the fire. A good candle is content and at peace. It is also a good host -- unwaveringly inviting and attentive. A good candle shows not only what is but what could be -- playing delicate shadow films over barren walls. A good candle forces you to confront your fears. It tells stories, each molten layer a piece of the past. A good candle is a gift. Not many candles at the shop will meet these criterion, but the ones that do will surely be worth having.