Vicology

      May 24th. The day I'm sure most of us are looking forward to the most. As much as I am waiting for that day to come, why am I scared?     Throughout my whole education, whenever I finally got comfortable with something, it always changed. When I got comfortable at preschool, I had to move onto elementary school. When I got comfortable at elementary school, I had to move onto middle school. When I comfortable at middle school, I had to move onto high school. And now that I've gotten used to high school, in just a few months, I'll be moving into my dorm and going to school with thousands of strangers who I will always, maybe, or never meet again.     Change is scary, yes, there's no doubt about that. Especially for us. Having to say goodbye to our friends, not knowing if you'll be the same when you see them again. Leaving your family for a foreign place. Going out into the world by yourself. All these things are terrifying for an 18-year-old. ...

       I have this thing where I post Instagram stories of picture collages and I always put my blood, sweat, and tears into them for like the 100 people that view it. My point is I never upload one without choosing the perfect song for the background. On Instagram there's this feature where you can see the lyrics of a song and that made me realize how much song lyrics mean to me. Even if the beat is the best thing I've ever heard, if the lyrics don't match the vibes, then I pick a different song.        Some of you may have read my title and thought that I was going to write about the songwriting queen herself, Taylor Swift. But nope, I actually have a different artist whose songs intrigue me more. Conan Lee Gray. After signing with Republic Records in 2018, he started his career by releasing his debut EP Sunset Season. He then went on to release his first album, Kid Krow, in 2020, which became a mega-hit because of the success he found...

      Words are weird. They can make us feel so many emotions without even doing anything. Like how hearing the word "test" fills me up with anxiety and stress, while the word "sleep" gives me comfort. On the other hand, someone else hearing those words could feel the same thoughts and feelings as me or they could feel the complete opposite. Maybe this is why I'm scared of poetry.     I resist poetry because of the complexity of the words. By the complexity of the words, I don't mean super big words or the words themselves, I mean the depth and significance of the words. Poetry always has more meaning than what appears on the paper. A poem could tell a million stories in just 2 lines. I'm sure I overexaggerated that number but you get the point. When reading poetry, you can never just  read the words, you have to understand them on a deeper level and figure out what the poet is trying to say. While some would argue that that's the beauty of poetry...

      Besides this class, I have juniors in every one of my other classes. That means I get to listen in on their conversations that I remember myself having last year. The one I hear the most at the moment is, "I can't believe I have to write an essay every week in English, it's literally the worst thing ever". Sounds familiar right? Whenever I hear them freaking out about 11 AP, I laugh internally, reflecting back on the essay-every-Monday days. I thought last year was the peak of my writing arc but looking back on this semester, I realized that there's so much I've learned about my writing style and reading beyond the surface level.     Writing blog posts in addition to in-class essays helped me recognize how to write differently in order to cater to a specific audience. While in-class essays carry a formal tone with more challenging vocabulary, I find myself writing in a friendlier tone in my blogs - replacing much of the "smart" sentences with c...

       Have you ever been in a situation where your opinion didn’t match the majority opinion? What did you do in that situation? Did you stand your ground? Or did you conform to everyone else’s opinion? Solomon Asch asked the same questions. He conducted an experiment – in what is now known as the “Asch experiment”. He showed his participants this picture…      He then asked which one of the three lines on the right was the same length as the one on the left. To test conformity, 7 out of the 8 participants were instructed to purposely give an incorrect answer. The real participant was seated at the end, unknowingly forced to give their answer last. Asch wanted to see if the test subject would conform to the majority view or give the right answer. The results were shocking. Asch’s data concluded that about 75% of test subjects conformed at least once out of the 12 trials (McLeod). Even when there was a clear right answer, participants chose to do what ...

          Smh. Abbreviation for "shake my head". It's used to convey disappointment and dissatisfaction. The avoidable tragedy of Othello had me "smh"ing for sure.           The story of Othello reminded me of a movie I watched over Thanksgiving break. It's called Love, Rosie. It follows the life of Rosie, specifically her situationship with her best friend Alex. Rosie and Alex are best friends since, practically, birth. Like any romantic comedy, Rosie obviously starts to develop feelings for Alex as they grow and mature together. From the audience's perspective, we clearly see that Alex has the same feelings, but Rosie can't see that because they won't communicate with each other. Their miscommunication leads to them going to their annual school dance separately with other dates, which leads to Rosie getting pregnant by a different man, which leads to Alex going to college abroad alone (they had agreed to study abroad together but ...