1. Hot Dogs 2025

As my grandfather has recently been transferred to an assisted living center due to his health conditions, my father and I have taken the duty of clearing out his apartment before terminating the lease. Being blind, my grandfather has accumulated quite the amounts of equal parts necessary and unnecessary items, making the trips to throw away trash seem more like my daily cardio than throwing away a stack of papers. Yet, it was among those stacks of papers that I discovered a new side of my grandfather. While I’m not particularly close to him, I’ve still known him for my entire life and consequently know a fair amount about him. I knew that he was a studious man, having worked all his life to become a pharmaceutical scientist. It seemed amazing to me that my blind grandfather, even at his ripe age of 90, could rattle off medicines’ names and their descriptions with just a feel of the prescription bottle, while I struggled to even pronounce the label that was printed so clearly in front ...

        Hobbies can be powerful additions to our lives. Most hobbies cause the development of certain skills. My hobby’s drawing, so through practicing, I’ve become pretty good. More importantly, hobbies allow people to develop skills, which opens up a myriad of possibilities.       In my case, I can use my artistic skills to branch out in the art field and beyond. My regular art style is semi-realistic black and white pencil. However, the general artistic skills I get from using pencils proved to be useful when I tried painting. Being able to blend, shade, and sketch complex shapes allowed me to still be proficient in a completely different form of art. I’m not amazing at painting, since using colored liquids with a flimsy brush is much different from using only grayscale with a firm pencil, but I’m definitely better than a non-artist. Even outside the art field, being able to draw improves my skill set. The best example of this is doing my makeu...

Grades decide the future of a student. A student decides how much effort they put into their work to get a good grade. Teachers decide what grade to give students work. IT is a vicious cycle of different powers that students have to go through, and grades hold students' futures in their hands. Grades hold the ultimate power over students, and students bend to the grades will. If the students want to get good grades to get a chance at a decent future, they have to sacrifice a lot of their free time to get a better grade. If a student decides that they don’t want to put in the effort to get good grades, they are shooting themselves in the foot.  Grades are the power that students battle against every day in school throughout their childhood.Students have the power to choose how much effort they put into their grades, and teachers decide how much effort they put into teaching their students. People say that grades don't define who you are, but they define what you can do in life. ...

Photo Credit: York, Ashley. "Opinion: Give Kindness More Often." Pepperdine Graphic , 8 Nov. 2022, pepperdine-graphic.com/opinion-give-kindness-more-often/. Accessed 29 Jan. 2025. In a world where everyone is aspiring to become the most successful or the most powerful person, kindness almost seems as an afterthought rather than an attribute that people try to implement in their daily lives.  Being kind has the powerful ability to comfort someone when they feel worried, stressed, or anxious about any struggles they are facing. It can be just purely listening to a friend rant about a class, a parent, another person, or even how they feel when they experience some self-doubt. Being kind has the ability to relieve that stress and worries with simple phrases such as "I am so proud of everything that you have accomplished" or "I am so glad to have you in my life," which sounds cliché now, but in the moment, someone could really use those words of affirmation as ...

Photo Credit: CareClinic , https://careclinic.io/emotion-tracker-app/ . Accessed 29 Jan. 2025. Although it does not seem obvious, emotions are closely tied to physical health. A person’s thoughts hold a lot of power. They can make or break their lives, relationships, and health.  In fact, some personality traits such as Neuroticism, in which people often have strong negative feelings such as those of aggression, are found to be directly related to an increase in diseases such as asthma, hypertension, and cardiovascular disease . On the contrary, positive thoughts on life are found to be related to the opposite of these diseases; they can lead to lower blood pressure and healthy blood sugar levels . This correlation makes sense. Feeling negative emotions likely leads to negative thoughts, which decreases a person’s will to take positive action. As a result, their health goes down, creating a reinforcement loop that continues to worsen. On the other hand, feeling positive about somet...

Balance of Power One of the most notable aspects of the American Government is that it distributes its power amongst its three branches - but those three branches are far from equal. The most powerful of the three must be the legislative branch, which is the branch in charge of writing and passing laws. The legislative branch is capable of overpowering both of the other branches if it is fully in agreement with itself; thankfully, this is a rare occurrence as the legislative branch is also the largest branch of government in terms of membership. The House has a total of 435 members while the Senate consists of 100 senators, which makes any consensus amongst congress rare.  The weakest of the three branches of government would be the judicial branch, which has the power of reviewing the constitutionality of laws and potentially overturning laws if they go against the constitution. This makes this branch of government not really able to actively influence politics, only usually acti...

        Last Monday, on Martin Luther King day, a day of celebration for how far our country has come, something very un-peaceful occurred. I can say with confidence that almost everyone tuned in to watch the inauguration of Donald Trump as the 47th President of the United States were definitely not expecting to see what they did. The sight, of course, that was met with horrified gasps from viewers across America, is none other than a Nazi salute executed not once, but twice , with rigor and passion by Tesla CEO Elon Musk.       To be honest, in the week since this aired on live TV, I have been in shock. It’s difficult to believe that in a progressive era such as this, in the year 2025, that bigots with such hatred in their hearts still exist. Now, to stop this blog from getting too political, I’d like to focus on exactly why this salute is a bad omen for our country, regardless of partisan beliefs.      There was a time when...

  Photo Credit: Dailey, Hannah. “SZA Concert Features Cardi B & Phoebe Bridgers as Surprise Performers.” Billboard , 6 Mar. 2023, www.billboard.com/music/music-news/sza-cardi-b-phoebe-bridgers-concert-surprise-performers-1235280366/. Accessed 16 Jan. 2025. When I think of a day full of relaxation, I picture waking up late in the morning, eating breakfast at almost noon and watching the hummingbirds drink the nectar from several flowers from the window across the dining  table , all while listening to a variety of pop and R&B. Music from my favorite artists always sets me in a good mood. Songs such as “Good Days” by SZA, “Growing Sideways” by Noah Kahan, and “Still Beating” by Mac DeMarco all scratch my brain the right way. Music helps me feel as if I am not alone in facing life’s obstacles and reassures me that every obstacle eventually will pass, meaning that there is no benefit stressing over something that cannot be controlled.  The power of music stems from ly...

Horror movies are an undeniable hallmark of our society. Although I don’t really like watching horror movies anymore, I used to be a huge fan of them. I remember how my friends and I would huddle on the couch during our sleepovers and watch movies like “The Ring” or “The Conjuring”. We definitely aren’t the type of people who are immune to horror movies. Afterwards, we would be so petrified that we always had to send our bravest friend to go turn the lights on. Once, my friend’s dad came in to get a glass of water, and we all screamed at the sound of his footsteps. When we were younger, we were so scared that some of us even started crying. But, no matter how miserable or paranoid watching those movies made us, we all enjoyed horror movies so much that they became a sleepover tradition.  The whole concept of horror movies seems counterintuitive. Usually, we watch movies to relax, or to be sucked into an amazing story. Instead, horror movies have one sole purpose: to terrify us. I...

Photo credit: Sattayamit, Tanaphong. " Dark Sorcerers Ember A hooded figure possibly evil manipulates fiery energy Symbolizing darkness magic power mystery. A hooded figure, possibly evil, manipulates fiery energy. Symbolizing darkness, magic, power, mystery, and dread. Can be used for display or montage your products. Empty Space for display your products, copy space ,banner, advertising. Generative AI. " Dreamstime , https://www.dreamstime.com/dark-sorcerer-s-ember-hooded-figure-possibly-evil-manipulates-fiery-energy-symbolizing-darkness-magic-power-mystery-dread-image352101646 . Accessed 14 Jan. 2025. It starts again. A new victim. So many options. So many without success. So many without help. Snap. Crack. Silence. Another one gone, lost to the expanse. Another fool thinking it could harness what cannot be restricted. Another ignorant soul, not knowing the sacrifice required to hold me in its hands. — Floating in the water, with blue all around, nothing for miles acro...

  Music is amazing.  It seems that there’s constantly a melody beating through my Airpods whenever and wherever I go, whether that be in class (when I’m really not supposed to), or playing it out loud in the shower before my Mom yells at me for taking too long. Often, when we meet with someone for the first time, one of the most commonly asked questions is, “What kind of music do you like?” Music is a bridge that makes connections between people, whether that may be eyeing a stranger's hyper-niche song preferences or swapping playlists with a friend.  My first ever campfire During a summer camp with my Boy Scouts troop, the counselor taught us a new campfire song called “Ging Gang Goolie.” As he sang it, I thought I must be going crazy because I couldn’t understand a word he was saying. Yet, as I looked around, I saw the same face of confusion that I must’ve been making reflected across the faces of the other campers. As the song ended, the counselor began to tell the sto...

  Farmers are the backbone of America, and a lot of people recognize them and realize the potential power that they hold. If farmers stopped growing food for the people, then America would fall because it won’t have any food. I am honestly surprised that a lot of people do not realize that they depend on farmers, and because of that, farmers all over the world could destroy every single country. You might think, “If farmers could destroy every nation, why don’t they?” The answer is very simple, they want money and they don’t want their country to be destroyed. National pride and money are pretty much the only things that are keeping the farmers from destroying the world. The government has realized that they relied on farmers, when some farmers went on strike in the past, the government pretty much just ignored them, but when a lot of farmers went on strike, the government listened to their demands and gave it to them because without the farmers, the government knew it would fall. ...

    Y2K is remembered, for better or worse, as a mass hysteria event that eventually culminated in a whole lot of nothing. It was believed that the start of a new century, the 2000s, would trigger a technological breakdown of operating systems across the globe. When the clock struck midnight and life continued to be the same, there was surely a collective sense of…embarrassment at our own gullibility. Perhaps that same embarrassment is the reason why, despite almost complete confirmation that the app TikTok is going to be banned in the United States, users are carrying on with their regularly scheduled posting. The collective disbelief almost reveals an underlying truth: power, in all its forms, often thrives on ambiguity. The mystery that shrouds the movements of people in power clouds our own vision and leaves us in a sense of denial over what we truly saw.       With the impending ban of TikTok scheduled for January 19th, American users are all wo...