6. Pretzels 2025

  Memory is a powerful thing, except when it disappears the night before an assignment is due. That’s why I’m writing this blog early, so I won’t forget! Have you ever stared at that red “Missing” icon on Google Classroom, wondering why your brain decided to erase all traces of that essay you were working on? Same. Actually, I recently learned that there was a term for this, which is the phenomenon called selective academic amnesia . Universal Excuses: “I thought it was due next week…” “Wait…that’s graded?” “I don’t remember hearing about that assignment!” “My digital dog ate my homework on Google Docs.” Language shapes how we recall information, but when it comes to assignments, our brains (or maybe just mine) turn into a master excuse generator rather than a good, trusty memory bank.  Teachers post deadlines, (some) repeat them, (some) highlight them in bold, (some) remind us again, and (some) want us to be on top of our game like Mrs. Smith, yet somehow a good 20% of the ti...

We have all been in a situation where you forgot something that you are just about to say. That feeling when you want to tell your parents or friends something exciting, but you always forget it right when you grab their attention is the worst feeling ever. You can almost taste the words that form on your tongue, but you have a brain fart and forgot everything. This annoying experience is called the “tip-of-the-tongue phenomenon,” and it happens so many times. So you must be wondering: Why does this happen? It turns out that our brains are extremely complicated and sometimes too complicated for our own good. You see, when we store words in our memory, we often link them to sounds, experiences or even taste for foods. Sometimes, our brains mix them up and output the wrong word, or you just stand there looking dumbfounded because you can’t put the words together. Another cause is interference which is the neurological equivalence of traffic jams. When words are too similar or connected, ...

Sitting atop a drawer in my room lies a large IKEA plastic storage bin. The clasps of the box are broken after years of opening and closing, and the lid no longer properly fits. It looks like it doesn’t weigh much, but it’s actually quite heavy—both in its physical weight and in the emotional weight of the memories it holds. Inside is every one of my yearbooks since kindergarten, along with random projects from each of my school years. This includes the star student poster I made in 2nd grade, my 4th grade California mission project, and plenty of other random assignments. Scattered between the contents are pieces of memorabilia from vacations, the small log with my science camp name on it, random drawings or writing that must’ve meant something to me at the time, and, more recently, my POAS paper. I always aim to add at least three to four pieces of my life into the box every year. I don’t open the box often; it’s by no means an everyday occurrence. It’s reserved for those random Tues...

 After every yearly visit to my grandmother’s house, I come back home with my heart overflowing with not only love and warmth, but also a sense of bittersweetness and fear. Seeing the newly formed wrinkles on her forehead, it shows a visual reminder of the inevitable time passage, and the memories that fly away with it.  Out of the many illnesses in this world, I believe that dementia is one of the most cruel and heartbreaking. It takes away the person's ability to form new memories or to remember old ones, erasing their valuable and meaningful memories. It is the most challenging for the person directly undergoing dementia since the thought of ‘losing yourself’ can be extremely scary. But it also puts serious emotional distress on the caregivers and family members, who experience guilt as they helplessly watch the patient’s condition gradually worsen. Spending last summer with my grandmother was an opportunity for me to build a lot of patience and to explore her thoughts on a...

(5 Minute English. https://5minuteenglish.com/memorys-impact-on-esl-learning-language-acquisition-insights/. Accessed. 19 Mar. 2025.) In our life, we experience many memories that shape the way we perceive language around us as we grow up. This can be seen through many examples in our life. Interestingly, a ubiquitous fact around the world is that a child’s first word is often “ma” or some form of “mom” as a term of endearment for their mother. Many speculate that the word “mom” has been established around the world in many different languages because of the fact that it is the first thing that most babies say. Evidently, the memories and experiences we have from a young age build up our sense of language. In fact, the very way we learn languages from the start is through our memories. As most of you already know, at a young age, our minds are very perceptive about language and are able to pick them up very quickly. This is what gives people the notion of a “native speaker” of a lang...

If you asked me what I spent my time on in freshman year, I honestly could not tell you. Like most people, I had 0 AP courses and only English 9 Honors. I had health class, which I remember literally being a free period if you just paid attention during a short lecture. I had PE class, which never had any homework at all.  So what was I doing when I got home from school? How did I spend those seven hours every day? And why can’t I remember at all? I only remember playing video games, but I’m confident that it did not take seven hours of my time every day. Most likely, I was just on my phone the whole day. Depressing, I know. As college applications now approach, I look more and more at my stats and my extracurriculars. The B I got in freshman year English is bringing my GPA down—I know I didn’t try hard enough. I look around me, and people have been engaging in their passions since freshman year or before, and all my extracurriculars started either this year or in late sophomore ye...

You'd think that I'd be the best person to explain my memories. After all, who other than me can fully access the depths of my mind and bring forth my recollections? Yet it feels as though even I see my memories through a filter. My short term feels overflowed with images of myself stooped over my desk, toiling over annotations; or spread out on the floor with my computer and notes, pouring over chemistry calculations and Lewis dot structures; or pacing my room, wearing down the floorboards as I mutter the lines of yet another presentation to myself. So many lunches have been spent in the library scouring books in last-minute revision instead of being out in the sun because whatifIdon’trememberthis . Don’t get me wrong–there have been just as many moments of joy, too. Of whispered inside jokes and sarcastic comments just within my earshot. Of being paralyzed and struck with silent, uncontrollable laughter, tears streaming down my face.  But when I look back on these memories, t...

“I don’t want you to go.” A tranquil silence follows, only interrupted by the soft whispers of the summer wind and rustles of the already yellowing leaves. Those were the last few words I heard from my childhood friend, spoken face-to-face. And so, we sat, our feet dangling off the rooftop. We basked in each other’s presence one last time, our unspoken words doing the talking for us. We stole tacit glances, our eyes meeting a few times, saying all there is to say. “I don’t want to leave.” My voice barely registered in volume above the cool summer breeze. Say something, Sunny , I thought. Anything . Alas, the only thing that followed was more deafening silence. Subtle glances. Eyes locked for fractions of a second.  Only when I heard a barely audible sniffle did I look up again. I looked up to see his gaze averted, his palms cupping his eyes. And just like that, summer came to an end. Warmth. Joy. Laughter. Sunny . All gone. Boy and girl sitting on a roof - Courtesy of Dreamstime.co...

At some point during the three painstakingly long years of quarantine, my favorite hobby was to learn new languages on Duolingo . I never became fluent in speaking nor did I ever achieve familiarity while typing. I don’t know why I suddenly had this immense passion for what I would now call random languages, but maybe it was between my anime binge and random TV show exposure that I found these “random” languages to be intriguing.  Maybe because Duolingo became a friendly competition between my friend and I, when nothing else seemed to intrigue me during freshman year. Maybe because reaching every achievement for a daily streak and friendship XP goal made me feel accomplished during the monotonous lectures during health about drugs, sex, or bullying. But now, I can barely remember how to say “Hello, it is nice to meet you” in German, or remember the thousands of Japanese characters that I used to obsess over on a daily basis.  Common College Math Errors This is why I never trus...

  Hear me out. You know when it’s like 3 AM, but you’re still wide awake for no reason? Then suddenly your brain just goes crazy and you start thinking about the most random things. I would never care or think about this during the day, but at 3 AM, they’re the most important things ever. Here's some food for thought if you’re reading this late at night (or save this until it's late so you can think about it). Do ants ever get bored? I just thought of this while watching an ant walk back and forth on my table in 3rd period. I wonder what goes on in the small minds of ants. Are they just hardwired to work and work and work all the time or do they ever have free time? I think there must’ve been an ant who felt that life was getting boring and thought that maybe he needed a break from walking in a straight line.  I was rereading my blog and started wondering if maybe, just maybe , the ants are actually us. What if, while we’re busy looking at them stuck in their routines, they’re...

 Memory is a funny thing. It feels almost unmistakable but it is really just a collection of fuzzy images and experiences. I've had plenty of moments myself where I was absolutely convinced of remembering something exactly as it happened like where I left my car keys or what chore my mom told me to do. However, it turned out to be completely different from what I remembered and I was completely wrong. Then a sudden realization breaks through and I scold myself for forgetting. It is a reminder that our brains really aren't as reliable as we think they are. This is especially true for schoolwork. In junior high, I found myself increasingly forgetting about assignments and even though there were little consequences back in 8th grade, I knew it would only get worse as high school began. It pushed me to a system to keep myself organized. As a result, I have been trying to write everything down into a to-do list. Although fancy calendars and schedules work for others, I find them to ...

It is unusual to think about but the truth is that humans are just organic robots whose brains work similarly to a CPU. I mean what is the difference between the two? Both use electrical impulses and have control over the entire machine or person. Similarly to computers, humans also have issues with their memories. Remember that one time that you thought that you saved a file or an online homework assignment; well, chances are you did, but the computer did not recognize the command or had some sort of internal issues. This is also why many people (including me) double check to make sure something is saved or unconsciously double click the save button. The same thing happens with humans. Since electrical impulses are based on emotions, we remember things that have happened to us in different ways. For example, we all have the memory of not getting ice cream on the trip when we were younger or being jealous of a toy that another kid had. See look, the image that just came to your mind pr...