With the end of senior year quickly approaching, we have experienced almost all of the rite-of-passage senior events that are so highly anticipated. Although prom and graduation are still about a month away, I thought it would be interesting to rank the events that have already occurred.

Honorable mention: prom. It wouldn’t be a complete ranking if prom wasn’t mentioned, but since it hasn’t happened yet, I have to give it an honorable mention. Buying a prom dress is something that girls dream about for years, and now that I have actually gone through the process I can say it lived up to my expectations. Although I can’t speak for prom itself, I can say that I’m pretty excited just to wear my dress and take pictures.

Now for the real rankings…

1. Hypnotist assembly. I went into this not really knowing what to expect, so I wasn’t necessarily excited for it. I think I was more excited to have the day off of classes than for the assembly itself. But about 10 minutes into the assembly, I realized that it was actually going to be a very fun hour and a half. Watching our hypnotized classmates go through the strangest series of actions, from riding a bike to hiding from spiders, was honestly one of the funniest things I’ve ever seen. I think it was a combination of the ridiculous commands and the fact that the people doing them would never actually do those things in real life. 

2. Senior fashion show. People may have a different opinion on this one based on what store they modeled, but I got Peaches, a prom dress store (can you tell I like wearing fancy dresses?).

Senior Fashion Show

I had a lot of fun going to Peaches with my friends to pick out our dresses, even though the selection was pretty meager because the store can’t lend out the dresses they actually want to sell. I’ve heard of people getting dresses from Peaches for the fashion show that are really not cute in past years, but luckily my friends and I were spared and got dresses that were actually really nice. The day of the fashion show was also really fun because my friends and I all got ready and had lunch together before we went to the school. I will say that we had to get to the school really early, almost 4 hours before the show started, and the waiting around part was not super fun. But all was forgotten when we put on our dresses and walked down the stage. I would say this event really made me feel like we were second semester seniors; it really marked the start of all the fun senior events.

3. Senior Celebration. This is such a highly advertised event and it really is admirable how much time and effort all of the parent volunteers put into making it a fun night. And I really did have fun going around to all of the different stations and playing the games. My personal favorite was the Memory Hallway; I loved seeing pictures of all of our classmates as kids and how we have grown up. The only reason Senior Celebration is ranked third is because I felt that it dragged on for a pretty long time. I think the length should be cut down to four hours, from 6-10pm instead of 5-10 to keep kids from getting bored.

4. Powderpuff. Although I wasn’t able to attend the actual game day because the original date was postponed, the preparation was very fun. I enjoyed my team’s “practices” (I’m not sure if they can even be called that) and making our t-shirts to wear. On the day of the game, I supported my team from afar and kept up with the updates on the Dawg Pound Instagram. They got out in the first round of competition, but I’m sure it was a strong effort nonethless.

Senior Sunrise (pre-rain)

5. Senior sunrise. I feel bad putting this one last because it’s supposed to kick off senior year, but the weather really ruined it. I did have fun making my “Under the Sea” costume with my friends, but we only got to wear them for about 15 minutes before we were ushered inside because of the rain. I wish we had been allowed to go on the turf to take pictures and socialize! I didn’t even end up going to the “make-up” senior sunrise day because it was cloudy again.

Even though some of these events didn’t rank as highly as I thought they would have at the beginning of the school year, none of them were not fun. With every senior-only event, I am reminded how quickly our last year of high school is going by. I’m really looking forward to the last few weeks of the school year when graduation is really close and the only thing that matters is enjoying every moment.

Daylight savings – you either love it or you hate it. Actually, maybe you feel completely indifferent about it, but for the purposes of this blog, pick a side. On the second Sunday in March (aka Sunday, March 10 this year), we set our clocks forward an hour so that the sun sets at a later time. Then, on the first Sunday in November, we set the clocks back an hour so the sun sets earlier. As I came to school Monday morning hearing teachers and students alike grumbling about losing an hour of sleep and feeling discombobulated, I began thinking about daylight savings and how it came to be.

This all started in the late 1700s with Benjamin Franklin on a commission in France as an ambassador for the US. It’s a common misconception that he invented daylight savings time, but in reality, he just suggested that Parisians change their sleep schedules by getting out of bed earlier, thus going to sleep earlier, to save money on candles and lamp oil. However, this set the stage for George Hudson, an entomologist from New Zealand, to come up with the modern concept of daylight savings time in 1895. He suggested moving the clocks back two hours in March and forward two hours in October, all so he could have more daylight to study bugs. At this point, daylight savings still wasn’t a common practice, but it was beginning to take on a familiar form. In 1916, locations within the German Empire set clocks ahead by an hour during the war to use less power for lighting and save fuel for the war effort. They switched the clocks back when the war ended.

Daylight savings time as we know it was temporarily enacted in the US in 1918, as a bill suggesting a seasonal time shift was repealed after just seven months. However, President Roosevelt reinstated the practice during World War II to save fuel resources for the war effort. Still, this so-called “War Time” ended after the war, similar to the German Empire’s swift repeal of the time change at the conclusion of WWI. 

Daylight savings time was permanently codified in the US with the Uniform Time Act of 1966. This law established the common practice of springing forward and falling back, although the exact dates have switched around a bit over the years. Interestingly enough, there are two states that do not participate in the time change, Arizona and Hawaii. Under the Uniform Time Act, states are able to opt out of observing daylight savings, which is exactly what these two states did. 

Almost every year around daylight savings, lawmakers introduce bills to make the time change permanent, meaning the clocks would permanently be set as they currently are between March and November. Although this would give us more daylight in the winter, with the sun setting an hour later, it would mean that our mornings would be darker year-round. Several of these bills have been introduced in the past few years, but none have been passed. One reason for keeping the daylight savings practice may simply be for convenience’ sake because so many countries in the world follow the custom. Most countries in North America and Europe follow the time change, so it keeps time differences consistent no matter what. 

In my opinion, I like daylight savings. Sure, I hate giving up an hour of sleep to spring forward, but it’s only one day out of the year. I think seeing the sun set an hour later, even if it isn’t due to a drastic increase in actual daylight, is one of the hallmarks of the approaching summer months. And even though I dislike the sun setting so early in the winter, I dislike driving to school in the dark more. 

The whole debate about daylight savings seems a bit much ado about nothing, but honestly it would be strange to have daylight savings abolished when many Americans have participated in it every year for their entire lives. For now, though, daylight savings time is safe – until next year, at least.

Before reading the poem, I looked at the shape of the words on the page. The lines looked like one large block of text, all about the same length, except for line 17. So, as I read the poem, I kept in mind that a shift of some sort could occur somewhere near that line. During my first read, I had difficulty deciphering the century-old, ultra-proper manner of speaking – writing, in this case – that Frost used throughout the poem. It felt like the words were out of order, and I had to put them back in order to understand the meaning of the line. For example, Frost writes, “Tomorrow’s wind, if it be wild, / Should waste them all” (3-4). If I were to re-write this in a modern style, which is more palatable for me, I would say, “If tomorrow’s wind is wild, it will waste them all.” The “them” that Frost is referring to are the leaves mentioned in the second line. After I translated, so to speak, the lines into my own manner of speech, I understood that Frost was saying that the wind will cause the leaves to fall off the trees. However, the dated speech mannerisms were definitely commonplace at the time, and I find that they add to the whimsy of the poem.

Now that I had mastered Frost’s manner of speech and could adeptly translate his lines into ones I could better understand, I looked at the plot of the poem to attempt to understand what Frost was saying. I noticed a heavy emphasis on nature throughout the poem, including falling leaves, the call of crows, and the setting sun. This imagery allowed the reader to better visualize the scene being set in the poem. Falling leaves are a pretty obvious choice to include in a poem about the month of October, because of course there are leaves falling in the autumn months. Crows also make sense to me because I associate crows with spookiness and therefore Halloween. However, I think Frost intended a different interpretation of the crows because he writes, “The crows above the forest call; / Tomorrow they may form and go” (5-6). Line 6 points to the crows migrating south for the winter, forming the “V” flight arrangement characteristic of traveling birds as they do so. As for the sunset, this was a little more ambiguous in my mind because sunsets are pretty similar in every season. Yet, the lines “Begin the hours of this day slow. / Make the day seem to us less brief” (8-9) describes days getting shorter as the winter approaches. I struggled to connect the leaves, crows, and sun, but then I realized that time was something they all had in common. Leaves only fall in the autumn, a specific time of year, similar to crows migrating south as the weather gets colder. Finally, the sun begins to rise later and set earlier in the fall as well, suggesting the passage of time. So, I came to the conclusion that in the literal sense, the poem was describing a day in October, from the slow sunrise, to the falling leaves and calling crows, and finally ending with a slow sunset.

There were a couple lines of the poem that didn’t exactly fit with this conclusion at first glance. I was very confused by “Hearts not averse to being beguiled, / Beguile us in the way you know” (lines 10-11) when I first read them, not understanding why matters of the heart had suddenly been brought up. To work through this, I looked at the literal meaning of the words, most significantly, beguiled – to enchant or charm in a somewhat deceptive way. These two lines then made a lot more sense, as the speaker is asking October, the epitome of fall, to enchant his or her heart with the beauty of the fall, which is kind of deceptive because fall is a transient natural state; it doesn’t last for very long. Additionally, the line “One from our trees, one far away” (line 14) was difficult to understand because the speaker was describing leaves falling in the morning and midday in the previous two lines, but this line was talking about “our trees” and trees far away. Perhaps the speaker meant that in the morning and midday, one leaf should fall from a tree in the speaker’s line of sight, and one leaf should fall from a tree far away. This extremely gradual change in the landscape could demonstrate that the speaker is uncomfortable with the passage of time and the thought of October ending. Finally, in the last four lines, after describing the sun setting, Frost all of a sudden brings up grapes and basically says that the grapes are going to die in the pending cold months. After spending so much of the poem on such classically fall-like ideas, the inclusion of the grapes, a sweet and lively fruit, perplexed me. Yet, as I thought back on the rest of the poem, I noticed that the tone was almost somber because of the punctuation. The first 16 lines of the poem are all punctuated with a comma, semicolon, or period, which give the lines a blunt ending and dulling any rhythm produced by rhyming words. However, in line 17, the words are punctuated by an exclamation mark, indicating a shift to a more lively subject – the grapes. The grapes seem to be a memory of warmer, happier times, like the summer. By writing “Slow, slow!” (17), Frost makes it seem as though the speaker doesn’t want those times to pass, doesn’t want the colder months to arrive. Yet, Frost also shows carelessness of nature for external wishes, writing “Whose clustered fruit must else be lost—” (20). This demonstrates that the grapes hanging from the vine must die at some point.

After deciphering the literal meaning of the poem, I felt that there was a deeper meaning to derive from the text. I noticed a very whimsical and delicate tone, with words like “ripened”, “beguiled”, “mist”, “enchant”, and “amethyst”. I didn’t really understand how these words connected to the death that October brings to nature, but the contrast evokes a sense of wonderment about the changing nature. Speaking of nature, I of course had noticed its prevalence throughout the poem, but I didn’t know how that related to the genre of the poem. Then, I thought about the time period in which Frost wrote this poem, the Romantic era. Since many pieces of art were focused on nature during this era, it makes sense that Frost would write a poem so focused on nature – a genre I now know is considered pastoral. The choice to write a poem about October through a nature lens gives it a focus on time, and including lines about the life cycle of leaves and grapes points to an overarching meaning about the brevity of life. Thus, this poem serves two purposes, at least for me: first, it accurately captures the melancholy feeling of an October morning, and second, it describes how nature demonstrates that life is a fleeting, temporary state that can end as quickly as a leaf falls to the ground, or as slowly as the sun setting on a fall day.

Over winter break, I had the opportunity to look at a family tree on my dad’s side of the family. It didn’t go back super far, just about four generations, but I did learn some cool things. One, my great-grandfather Kermit E. Hale was the mayor of Stuttgart, Arkansas in the 1950s. Two, the name Kermit and nickname “Dan” have been passed down through the males of the family. While my dad’s name is not Kermit, it was interesting to see how the name had been preserved throughout the generations. And three, my grandmother actually has my great-great-great grandfather Dan’s steamer trunk that he used when traveling. She had it restored to its former glory a long time ago, and serves as a reminder of times when train travel was most common and steamer trunks were the preferred, if not more cumbersome, method of transporting personal items.

Looking at this family tree led me to thinking about my mom’s side of the family. Coming from a family of Jewish immigrants, my maternal ancestry can be hard to trace once you go back far enough to the pre-immigration generations due to the recordkeeping systems in the small Eastern European towns they lived in. However, a quick call with one of my aunts and a visit to her account on the Ancestry.com website opened up a wealth of family knowledge I had previously known nothing about. Up until that point, the most I knew about the older generations of my mom’s family was that my great-grandparents had come to the United States from Poland in the early 1900s.

After some deep searching, I was able to find some information about my mother’s paternal grandparents, including that her grandfather had actually immigrated from Austria, not Poland as I had assumed. The real treasure was on her maternal side, where I went back seven generations from myself and found my great-great-great grandparents. It felt like I was discovering a whole new family I never knew existed. This information centered around my mother’s maternal grandmother, Pauline Notkoff (née Rogowska). Finding Pauline’s maiden name was central to my search, and from there I was able to find her parents and grandparents. Pauline immigrated to the US from Bialystok, Poland (Russia at the time) in 1917, and married my great-grandpa Jack a few years later. Jack was also from Bialystok and actually followed Pauline to the US to marry her. One cool piece of information I found in a US Census record from 1940 listed the Notkoff’s primary language as Yiddish, which they had spoken while living in Poland/Russia. Once they immigrated to the US, they kept speaking Yiddish at home in the Bronx, and my grandmother also grew up speaking it. I then understood why my mother’s speech is speckled with Yiddish words, as she often exclaims that she doesn’t want to “schlep” over to somewhere or that some “meshuggeneh” cut her off while driving.

Using Pauline’s maiden name, Rogowska, I was able to find information about her parents, Michel Rogowska and Feijga Chaja Wasilkowski. Seeing those names, which are so different from the ones in my family today, really made me feel connected to a side of the family I had never known about before. I even found a photograph taken of the Rogowska family when Pauline was still a girl. All of her siblings (Rachel, Paul, Jean, and Shirley), as well as her parents, are in

The Rogowska Family. My great-grandma Pauline is in the top right.

 the photo. It was so cool to me to see the faces of people in my family who lived so long ago, in a different world, really.

Through more searching, I found Pauline’s maternal grandparents, Pesach Yudel Wasilkowski and Sora Merjam Sokolska. Her grandfather was born around 1846, and although I could not find a birth year for Pauline’s grandmother, I assume it was around the same time. 

Although this was the last generation I was able to trace, it was so cool to find records dating to almost 200 years ago for people who lived on a different continent. Seeing naturalization records, marriage licenses, and even just data from different years of the US Census, where I saw the family grow as new children were born, was fascinating. Tracing my family back to my third great-grandparents may not seem super impressive to families who can trace their lineage back 500 or more years, but this isn’t feasible for many Jewish families whose records have been lost or destroyed due to various events in history. Thinking about my ancestors and their relatives, I wondered if I have distantly related family still in Europe. I mean, it’s very likely that I do, but I’m not sure I would ever be able to track them down at this point. 

The moral of the story, my family’s story, is that heritage is important. Tracing my lineage as far back as I could made me feel more connected to who I am, and I would definitely encourage anyone who is able to take a look at their ancestry and find out more about their heritage.

Blogging this semester allowed me to practice writing in a more personal style that I haven’t really gotten to use in an academic setting before, except in my college essay and some supplementals. It was an interesting journey of discovering my voice as a writer and how I can use my voice to create an effective piece of writing.

The blog I enjoyed writing most  was “Where’d All the Time Go?”. Interestingly enough, this was also the most difficult blog for me to write. I had all of the ideas in my head, but it was difficult to put them onto paper (or computer, in this case). I kept writing sentences, changing them, moving them around to find the right spot, and eventually deleting them altogether when a better idea came to mind. In the end, though, I really felt like my words reflected my thinking about how quickly it feels like time has passed. This blog was a really introspective look into

 my relationship with time, a nostalgic, bittersweet feeling that life was passing by, and I hadn’t even realized it. It was fun (and a bit sad!) to scroll through my camera roll to find photos from earlier high school years to use as a photo comparison to now, reflecting on my time in high school and how much I have enjoyed it.

As I mentioned earlier, writing these blogs have been particularly helpful in developing my voice as a writer. Finding a good combination of tone, vocabulary, and syntax to build my personal style really helped make writing these blogs an enjoyable experience because my words better express my thoughts. Reading other students’ blogs helped with finding my voice, as well, because I was exposed to a wider range of styles that gave me new ideas for my own writing. I also found that finding different forms of multimedia to include in my blogs, whether it was pictures from my own camera roll or images online, really helped convey my ideas. I think that scrolling through the blog website and seeing all the pictures other people have

included helps catch the reader’s eye and make them more interested in the blog, so the multimedia component of blogging is also really essential.

Reading and interacting with other blogs also allowed me to learn about new artists, entertainment, food, and restaurants. For example, reading blogs about new artists on Spotify, drinks at Starbucks, TV shows, and more helped me discover new types of things that I already consume. I also learned about topics I probably wouldn’t focus on normally, like football, philosophical topics, and technology. It was an opportunity to learn about the interests of people I don’t normally talk to often, or even at all.

Writing blogs has allowed me to discover a new type of writing, a more relaxed, personal version that I actually really enjoy. Academic writing, like analytical essays and timed writings, definitely isn’t my favorite, but I also feel like I’m not great at creative, fictional writing either. One thing I did struggle with a bit towards the end of the semester was coming up with new ideas for blogs. I didn’t want to repeat the same topics that other students have written about, like college applications or lists of the best TV shows, restaurants, artists, etcetera, but at the same time, I was running out of other options. However, this forced me to be more creative by really thinking about my interests and finding a way to form those into an interesting blog. Blogging has been a fun opportunity to write about topics in which I’m interested, in a style in which I feel more comfortable.

Anyone who has ever tried to make plans with me knows that Sunday is not an option, because every Sunday, I reset myself for the week so that I am prepared for anything that school, extracurriculars, or life throws at me. This includes cleaning up my room, finishing any homework, relaxing myself, and more. I’ve perfected this process over several years to figure out what works best for me, so without further ado, here are my steps to the perfect Sunday Reset.

Step 1: Exercise. I always find that I focus better if I work out before doing homework or other tasks. I used to procrastinate working out until late on a Sunday afternoon, and I wouldn’t get anything done in the morning or in the early afternoon, so I had to do all of my homework and other tasks late on Sunday night. However, if I get moving even for 30 minutes right when I wake up, it sets me up for a productive day and I can concentrate on the tasks ahead.

Step 2: Laundry. I feel like laundry gets a bad rap for being annoying and tiresome, but I find that putting the laundry in the wash isn’t the problem for me, it’s when I have to fold the freshly washed clothes that I start to dread it. Still, it always makes me feel better to throw a load of clothes in the wash on Sunday and do something else for the hour or two that the clothes are washing and drying (see next step!). When the clothes are ready to be folded, I find that the trick to actually folding them and not just letting them sit in my laundry basket for days is to just fold them right away. For a task that only takes about five minutes, I sure have to spend a long time convincing myself to start, but I always feel better when my clothes are washed and put away and I have an empty laundry basket to start the week.

Step 3: Homework. Depending on how productive I was that weekend, I might have anywhere from 30 minutes to 5 hours of homework to do on a Sunday. While the laundry is in the wash, I start my homework, take a break to switch the clothes to the dryer, go back to work, then take a longer break to fold the now-clean clothes. Sometimes on these breaks it’s easy for me to get distracted by other things, even if I don’t go on my phone. I seem to be able to take any little distraction and turn it into a long ordeal, whether it’s playing with my dog or watching a random TV show with my dad. Random distractions aside, I try to get all of my homework done so that I am caught up going into the week ahead. I won’t lie, this often includes reading about 100 pages of a book, not going to say which book or for which class, but it takes up a good bit of time.

Step 4: Clean. I try to keep my room clean during the week, but there are always random papers strewn across my desk, pillows and blankets in different corners of the room, and clothes on the floor by the end of the week. So, I take some time to clean up all the clutter in order to go into the week with a tidy workspace for homework. I’ve noticed that if my room is messy, it’s harder for me to focus on work because there is too much distracting me, so I always clean it up to start the week.

Step 5: Prepare. After doing laundry, homework, and cleaning up, I’ve almost finished all of the steps of my Sunday Reset. Before I can get to the final step, though, I pack my backpack, wash out and refill my water bottle, and make lunch for the next day. I also do miscellaneous things like plugging in my computer or changing my sheets.

Step 6: Relax. If it’s not too late by the time I’ve finished everything on my reset list, I like to unwind by watching a show or movie. It feels good to do something mindless and very low-stakes after spending all day preparing for the week ahead.

There you have it! These exact steps may not work for everyone, but I do think that it is beneficial for everyone to do some kind of reset once a week to clean up and take care of tasks that may get pushed to the side during the week. It’s easy to let simple tasks pile up, but a Sunday Reset helps me stay organized and feel refreshed going into the new week.

        As I’m writing this blog, I’m looking out the window as the first snowflakes of the year fall. Although they won’t stick for long, they foreshadow the snowy winter season to come, and I can’t help but get excited. I’m a firm believer that October-December are the best months of the year, and there’s plenty of reasons why. I do love the spring and summer months, but there’s something about fall and early winter that is unmatched, even by the allure of the warm summer months free of school.

View from my window during fall

        October. I know the month has already passed, but I’m still including it because it has to be mentioned in a blog about the best months of the year. In Illinois, at least, this is the first true month of fall. There might be a few chillier days and scattered yellow leaves in September, but it’s really in October that autumn begins. I love when the leaves change into their vibrant red, yellow, and orange hues, and waking up to the first cold day I can wear pants after being in shorts all summer. I feel like I’m appreciating the changing landscape more than usual this year because I know that next year I won’t be in Naperville to see it. October is more than just pretty leaves, though.  Pumpkin spice marketing comes out in full force, spooky decorations pop up in neighborhood yards, and everyone is excited for Halloween. There’s so many fun things to do during this time, like apple picking, going to a pumpkin patch, or visiting a fall fest (my favorite is at

Halloween, 2011

Danada). I feel like no season is welcomed as much as fall, maybe because people are happy that the hot weather is finally over.  My favorite tradition is carving pumpkins with the cross country team one day after practice – our coach really loves Halloween and fall in general. And although I don’t go trick or treating anymore, I still get together with friends to celebrate. In my opinion, Halloween is the perfect transition from mid to late fall, marking the moment stores switch their displays from pumpkins to turkeys (and Christmas trees, in some cases).

        November. The first round of college applications are due, daylight savings means the days are getting shorter, Thanksgiving comes around, and Christmas music appears on the radio for the first time. It’s a huge relief to have the first round of my college apps taken care of because I now have two extra months to finish my January ones. November might seem like a boring month, with the only major happening being Thanksgiving, but really enjoy this time because everyone has a generous and thankful spirit. I always spend Thanksgiving with my mom’s family in Maryland, so I love getting to visit them. The week between Thanksgiving and the beginning of December is kind of a limbo time, in my opinion, because it’s kind of fall but it’s also kind of the holiday season.

Winter in Colorado

        December. The true beginning of the holiday season. People decorate their houses with beautiful lights, stores put out festive displays, holiday music is playing on the radio stations, and people are generally in a good mood. I love shopping for gifts, looking at decorations, and generally doing holiday activities. I’m lucky enough to get to celebrate both Chanukah and Christmas, and although I do feel more connected to Chanukah, the buildup to Christmas is unmatched. Aside from the holidays, December is just a fun month. Winter really begins during this month, so you can do fun winter activities like ice skating, sledding, and skiing. There’s also winter break to look forward to, because everyone can use a break from school at that point. Winter break is such a good time to reset before second semester starts because you get a true break from your classes after finals. Overall, December is definitely my favorite month in the year because of all of the fun things that happen in it, but I might just be saying that now because I’m excited for it.

        Everything after. After the last pieces of confetti have been picked up from New Year’s parties, things can get kind of dreary in Illinois. It’s bitterly cold, the snow stays on the ground for so long that it turns brown, and the days feel shorter than ever. I’m choosing not to think about the months after December right now – I’ll cross that bridge when I get to it. For now, I’m just looking forward to the coming months, and I hope that you are too.

As I was driving home from cross country practice the other day, a gust of wind blowing yellow leaves across the street prompted a realization: this is the last time I will experience autumn in Naperville. 

Of course, at that moment, the song “Where’d All the Time Go?” started playing from my curated Spotify playlist of fall-feelings songs. And I really thought, where did all the time go? I remember jumping into leaf piles that my dad would make from the leaves he raked up from our yard every year. There are pictures of us in the leaf pile every year from when I was probably three years old to sometime around when she left for college a few years ago. Looking back on how young I was in these pictures, but still remembering those moments so vividly, makes me feel nostalgic for the time when I felt like the time to leave home was quite literally never going to come. Somehow, though, it’s almost that time: senior year, the year of lasts.

I’m about to run in my last DVC championship meet cross country race on Saturday. It’s a tradition on the girls team to have seniors each write a letter to the team with advice and other reflections on their time in the program. I never thought that it would be my turn to write one. 

As I was writing this letter the other night, I thought about previous seniors’ letters. Every year they  say something about the time flying by, but I couldn’t have ever imagined how true that statement is. I’ve definitely had my ups and downs with running over the years, but no matter how much I complain about it, I wouldn’t trade my time on the team for the world.

Sophomore Homecoming

Sometime while I was writing, I got the brilliant idea to look through my camera roll and reminisce on cross country. Spoiler: this was a bad idea. As I saw pictures of my friends and I as baby freshmen, then a little older as sophomores, older still as juniors, and now seniors, tears came to my eyes. These girls have seen me at my best and worst and been there for me through thick and thin. What am I going to do without them next year?

Senior Homecoming

I also found pictures of teammates who have since graduated. I don’t talk to these girls as often as I once did, but I still feel their presence in my life when they comment on an Instagram post of mine or send a Snapchat flashback from two years ago of a photo that I’m featured in. As I went through these photos, I texted these girls, saying that I had just finished writing my senior letter and that I missed them a lot. All of them responded with a similar sentiment, basically this: “I can’t believe you’re a senior already! Miss you so much!”

Simple words, but I asked myself again. Where did all the time go? When I look back on my high school career, events feel like they happened so recently that I can still picture every detail. At the same time, these events feel so very far in the past. I guess they’re not so far in the past, but I’ve grown farther away from who I was at that point in time. Sometimes it’s hard to imagine the time when I was the person in those pictures I mentioned earlier. And that idea makes me a little sad. I know that growing up is, well, what happens when you get older, but what if I’m not ready?

The thing is, you’re never really ready to grow up. As a kid, you wish for the independence that comes with being a teenager or adult. But once you actually obtain that so-called independence, you’re wishing for the time when everything was taken care of for you. I guess what I’m trying to say is that time passes whether you want it to or not, and you just have to be ready for what gets thrown at you in different stages of life. 

While writing this blog, I’ve had the chance to think about what I spent high school doing, and really what I spent the last almost 18 years doing. And I think I finally have an answer to my original question. So, here’s where all the time went: in school days, movie nights, Homecoming dances, cross country practices, family vacations, and more laughs and tears than I can count. These are the experiences that have shaped who I am today. No matter where the time goes in the next four years, I know that each experience helps me grow as a person, and that’s what living is all about.

There’s a trend on TikTok right now in which female users ask the males in their life how often they think about the Roman Empire. The number is higher than you might expect, with some guys answering that their mind wanders to the ancient empire multiple times a day. Although I’m not one to post my own take on the trend on TikTok, I was curious if this phenomenon would hold true for the males in my own life.

It’s a simple question: how often do you think of the Roman Empire? I asked my dad for his input a few nights ago and his answer surprised me. He thinks about the Roman Empire three times a week on average. I just didn’t perceive him as being someone who thinks about history, and a specific part of history at that, on a regular basis.

Bolstered by this confirmation, I asked some people my own age. Once again, I was surprised that guys in high school think about the Roman Empire quite often. I assumed that their minds would be occupied by other things – homework, sports, college applications, friends – but surely not the Roman Empire.

I can see why the Roman Empire is interesting for guys to think about. Ancient Rome was a man’s world, with men holding power at home and in public. I assume that the gladiator fights and military prowess of the empire also add to their fascination. But all of this talk about this interest in the male-dominated ancient world got me thinking – what is the female version of this phenomenon?

The first thing that comes to mind for me personally is Taylor Swift. She is an iconic, powerful symbol of feminism who has become a historic musician during her 18-year career. From her humble country music beginnings, to the feud with Kanye West that began when he interrupted her award acceptance speech at the 2009 VMAs, and now through the culmination of her career thus far through her Eras Tour, Taylor Swift has been scrutinized for every move she makes. People say she dates too much, is too opinionated, or does things for attention. I think almost all women can relate to being perceived as one or more of these things by other people, but Taylor Swift handles the allegations with grace. The success of her current Eras Tour has also drawn worldwide attention, with millions of people vying for tickets. Her musical prowess, strong morals, and relatability certainly makes her an obvious choice for the female version of the Roman Empire phenomenon.

Another topic that could mimic the phenomenon in women is being kidnapped. All children are warned from a young age not to take candy from strangers, but it is drilled into women that they constantly need to be aware of their surroundings in order to stay safe from being kidnapped or caught in a trafficking scheme. I feel like every time the TV is on in my house there is another story about a woman being kidnapped, raped, and/or killed. It’s scary to think about. Sometimes, when I’m getting into my car alone in a deserted area, I jump into the car because I’m afraid that someone hiding under the car is going to slash my Achilles and kidnap me. Although this isn’t a positive thought source like Taylor Swift, it definitely comes to mind often. It’s striking to me how the topic that men focus on is so masculine, while many of the women’s alternatives are strictly female-dominated areas.

The final topic that I often think about unprompted is the British monarchy, specifically three women who are or were a part of it: Queen Elizabeth, Princess Diana, and Princess Kate. The existence and purpose of the monarchy is a controversial topic, but I think all girls have wished to be a princess at some point in their lives. This goes beyond the designer outfits and lavish lifestyles. The elegance of the female members of the British monarchy, as well as the rules they have to follow in order to act with poise, is a source of fascination for the idle minds of many women. The media has certainly contributed to this interest, as these female monarchs were and are often painted in a very positive light.

The Roman Empire phenomenon, as it has become known on Tiktok, represents more than a niche interest that many men share. It symbolizes the admiration of patriarchal societies and masculinity that literally dominated the world. While the women’s alternatives are areas that center around femininity, the focus is less about power and strength, and more about a kind of sisterhood that unites girls everywhere.