I know what you are thinking. It’s crazy that a second semester senior doesn’t have her license. Trust me, I have my excuses. But I am finally getting my license this Friday. I totally am not skipping periods 3-5 for it! School is important but I have been waiting way too long for this. The last two years without my license has quite literally been a nightmare: I felt bad having to rely on friends. Even with my parents, it sucked not being able to make multiple plans in a row since I would need to be picked/dropped off multiple times a day. Because I work at a movie theater, I also work late sometimes, and I feel guilty every time my mom has to stay awake to pick me up after midnight. So, here are the things I am going to do when I get my license, the people that I pick up, and the places I will go!

#1, Pick up a hot chai tea latte from Starbucks and pick up Louisa

Out of all of my friends, Louisa has taken on the burden of driving me around the most. Whether it was taking me to Starbucks, library study dates, or just any group gathering with all of our friends, she has always been willing to help. Therefore, she has to be the first person I say thank you to! Hopefully she can’t read this because she is in Hitzeman’s class but I would pick up her favorite drink from Starbucks (which is a chai tea latte) or maybe I will get her chicken tenders from Raising Canes or MAYBE I should get her a Mcdonald’s sprite and chicken nuggets. It is going to feel so nice to be able to do the same things she has always done for me. She deserves it so much. 

 

#2, Just get Izzy out of her house

Izzy has frequently told me that I am the reason that she leaves the house. Whether it be because I am planning most friend gatherings or because I am obviously the coolest person ever and she only wants to hang out with me, I can see her location so I know she isn’t lying. Whether, we’re getting food, bothering our friends, or hitting up the functions, I’ll be getting Isabella off the screens. Maybe I will help her get more Vitamin D!

 

#3 Take Matthew and Soohyun shopping

Although Matthew is a bit better, their fashion sense is ABYSMAL, truly an artist’s tragedy.

While I could just them shop online, I feel a thorough in person, correction is what is needed and what is most effective. We’ll make an extensive trip to the mall, basically replacing their existing closets and maybe we’ll burn the old ones on the way back. They need to get out of their basic style and develop their own unique style. Matthew needs to stop wearing sports hoodies and sweatpants and Soohyun needs to expand his purchases past Abercrombie and Fitch. The clothing industry is filled with possibilities, but these two have stopped at the same two stores

. 

#4 Drive Grace to work

Grace has been working at Lil Pops for quite sometime but I still have never been. “The food there is so good, Meg”. I frequently get Lil Pops fomo. This way, Grace gets a ride to and from work and I can cash in on her employee benefits. Win win win win win. Something tell me she will be opposed to this when she reads this.

#5 Drive Ivy to the DMV

She is an 18 year old who has no form of identification. Is that even legal?

#6 Drive Shan to school

This has been a request of his for a while. Paying him back for our Tuesday rides. Maybe I will make him pay for my Starbucks on the way!

#7 Drive Zach to a golf course

This is to make up for the fact that he could not come to Hilton Head with us over spring break and play in the really famous golf course there! Sorry we univited you, Zach 🙁

#8 Drive Kathryn and Celina everywhere up and down Ogden

In conclusion, I am so grateful for all of my friends who have driven me over the last two years! I can’t wait to be a more useful human being :)))))

 

I went to Hilton Head over spring break and honestly it reminded me of how much I hate living in Naperville. I sometimes can’t believe that vacation spots for some people are homes for others. Although I have heard people constantly say that a vacation spot only seems like paradise due to the short time spent there and for the people that live there, it is boring everyday life… I would rather have a boring everyday life in tropical weather with palm trees and beaches everywhere than the never ending sight of parking lots and cornfields in the Midwest. I liked Hilton Head since I was able to bike/walk almost anywhere. I felt so good physically and my mental health was also at new highs during the trip. Biking and walking around in such good weather helped me clear my mind and I felt less overwhelmed and stressed.

All I could really do on a bike was enjoy the perfect weather and I traveled down the streets. I have always been jealous of people who live in walkable cities (so basically everyone who

lives in Europe). I constantly see travelers on Tik Tok posting about how when they moved to Europe, they felt so much healthier and happier due to the healthier food and the biking/walking lifestyle.

Our flight to Savannah/Hilton Head airport was not a direct flight. We had a 5:20 am flight to Dallas with a thirty minute layover before getting on a flight to Georgia. All of my friends came to my house the night before, in the time range of midnight and two am. We dragged my tv into my room and tried to stay awake until three, so we could get to the airport without being drowsy and sleep on the flight to make time go by faster. That’s a hack I have discovered and I have been using it on any trip I have gone on. I pull an all-nighter and sleep on the car/plane to my destination. When I was in middle school, my family drove to Texas which was almost a seventeen hour drive. I fell asleep when we were pulling out of my driveway and woke up in Oklahoma. It makes traveling so much easier!!

Our first day in Hilton Head, we settled in our huge airbnb. Our airbnb was meant for seven people and there were only four of us. We had tons of space in the living room and an extra king sized bedroom just to put our luggage in!

After we unpacked, we went to get rental bikes. One of the main reasons we chose Hilton Head was due to the fact that we could bike/walk literally anywhere. This took the ppressure off of us to find a rental car dealership for eighteen year olds or the money to uber/lyft everywhere. Our first meal on the island was at a seafood shack, and it was probably my favorite meal on the entire trip. I got buffalo shrimp with a bunch of sides, and even though I am not a big seafood fan, I loved every piece on my plate. We biked around for a while and explored the town and plaza we were in. We also biked for like thirty minutes in the rain because we  could not figure how to get back to our airbnb oops. We picked up sushi for dinner and biked to the beach despite the thunderstorm alert once again.

 Then, we picked up our lovely friend Grace Carsello and kidnapped her!! 

We all went to Moo’s, the ice cream store on the island with the most flavors! I think they had over ninety two flavors, it was pretty crazy. I usually get chocolate but I forced myself to get a very different flavor (like black cherry) just to allow myself to experience things outside of my comfort zone and habits. We spent the rest of the night playing games and watching movies at our airbnb before calling it a night in. 

The rest of the days we spent there were spent lounging at the beach, biking around different areas and exploring different towns, and just eating good! It was such a good trip for my mental health with friends and I am really glad I was able to experience everything Hilton Head had to offer with the most adventurous and funny people I know!

Obviously this blog post has to be about BPA.  

Last weekend’s BPA state trip was a fever dream: a complete blur. 3 days of lounging in a hotel for only thirty minutes of actual competition. A weekend filled with procrastination, napping, trying not to be sick, and heading into the judges room with zero preparation but still managing to snag some hardware. 

We left on Thursday but I was mentally checked out from Monday. Something about only having a three day school week for three weeks (BPA, DECA, and Parent Teacher Conferences) just made me feel like school isn’t real. Time was going faster than I expected and especially with lacrosse starting, I already saw myself in May, disconnected from my current reality. 

When we arrived at the hotel, it was a dump. The rooms were so thin, the hallways were tiny, and each room felt so cramped. But whatever, right? High school kids don’t need much. We navigated through the tiny and creaky elevators, the crowded lobby, and the doordash orders that always surpassed one hundred and fifty dollars. 

After all of us got our schedule, I realized that both of my events were tomorrow and I had absolutely nothing to do today. So while the rest of my friends studied for their events, frantically scanning through printed notes and quizlets, asking each other why each question was right, I just took the fattest nap. 

That’s all I did the whole day on Thursday, nap. 

In my defense, I was a little sick and my cough, bad throat, and light fever did not motivate me to get out of bed to explore the hotel, the mall, go out for food, and socialize with new people. I was comfortable in my little world: the hotel room with my friends. Maybe it is because we were not freshmen anymore, comfort and security I find in my established group of friends overtook the need to explore and find new people. 

For lunch, we got KFC (like true Americans). For dinner, we ordered Cheesecake Factory. Our room smelled like fried chicken and pasta, and I somehow still managed to nap in it. I lost half of my friends for a few hours in the evening, but that didn’t really affect me… because I was napping. 

I finally decided to leave the room with my friends in the late evening to go to BPA game night. I left ten minutes after being there. The lights were all on, all of the games were filled, and huge groups of people were gatekeeping each activity. 

I know I made it seem awful and boring, but a day to just sleep and spend a day inside a hotel room with all of my friends just talking is truly what I needed. 

The next day I had to get up at 7am and get ready for my event. Both of my events went pretty well, and I made it to the second round for one of my events. The judge forgot to tell me to check back in for a second round. I saw the finalists sheet because of a stroke of luck as I was waiting to go into another event. I still felt awful, and my seventeen dollar breakfast buffet still did not make me feel any better. I took another nap and then got ready for the banquet dinner and “BPA Dance”. 

The chicken dinner and the mosh pit at the dance were nice, except for the fact that DECA just does it better. A group of kids in the dance went so hard they knocked the sound system over and they spent five minutes setting it back up. Our social battery drained, and we went back to the room to watch some Netflix and call it a night.

We started watching this Korean show called Physical 100, which is trending on Netflix shows right now. The 100 strongest men and women in Korea compete in a series of competitions, including seeing who can hang on high bars for the longest, seeing which team can haul the most amount of sand bags over a bridge, and even one on one competitions that ended in immediate elimination. 

It was such a low key weekend, filled with really doing nothing. I was floating around with no thoughts in my head. But ultimately, I was so glad it was a lame weekend. I needed a reset, a break, and just some time to be antisocial while still being with all of my friends.

 

Love you, BPA. 

Waking

on the train, I thought

we were attacked

 

by light:

chrome-winged birds

hatching from the lagoon.

 

That first day

the buoys were all

that made the harbor

 

bearable:

pennies sewn into a hemline.

Later I learned to live in it,

 

to walk

through the alien city—

a beekeeper’s habit—

 

with fierce light

clinging to my head and hands.

Treated as gently as every

 

other guest—

each house’s barbed antennae

trawling for any kind

 

of weather—

still I sobbed in a glass box

on an unswept street

 

with the last

few lire ticking like fleas

off my phonecard I’m sorry

 

I can’t

stand this, which

one of us do you love?

—

Upon the first reading of Venice, Unaccompanied by Monica Youn, I was most perplexed about the imagery she was using throughout the poem to tell her narrative. The poem began with “Walking on the train, I thought we were attacked by light: chrome-winged birds hatching from the lagoon”, which was difficult to interpret due to her use of a colon. Initially, I thought she was sleeping on a train that was traveling through a tunnel, and she was woken up by light. However the use of a colon after“light” followed by a description of “chrome-winged birds hatching from the lagoon” indicates that the birds are a restatement of her description of the light. This made the reality of the description difficult to comprehend. She could be talking about pigeons, as they are a chrome color. However, since these birds are hatching from a lagoon, so there is a higher probability that they are seagulls or shorebirds. Due to this, it is more probable that she woke up naturally and a swarm of light-colored birds was the first thing she saw, rather than being woken up by sunlight after traveling through a tunnel. She also has a break in the imagery which makes the first stanza appear to be violent, ending in “we were attacked”. “Light” appears after the break and only then can the imagery be fully read as “we were attacked by light”. By breaking the imagery off between the words “attack” and “light”, it brings a sense of paranoia onto the reader before they realize that the speaker was simply just personifying light. The speaker may have done this to bring the reader into the setting with her, and convey the sense of fear she felt at that moment while she entered a new stage of her life. Throughout the entire poem, it was difficult to discern certain imagery due to her ambiguity and punctuation; it made me read and reread backward to understand what was truly going on.

The general plot of the poem was not too difficult to interpret. It appears that a young woman (who could be the speaker) moved alone to Venice, a new city, after being cheated on by her significant other. The poem is a narrative of her journey, her lost sense of self, ultimately ending with her breaking down and calling her significant other from a phone booth to ask… “Which one of us do you love?”. The poem explores a sense of loneliness, transition, and feeling like an outsider. It presents a conflict about loyalty and independence. Even though the speaker moves to a new city to escape her past, she still feels tied to her old life. It can also speak to the difficulty of migration andhow it is hard to adjust to a new identity in a new location. Setting is more tied to one’s identity than many believe. However, finding a rhyme scheme was difficult. It appears that Youn used the free-verse writing style, which is popular amongst modern poets. Upon research, I learned that the free verse style allows for a greater sense of freedom of expression for the poet, since they are not bound by rules and constraints. This allows for the reader to focus more on the content of the poem rather than the form of writing. Youn’s usage of a free verse writing style caused difficulty as I was trying to discern why she made each stanza a tercet (three lines per stanza). Could it allude to the three people in the relationship that the poem is centered on? Was it to make the reader read the poem in a short, choppy manner that can make them feel disoriented and surreal, which is how the speaker feels in this new city? Despite not being able to understand its purpose, the free verse style allows the poem to be read as a stream of consciousness which lets me be there in Venice and experience the speaker’s thoughts and feelings in a more vivid and real manner. Continue reading →

Hi! My last blog was about my anticipated cruise port ratings, so in this blog, I will give you my actual ratings. I loved the new experiences I was able to experience during this experience (lol). Before our cruise, we stayed at this mini resort near Miami and the beach there was absolutely beautiful. My family and I went for a sunrise walk and it was honestly the best thing to wake up to. We got onto our cruise ship that Monday and it felt like complete deja vu because the cruise ship we were on was very similar to the ship we were on in 2018. I quickly learnt that Princess Cruises has pretty much the same outline and structures for most of their ships. The ship we were on was called the Enchanted Princess, and she was a pretty new ship (built during COVID) so that was pretty cool! The rooms, piazza, restaurants, and Lido Deck were all the same as I remember. I kind of wish we went on a different cruise line so we could have a completely different experience, but it is something family and I will keep in mind for next time!

Port 1: Bahamas 6/10

The Bahamas went pretty much as I expected. The beach was the same as last time and since I knew how it was going to be, I was able to set my expectations accordingly. I took the longest nap, ate some burgers from the buffet, and made a little sandcastle. It was a pretty chill spot.

Port 2: St. Thomas, U.S. Virgin Islands 10/10

This place was absolutely breathtaking. St. Thomas was genuinely the most beautiful out of all the islands I visited. The island itself was so high, green, and had so many boats/yatchs. I went on a catamaran to these coves and drove an underwater scooter eight feet deep. I was able to see a bunch of fish and a shipwreck so it was pretty cool!

Port 3: Antigua 7/10

In Antigua, we went on a catamaran ride to a bird island and hiking trail. I kind of did not enjoy it as much since we got onto a boat after getting off from another boat. The bird island was really really small and the hike was simply a staircase. However, the ride was really pretty as I was able to see the Caribbean and the Atlantic Oceans mix along with various historic sites. I absolutely love viewing historical sites, it reminds me of how far the world has come and how life was so different than we know. The view on top of the staircase hike was also beautiful and I got an ariel view of the island and the two oceans coming together.

Port 4: St. Lucia 8/10

St. Lucia was also beautiful. It was so mountainous and it had Pitons (which are like island peaks). I was kind of in a bad mood and tired that day but other than that, the actual island was gorgeous. We went on a bus tour which was a nice break from all the water tours we took. I loved seeing the island life. We also got to go to sulfur springs and a drive-in volcano. It was pretty cool but also very similar to the Yellowstone trip we took a few years ago. By this time of day, I was super hungry but the tour still included a botanical garden and by the time we got to go to lunch, we were received with a disappointing menu. But other than those two things, it was a pretty decent day.

Port 5: Barbados 9/10

I have a few regrets about Barbados. Some family friends and I went on a submarine which was insane. I got to see the ocean floor, corals, and some pretty cool fish. The submarine was an hour and we went back to the ship after that. My parents, however, went on a tour of Barbados on a bus. When they came back, they told me how absolutely beautiful Barbados was. I wish I had planned to go into Barbados and see more than just the submarine but I still loved the experience.

Port 6: St. Kitts 9/10 

St. Kitts was pretty fun. It was the day after Christmas so the entire island was having a festival; it was interesting to see the island coming together for their traditions. We went on the most wild bus ride ever. It was an open bus and the driver was driving like it was a race track. My hair was absolutely tangled, everyone was flying around everywhere, and not to mention that St. Kitts is a pretty rainy place, so random bursts of water would hit us inside whenever we would drive through a rainy patch. I got to see some pretty beautiful sights and walk through a rainforest!

The cruise was pretty fun, but it was also a little long. I was so stressed when I came back after because I had to take my finals. But overall, it was an experience of a lifetime!

One of the things my friends hate most about me is that I am a super nostalgic person, it is kind of bad to a fault. I love my friends, I love North, and I love the person I have grown to become the last few years of my life. People usually joke about how boring Naperville is and how they cannot wait to get out, and even though I would love nothing more than to go to college far away from home and experience a new chapter of my life that will make me more open to all this world has to offer, I personally have no complaints about Naperville. To me, it’s a place of security and love that has nurtured me throughout my entire life. With that in mind, I’m always filled with sadness when things come to an end – such as the end of the first semester of senior year. Even right now, my mind is filled with how the second semester is going to go by even faster than the first semester. Between lacrosse season, senior festivities, spring break, and work, I know that graduation is approaching faster than I would like to think so, and leaving my friends and family behind to go to college is something that absolutely instills the fear of god in me. Perhaps in a way, I should feel grateful for having such great relationships with the people in my life that make saying goodbye so difficult. I have learnt to treasure the people in my life but remain more open to new experiences and people. Leaving somewhere is hard, but once you leave, you may realize you are even happier somewhere else – but you have to take that risk first. The last six months have been dramatizing. My close friends have changed, the strictness of my parents, I got my first job, I applied to my dream college, and even heard back from a few other ones. I changed from a girl who just finished an exhausting junior year, worried about her future, to someone who accomplished the big steps in life that have always seemed like they were too far away to worry about. For this blog, I would love to travel to the two key events of these last six months that defined growth as I embarked in a new phase of my life.

Over the summer, I got my first job at Studio Movie Grill, a dine-in movie theater in Wheaton. I will admit, I am a pretty high maintenance person. I love eating out, have an eye for the more expensive things on the aisle, and overall just love having fun. Although my parents never have prohibited my spending and made very few remarks about it, over the last year, I have begun to accumulate feelings of guilt for spending money that was not mine at the levels that I was doing so. At the same time, I did not have any intention of reducing it (because you only live once you know) so I finally got a job so I can have complete control over what I spend my money on, and  I feel good about it too because it truly is mine to spend. Getting a job started a period of financial independence away from my parents for me, and made me a more responsible person. In a way, it also changed how my parents viewed me and hopefully makes them feel better about me going to college. Getting a job also played a key role in them being less strict and acknowledging my personal freedom more.

When college app season started, I realized that Michigan was my dream school and that I wanted to major in finance. This took away years of me simply not knowing what I wanted to do with my future. But with research and campus visits, I fell in love with the school and happily pressed the submit button on October 28th. Even though I genuinely do not think I am going to get in, it really helped me define the future I saw for myself career wise and solidified what I valued in a college, my likes and dislikes, which helped shape the rest of my preferences regarding colleges. No matter where I actually do end up going, Michigan played a key role in mapping out my preferences and for that I am also grateful. During college app season, being together with my friends for hours and hours in the library, even skipping school together for it, brought me closer with everyone and reminded me just how lucky I am to have such a hard working group of friends who would do anything to help each other, even though what was the hardest few months of our lives. The advice, the editing, and the simple moral support has helped me a lot this year, and it makes me happy that I have such a great support system in place.

Bonus: here are some fun pictures from Homecoming, 80s dance, and football games!! 

    

 

 

To the incoming seniors, I would tell them to make the most out of their last year and cherish the time they spend with the people they love, even if it’s at the library at 9 pm rushing to submit their last apps. These are the lessons I have taken away with me these past few months and I hope that I will find the same contentment in the second semester that I found in the first semester.