How does this stand?

I Almost Didn't Publish This

Enigmatic. Who knew that a word that literally means mysterious would help me solve a mystery I didn't even know existed. March 14, 2019. The hour had arrived to present our imaginary presidential candidate to students and admin in hopes of them electing ours over the other group's. It was the culmination of a month long AP gov project. Our group had scraped together a backstory, political stance, and campaign for this man--an African-American-to-appeal-to-liberals, male-to-appeal-to-conservatives man--Winfield Burnes couldn't fail us now. Our presentation went smoothly, as our group was well rehearsed, until the questions. "How is your candidate different from your opponent's?" Unsurprisingly, our liberal-heavy class had run eerily similar candidates; it seemed as though the only difference between them was their gender and the color of their skin. The opposing group went first. "Our candidate is charismatic, hard working, intelligent, enigma...

I'm Tired of Being Tired

For the past three weeks, I've been tired. Not the ‘I got 4 hours of sleep’ tired, or the ‘I’m so stressed I’m about to cry’ tired. It’s more of the ‘I want to sleep all day, and when I wake up I’m still tired’ variety. And well, now that there’s not much else to do, sleeping is how I keep busy. I sleep. All day. I wake up incredibly tired, so I go right back to it. Yes, I have things I should be doing, but I just say, ‘tomorrow will be the day,’ and resume my slumber. I do nothing except play the piano an hour a day and maybe Animal Crossing if I’m feeling really ambitious. I might go for a twenty minute run before I give up and return to my bed. Then I read Dare to Lead by Brené Brown. It was for an assignment for college, and yes, something I had put off by napping. However, I became hooked as I read. I felt as if it were written just for me. Most importantly, the book helped me come to a realization. In the book, there is a part where Brené includes writing from one o...

What do I want?

Now that I’m in high school, everyone’s favorite question is, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” I’ve answered a million different things: doctor, journalist, lawyer, therapist, PR officer, neuroscientist; the honest answer is, I don’t know. But if I tell people that, they just give me a look of unconcealed disappointment. It’s been drilled into our heads that we need to take the classes that align with our desired career paths in order to be successful. If you want to be a doctor, Biomed and AP Bio is the way to go. Or if being an author has been your dream since you learned how to write, you should take classes like Creative Writing and AP Comp. But what if you don’t know what you want to be? What then? There is so much unnecessary pressure to know exactly who you want to be right now. But the thing is, high school can still be a fruitful experience despite not taking all of the classes that “go with” what you want to do. This is a time to experiment, to see what ...

Andrea Hefferan

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