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One line that stood out to me when I was reading a book for fun freshman year is “There is no great secret. You endure what is unbearable, and you bear it. That is all.” This is from Cassandra Clare’s Clockwork Princess, and even though it is about how to deal with death, it’s something I’ve kept in my mind while I’ve had to do something I don’t want to. It’s similar to “grin and bear it” but I like how it doesn’t include the facade of smiling through it. I interpret that line as meaning that yes, what you’re going through does indeed suck but that you just have to forge on through it. Simply thinking about it or repeating it as a mantra in my head has helped me get through things ranging from awkward situations to running laps in PE. It boils down to something quite straightforward—enduring through bad times really is no great secret—but sometimes figuring out how to get through them seems more complicated than it is at the time.

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My name is Aya Ide and I’m currently 17 years old. I was born and raised in San Jose, California. I will be going to UC Santa Barbara in the fall as a Pre-Chem major and hope to go into either chemistry or biochemistry. My achievements at Lynbrook include holding a Vice President position in the Red Cross Club and being a two year section leader for the clarinets in the marching band. I will most remember my times on the field with my section and friends, and I would like to say thanks to all the parents, staff, and bandmates who made my four years so memorable. In my free time, I enjoy reading, binge-watching Netflix or Youtube, online shopping, and going running or hiking. In the future, I hope to find a better better balance between working hard and enjoying my life. I would also like to thank all my teachers for the time and patience they devo. I would also like to say thank you to all my teachers for their patience and time they have dedicated, especially to the ones who pushed me to my limits when I didn't believe in myself.

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My best literary work in high school is a research paper I did in APLAC on The Bell Jar. The assignment was to read a novel of our choice and then write about it, and even though this was one of the last papers we wrote in that class, this was the writing assignment I put the most effort into because I genuinely got to reflect on Sylvia Plath and her novel. This was a big assignment to tackle and didn’t start off very structured so it required internal motivation to produce a high quality paper in time for the due date. I learned about the will humans have to push forward from this book but also saw in myself writing this paper how drive functions.

Plath is typically associated with dark topics and although I definitely did see this in her writing, I had a different takeaway from her novel. It provided historical insight into the lives of women during the 1950’s which taught me to feel grateful for the increased freedom I have now. Learning about the limitations imposed on women in history class can be impersonal, but reading about an experience even through a fiction novel allowed me to really comprehend how much progress we as a society have made and how much further we still have to do to eliminate inequality. Something else that astounded me was how strong the instinct to persevere is in humans. I remember writing my conclusion about how incredible it was that there was always something, be it mental or physical, keeping Esther from dying.

Besides what the text taught me, this was the first research paper I had ever written so I had to learn how to combine a novel, outside analysis, and context about the author’s life to create my own new and cohesive idea. This was good preparation for the research paper in senior year, but it was overwhelming at the time. I learned to draw connections between the text and the outside world to better understand and appreciate the author’s meaning. This is a skill that I didn’t previously go into that much, settling for textbook analyses of the things I read. This paper, on the other hand, is something I can say I’m proud to have written.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B1m5gNel_DLWcldNR3A2S3ItR2M/view?usp=sharing

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My greatest academic challenge came to me at both the best and the worst time possible. Freshman year had been a breeze for me—I never felt like I needed to study for any of my classes, and I was going to bed before midnight almost every night. I didn’t understand why people said Lynbrook was academically rigorous and didn’t really expect it to get much harder. The following year showed me a real-life case of how hubris can get the best of you.

Chem Honors started out easy enough even though it was the first honors course I had taken at Lynbrook. The first test rolled around, and I got a solid A while the class average was a C. Instead of using this as an opportunity to work hard while I was in a strong position, I slacked off thinking that sophomore year was going to be a repeat of the one before. It wasn’t until midway through the semester that I realized my B in the class not merely flukes and that chemistry is not something that comes naturally to me. Something I’ve come to notice over my four years at Lynbrook is that I have a tendency to quit things I fail at and with many of my classmates dropping the class, this was definitely tempting to me.

It wasn’t losing my 4.0 or getting through the class that was my greatest academic struggle, but the mindset change I needed to go through. First semester sophomore year was such a defining time for me because that was when I made the choice to push and struggle through something I didn’t initially do well at instead of running away from it. I didn’t get an A in that class either semester, but what I learned was so much more important. I discovered my tenacity and that working hard is worth more than taking the easy way out. Now, as I’m about to graduate, I look back on that class proudly. Proud because I didn’t cheat, proud because I did my best, and proud because I didn’t give up.

Looking forward, I’m planning on majoring in biochemistry even though I know it won’t be an easy path. I didn’t pick a subject I have an innate talent for, but rather one that I enjoy and I’m willing to work hard at. My sophomore year experience came at a time when there was also a lot of other stress I was dealing with and in that sense, it was the worst time possible. But it was also because of the timing that I had to change my mindset, and for that, my greatest academic struggle and wake-up call came at the best time it could’ve.

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I’ve never been one to plan for the future. I enjoy the thrill of spontaneity and find that it makes life a lot more interesting. I do stand by the idea that it’s crucial to live in the moment at least sometimes to enjoy life to the fullest, but sometimes I worry that I’ll struggle to find a balance once I’m away from the structured lifestyle I have right now.

Life up through high school is supposed to be preparation for living alone and becoming more confident and independent. If anything, though, the past four years especially have only left me more confused about what I want from life. I worry that I won’t ever find my passion, and that my lack of drive coupled with no strategic planning for the future will cause problems for me down the road.

People tell me that I shouldn’t be worrying, that it’s a rare thing for someone to find their one true passion right off the bat but at the same time, I watch what seems to be just as many people picking their majors for careers and being satisfied with them. This becomes particularly difficult for me when I compare myself to my brother. He found his love for computer science his freshman year of high school, and he still devotes all of his time to it today. Watching someone who can easily be compared to me become so successful and happy with his work makes me nervous and unsure of how my life will turn out because I only have a vague direction I want to go in.

I want to be able to look back on my life and be content with how I spent my time. I worry that in retrospect, it’ll just appear as if I wasted years of my life away flitting around instead of having a focused goal. Going along the same line as my spontaneous actions, I don’t enjoy thinking about things like this because that involves the future but it always is an underlying fear. And even though I’m scared my life might turn out directionless, I also am confident that I’ll meet new people and discover new topics at college and am optimistic that I will find something I truly am excited to dedicate myself to.

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Despite all the forewarnings from older friends and family to focus on myself and not get caught up in what other people think of me because of how irrelevant it is in the grand scheme of things, I’ve had my fair share of insecurities related to other people’s opinions of me. I was painfully shy when I was younger, more of an observer from the sidelines. I had no interest in being the center of attention and preferred to watch the action rather than partake in it. It took a lot of encouragement to build up confidence but that’s not that hard to come by as an elementary school student where teachers are constantly trying to do just that. Flash forward to middle school when I thought I had discovered a real friend group. I was happy with being myself in front of them, but I then found out that a lot of what I thought was a true friendship was fake.

I didn’t realize the effects at first, but so much of the self-confidence I had finally developed slipped away. I became more self-conscious when people asked my opinion of anything and found myself questioning if any of my friends even liked me. There still definitely are times when I have doubts about whether or not my friends are being fully transparent with me, but I’ve also come to realize that it’s unreasonable to expect anyone to always accommodate my insecurities. I’ve learned to seek out friends who are willing to discuss any problems we face instead of pulling away to talk about them behind my back. But probably most importantly, I’m figuring out how to balance how much I care about what people may say about me versus what I think of myself. Of course I value the things my friends say, but I also take them with a grain of salt. The moment I tried completely letting go of my fears of what others might think of me and started doing the things that followed my own set of morals was the most freeing and relieving thing ever. This way, my friends could decide if they liked the real me and not some person trying to conform to them. I’ve learned to deal with my fear of people judging who I am by unapologetically being myself. I’ve lost some friends along the way, but it’s because of the ones that stuck by me that I’m happier now than I ever was before when I was trying to fit in.

Being attractive on the surface level isn’t a bad thing and can in fact be very appealing, but Cyrano teaches us that love is so much deeper than that. He doesn’t initially confess to Roxane because he thinks that he is “whom the plainest woman would despise” (47) since he has a large nose. He lets his insecurities get the best of him; however, genuine love is so much deeper than that. My current friends stay with me no matter what my grades are or how I look on any given day, and reading Cyrano just affirms that no matter how cheesy it may sound, it’s what’s inside that counts. What he teaches us about love is in the same vein as what we learn about courage. Bravado isn’t what real courage is. Being courageous means opening yourself and being vulnerable. All the times Cyrano takes on risky situations like fighting the men a hundred to one, he does it for an image. He rarely exposes the parts of him that makes him weak emotionally, telling the orange girl that other than the meager amount of food he took from her, he only wants “your hand to kiss” (45). He instead hides things such as his financial state or how he truly feels about Roxane. Through his mistakes, we learn that the payoff to being courageous is that Roxane would have known that it was him she loved. Relating to my own insecurities, after getting hurt by “friends” enough times, it was hard for me to put myself out there and meet new people. It took courage to trust and be vulnerable, and though I did get hurt during the process, the friends I have now have made running that risk so very worth it. Cyrano uses his panache to compensate for his insecure feelings. Instead of dealing with his insecurity with his nose, he chooses to cover it up by either fighting everyone or astounding them with his words about it. His panache is his defense mechanism, but in the end it is also the root of his destruction. His “satires make a host of enemies” (206) that result in him getting killed, but they are what he has used to deal with his insecurities his whole life. This goes to show how the best way to solve a problem is to deal with it and not try to evade it. I think about the times that I could have run from my insecurities and I know I would’ve either ended up friendless or else pretending to be someone I’m not, neither of which are beneficial in the long run. Cyrano’s panache is a good cover-up but fails as a solution. Self-confidence is something I’ll probably always struggle with to an extent, but learning to love myself and  surround myself with people who care about who I am as a person has changed me for the better and helped me tackle this insecurity.

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Reading fiction is something I think is extraordinarily underrated. From my own experiences alone, I can definitely say that reading fiction expands creativity, provides an escape during hard times, and has allowed me to be more empathetic. It’s been an integral part of my life ever since my mom would read to me before bed, but it was only toward the end of middle school that I realized just how much of an effect it had on my life.

When I'm reading any kind of fiction, whether it's for school or on my own, I am subconsciously creating the world in the book in my own mind. For example, while we were studying Beowulf, I had my own images of what the dragon and all the battles looked like. If you're truly engaged in what you're reading, fiction naturally has that effect. The brain is forced to think outside the box and extrapolate from what the text says, and that's an experience that any medium that involves watching can never provide. Even listening to audiobooks, the narrator's tone and inflection changes my perception of what's in the book and limits my creativity in a way that simply reading fiction doesn't.

The biggest reason why I see fiction as being so important, however, is the emotional effect it has. The characters may be figments of the author’s imagination, but that's not to say that the lessons they teach and how they make readers feel should hold any less weight. There were some times throughout middle and high school where I felt lost, but as clichèd as it is, I never was truly alone when I was reading about characters I felt understood me. In one of the fantasy novels I read, the protagonist is a strong heroine. She’s nervous about fighting this terrifying villain but she’s just as anxious about mundane things like making a good impression. This made someone inspirational also relatable, and even though reading functioned as an escape from the real world for me, her courage stayed with me long after I finished the book. Reading about characters like her validated my “stupid” fears and taught me how to get through them. Another thing characters from fictional books give is empathy. As a reader, you're looking at the conflict from an outsider’s perspective and it gives you the opportunity to look at it in a more logical manner from all points of view that real life doesn't offer. If I were one of Victor Frankenstein’s victims, I would probably hate him. Reading about him in a novel allowed me to both see his selfishness but also understand his regret later on. If you pour yourself into a book, every character elicits some kind of emotion. You become more understanding and the spectrum of emotions you feel for others widens. Reading a novel is a personal experience but only when you connect it to yourself, and that's achieved by feeling for the characters.

I can't overstate the benefits of reading fiction—it's made me a better person and helped me navigate life a thousand times over. Not only have I learned life lessons from the characters, reading an author’s words have made me a better writer and thinker. It's something often overlooked, especially in this community, but I’ll always defend the notion that reading fiction does have value.

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1. Riverdale

2. Polandbananasbooks

3. Prison Break

4. Parks and Rec

5. Boba

6. Shadowhunter Chronicles

7. I’ll Give You the Sun

8. Popeyes

9. McDonald’s Apple Pies

10. History Is All You Left Me