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"He told me was that he and a North Korean soldier had installed a plaque declaring a truce between the northern and southern nations."

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"Would you like to go visit the Brennan's with me? My mom asked as she picked me up from school.

"Yes", I replied, "But do you think we can be home in an hour? I have a Physics test tomorrow".

" Yes don't worry, we'll be home as soon as possible" She assured me.

"Okay, we'd better be home by two", I mumbled, as I buckled my seatbelt.

...

When we arrived at the Brennan's, I had the pleasure of speaking with Mr. William (Bill) Brennan who is a Vietnam and Korean war veteran. I greeted Mr. Brennan, with a firm handshake and let myself become consumed by their couch. As we shared details about our day, I noticed a fire truck-red book in the corner of my eye. I ran my eyes across its spine and read " The Sympathizer " by Viet Thanh Nguyen.

"There's no way that's the same author", I thought. But indeed, it was.

-

Just one week before I came to see Mr. Brennan, we read an article in Mr. Ziebarth's class titled " What I've learned from my four year old " which was also written by Viet Thanh Nguyen. In this piece, Nguyen urges his readers to make a change in their country and in themselves by telling them to " believe in what is good and right, without demonizing those that [they] oppose; that [they] must fight for what [they] believe in, without recourse to hate or insults; that [they] must give, in ways great and small, to distant organizations and the people [they] meet face to face" (Nguyen). Most importantly, he tells his reader to listen. Nguyen says "Not everyone will listen, caught up in the noise, but enough might. Those who do not listen will never know what those who listen do: that it is the listening itself that matters, that listening is what connects us to others, and ourselves" (Nguyen). That week, I listened intently to all things around me. I began listening to understand rather than just listening to reply.

-

I waited for the conversation between Mr. Brennan and I to slow down before I brought up the book.

"Is that yours?" I asked

"Yes! The author tells a brilliant story about a spy during the Vietnam war". He said

He then proceeded to tell me of the times when he fought in Vietnam. "I would give them all the dollars I had", said Mr. Brennan, "You should always try to help people whenever you can, and always be kind because love is kindness and kindness is love ". Mr. Brennan also told me of the children he met and the schools he stopped by. "[The schools] didn't have any paper or pencils or nothing. So I sent a letter back to my buddies in America and asked them to send over some supplies. You should've seen the teacher's reaction, oh he was so grateful and the kids were so happy!" After his time in the service, Mr. William Brennan was presented with a medal of honor from the U.S. Army for showing great valor.

I also listened to his stories of the Korean War. He told me how the war ended with a truce declared via armistice which was signed in 1953. One of the most amazing things he told me was that he and a North Korean soldier had installed a plaque declaring a truce between the northern and southern nations. He made sure I understood that in times like these, the best thing we can to is be kind. We then wrapped up our conversation, as the clock neared 2:30. I said goodbye with a hug and a firm handshake and started making my way out the door.

Before I left he made sure to tell me, "remember, Love is kindness and kindness is love. But not physical love, love in here" he said, as he pointed to his heart.

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Investigating the works of Viet Thanh Nguyen through 4 year olds and 93 year old war veterans.

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"Would you like to go visit the Brennan's with me? My mom asked as she picked me up from school. "Yes", I replied, "But do you think we can be home in an hour? I have a Physics test tomorrow". "Yes don't worry, we'll be home as soon as possible" She assured me....

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"I envy people who can apply themselves to work they hate."

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I think i've been here for a while.

I've only lived 16 years of my life so far, but it's felt much longer. I can't recount how many times i've woken up in the same position or woken up at the same time, because I've seem to forgotten. It's odd how I can't remember what happened last week either. I guess it just wasn't important to me.

My laziness gets the best of me most of the time. I can't recall the last time i've stayed awake after getting home from school, and then have to inevitably stay up late finish homework. I feel defeated. No matter how hard I try to stay awake, I can't. I need to find a reason to actually apply myself to school. I'm like a dog who has lost interest in its food; if I don't care I don't do anything.

I envy people who can apply themselves to work they hate. I find myself re-watching youtube videos just to avoid doing homework. This is why i'm up typing this so late too. I tell myself I can do it later, but I always end up starting homework at 10:00 p.m. . Even though I want to sleep early, I'm beaten down by my feeling of laziness.

If you find yourself doing the exact things I have mentioned, I have no advice for you as I'm still sorting my out life too. The only thing I can tell you is fix it quickly because I'm starting to miss out on things purely due to my laziness. I'm not going to offer advice because I know that the best advice comes from experiencing things yourself. The only thing I hate more than my own laziness is generic advice, because the same advice doesn't work on multiple people.

Back to being lazy. I've been thinking about the future and how being lazy endangers the future me. I hate to shoot myself in the foot, but I know that i'm pushing everything into the future even though I know nothing about it. This itself scares me as I should be preparing myself for whatever comes. I just can't though. Even my brother tries to help me be more productive, but after he screams at me I lock the door and go back to wasting my time. The second thing that scares me is how i'm fully aware of the situation, nonetheless I don't move.

I just remain still as if i'm waiting for something.

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I think i've been here for a while. I've only lived 16 years of my life so far, but it's felt much longer. I can't recount how many times i've woken up in the same position or woken up at the same time, because I've seem to forgotten.

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"I wonder if the last year of high school is just a matter of wasting my time"

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Photo [CC-by-2.0] by Alan Light

I've been having a reoccurring daydream lately, and it's been quite bothersome. It's always the memory of my brother and his choice of leaving high school that upcoming year, to be home schooled. The first time I heard this I was confused, and almost upset at my brother for making that decision. The most frustrating part was seeing him leave senior year and his friends when he only had one more year left! And what made me feel even more upset was the fact that he missed his last high school homecoming, prom, and graduation! I was annoyed at what seemed like his worst mistake in his life, but fast forward to during his senior year and he was in Belgium having the time of his life while everyone else was stuck in a classroom.

After looking back at his choice, I started to wonder if I should do the same. The reason it's been bothering me is because I'm going to be a senior soon. Should I be exploring the world like my brother, or go to my one and only high school prom? Well, which one is it Emmi? Time is ticking. I used to believe senior year was the year to make all the memories, as if it were a year long necessity to complete before graduating. But my brother didn't do it, and he thought senior year in Europe was way worth graduation in a college football field. So now that it's my turn to decide, is senior year worth my time?

After seeing my brother having a great time not going to senior year and after reading Walter Kirn's piece "Class Dismissed" in the New York Time's Magazine, it seems only logical to step out of high school a year early. In Kirn's piece, he describes senior year as a "climactic academic experience than an occasion for oafish goofing off, chronic truancy, random bullying, sloppy dancing in rented formalwear and interludes of moody, wan philosophizing...about the looming bummer of adulthood" (C.D. Walter K.). Doesn't sound so great to me. I started to wonder if senior year really is waste of time and money like what Kirn said. He mentions that after winter break, seniors have already turned in their applications, know what schools they want to go to, and what they're aiming to be for the future. He questions why these students are still waiting around to graduate when they could be starting early on college classes now and not waste time. This hits the panic button. If someone tells me that I have the opportunity to start on something early, I don't want to waste my time dwelling on it until until the day it's due. Just like starting college, if I have a chance to start early, what am I waiting for? I wonder if the last year of high school is just a matter of wasting my time, and question if losing this year would really make a difference, since "nothing much [in the year] happens anyhow" (C.D Walter K.).
The combination of Kirn's piece and my brother's foreign postcards hung on the fridge keep me wondering about my last year of high school. Would you want to waste time and energy on a year that seems useless? But then again, would you want to miss out on your last year of being a high school student with your friends? Evaluating these choices made me start looking into homeschooling, to start looking ahead on college courses and credits, and to keep an open mind about new options. Although both have their pros and cons, I have a better idea of what the two choices have to offer, and look forward to making my decision very soon.

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Photo [CC-by-2.0] by Alan Light I've been having a reoccurring daydream lately, and it's been quite bothersome. It's always the memory of my brother and his choice of leaving high school that upcoming year, to be home schooled. The first time I heard this I was confused, and almost upset at my brother for making that decision.

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"This human nature, which is what machines do not have, is key to our success in the future."

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Photo [CC-by-2.0] 2008 by Olga Berrios

People nowadays are just too similar. Everyone looks the same, because everyone is doing the same workouts and flexing the same muscles. Although there are slight variations with muscle growth, my point still stands that everyone is changing to become the same. In high school this lack of individuality is not inspired by a desire for muscles, but rather a desire to be "well rounded" so students could go into any field they might see fit in the future. This embodies the very saying of being a jack of all trades, master of none. Without direction or magnitude, people walk around blindly not knowing when to stop, where to stop, or even where to begin; thus, humans are becoming more and more like robots, because they do not know what they are doing.

The other day we listened to a podcast "3 Surprising Reasons Students Don't Get Into Top Colleges". This podcast enlightens us upon what people have been doing wrong all this time. This brought to my attention that humans are not so significant by themselves. Just like what the podcast was saying, students are just puzzle pieces that have to fit into schools in the right way in the same orientation, otherwise, nothing great would come out of it. Puzzles are fun, because with just one piece, it could lead to connecting to another piece, ultimately leading to a finished product. The finished product is what is great and what could make a change, but a puzzle piece by itself is nothing. What colleges are looking for are puzzle pieces that fit into the picture they are trying to make. Puzzle pieces that do not have a connection to the creation of a particular college's image would just be an extra piece thrown to the side. On top of not needing extra pieces, colleges also do not want to go through thousands of malfunctioning pieces they know to be the same.

In the end the question still stands: how to be unique?, how to be different?, how to stand out? The podcast illustrates that by having connections with people that colleges deem to be interesting would get them into good colleges, but that still doesn't answer how they make these relationships. Because many are afraid of rejection, students do not reach out and establish connections. Just by telling people to establish connections does not solve the root of the problem. The root of the problem that is causing people to be afraid is the education system itself.

Photo [CC-by-2.0] 2011 by Sean MacEntee

I saw a video that showed how the world is changing. Machines would soon take over the world, which explains why colleges would want those that are different. In the modern era, what schools teach students, the colleges already have a better version of it. In order to have the world develop and change, a person's personality must be developed. This human nature, which is what machines do not have, is key to our success in the future. Schools, however, neglect this important fact, which stagnant human development. By developing, humans risk positive and negative change, but nothing is worse than staying in one place not ever understanding what possibilities one could achieve, similar to the lesson depicted by Plato's cave.

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Photo [CC-by-2.0] 2008 by Olga Berrios People nowadays are just too similar. Everyone looks the same, because everyone is doing the same workouts and flexing the same muscles. Although there are slight variations with muscle growth, my point still stands that everyone is changing to become the same.

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"I’ve grown sick and tired of following the path that other people have told me to."

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My entire life has been dedicated to the notion that going to a good college amounts to success. Putting the words "success" and "drop-out" next to each other astounds the masses. How could it be that someone who did not receive a degree obtain a happy life? It's a miracle.

Colleges love students who get good grades. Colleges want people who are well-rounded in extra-curricular activities. Colleges are looking for kids who help around the community. Oh, but no, colleges also want individuals, so make yourself stand out.

"Colleges" have become a devil under my bed, a monster that is always looming over me, an inescapable dread. When my final year of high school comes to an end, I will be placed on a podium, a defendant in the courtroom, as College, the judge, dictates whether or not I'll have a prosperous future.

Last Tuesday, I attended a conference in Pasadena for Virtual Enterprise. Unlike every other convention I had attended, the administrators had decided to invite guest speakers. I was invited to represent Fountain Valley High School at a coffee talk meeting where I would get to personally talk to one of the speakers before they would perform. The person I met was Ash Sobhe, a millionaire who did everything people told him to do: he studied hard, went to college, made a business, made money, and became the definition of successful. He started from the bottom and made it to the top. When facing adversity, he pushed harder just as everyone else had said to. It all changed when the doctor told him he was dying from cancerous brain tumors. He told us not to play in this game that other people have made for us.

Throughout these last few years, I've grown sick and tired of following the path that other people have told me to. To many, success means having money. Unfortunately, we can't take money into our deathbeds. I don't want my high school life to be dictated by the notion that I have to impress these colleges. I don't want my life to be controlled by other people telling me what will make me happy.

| Fountain Valley Baron Banner | ('19) | Staff Cartoonist and Staff Writer View all posts by vivianleportfolio

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My entire life has been dedicated to the notion that going to a good college amounts to success. Putting the words "success" and "drop-out" next to each other astounds the masses. How could it be that someone who did not receive a degree obtain a happy life? It's a miracle.

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"why not get to know your students better and connect on bigger and better levels other than the curriculum."

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The one word that comes to mind when I reflect on the word . I've grown up writing essays in MLA format, and having bland topics based on books I didn't read or ideas that my teachers found interesting, that I honestly could care less about.

Analyze this, what does the author mean when they do that, all things that are meaningless to me.

I don't want to write about how Siddhartha hooking up with that prostitute and having a kid was important (like I said that could be wrong I didn't actually read Siddhartha) or how the author's diction made the article feel this one way. Not to sound narcissistic, but I want to write about me, my personal experiences and things that I'm truly interested in. I don't want to talk to someone and say, "I bsed it..." I want to be able to show off my work and be proud of what I created. With that being said, I know that we can't be storytellers and just talk about us, and I understand that we do have to write essays about story plots and how the writer conveys specific things, but that doesn't have to be the only thing we write about. It would be so nice for once to have an a essay based on something like our best moment, favorite story, or how one little thing has changed you.

I also feel as if these more personal topics will allow the teacher and students to have a closer bond and better understanding of one another if those finer details were expressed. You can learn so much from one piece of writing, so why not get to know your students better and connect on bigger and better levels other than the curriculum. If teachers would just step back and not focus so much on the material, but rather the students, I feel as if their writing would be so much more interesting and worth the read.

I'm in a never ending routine, and its been like this since I can remember. Write a meaningless essay. Submit. Check to see if it's in the grade book.

It's never been let me pour my heart and soul into this piece and who cares about the grade because this is my time to shine.

I can't speak for everyone but I've always been unmotivated to write an essay because I don't care at all about the prompt. I just write it because I have to. I can recall only a handful of times when I have sat down and actually cared about a writing piece, and let me just tell you that never happens. One of those very few times, was actually my semester self reflection. I was so excited to write about something that revolved around me, because I know myself best. I described how I have improved over this past semester and how one assignment in particular helped me wrap my head around the idea of noticing. Personally, that was one of my best pieces, and there was no prompt to it other than "show your learning."

When I do get a prompt or topic that I enjoy and I'm not being a brat about it, I feel as if I can write a pretty well rounded essay. I can do as many paragraphs as I want, explain my feelings and emotions, and really dig deep. The true me shines through my essays because I'm not writing based off something else, I'm writing based off myself. My first, then, in conclusion, academic self gets pushed away and now I'm one of those princesses from Disneyland that reads to the kids about her journey. There is no stopping me in my writing because of my genuine happiness. It's not that I despise essays, it's the lack of creativity and meaning that many of them contain due to the prompts and or topics.

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Forced. The one word that comes to mind when I reflect on the word essay. I've grown up writing essays in MLA format, and having bland topics based on books I didn't read or ideas that my teachers found interesting, that I honestly could care less about.

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"The farmers in Grapes of Wrath did not think about the future, only how they we going to feed themselves here and now.

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Free Thoughts on the Precedings of AP English

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The novel, Grapes of Wrath, by Steinbeck, touches on social, economic, political, and environmental issues during the Depression. In chapter five, the poor tenant farmers are struggling to make a profit from the sandy, nutrient-dry soil. The land owners tell them to plant more cotton, which will suck up the last of the nutrients in the soil, leaving it irreparable. Then, they will sell the dead land to unsuspecting migrant families.

This example brings up many issues: social, economic, and environmental. I want to focus on environmental issue. The farmers know that by planting cotton, they are making the land worse. But they don't think about how it will affect their future, they plant the cotton to get money for one more day, to buy food for one more day, to be one day further from starvation.

This is similar to an environmental issue we are facing today, which is garbage.

To be clear, I'm not going on a rant on Global Warming and politics and saving the whales, but I am concerned about the plastic I see literally everywhere. Whenever I go to the beach, I see plastic bags and bottles all over the sand, and floating in the water. I know it didn't look like this twenty years ago. So why does it look like this now?

And what happens even if it all gets picked up off the beach? I am very concerned about landfills. Every time I hear the garbage truck ride through my neighborhood, I know that my garbage will soon be dumped with thousands of other black bags of garbage.

The thing that worries me the most is that people completely forget about trash as soon as it gets picked up. It's like as soon as the garbage truck comes the trash is gone and not something to worry about. But it's not. The trash is still here, on Earth, and it is very much something to worry about.

It is this attitude of not caring that leads to the build-up of trash. When I asked my dad if we should start trying to recycle more, he told me not to worry about it. That the trash will just decompose. But it won't decompose because most off our trash is plastic!

If everyone stopped using plastic, it would help this problem, but that's not possible. In this modern age plastic is essential to life. Plastic is used in shoes, clothes, pencils, water bottles, really everything.

The farmers in Grapes of Wrath did not think about the future, only how they we going to feed themselves here and now. Although they were aware they were ruining the soil by planting cotton, they disregarded it, like the way we disregard using so much plastic.. But if we all try cut down on how much we waste, it can make a difference.

Next time you wheel your trash bin to the side of the street, I urge you to stop and think about where it is going when it is out of sight.

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The novel, Grapes of Wrath, by Steinbeck, touches on social, economic, political, and environmental issues during the Depression. In chapter five, the poor tenant farmers are struggling to make a profit from the sandy, nutrient-dry soil. The land owners tell them to plant more cotton, which will suck up the last of the nutrients in...

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Natasha on social media in the classroom

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Natasha on social media in the classroom

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"if you publicize academic work on social media, you’re not attracting the right sort of attention"

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When you walk into a classroom, you don't expect to be told that you need to make a social media account. You don't think that you'll be turning in your work through Twitter or Instagram. You expect to be berated into hiding your phone under your desk or to sit your phone face down on your desk and zone out without the aid of Instagram memes.

I'm constantly being told that cell phones and social media cause more problems and that we should thus "disconnect." And how can I disagree- the constant stimuli of selfies and odd collections of cartoon frogs keep me from being as productive as I could be. Social media is chaos as both the demented and the world's most prestigious leaders tweet arrogant and pointless messages like pigs snorting their say in any given issue. And yet, more and more teachers move to incorporate this mess of an innovation.

A classroom is a place for organized learning. That's why we have seating charts, textbooks, and lesson plans. Everything is planned out and researched. Nearly every teacher you meet has pristine files that could be filled decades of worksheets and activities. Every aspect of the learning experience has been polished like pearls-perfectly round and shiny. Teachers have calendars, reading schedules, visual aids, grading scales and an infinite amount of organization devices. Everything in a classroom is organized to teach and encourage learning.

How then, can we incorporate the turmoil of social media into a coordinated classroom setting?

I'm talking about individual classrooms. This is a call to teachers, not to superintendents or deans. Superintendents have to deal with the complex relations of the school system, not the classroom experience.

The answer to the question is that you can't. You cannot combine the insanity of social media with the strict organization of the classroom.

Those who believe that social media can be tamed are naive and ignorant of the actual use of social media. These are people who believe that social media is a means of awareness and putting yourself out there. However, if you publicize academic work on social media, you're not attracting the right sort of attention. No one on social media is looking to learn but is mindlessly becoming acquainted-not enlightened- with a few friends' recent outing or celebrity's haircut. In writing, you must know your audience, just as with marketing yourself. However, you will not find your audience on social media. So keep your academic work in the academic world.

For students out there, remember to stay off your phones and to finish your homework. For these are two separate activities that cannot collide. Social media was meant for the mindless characters of dystopia while school was meant for the mindful activists preventing and pushing past dystopia. For the teachers out there, do not forget that you are facilitators of learning and must create an environment of clean thought. An environment of clean thought must strive to distance itself from the landfill of breakfast pictures and kitten videos that is social media. To students and teachers combined, it is your job to pursue a useful and thoughtful future that dares to burn the bridge between pointless indulgences and mindful philosophies. Intelligent thoughts are as rare as pearls and, as the saying goes, do not cast your pearls before swine.

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When you walk into a classroom, you don't expect to be told that you need to make a social media account. You don't think that you'll be turning in your work through Twitter or Instagram. You expect to be berated into hiding your phone under your desk or to sit your phone face down on...

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"In a way, we’re all like boxed cake mix; We all put in the same ingredients and make the same cake." -Trinity

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Truthfully, I'm just like the majority of students out there in the world. I'm a student who enrolls herself in AP classes for the sake of her college application. I'm someone who does things for her college apps rather than for herself and like everyone else in highschool, is struggling to stand out from the sea of admissions.

Shirag Shemmassian explains that there is no simple recipe for getting into our desired colleges in the interview, "3 Surprising Reasons Students Don't Get Into Top Colleges." He points out that students today put so much emphasis on maximizing test scores and taking the hardest classes possible, a common misconception that many believe is a necessary step to getting into the college of their dreams. Several of us are tricked into believing that grades, test scores, and extracurriculars are all that colleges look for. However, it is the complete opposite; Colleges like to see what you're passionate about and how you've utilized the time on your hand to show it. No doubt, college applications are just a never-ending cycle of competition between students and the only way to break free from it is to focus on what really matters: what you love to do.

I can go on about how much I despise students who take AP courses just for the gpa boost but unfortunately, I'm one of them.

I'm taking rigorous courses I know that I'm not passionate about and even after reading several articles that talk about AP classes being nothing, I continue to take them. If someone were to ask me why I was taking the class, I wouldn't be able to give them an honest answer. This is one thing that I absolutely hate: my inability to step outside of society's conformity and take classes that I actually like. So what's stopping me?

Our society puts so much emphasis on numbers rather than the learning itself; A student with a 3.5 gpa could have learned so much more than a 4.6 student if they took courses that they actually enjoyed. Yet the majority of us continue to take the hardest classes on campus because we think that it looks good on our applications and also, our friends are taking them.

In a way, we're all like boxed cake mix; We all put in the same ingredients and make the same cake. Even with the knowledge that AP courses aren't everything, we continue to believe so because of the people around us.

In order to stand out, we must put in our own ingredients rather the ones that the boxes at the supermarket tells us to. Despite how difficult it may be in a society like ours, we need to start building our college applications from scratch and understand that our passions are what set us apart from our friends.

No two individuals are alike; We shouldn't try to follow each other's footsteps because we all have different shoes.

Author: fvtrinity

Hi, I'm Trinity and welcome to my blog. I personally love to travel and try new foods on my free time. My hobbies include skating and playing the Vietnamese traditional instrument (the sixteen stringed zither). Here you'll find all my thoughts written down in a single place. You can join me on my writing adventure: IG and Twitter @fvtrinity. View all posts by fvtrinity

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College Applications Should Display Passion Not Intelligence

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Truthfully, I'm just like the majority of students out there in the world. I'm a student who enrolls herself in AP classes for the sake of her college application. I'm someone who does things for her college apps rather than for herself and like everyone else in highschool, is struggling to stand out from the...