Nothin' but Nihil

T he day I first walked into Mrs. Valentino’s AP Language class, I didn’t know what to expect. Here I was, decked out in my new back-to-school drip, looking for an empty seat and our new teacher, Mrs. Valentino, when all of a sudden, I see a young, bald man in her place, talking about the new Kanye album. From that moment onwards, I knew that I was in for a ride. I fastened my seat belts and experienced the joys and thrills of The Great Gatsby , A Raisin in the Sun , and The Clan of One-Breasted Women , while also experiencing the pains and miseries of homework (don’t worry, I still enjoyed reading pieces such as The Diamond as Big as the Ritz and annotating other pieces). And while I’m talking about how great this class really was this year, it would be disingenuous of me to continue onwards without giving a proper appreciation to all the people and pieces that have made this year and this experience possible.  First, I would like to express my deepest appreciation to the two ...

This is a picture of me, back in our old apartment at Somerset. You can tell from our apartment that it was merely a humble abode with everything I ever needed. Well, it was humble enough until I saw something on TV. Or at the library. Or at Barnes & Noble. And then I absolutely needed it, no matter how much it costed, or whether we even had any room for it back in the apartment. We were at Toys R Us that evening, and it was the usual window-shopping, until I happened to stumble upon a train set that happened to be so beautiful that only god himself could rival its beauty. You see, I had always wanted a train set to call my very own, even from a young age. My aspirations were habituated slowly by watching Thomas & Friends for hours upon hours each day, but I never realized my love for these toys until a visit to Barnes & Noble changed my life in ways I can barely describe. I was just wandering around, trying to find a book on dinosaurs or the Magic Tree House series or som...

One eating environment that I grew up relatively familiar with was Burger King, the infamous "home of the Whopper." Before I continue with the rest of this piece, one thing I would like to praise Burger King for is its relative honesty. The moment you step into the front doorway, you get exactly what you are paying for. There's no sense of false pretentiousness about it. Take one look around, and you can immediately tell that you have stepped right into a microcosm of corporate America. You're greeted by the sight of workers and cashiers, many of whom are being forced to survive on the minimum wage. Take a peek into the kitchen and you can see, firsthand, the standardization of the food that will be served to you. Pop a patty on the grill and pull it out to serve the people. This process is repeated innumerable times every single day. In fact, it's repeated everywhere as well. Every Whopper made here, in Troy, Michigan, is the same as a Whopper made in Kenya or A...

In class last week, we looked at two different interpretations on what it felt like to be an outsider society. We read Firoozeh Dumas's piece on what it meant to have a foreign name in America, and David Sedaris talked about how it felt to not understand French in a French class (with a scary teacher as well). I also feel that in some ways, I can relate to these two authors. I grew up speaking Tamil, just as the rest of the members of my family had done. I never went to daycare like other children did, so my only exposure to English for the first four years of my life was the television. With this in mind, you can probably tell I never really had an American accent growing up. In fact, when watching old videos of myself, the first thing that stands out is the heavy Indian accent I had. I never really saw it as a bad thing. One thing you should know about me as a child is that I loved talking. I didn't care who I was talking to or what I was talking about, all I knew was that I...

It was club picture day last Tuesday, and here I was, waiting next to the main staircase with the rest of my Science Olympiad team. Right behind us, there was the wall with all the sticky notes written by our students in support of Oxford. With nothing else better to do, my friends and I decided to take a look through each of them. Obviously, most of them were beautifully written. The thought and effort put into these were palpable. There were nice, cute doodles on some of them, words of unison and love on others; some even wrote entire poems! However, there was one sticky note that kind of rubbed me off in the wrong way. There was one sticky note, smack dab in the center, that said, "what doesn't kill you, can only make you stronger." Now as soon as I first saw that, I began to think about how that saying seemed a little tone deaf in this context. Personally, I don't think I would use that phrase to reassure the survivors of one of America's most horrific tragedi...

Veiled threats are more common in our daily lives that people think they are. As Steven Pinker stated, the obvious example of a veiled threat would be the gangster noting what a great store someone has, subtly threatening that person to do as they say or else the store gets it. However, these threats don't have to be so ominous all the time. Sometimes, they can be humorous, like this meme down below.  Ok, so maybe our definition of humorous varies. However, when reading Pinker's piece, I was immediately reminded of this old Stafford meme from years back. I mean, you can't deny that it's a threat. The other team must be literally shaking in their boots the moment they see Frat Stafford 😬. But on a more serious note, I was also reminded of the situation right now in Ukraine. Ever since last year, Putin has been constantly moving troops to the border of Ukraine, citing them as "peacekeeping troops." In reality, they stand there as nothing more than a threat to U...

For many years, I had known that the United States had tested their atomic bombs on our nation's mainland. For example, I knew that the first atomic bomb to be detonated was done so in Alamogordo, New Mexico on July 16, 1945. In our history books, we had been taught that all testing was done in desolate areas in which no one was living in. Until I read Terry Tempest William's piece The Clan of One-Breasted Women , I assumed that the government was telling the truth. The chilling descriptions of women becoming bald "as cytoxan, cisplatin, and adriamycin we injected into their veins," along with the "green-black" bile that they vomited got me thinking about another ecological disaster happening in our right now: coal-mining. Appalachia has always existed in a tough spot. Sandwiched in between the Midwest and the Far East, they remain one of the most isolated and impoverished communities in America. Many of the people living in Appalachia, especially those in s...