Past from the eyes of the Present

 With another year gone and another semester of school passed by, I sat down and did some self-reflection. What did I achieve, what I learned and how I have grown. Some of the most important things I have learned were due to my reflections and connections from English class. It’s easy to read literature with a disconnected mind because “How is this relevant to me, and when am I going to need to rely on such experiences?” and that is correct. I am never going to go through the experiences of Meursault or Oedipus but I am going to face similar problems, similar conflicts. I mean I’m not going to be in an existential dilemma after shooting a man 5 times (I hope) but, the main thematic conflicts with existentialism and this idea of redundancy really resonated with me. I didn’t have any earth-shattering realizations or anything, but more of a subtle change in perspective. I have become far more receptive to contradicting ideas, and I have also learned to look at things deeper than the s...

How do we want to be remembered? Do we have a say in how we are remembered?   Willy wanted to be remembered as this charismatic salesman, who had this energy surrounding him that just made everyone like him. You know kind of like a Jim Halpert/ Harvey Specter character. Now it is obvious that this fantasy of his would never come true but is it possible for that picture to be popularized.  How many times have we seen people become more famous after dying, or how many times have the bad actions of people been forgotten or overwritten after their death. It is incredibly evident that a flattering narrative is usually encouraged after someone dies. The most obvious example I can think of is fictional. It always fascinates me how the narratives switched for Severus Snape after his death. For six, even seven, solid books everyone hated that man’s existence. He was everything you hated in a person- arrogant, selfish, obnoxious ad condescending to name a few. What further proves my p...

Today I would like to tell everyone a secret, a secret I have quite frankly hidden for a great part of my life. I am secretly very, very , fond of rom-coms. They’re just amazing, with like a no-brainer plot, a bit of angst, tons of fluff and all of that wrapped in an assured happy ending. Who doesn’t like that. I don’t know about others but usually when I watch a movie, I watch it because it’s fun and it’s something different. No one watches a movie to learn stuff, you watch a documentary for that (also they are boring (for some reason David Attenborough doesn’t fit this but whatever)). Realism is this idea of taking real life experiences and having people watch that real thing for some intellectual purpose. Well the thing is I don’t really fancy getting out my life of being a high schooler (real stressful I know), to watch a movie about the realities of poverty or what nor. I want a movie with drama, and useless dialogue so that I don’t have to use my brain. Is that too much to ask? N...

I honestly have no idea what I am supposed to do with this article.  I mean even when you see movies and you're telling your friends about it it's always "Ohhh that movie yeah imagine Romeo and Juliet and amplify the stupid, and add the ability to defy physics." There you go, I just told you the plot for almost all Bollywood movies.  (the black hole I delved in trying to find the best image) (anyway... moving on) We have always lived in this world where originality it an important concept, but no one truly adheres to it. I mean songs have inspired beats, lyrics, or sentiment; art have traces of other artists with a twist. Originality is a false concept that we have made up, to praise derivatives of the same story. Stories are the same as colours, you cannot imagine up a new colour because there is no combination, permutation of known colours that we haven't mixed. In this case you give it new names instead of "pink" it is now called 'ros é' to gi...

  I love Harry Potter. I can easily say that it was my childhood, because it was read to me when I was 5 years old, and then I read the whole thing on my own when I was 7 years old (it was in fact my birthday present). Now while she is not my favourite character, there is something very intriguing about Luna Lovegood.  For those of you who haven’t read Harry Potter (how dare you?) Luna Lovegood, is one of the main side characters, and her entire thing is that she is different. She believes in things that others don’t believe in, she Accessorize differently, and she behaves differently. All in all she is different. Now what trips me up is that everyone (who’s read the books) loves Luna. They love her quirky nature and they love how she isn’t afraid from being who she truly is. Embracing their inner nature and not seeing anything wrong with it? Which other character do we know who does the same? Meursault. Meursault is also a character who does not fit in the typical mold of soc...

 "Money can't buy happiness, but it sure is better to cry in a BMW than on a bicycle". Two truths, one lie: I have brown eyes, I am in 12 AP and I am definitely not a cynical person, who believes that happiness requires money/ material goods. I am sure we can all now figure out where I stand.  Now it is seriously debatable if the ending of 'Little Miss Sunshine' was happy, sad or something in the middle. On one hand none of the people got their dreams true, and not all of them even survived ( my dude Edwin knew what beauty pageants were like and OD'd himself).  But...but..but they are all together, they are Hakuna Matata-ing and slowly becoming less dysfunctional! Family sticks together, and they know that now, doesn't that count?  I mean I guess? But how long are they actually gonna stick together? How long before Richard falls into another motivational speaker fantasy (cause lets be honest the only thing he motivates me to do, is smack him with his book)...

In a new segment which I call 'Things School Makes You do That Doesn't Really Make Sense' or 'Student Life' for short, we will be talking about in class essays. Yay!!     Now in-class essays were first thought of in 8795789 BC when the gods ran out of torture techniques. Modern technology was non-existent, so they had to make do. However, since we all are sticklers or tradition, we continue this  experience,  and all take fulfillment from it. In-class essays test your ability to write a comprehensible, mature analysis in 40 minutes because we should be able to answer the deep questions of life in 15 minutes and write it down in the next 25. Don't forget to make it poetic and rhythmic, because the purpose of the essay is not only to answer a question but to win a weird Montreal International Poetry Prize and Pulitzer Prize hybrid.      The best part about the in-class essay is the usefulness of it. I don't know if you guys are aware, but you will b...