Author: scarlettohara

Write your Application Like you’re Chappell Roan (yes really)

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When I did my writings, I got the sense my English classes only laid half the groundwork for presenting myself in the best light. Yeah, I got the sense of which rhetorical devices best clicked in some analytical essay, but analysis only occasionally begets charm in real life. I had to trim sentences for applications when I was rewarded for padding them out before. I had to justify myself rather than a distant theorem. Heck, until last year, I barely knew the importance of how applications use essays, so the persuasive quality of my writing was rather touch and go for me.

I’m guessing I probably get my head around the assignment around December, which is fortunate because it took me until after application season for me to find an unintentionally stellar college supplemental in the wild:

This is only an 90 econd speech but you can easily hear the conviction Chappell has about her past, and how it connects to a broader issue and community. And if it spoke to me, someone who otherwise has little to do with the music industry, then maybe we hit the formula for effectively marketing oneself. At least anecdotally, I can definitely see that when my supplementals paralleled this speech’s strengths, my application was far more likely to get past the post compared to when I felt aprehensive about my efforts just before hitting submit.

So in short, to be like Chappell:

  1. Be honest and vulnerable – that way you’re relateable and readers/interviewees know you’re genuine
  2. Use punchy, but down to earth language
  3. Emphasize that you’re part of a bigger cause

What I Will Do as I am Manifesting my Dream School Accepting

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After blogs after blogs of hoping for this, I really do think I’m on the up and up at this point. Or, at the very least, I think of a lot of the troubles I had before as rather silly now. I’m back to my nonchalance, go with the flow persona, so here are some things I will go back to doing.

  1. Journal when I have time, not just whenever I’m in a cafe.
  2. Sleep properly. I’m not going to sleep till 11pm because it looks like a reasonable time for most people. Not if I’m spending all day yawning and stretching, having heavy lids the whole evening, until I stay up till 11pm again just to catch up on what I needed to do before.
  3. Use Soluna. It’s a mental health/self-improvement app that I’ve recently been recommended. It has mini motivational articles, options to reach out to coaches, but what I’m sure to use most are the tools they have. They have breathing exercises, white noise, etc. enhanced by visuals, which for whatever reason makes me feel more motivated to use them. Actually check it out if your in the 13-25 age range, it’s going to change your life.
  4. Remind myself what I really have. Yes, I need to be cautious when considering my future and what may limit it. And plenty of people like to hammer that point in. But honestly, those who find that much of a need to eulogize me to my living face must be haunted by their own demons in a way. Either they are desperate for me not to have the same fate, or they seek to fill me with the same despair they have. So no matter what, I’m going to be whoever suits me best.

Dear Sister

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(This isn’t an actual letter I sent to anyone. These are just things I would like to say if they would be accepted)

Dear [no-name],

So far I already got into 4 UCs and one of them is a full ride, so please don’t tell me my only option is community college. Or that I was foolish for not applying to any beforehand. That, when I was worried about not being able to go to college at all, you said I was classist to expect what you’d gotten. And to be clear, I know you lied on the spot when you said you were smart enough to apply to community colleges at my age, since before you said the only colleges you got accepted to were UC Santa Cruz and Emerson. It would be a miracle if any community college were to reject someone like you, when they’re legally mandated to accept petty felons.

You might hope that you’d help me, but here are some ways I wish you’d help. I wish you’d understand that there are four years between the last time we actually lived together, and I’ve lived on my own the whole time. My high school experience has been much more open, you might even call it crunchy, than what you, our family, or even most of our people get to experience. That’s part of why I got different priorities than what you might consider natural. In fact, so many of my expectations on how humans work are shattered by the great people around me, because most people aren’t so Confucian that they deny themselves of experiencing joy or equality. They respect me and everyone else on the basis that we’re people. It’s not something that must be earned, and it’s not the opposite of preparing someone for the real world, or whatever you say to excuse yourself.

And since you tell me you never mean anything you say, then can you perhaps not take what our family and I say as personal attacks? Because no offense, but whenever you tell me I’m unprepared to be an adult, I feel you’re a pot and I’m the kettle in the situation.

Sincerely,

Me

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Junos

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There is always at least one Juno in a person’s life. Someone who is their own worst enemy, because their worst enemy is hatred. Someone who may have everything lowly everyman could want but, whether from actual grievances or lack of worldliness, still finds cause to complain. If they’re under the thumbs of higher tyrants, I might be able to sympathize. If they didn’t also lash out against the few they have power over. They might proclaim themself a defender of men, a Hera Alexandros, but we hear the things they’ve done. Honestly, we wish we couldn’t hear them screech or moan for its own sake.

I’m a living human being, but even then I’m worried about the temptation to go down to their level. Maybe that’s part of the point, that they love company. But I’m in a relatively comfortable position, and have more support than I could ever ask for. I have a lot going for me and a lot to enjoy. I can go back to saying “yes” to opportunity, joy, the better part of myself. And why should I care about the curses Juno might send my way? If anything, I hope she gives Jove a piece of her mind and escape the millenia of myths she’s trapped in. It’s not very different from what her patrons must do.

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Sappho 31 Revived

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(Yes, one of the reasons I want to learn Ancient Greek is to read Sappho in her original language. Yes, one of my goals in my life is to create a poetry collection building on all of her remaining fragments, with this being the first of its kind. I have priorities.

But since this is based on an original that has enchanted readers for literal millenia, check out a translation of Sappho 31 to fully see how I turn it inside out. The skeleton of my revival is mostly based on Anne Carson’s translations, but I definitely looked to others for inspiration.)

He seems to me a man who’d like to kill god
Whatever he is, sitting in front of you
Prowling to see any bent
To deconstruct who you are
But he’s sure he’ll sink into sweet legend


Your smile after is sweeter; but how is it
Even when he’s gone
My own tongue cracks. And every word’s drought. Fruitless.
Any peep from him puts the gall in my belly on wings
So when I look at you, even a moment
No speaking is left in me


If I see you next- a subtle fire will speed through my skin
He took my sight, he burst my ears
Already so your touch makes me seize and shake
Myself, or is that you?
But whatever I try to hold
I am still paler than grass, I am deaf from all of this buzzing
I am dead- or I seem to be at this rate


But what can be endured, can be recovered
As when I saw the sun-glades shimmer in human eyes
While speaking words stronger than bone, more resistant than sinew
Yet more sensitive than nerve and barer than skin
I remembered to see the poorer half that lives

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Hibernation

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The return of spring is when the world returns from the dead
Or – it is so for the black bear
It creeps on its claws towards the mouth
Of the tomb, which the crumbling dirt enclosing all
Caressed the bear as it rested
It would be miraculous for it to come to life
But the immaculate, sterile state of the newborn world
Would be unearthly to the black bear
When the grime was its own closed world for so long
Recollections of the outside leaked in the time since


Perhaps the outside is too clean
Too white in its naive snow
For one so long in the dirt
Or even, that the air is not so fresh
But packed with strife
And noise and human eyes


Is there anything that can force an animal of instinct
To sink, continue, down and still
Under the earth


But awaking again-
Feeling the fur-soft grass beneath paws
Hearing the birds chirping like bells away from daily bullets
Seeing all the other creatures who
In the same place, awaken again year after year
That is what makes it worthwhile
That the black bear’s instincts make it fall and rise
Neverending

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Danville

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(Normally when I write poems I imagine created scenarios like “What if a speaker leaves her kidnapper for the moon,” or “What if a speaker roasts a stealthing girl for completely unpersonal reasons.” This poem totally, definitely is the same.)

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Do you remember the last time we walked
Through our high school on the hill
After hours and empty?
It always felt like a dream
Shadows creeping acutely far
Never before seen by student eyes
But think, so many lived here,
Someone every day was wandering
Stray people like stray animals
We had roads, just for ourselves


Do you remember how we might meet,
Or run into the other
Outside dorms
We exchanged words, treats, as acquaintances
And I cupped my hands to take a world’s granted abundance


I remember that pitch tar night
Or that overlight room
When I coughed
Out the most pointless goodbye in the world.
If I returned, would I find it
All the same, wax stuck
I seem to have a knack, in eternally returning


Or, like the footprints
Are they all gone?

Hey I Like My Dad

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Yeah I’m going there. I am willing as a teenager to express gratitude, and other positive emotions. Because dang it, we have no predetermined purpose and cynicism has been trending since Franz Ferdinand was shot. While there are many people who would like to make our troubles worse by complaining, complaining and complaining in their everyday life, I would like to do something more helpful to myself by, perhaps, being satisfied with what I have in life. So here is a nice and accurate, but not exhaustive, list of the things I love that my dad does for me, since I know plenty of dads don’t bother with the least of what he does.

  1. He always drives six hours roundtrip to pick me up. It was only this year that he stopped taking days off work just to get me on Fridays, since his company didn’t like he was out of work so often.
  2. He gets me the best snacks. My dad works for H-Mart. That’s the company that tightened its leash on him, so he’s not exactly flowing in cash. But what he is flowing in is coupons. My dad never lacks in giving me free treats, the sorts I can never find in most grocery stores nowadays. I always wait to refill my childhood memories.
  3. He gets free Starbucks too, and always gives them to me.
  4. He gives me strategies for growing up. My dad sometimes felt like the bad cop growing up, especially when my sister and I were used to our mom doting on us. But it turned out parenting is a balance between the old adage of “you can do anything you set your mind to” and telling your children about those who seek to take that away from them. My mom is the dreamspinner, my dad is the postwar cynic. Huh, maybe I have to give those postmodern critics some credit.
  5. He has the oddest sense of humor. It’s not dad jokes exactly, but it’s hard to describe. It’s a little funky, maybe a bit something like out of a Taika Waititi production, which certainly explains my taste in media.

I’ve been worrying about what I could have left in the coming years. I consider myself an average, perhaps lucky person, but luck doesn’t run as far as it used to. I sense that if things were to go haywire there would be many fronts for “these unprecedented times” to attack me on, because I already see others being persecuted for those same things lol. But since half a person’s salt comes from their dad, I’m glad I have his principles and taste in comedy to weather the storm with.

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Half-Resolutions

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I was never one to make resolutions for the new year specifically. If I wanted to make a change in my life, I would do it that moment, and cease it in two weeks like anyone else who makes resolutions. But I feel like I finally have time to take extra care of myself in the next six months, so maybe some resolutions for half a year would do me good.

  1. Either read a chapter or watch a tv episode everyday.
    • Don’t fret about whether what I read is a beloved classic or modern slop, when most classics originally were the slop of their day.
  2. Go on a run once per weekend.
    • Don’t feel bad about not doing it twice.
  3. Leave some more time to myself where I can do nothing, and that would be fine.
  4. Sleep before 11pm even on weekends.
    • I have never felt more that the world had turned itself around than when I learned that sleep requirements differ by sex. Women need to sleep more than men, but the oft repeated 7-8 hours of sleep a night is only based around the time men need to be healthy. And for years I wondered why I was so drowsy.
  5. Enforce the time limit on my phone.
    • The four weeks I spent without one were some of the strangest in my life, but I can’t say some part of me didn’t feel relieved in some way.
  6. Read the news, but don’t doomscroll.
    • I need to cut the tough balance between understanding exactly what my position in the world is, and retaining the drive to break out of it.
  7. Don’t wait for the right time to do something, but start on what I need to do once I can.

At this moment in time I feel I’m on a precipice. Anything that seems quaint or mundane now might be something I’ll miss very soon. I think on what could have been, what I must do now, what is even worth doing now in the time I have left. I wonder if I’m more or less satisfied than what I should be, or what is common for others who are in my position. But maybe if I can live more in the little things, beyond what is considered likely to yield products or prestige, then I can feel I’m back in my peak.

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Merchant of Venice as the Newest Member of the Almost Masterpiece Club

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Ranking all the Books I Read So Far in High School

A while back, I reviewed all the books I did for required reading in high school, and nearly all of the books in the “almost masterpiece” tier were from Ms. Whipple’s classes. I don’t know how she keeps getting away with this, but I’m adding Merchant of Venice to this tier. (The most I will say about Heart of Darkness is that I put it in the “I respectfully tolerate” tier.)

Before I read Merchant of Venice I actually thought I would put it in the “respectfully tolerate” tier, as I thought it would have aged too poorly for me to be invested in. My only exposure to it was a Jewish youtuber I liked using the play as the ultimate example of a poorly aged classic, so I feared the only thing I would find in it would be garden variety antisemitism.

Though after reading it I suppose I know why we’re learning about it. It’s true, parts of the character Shylock, the main Jewish character in the play, and especially the way other characters treat him that make me cringe. People call Shylock a dog and Lancelet, the most “love to hate” character in the play, outright says he should hang for his religion. But once I read about Lancelet tricking his blind dad into thinking he’s dead, just for the kicks of it, I began to wonder if my disgust towards the characters is meant to be the point.

All of the Christian “heroes” have unsavory qualities, even outside of their antisemitism. Portia mocks the men who want to marry her because they are foreign. Bassanio is a gambler and wannabe gold digger. And what most surprised me was how Jessica, Shylock’s daughter, sells her dead mother’s ring to buy a monkey. As a Jewish convert to Christianity, the other characters act like she is her father’s moral superior, but her actions only make the rest of the cast’s moral standards suspect.

At this point, I can’t help but wonder if Shakespeare was on the better side of history, that he really try to write Shylock as the most sympathetic character in a sea of terrible people. He has some of the best lines, many of which sufficiently call out the injustice of his world, and his villainous actions can’t hold a candle to many of Shakespeare’s tragic heroes. My bread and butter are works where nearly everyone are equally terrible people, as it makes the halfway decent ones stand out all the more. So I can’t help but find that Merchant of Venice scratches my itch, so into the Unofficial Whipple Tier it goes. I don’t think it’s quite on the level of works like Invisible Man, which are stories that I think anyone can get something out of it. I still get that youtuber’s discomfort with Merchant of Venice, so I’m not making this messy story required reading for all of humanity. For all my low expectations I still think it needs an inventive production to bear stomaching for modern audiences.

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