Practice didn’t prepare me for the expectant hush that blanketed the auditorium, or for my cap which insisted on sliding every which way whenever I turned my head.

So, some of you may have seen me earlier, frantic because I had forgotten my tassel at home in my rush to get here.  Don’t worry, everything’s okay – I have a tassel now, so thank you, Mr. Pech, for finding one for me.

It is optimistic to believe that we will keep in touch with every member of our 156-person class, but nevertheless, our common experiences consist of firsts, constants, and lasts of all CAMS’ students.  Consuming those they’re-all-right-just-joking-they’re-kind-of-bad school lunches.  Sneaking off campus for the very first time.  And again – and again, sometimes during class!  Putting our hearts and souls behind our athletics teams, but even more so behind our Robotics Team.  Screaming for your cohort during the last 3-day freshman orientation, if not traditional Spirit Rally, in CAMS history.  Remember when skits used to be in the center of the quad, instead of by the pillars?  Being the last bunch of Interactive Math students who had to ever think, “Do bees build it best?”  These experiences spin the fabric of our memories.

Yeah, my cap fell off right around this point.

We are the CAMS Class of 2013, but we are also a generation born and raised in uniquely turbulent times.  In less than two decades, we have witnessed two wars.  We have seen the country’s largest surplus plummet to the most appalling deficit – and the Great Recession seems to have no end in sight.  We cheered at the election inauguration of the first non-white President.  We were born in the age of corded home phones but we matured attached to the multi-capability, internet-accessible smartphone –At some point in the past four years, we each have realized – as we looked at our grades, our extracurricular activities, lives coming together, lives drifting apart – that there existed a gap between our expectations and reality.  And although that discrepancy may have stung at that time, it wasn’t discouraging.  It certainly didn’t turn us into cynical, bitter 17 and 18 year olds.  It just inspired us to do something about that gap.  And we’re sitting here because we have succeeded.

You may not care that the world is evolving now, faster than ever before.  But if you take away anything, take away this.  Envy will stalk your doorstep; arrogance your workplace.  “Life will punch you – hard – in the face, and wait till you get up just to kick you in the stomach.”*   Yet we – we as a generation, we as a graduating class, we as an individual – we cannot ever stop allowing the world to amaze us, because “there is nothing more beautiful than the way the ocean refuses to stop kissing the shoreline no matter how many times it is sent away;”* nothing more sublime than watching a baby bean sprout conquer clods of dirt a million times bigger just to befriend the sun; the steady “yes I can, yes I can” of your heart no matter that your brain is screaming the opposite – these are all the more reasons why you should say thank you.  Ask all the questions, discover all the answers, make all the mistakes – because dreams, if we don’t act upon them unafraid of setbacks, will remain, forgotten, at the pillow.

When it comes to self-interest, everybody is fighting after the same things: money, fame, power, status.    I’m sure you all will do the same in your own way.  But, I challenge you to remember integrity and humility.

Integrity, humility.  Those two words mean different things to all of us.  But I know that we will never, can never, and must never lose those driving forces.  In the words of Hillary Clinton: Integrity, the courage to be whole… living in relation to one another in the full poetry of existence.  Integrity is not downloading a PDF of a textbook and sneaking peeks during the test.  And by the same token, integrity, integrity is not assigning last-minute requirements and penalizing students when they fail to deliver on all of them.  But you see, I know that our class has integrity.  I know this because I have seen us confront the faceless bullies behind CAMS Confessions Uncensored by posting compliments instead of criticism, by standing up for the peers in our grade and all the other grades.  Integrity is uniting to honor but always remember those who have fallen.

And humility, the audacity to apologize when you are wrong, and to extend gratitude where it is due.  Each one of us has come so far – but we wouldn’t have completed this journey without the support of the people in this auditorium.  Everyone we’ve met – everyone fidgeting in their stuffy blue robes, the faculty and staff, our family.  Everyone we know personally has impacted and shaped us – some have more than others – but still, words cannot begin to express enough gratitude.

“The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.”**  Don’t you dare allow yourself to be confined by your career’s constraints.  With each click of the mouse and slash of a keystroke, the world shrinks the tiniest bit.  But it always will have everything to offer.  Hope.  Aspire.  Dream.  The future is ours.  The future is ours because I know that we have the smarts, the desire, the integrity, the humility, the kindness – the potential in each and every single one of us to fulfill our aspirations – change the world – not because we deserve it, but because it is our responsibility – all of this potential, is brimming fit to overflow.

So go.  Go and transform that possibility into reality.  I’m rooting for you.  I’m rooting for all of us.

Thank you.

*  From “B” by Sarah Kay

**  Class Quote: “The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams” – Eleanor Roosevelt

Sometime ago, WordPress changed its layout.  Suddenly “My Dashboard” became “Blog Admin,” the color scheme changed from gray-scale to sky-blue-scale, and a whole host of other changes that – since I’m so terrible at blogging, I hardly ever log on to WordPress anyway – I have yet to discover.

(Attempting to navigate the new layout makes me feel like one of the blind men in the poem “The Blind Men and the Elephant.”)

Whilst (I never say “whilst” in real life, haha) hopelessly navigating, I stumbled upon a blog called The Daily Post which has, among other things, prompts for floundering bloggers to write to – daily, of course, because that’s how you get your creativity flowing.

I started following that blog and promptly forgot about it.  Until now.

What do you display on the walls of your home — photos, posters, artwork, nothing? How do you choose what to display? What mood are you trying to create?

I live in an unremarkable one-bedroom apartment on an unremarkable street in an unremarkable city in – well, I can’t say California’s an unremarkable state, so I’ll just leave it at that.

Because I live in an apartment and pay rent (more specifically the parental units pay the rent), there isn’t much customization that can be done, so the-

whoa, earthquake!

– walls remain a default beige.  Plus, because we’d lose the deposit if we move out and there’s a significant amount of damage to the apartment, there aren’t any pictures/photographs hung on the walls.  Most things are filed away in photo albums.  But the bit of wall that has the most character is the portion right next to the toilet.

When people journey to the bathroom to do the #2, they usually bring a book.  Between the ages of 7 and 9, I brought a pencil.  I had just finished reading Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, and having becoming smitten with the Dobby the house-elf, I proceeded to draw, endlessly, house-elves.  There were tall house-elves and there were short ones.  They were lanky, stout, warriors, priests, scholars – and when I read Eragon by Christopher Paolini, dragon riders were added to the mix.  The wall beside the toilet was as good a canvas as my school notebooks.

Sorry (not really) if that’s TMI.

Elves with cat tails are the bomb.

My dad drew a really cool dragon and I tried to copy it. Success is lacking, haha.

I still have to go through their CD. And yes, I did eat all the candies…

Hello, my name is ______ and I am not attending an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting went to church for the first time today.  I went to University Presbyterian Church at UCLA. (I’m a summer intern there at UCLA’s Materials Science and Engineering Department!)

For four summers starting in 2008, I attended Johns Hopkins CTY, a three week residential summer program hosted on various college campuses across the nation.  The residential assistants at CTY organized Sunday trips to take the campers to nearby churches based on denomination.  I’m agnostic, so I never bothered going. After CTY ended, I suddenly matured and regretted not seizing the opportunity.  If being agnostic is a concious choice, I thought, I might as well have legitimate reasons.  As such, I “attend church at least once” was one of my goals for this summer.

So, University Presbyterian.  Summary: It was certainly interesting.  The first thing that comes to mind is: I think I injured my left ankle tapping along to the beat of the five Christian songs we sang at the start of service.  I didn’t
know what I was singing, so it was a good thing the lyrics were displayed on the projector.  The second: Man, these people are friendly.  They were quick to introduce themselves and the rest of the congregation, and they even
gave my roommate Saatchi and me goodie bags for being “new members” !

The third, of course, is the main bulk of the worship – the sermon.  According to the program, today’s message was “God’s Love Story: Are you Listening?”  It was basically about improving oneself by heeding God’s signs.

There was a particular part of the sermon that I was a bit confused about – Pastor Soon started off the message by talking about Israel.  He was discussing how the Israelites were straying from God’s path.  As I’m not quite up to speed with Israel’s current affairs, I was a tad lost.  After, though, I asked Saatchi about it, and she told me that Israel was pretty much building nukes intended for Palestine.

Leaflets for Sunday 08/05.

There were a couple of things that I did not agree with, but they were minor qualms, especially with respect to the whole picture which was about self improvement.  The first issue was homosexuality.  In discussing the Israelites not heeding past warnings.  The anecdote was about a traveling priest who had a concubine.  When the priest stayed at a particular tribe, some of the tribe members wanted to engage in homosexual intercourse with him.  In order to avoid this, the priest offered his concubine to the tribe members.  The next morning, the concubine was dead.  The real message was that such barbaric behavior has severe repercussions.  But what bothered me was that it was implied avoiding homophobic interactions somehow justified that sacrificing someone in such a fashion.  I don’t agree. I’m not saying that the polar opposite is true, but there has to be some happy medium.

The second thing that I disagreed with was the jab the pastor made about Hinduism.  This time, the context was the Israelites consorting with the Moabites (Ba’al Pe’or).  This resulted in the Israelites beginning to worship both the (Christian) god and the Moabite gods.  This harlotry, said Pastor Soon, is comparable to Hinduism, where one can worship many gods. `First off, that’s hardly an accurate comparison.  I understand how Ba’al Pe’or is considered wrong, because that goes against the monotheistic grain of Christianity and Judaism.  Hinduism, on the other hand, IS inherently polytheistic.  Besides, one of the main tenets of Hinduism is the acceptance of all other beliefs (I still remember some of that sixth grade ancient world history).  By another token, in the Islamic country of Malaysia, if you’re ethnically Malay, you are by law required to practice Islam.  Is the entire Malay race then to be condemned by the Christian world?  I think not.

But as I said before, these two things were only little bits of the big picture.

What I enjoyed about the sermon was that the stuff that Pastor Soon was preaching was common sense – learn from mistakes, and listen when people who care deeply about you advise you. Of course, I think some very important parts of this message were missing, such as don’t listen to advice if it’s obviously unsound (even if it is from someone who loves you!). The whole religious slant that God is the one dropping all these hints, I as an agnostic am ambivalent about, but other than that it was pretty good advice.

As the sermon continued, I realized that Israel’s current situation can being used as comparison on an individual level.  If one heeds past mistakes and consciously works to improve, then the phrase “history repeats itself” will be obsolete.

There was one part that I really liked – Pastor Soon was talking about discipline in families, and how parents must discipline their children to instill a sense of morality.  The example Pastor Soon gave was when his mother beat him with a baseball bat when he stole something from a store.  Pastor Soon adamantly said that he does not condone domestic violence, but he did stress the importance of discipline.

Discipline goes hand in hand with obedience, which is a coincidence since my friend Vincent was talking about obedience a few days earlier.  According to his elder, a lot of problems nowadays are caused by disobedience.  For instance, family relationships are broken due to a lack of filial respect.  Teachers encourage “disobedience” by teaching students to distrust the bias in textbooks and such, and mass media and pop culture celebrate rebellion and disrespect.  Such factors foster a culture of challenging authority, which in turn contribute to the issues we face.

There was communion today.

In freshman year, I learned the phrase “cafeteria Christian.”  According to my friend Abigail’s theology teacher, just as one has to pick and choose what to eat in to remain healthy, one also has to discern which parts of Christianity to follow to remain a morally upright individual. And, as odd and sacrilegious as that sounds, I think that’s true.  Besides, I feel that arguments about “better” religions are pointless – any person with a any sort of rooted sense of faith will not budge no matter how many arguments you throw at him or her.  Personally, as long as an individual has a relatively straight moral compass, I’ll have no qualms with him or her regardless of religion.  If God helps you, then God helps you.

Am I converted?  Oh no. Though, I do find it amusing that I’m listening to Starfield, a Christian rock band, as I’m typing this up.  I’m not experiencing a revival or anything – I just find Starfield good music to write to, hahah.

BUT!  I am definitely going back this Sunday.

Home-made!

Note to self #1:  Pay attention to how much condensed milk you add while making milk tea, because contrary to popular belief (or at least, to little kids’ stereotypical sugar craving), ridiculously sweet things taste horrid.

A friend and I were trying to make thai tea, as per this recipe (thank you, Google) but we didn’t have any of the spices, so we settled for plain milk tea.  Since the ratio of cups of condensed milk to cups of boiling water was 0.5:6, we calculated that we would need 0.83 cups, or 6.7 ounces, of condensed milk to make 10 cups of milk tea.  Each can of condensed milk was 3.5 ounces, which meant we had to add a little less two cans.  I don’t know how we ended up pouring seven cans of sweetener, but by then, it was too late.

We finally neutralized the over-sweetened tea with instant coffee powder.  Note to self #2:  As aspiring engineers, we may be lousy cooks, but we can at least rectify our mistakes.

The tapioca turned out wonderfully.

I bid farewell to my high school Class of 2012 this evening.  Cue hugs, smiles, and tiptoeing in pictures.

Ignore the messy desk.

I’m dismayed that the Penguins are leaving!  They had the the best rally skits, the most energetic dancers, the brightest and most varying students.  Their graduation marks the end of the old CAMS – the CAMS with a stable faculty and a classic challenging core curriculum, the CAMS without gates and before deaths and layoffs.  With my graduating class, my school welcomes the elimination of the volunteer hour graduation requirement, heralds the tradition of replacing teachers due to district budget crisis, and admits incoming freshman through a less exhaustive admissions process.

But finally, it means that I’m officially a senior.  And that is the most jolting of all, because it means I can’t avoid growing up any more.  I’m now privy to all the joy of navigating my way through the labyrinth called university admissions websites, frantically calculating the rapidly growing cost of application fees, balancing extracurriculars and the most rigorous course load I’ve ever had, and… finding time to eat.  Growing up means that I’m no longer shielded from the unknowns of the “real world” (which people say begins with college, but I don’t quite understand the reasoning haha).  Cue emotional rollercoaster.

But it’ll be okay.  These are good problems!  I think this is where I’m supposed to babble on about how in a year, everything will turn out all right.

I think I’ll pass.

So here’s to the first day of summer, and the first day of being a senior.  I’m making milk tea with boba tomorrow; that’s a good start, no?

When I first heard the word ‘blog,’ I immediately thought of puking.  Not that it made me want to vomit; it just seemed like a sound a person makes when throwing up, like ‘blaargghhh’ plus a whole symphony of other retching noises.

It turns out, blog = web + log.  An online journal.  A public online journal.  Writing in a journal is easy.  But for some reason, I found blogging difficult.  I spent hours on one post, focusing on polishing the piece rather than capturing the feel of the moment.  And I stopped.  Blogging, that is, just in case you’re thinking something dire like breathing.

So why am I here pecking away at the keyboard on the once-so-familiar ‘New Post’ screen after a three-month siesta?

I was scared.  Scared that I would forget.  Don’t get me wrong; I’m not a middle aged soon-to-be pensioner who has a long family history of Alzheimer’s.  I’m a fifteen-year-old high school sophmore.  (About to be, actually;  term starts next week.  I’ve heard funny things about 10th grade…)

It started after a somewhat-dismaying session of washing shoes.  Yes, washing shoes.  As if such an act can be capable of anything out of the ordinary.  Later, I thought about the incident and laughed at how idiotically I behaved.  No, I wouldn’t forget this moment for the world.

And then I was seized with a gnawing doubt.  “Okay, then,” said Common Sense.  “After little things like this, you always say you won’t forget.  That’s very lovely.  But you do eventually.  Right?  What about that pidgeon thing at the park?'”  Hmm.  What about those pidgeons in the park?  I vaguely remember pointing and laughing maniacally at something pidgeon-related, but that’s about it.  I know I emphatically told myself  I would always cherish that moment, and now I’ve forgotten it.  Which means I’ll definitely forget this washing shoes incident.

If only I could have some sort of record, I thought desperately.  Like a video.  Or an album with a picture for every second, for every action, every expression.  Admittedly, it would be quite stalker-ish if such a thing did happen, but still, it’s a momento.  Yet, these mediums don’t, can’t convey the multitudes of thoughts that flit through the mind, the exact emotion that engulfs a person.

Then, what can?

One word.

Writing.

“They said, ‘keep yourself hydrated.’  I tried!  The thing was, I kept myself hydrated with loads of champagne.”

You fool.  No wonder you ended up in the hospital, I felt like saying.  The man next to me had been jabbering away on his cell phone for the past 15 minutes.  He was the only one in the compartment who was talking.  I didn’t mind – the compartment was too quiet for my liking – but when he started detailing his midnight rendezvous, I tuned out and focused on the landscape flashing by.  I didn’t want to hear about his sex life.

The first thing I saw was a large liquor store almost completely covered with ivy.  Someone was clearing the ivy from a spot on the wall.  When he moved away, I saw it was a painting of the Lady of Guadalupe.  Ivy grows very rapidly and profusely; he would be waging a never-ending war against the vine.  What devotion!

The Metro train came to a halt.  Firestone station.  Across the street was a large, one story house painted a garish neon pink.  As passengers boarded the compartment, a lady and child came out of the house.  They laid a rug out on the grass front and kneeled.  They were Muslims starting the day’s prayers facing Mecca.  Five times a day they would pray: sunrise, mid-morning, mid-afternoon, sunset, and evening.  It must be wonderful to have such structure.

The compartment was silent.  I looked at my chatty neighbor, who was no longer talking on his cell phone.  Instead, he was mouthing words.  I glanced at his hands.  They were holding either the Torah or Qur’an; I wasn’t sure which.  He, even he – a man who doesn’t care who overhears what goes on in his sex life – takes the time to pay his respects.

Religion.  It’s everywhere, like that pervasive fragrance at Macy’s that I can’t quite put my finger on.  And maybe it’s because I have no religion that I can feel its presence so distinctly.  It’s almost as if there was a shining light within each person, a shining light that screams God, or Allah, or Krishna, or whoever else the person believes in.  The light varies in intensity from person to person, but it’s still there.  Me?  I have no light.  I am lost – not in the tangible world of ivy and libraries and Metro trains – but in the world of the pious, of supreme beings and holy scriptures, a world in which I have no place.

But quite honestly, I really don’t mind.

That’s actually a song by the Barenaked Ladies, an (ironically) all-male Canadian band.  They do live up to their name, though, in their album covers.  The song is about a couple who follow a weekly cycle of bickering and reconciling stick, depicted in this simple-yet-eloquent animation, created solely with the program Paint.  It’s not my animation, by the way.  I wish I was that artistic.

But at least that couple had something to occupy them.  I, on the other hand, have nothing to look forward to during spring break, except homework.  Granted, homework’s more peaceful than squabbling.  It’s not like the term paper is going to resurrect itself and wreak havoc.  That’d be a bizarre talking point:  What happened to you; you’re all covered in bruises!  Oh nothing really, only my projectile theory report suddenly sprang up and started slinging pens and pencils at me.

See, this is my pattern:  I’ll read for a chunk of time.  Next, I’ll play video games.  Then I’ll start snacking.  Now it’s time to just stare off into space.  It gets really monotonous.  It’s moments like this, after I’ve exhausted my ways of keeping myself busy, that I begin wishing Monday would hurry up.  (Blasphemy!)  Then I’ll get tired of traipsing back and forth to classes and I start ticking off the days till the holidays.

If only I didn’t have homework.  Otherwise, I’d go swimming!  Not beach swimming, where all you do is flounder and splash, but actual competitive swimming.  One of my team’s motto is “Real athletes don’t wear shoes.”  I think I offended the cross country and track people when I wore that shirt to school.  I really should have more of those shirts.

Well, I’m going to find my swimsuit and goggles.  I just hope I haven’t left the sunscreen in my school locker.

Don’t worry; I haven’t got tuberculosis or anything.  And it’s not like love-sick, where you at least get a kick out of the emotional rollercoaster.  No, this ride is all downhill.

I was flipping through my planner (Ah, the boredom of science class.  I’ve got nothing against science, mind you.  It’s just the class) when I realized, with a shock, today was Tuesday.  And not only was it Tuesday, it was the 9th.

What’s so special about Tuesday, March the 9^th?  Nothing really, not if you’re looking for an apocalypse.  But for the students in Health Occupations Students of America, or HOSA, the day after tomorrow is the start of the California HOSA competition.

Have fun!  That’s what the parents say.  And it will be fun.  I get to skip two days of school for an overnight stay at the Marriott in Ontario (California, not Canada), there’s a three hour dance, and the curfew’s 12 AM.

But the bottom line is, it’s still a competition, and I’m not ready.

Proper breathing lowers cancer risks.  That’s my topic.  My partner and I have got the right information and now we have to put the presentation together.  A 6 minute presentation, an 8 page report, and a Powerpoint.  All this about lungs and cancer.  It’s really not that difficult, so why am I finding it so hard?

Maybe I’m brain-sick as well as lung-sick.

I never thought good things happened back to back.  But now I know they can.

Of all the things I had lined up, the event I was the most doubtful of turned out to be the most successful.

I had bombed my Spanish test, I was going to get all four wisdom teeth extracted and I still had to finish that report for a biomedical club. But I wasn’t bothered too much.  I mean, that test was the only assignment in the grade book.  I had teeth extracted before – how different could this be?  And, it was only a report.

But I was really stressing about Key Club.  Their major emphasis program is ‘Children: Their future, our focus.’  Well this child here, yours truly, is starting to freak out (about you, oh high and mighty international organization); care to focus? 

I had decided to run for a board position, and the day before elections I was starting to get cold feet.  Do I have a chance against two 10^th graders?  And, did I study enough for the two minute question-and-answer session?  Because the president’s going to ask a lot of questions, and if I don’t do well, then she just might feather, skin, and debone me.  And enjoy it.  Not that I have feathers.

But somehow I got through election day (all the while nursing my chipmunk-like cheeks, aftermath of the tooth extraction).  I said my speech and answered questions.  Time total:  5 minutes tops.  I spent two weeks preparing for 5 minutes talk time.  Wonderful.  But it must have paid off, because I got elected as my school’s Key Club secretary.

That was good thing number one.  I’ve been following an elementary school teacher’s blog.  The most recent post (at the time), Shattered Mosaic, cried against the unfairness of the educational system.  Mr. Teacher had a photography project meant to give students an insight to their cultures and backgrounds.  But, due to the terrible NYC weather and the upcoming standardized testing, not all of the students could participate.

The way he described it, I felt as if someone had taken my favorite glass bauble and smashed it in front of me, just for the heck of it.  These students were missing out on a beautiful, enriching project, and it wasn’t their fault.  So I made my first comment.  I sure didn’t expect the response.  My comment was ‘complimentary’ and ‘uplifting.’  I feel like I’ve made someone’s day.

That makes me happy.