3. Hector's Dolphins 2026

I love my family. I love my friends. I love sleeping. I like scrolling. I like shopping. Most of all, I love food. But how can you use the same word to describe your feelings toward your family and a bowl of fried rice?  In almost all the portrayals of an American family in movies that I have watched, the word “love” seems to be juggled around in the context of everything. It’s thrown around so much that there is no difference in meaning between “I love that” and “That's nice.” It’s used so casually that I feel like the word “love” is secretly a double agent. We use it to express our deepest emotions while also to express the shallowest feelings of joy. A funny reel that your friend sent you on Insta? Love it. Your teacher postpones that one dreadful test you and your friends have been crying over? Love that. Finally getting tickets to a concert that your mom originally refused. Love her. It can communicate affection, excitement, happiness, or simply the fact that our food tastes r...

  “Tesserae” are the small tiles used to build a mosaic.  There is a beautiful quote by writer James Nicoll that describes English not as a neat, organized language, but as one that “follows other languages down dark alleys, knocks them over and goes through their pockets for loose grammar.” And quite frankly, I can’t write quite as well as Nicoll, but I’m doing my best with the confusing pathways that make American English from https://blog.mosaicartsupply.com/beginner-mosaic-artwork/ If you’ve ever studied art history, read historical fiction, or even seen The Hunger Games , you might have stumbled across the word tesserae . It sounds pretty, but I know that even the most diligent SAT vocab studier doesn’t know what it means at a first glance. It is originally borrowed from Latin and Greek, and refers to the small, individual pieces of stone, glass, or tile used to construct a mosaic. Its a great word on its own, but it is quite the metaphor about the Language of America. Lo...

Throughout history, Ancient Greece has been seen as the pinnacle of civilization. In fact, many parts of Ancient Roman society (another idolized civilization) were copied and added to from their Greek counterparts, namely their gods, art, and architecture.  A famous piece of Greek architecture is the Parthenon . It has Doric columns on the outside, a wrap-around frieze (the rectangular strip that sits above the columns), and a pediment (the triangular section atop the frieze).  Image of the Parthenon from Wikipedia Likewise, a famous piece of Roman architecture is the Pantheon . And it looks like a standard temple from the front. It also has (Corinthian not Doric) columns, a frieze, and a pediment.  Image of the Pantheon from Wikipedia Apart from their extremely similar names, the Parthenon and the Pantheon have somewhat similar structures, even if their styles are different. The Pantheon is just one example of Greek influence on other societies.  But as I said, the ...

  Height. Arguably one of the most effective social status boosters. If you walk down the street right this moment, who do you notice walking alongside you: the 6’7 Marlon incarnation or the average Jimothy standing at 5’8? (rhetorical question btw, but you can answer if you’d like to).  Some might argue while tackling how “height isn’t everything” and that only “personality matters.” But I guarantee you if Genie himself awakened from that one poor, overworked kettle in your kitchen, and said, “I can only add inches to your height”(which is lame and tragic), all of you reading this blog will answer with a big fat YES while grinning ear to ear, because who WOULDN’T want to grow taller. Balversa (Erdafitinib) We’ve had our parents tell us to “drink more milk,” and we've seen annoying ads interrupting our favourite TV shows, promising that their vitamins will grow kids vertically. ( side note: the kids actually grew perpendicular to the direction the ads promised ). This eviden...

                                                                                                                                 Image of Indian Flag from Jai Tv It seems that every time I go on TikTok or other social media nowadays, I always see hateful videos directed towards individuals of Indian descent. Whether it be a disgusting depiction of Indian street food. Most of the time, these videos are blatant misinformation or recorded in the slums of India, where individuals are too poverty-stricken to invest in hygiene products. Videos like these spread common stereotype...

A couple of weeks ago, my older brother surprised me with a gift: a bobblehead of some random respected football coach at his college.  I hope you guys like the cool angle of the photo! I'm trying to be more aesthetic! To be frank, he probably gave it to me because it was a nuisance to him. But, hey, you know what they say: one man’s trash is another man’s treasure. So, I’ve kept it on my nightstand since, serving as a good luck charm (well, mainly because the name of the bobblehead is “Manager Luck”). Staring at this bobblehead, though, I’ve come to confront the same question that’s been lingering in my mind for the longest of time: why is the sport called “American football?” The players only kick the ball once every twenty minutes or so, and for every other play, they go back to the good ol’ catch and throw.  As a soccer fan and an American, I have nothing but love for American football, but c’mon man! Basically every single other continent on this planet even recognizes so...

No, He’s Not French When asked where the name “ Lucy Bedroque ” came from, the artist explained that Lucy translates to “light” in Latin, while bedrock represents a solid foundation. Put together, the name implies that light is the foundation . When EVERYTHING around you is shifting—your relationships, your motives, your environment—what is your bedrock? It shouldn’t be your external label. Your foundation should be your inner light: your core values, your creativity, your resilience, and your right to change. See, many of us categorize ourselves with labels—stamped, inked, and firmly sealed to fit into an ideal frame of societal standards. Controlling us on who we are and who we can be. An example of this can be Lucy’s music and the modern media’s labeling of the various sounds he’d created over his career.  Sisterhood was released by Lucy Bedroque when he was under the moniker lostrushi . This 2023 era of Lucy was defined by hazy, ethereal cloud rap and hypnotic digicore...

My dad has a pretty noticeable accent when he speaks English. Not only does he mispronounce half the words he says, but even the ones he phonetically pronounces correctly sound off for some reason. I vividly remember teaching my dad how to pronounce the letter “H,” repeatedly enunciating the letter so he can imitate it, with no prevail. As an immigrant from China, this accent is bound to his lips; however, his accent doesn’t reflect his ability to communicate proficiently in English. In fact, my dad got a higher score on the English section of the GRE,  a standardized test required to graduate from a university, than the average American. This distinction between accent and linguistic ability shows that accents are more than just the way we pronounce words. An accent, at its most basic level, is just physical differences in sounds shaped by factors such as geography and culture. These physical differences, however, are not inherently associated with the meanings that society assign...

                                                                       College Board Logo from Facebook. “How many APs are you taking?” I get this question almost EVERY SINGLE TIME I try talking to someone my age. It gets to a point. As we get older, school becomes a greater part of our identity than most of us would like. Fine, I’ll admit it: whenever a conversation is dying, I ask a question about school or AP classes, and all of a sudden, the conversation is reborn. In fact, most high school students could talk about their classes for hours. Although this seems like a good way to make connections, you never actually learn anything about the person you're talking to; you just learn the classes they’re taking and how they feel about them.  Somewhere along the way, we s...

“Oh, I don’t really watch movies.” What?! As someone who absolutely loves watching movies, I’m shocked when people say such a thing. How can you possibly not watch movies?  Now, if you’re genuinely a “film connoisseur,” you might want to stop reading now. Because when I say I like movies, I do mean classics . In other words, movies that are quite literally known for their popularity over time. Think The Breakfast Club , When Harry Met Sally… , Back to the Future, Love Actually . These movies are typically (but not limited to) coming-of-age, rom-com, or sci-fi movies that are noted for their nostalgia of 80s, 90s, or 2000s culture.  So far, I’ve watched 43 out of the 56 movies on my growing list of classics. During my extensive movie watching, I’ve noticed how much standards have changed over a period of 20 to 40 years. When I say standards, I don’t mean that movies are terrible now or were terrible then. I mean that movie content has changed a lot. First off, there are so man...

  I hate tests. Sorry, maybe I didn’t emphasize that enough. I HATE, HATE, HATE TESTS. For as long as I can remember, I’ve always found myself scoring lower than what I expected on almost any form of a test. Whether it be the vocabulary quizzes we do biweekly (seriously, these are so much harder than I thought they would be), timed writes, or math tests (which can single-handedly alter my mood days before the test), I have rarely felt satisfied with my performance.  Even with the September SAT (gosh, I genuinely hope the people at College Board , the SUPPOSED NONPROFIT, go to sleep tonight with a warm pillow), I opened my score at 7:00 AM on a Friday morning, only to ruin my mental state for that day and a few days that followed.  (Unfortunately not my SAT score) I’m sure many of you feel the same way I do. One of my favorite books that I read during the summer before our sophomore year is James Clear’s Atomic Habits . In it, he explains the concept of how we create our o...