I’m hiding behind the swing door of the dressing room when I text my mom just one word: “Traumatizing!” I’m on a bra-shopping expedition with my grandmother, and just in case it’s not abundantly clear, this trip was Not. My. Idea. Bra shopping has always been shrouded in mystery for me, and growing up in a household with two moms and two younger sisters hasn’t helped one bit: One of my moms doesn’t wear bras; the other proudly proclaims that her bras are older than me. A two-mom family without the faintest idea what a teenage girl needs—par for the course around here.

So when my 78-year-old grandmother volunteered to take me bra shopping, my moms jumped at the chance. Here I was with my frugal grandmother, outlet-shopping among the racks of intimates that aren’t sized quite right, that have too much padding or too little…You can see my predicament, and it’s no surprise that my younger self was confused by the words “wire-free,” “concealing petals,” “balconette.”

The saleswoman called to my grandmother from across the store, “What cup size is she?”

“I don’t know,” my grandmother screamed back. “Can you measure her?”

Measure me? They have got to be kidding. 

***

“I just don’t want her to feel different,” I heard my grandmother say later that day. “Kids this age can be so mean.”

I love my grandmother, but she believes the world is harsh and unforgiving, and she thinks that the only path to happiness is fitting in. My grandmother had taken me bra shopping in a last-ditch attempt to make me “normal” because I was entering 9th grade at Deerfield in a few weeks, and she worried that I would stick out worse than the underwire of a bargain basement bra.

It’s true—I’m not your typical Deerfield student. I’m a day student with lesbian moms who have several fewer zeros on their bank account balance than typical Deerfield parents. I’m the kid with a congenital foot deformity, which means I literally can’t run, who will never be able to sprint across campus from classroom to classroom. I’m the kid with life-threatening food allergies to milk and tree nuts who can’t indulge in the pizza at swim team celebrations or the festive cake and ice cream during advisory meetings. 

But fitting in was my grandmother’s worry, not mine. What my grandmother didn’t consider is that there’s no single way to fit in. I might be two minutes later to class than the sprinters, but I always arrive. I might have to explain to my friends what “having two moms” means, but I’ll never stop being thankful that Deerfield students are eager to lean in and understand. I may not be able to eat the food, but you can count on me to show up and celebrate.

While I can’t run, I can swim and play water polo, and I can walk the campus giving Admissions tours. My family might not look like everyone else’s, but I can embrace those differences and write articles for the school newspaper or give a talk at “School Meeting,” sharing my family and my journey. Some of my closest friendships at Deerfield have grown from a willingness on both sides to embrace difference.

On one of the first days of 9th grade, I sat down to write a “Deerfield Bucket List”—a list of experiences that I wanted to have during my four years in high school, including taking a Deerfield international trip and making the Varsity swim team. That list included thirteen items, and I’m eleven-thirteenths of the way there, not because I have the right bra, but because I’ve embraced the very thing that my grandmother was afraid of. Bra shopping is still shrouded in mystery for me, but I know that I am where I should be, I’m doing work that matters to me, and fitting in rarely crosses my mind.

As late afternoon sunlight danced on my shoulders, I squished my eight-year-old face against the glass of the outdoor tank, eyes wide and searching for any signs of life. There! I scrambled from where I was seated, chasing the flickering sight of my prize. The otter darted away from me, his lithe body disappearing into a crack in the stones. I slumped against the wall, disappointed. Ever the HR representative, my mother saw my face and asked me what was wrong. I explained my frustration with the otters -- they’re so fun to watch, but they refuse to be seen. My mother leaned down, brushing a long lock of hair out of my face, and told me, “Sometimes, the animals get tired of being watched. They just want to be left alone.”

I didn’t think much of the otters after that. Until I became one.

In October of my sophomore year, I was four months into my transition from female to male. I wasn’t out to my extended family, my wardrobe was a haphazard mess of cargo shorts and skirts, and my voice was still, to my distress, annoyingly high. Being transgender at Middleton High School was no small feat -- I stuck out in a sea of over 2,000 cisgender peers, and most of my teachers did not know how to deal with people “in my situation,” as one put it.

One day, as I walked to my bus after school, I heard snickers from behind me. I turned around and saw a rowdy group of boys. One had his phone up, recording me. Everyone was laughing, and in an instant I knew they were laughing at me. I turned and walked away, doing my best to conceal myself from their view. The laughter continued.

I was the star of a humiliating show that I never asked to be a part of. I had become the otter. Their laughs kept ringing in my ears as I sat alone on the bus. I wanted to crawl inside myself and implode rather than think about going back to face them again the next day. My phone kept buzzing, but I refused to check it. It was only when I arrived home and checked those messages that I found that the video had been posted across social media for hundreds of my peers to see. It seemed like nothing, just a video of me walking, turning, and looking away. But their laughs were clear in the background, and I still understood the point of the video -- look at the freak. Look at the new zoo exhibit.

Seeing that video, I realized that I couldn’t allow myself to turn into what they saw me as. They wanted an otter, a punching bag that wouldn’t fight back. I was not going to be their otter. The next day, I went to my first Sexuality and Gender Equality club meeting. I spoke to the administration about what had happened. I saved the video and showed people. I took control.

Maybe they'll never see me as an equal, but that is their blindness, not mine.

Those boys wanted me to believe that I was merely an exhibit to be laughed at, but now I know I live for greater things. I live for lattes, for courtroom closing arguments, for the pesto I make at work. I live for Black Lives Matter and #enough and Pride. I live for kayaking and summer camp, for the kids in SAGE and my younger sister. My classmates tried to dehumanize me, trample me, and mold me into their image of transgender people. Maybe they’ll never see me as an equal, but that is their blindness, not mine. I do not live on display. I do not live in a zoo.

《动物园》

那些男孩想让我相信自己仅仅是一个供人取笑的展品，但我知道我为了更伟大的事情而活。我为了拿铁咖啡而活，为了法庭上的结案陈词而活，为了我在工作中制作的香蒜酱而活。我为了“Black Lives Matter”运动、“#Enough”运动和“Pride”游行而活。我为了划皮划艇和夏令营而活，为性别平等俱乐部的孩子们和我妹妹而活。我的同学们试图让我失去人性，践踏我，并将我塑造成符合他们对跨性别者偏见的样子。也许他们永远不会视我为平等的人，但那是他们的偏见，不是我的。我不是为了成为展品而活。我并不生活在动物园里。

Fish Out of Water:

idiom. a person who is in an unnatural environment; completely out of place.

When I was ten, my dad told me we were moving to somewhere called "Eely-noise." The screen flashed blue as he scrolled through 6000 miles of water on Google Earth to find our new home. Swipe, swipe, swipe, and there it was: Illinois, as I later learned.

Moving to America was like going from freshwater into saltwater. Not only did my mom complain that American food was too salty, but I was helplessly caught in an estuary of languages, swept by daunting tides of tenses, articles, and homonyms. It’s not a surprise that I developed an intense, breathless kind of thirst for what I now realize is my voice and self-expression.

This made sense because the only background I had in English was “Konglish”--an unhealthy hybrid of Korean and English--and broken phrases I picked up from SpongeBob. As soon as I stepped into my first class in America, I realized the gravity of the situation: I had to resort to clumsy pantomimes, or what I euphemistically called body language, to convey the simplest messages. School became an unending game of pictionary.

Amid the dizzying pool of vowels and phonemes and idioms (why does spilling beans end friendships?), the only thing that made sense was pictures and diagrams. Necessarily, I soon became interested in biology as its textbook had the highest picture-to-text ratio. Although I didn’t understand all the ant-like captions, the colorful diagrams were enough to catch my illiterate attention: a green ball of chyme rolling down the digestive tract, the rotor of the ATP synthase spinning like a waterwheel. Biology drew me with its ELL-friendliness and never let go.

I later learned in biology that when a freshwater fish goes in saltwater, it osmoregulates--it drinks a lot of water and urinates less. This used to hold true for my school day, when I constantly chugged water to fill awkward silences and lubricate my tongue to form better vowels. This habit in turn became a test of English-speaking and bladder control: I constantly missed the timing to go to the bathroom by worrying about how to ask. The only times I could express myself were through my fingers, between the pages of Debussy and under my pencil tip. To fulfill my need for self-expression and communication, I took up classical music, visual art, and later, creative writing. To this day, I will never forget the ineffable excitement when I delivered a concerto, finished a sculpture, and found beautiful words that I could not pronounce. If biology helped me understand, art helped me be understood.

There’s something human, empathetic, even redemptive about both art and biology. While they helped me reconcile with English and my new home, their power to connect and heal people is much bigger than my example alone. In college and beyond, I want to pay them forward, whether by dedicating myself to scientific research, performing in benefit concerts, or simply sharing the beauty of the arts. Sometimes, language feels slippery like fish on my tongue. But knowing that there are things that transcend language grounds and inspires me. English seeped into my tongue eventually, but I still pursue biology and arts with the same, perhaps universal, exigency and sincerity: to understand and to be understood.

Over the years, I have come to acknowledge and adore my inner fish, that confused, tongue-twisted and home-sick ELL kid from the other side of the world, which will forever coexist within me. And I’ve forgiven English, although I still can’t pronounce words like “rural,” because it gifted me with new passions to look forward to every day. Now, when I see kids with the same breathless look that I used to have gasping for home water, Don’t worry, I want to tell them.

You’ll find your water.

《如鱼离水》

如鱼离水。俚语：一个处于不自然环境中， 格格不入的人。 

十岁那年，爸爸告诉我，我们要搬到一个叫 “Eely-noise “的地方。当他在谷歌地球上滚动浏览6000英里的水域，寻找我们的新家时，屏幕闪烁着蓝光。滑动，滑动，滑动，就到了。我后来才知道，那个地方叫伊利诺伊州。

搬到美国对我而言就像是从淡水环境进入咸水环境，不仅妈妈抱怨美国的食物太咸，我也被困在语言的海洋中，被时态、冠词和同音异义词的巨浪冲击。难怪我产生了一种极度渴望的感觉，现在我才明白，那是我想要表达自己声音和情感的渴望。

其实也很正常，毕竟我的英文基础只有“Konglish（韩式英语）”—一韩语和英语混合体一—还有从《海绵宝宝》里学来的断断续续的片段。当我踏入美国的课堂时，我意识到了问题的严重性：我不得不依靠笨拙的哑剧，或者说是肢体语言，来传达最简单的信息。学校变成了一个无休止的你画我猜游戏。

在令人眼花缭乱的元音、辅音和俚语（为什么“泄露秘密”会破坏友谊？）中，唯一能使我理解的就是图片和图表。很快我开始对生物学感兴趣，因为那本书插图比例最高！虽然我看不懂那些像蚂蚁一样的密密麻麻注释，但色彩鲜艳的图表足以吸引我这个文盲的注意力：绿色的食糜球在消化道里滚动，ATP合成酶的转子像水车一样旋转。生物课以其对英语语言学习者的友好吸引着我，从未放手。

后来我在生物学课上学到，当淡水鱼进入咸水时，它会进行渗透调节—大量饮水，减少排尿。这跟我曾经上学时的情况如出一辙，我经常不停地喝水来填补尴尬的沉默，并润湿舌头发好发清楚元音。这种习惯反过来成了英语口才和膀胱控制能力的考验：我总是因为担心如何提问而错过上厕所的时间。我唯一能表达自己的方式是通过手指--在德彪西(Debussy)的曲谱页和笔尖之下创作。于是，为了满足自我表达和沟通的需求，我开始接触古典音乐、视觉艺术，甚至是后来开始创作文学作品。直到今天，我仍然无法忘记当我演奏完一首协奏曲、完成一件雕塑、找到那些我无法发出却美丽的词汇时那种难以言表的激动之情。如果生物学帮助我理解世界，那么艺术则帮助我被世界所理解。

艺术和生物学都有着人性、共情甚至救赎的力量。它们不仅帮助我适应英语和新家，它们连接和治愈人们的力量远不止我个人的例子所能涵盖。在大学乃至以后的日子里，我希望能将这种力量传递下去，无论是通过投身科学研究，参加公益音乐会演出，还是仅仅分享艺术的美好。有时候，语言感觉像舌尖上的滑鱼，难以捉摸。但知道有超越语言的东西存在让我感到踏实和受到鼓舞。英语最终渗透进了我的生活中，但我仍然以同样的，或许是普遍的，迫切和真诚的态度追求生物学和艺术:理解世界，也被世界所理解。

多年来，我逐渐认识到并爱上了我内心的那条“鱼"，那个来自世界另一端、迷茫、舌头打结、思乡的学习英语的孩子，它将永远与我共存。我也原谅了英语。尽管我仍然无法正确发音"rural"这个词，英语给了我每天期待的新激情。现在，每当我看到孩子们带着我曾经那种渴望家乡水的喘不过气的表情时，我都想对他们说:

My nightstand is home to a small menagerie of critters, each glass-eyed specimen lovingly stuffed with cotton. Don’t get the wrong idea, now – I’m not a taxidermist or anything. I crochet.

Crochet is a family tradition. My grandmother used to wield her menacing steel hook like a mage’s staff and tout it as such: an instrument that bestowed patience, decorum, and poise on its owner. During her youth in Vietnam, she spent her evenings designing patterns for ornate doilies and handkerchiefs. Then the Vietnam War turned our family into refugees. The Viet Cong imprisoned my grandfather, a colonel in the South Vietnam Air Force, in a grueling labor camp for thirteen years. Many wives would have lost hope, but my grandmother was no average woman. A literature professor in a time when women’s access to education was limited, she assumed the role of matriarch with wisdom and confidence, providing financial and emotional security. As luxuries like yarn grew scarce, she conjured up all sorts of useful household items – durable pillowcases, blankets, and winter coats – and taught my mother to do the same. Because of these bitter wartime memories, she wanted my handiwork to be of a decidedly less practical bent; among the first objects she taught me to crochet were chrysanthemums and roses. However, making flowers bloom from yarn was no easy task.

Even with its soft plastic grip and friendly rounded edges, my first crochet hook had a mind of its own, like the enchanted broom in “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice.” It stubbornly disobeyed my orders as I impatiently wrenched it through the yarn. My grandmother’s stern appraisal of my efforts often interrupted this perpetual tug-of-war: My stitches were uneven. The edges curled inward. I would unravel my work and start anew.

I convinced myself that cobbling together a lopsided rectangle would be the pinnacle of my crochet prowess but refused to give up. Just as a diligent wizard casts more advanced spells over time, I learned to channel the magic of the crochet hook. The animal kingdom is my main source of inspiration; the diversity and vivid pigmentation of life on Earth lend themselves perfectly to the vibrant and versatile art of crochet. Many of the animals I make embark on migratory journeys, like their real-life counterparts. Take Agnes, for example, a cornflower-blue elephant named after mathematician Maria Gaetana Agnesi who lives in my calculus teacher’s classroom, happily grazing on old pencil shavings and worksheets. As I fasten off the final stitches on every creature, I hope to weave a little whimsy and color into someone’s life.

Each piece I finish reminds me of the network of stitches that connects mother and daughter, past and present, tradition and innovation. In this vast cultural web, I am proud to be my family’s link between East and West. As I prepare for adulthood, I am eager to weave my own mark into the great patchwork quilt that is America.

《把编织带到美国》

I was in love with the way the dainty pink mouse glided across the stage, her tutu twirling as she pirouetted and her rose-colored bow following the motion of her outstretched arms with every grand jeté.

I had always dreamed I would dance, and Angelina Ballerina made it seem so easy. There was something so freeing about the way she wove her body into the delicate threads of the Sugar Plum Fairy’s song each time she performed an arabesque. I longed for my whole being to melt into the magical melodies of music; I longed to enchant the world with my own stories; and I longed for the smile that glimmered on every dancer’s face.

At recess, my friends and I would improvise dances. But while they seemed well on their way to achieving ballerina status, my figure eights were more like zeroes and every attempt at spinning around left me feeling dizzy. Sometimes, I even ran over my friends’ toes. How could I share my stories with others if I managed to injure them with my wheelchair before the story even began?

I then tried piano, but my fingers stumbled across the keys in an uncoordinated staccato tap dance of sorts. I tried art, but the clumsiness of my brush left the canvas a colorful mess. I tried the recorder, but had Angelina existed in real life, my rendition of “Mary Had a Little Lamb” would have frozen her in midair, with flute-like screeches tumbling through the air before ending in an awkward split and shattering the gossamer world the Sugar Plum Fairy had worked so hard to build.

For as long as I could remember, I’d also been fascinated by words, but I’d never explored writing until one day in fourth grade, the school librarian announced a poetry contest. That night, as I tried to sleep, ideas scampered through my head like Nutcracker mice awakening a sleeping Clara to a mystical new world. By morning, I had choreographed the mice to tell a winning story in verse about all the marvelous outer space factoids I knew.

Now, my pencil pirouettes perfect O’s on paper amidst sagas of doting mothers and evanescent lovers. The tip of my pen stipples the lines of my notebook with the tale of a father’s grief, like a ballerina tiptoeing en pointe; as the man finds solace in nature, the ink flows gracefully, and for a moment, it leaps off the page, as if reaching out to the heavens to embrace his daughter’s soul. Late at night, my fingers tap dance across the keys of my laptop, tap tap tapping an article about the latest breakthrough in cancer research—maybe LDCT scans or aneuploidy-targeted therapy could have saved the daughter’s life; a Spanish poem about the beauty of unspoken moments; and the story of a girl in a wheelchair who learned how to dance.

As the world sleeps, I lose myself in the cathartic cadences of fresh ink, bursting with stories to be told and melting into parched paper. I cobble together phrases until they spring off my tongue, as if the Sugar Plum Fairy herself has transformed the staccato rumblings of my brain into something legato and sweet. I weave my heart, my soul, my very being into my words as I read them out loud, until they become almost like a chant. With every rehearsal, I search for the perfect finale to complete my creation. When I finally find it, eyes dry with midnight-induced euphoria, I remember that night so many years ago when I discovered the magic of writing, and smile.

I may not dance across the stage like Angelina Ballerina, but I can dance across the page.

I, too, can dance.

《我，我也能跳舞》

我沉醉于那只精致的粉红色小老鼠在舞台上的翩跹身姿，旋转间，她的芭蕾短裙轻盈飞舞，每次腾空跳跃，她身上那玫瑰色的蝴蝶结都随着她伸展的手臂而飘逸摆动。 

跳舞一直是我内心深处的梦想，而安吉丽娜这位芭蕾舞者，将这份梦想展现得如此轻松自如。每当她优雅地做出阿拉贝斯克舞姿，身体与《糖梅仙子之歌》的细腻旋律融为一体，那种自由与释放的感觉让我为之倾倒。我渴望自己也能融入音乐的魔法之中，让灵魂随之起舞；我渴望用我自己的故事去迷醉世界；我渴望看见每一个舞者脸上那如星光般闪耀的微笑。

课间休息时，我与朋友们会即兴舞动，但每当他们似乎都在向芭蕾舞者的优雅靠近时，我的舞姿却更像是一个零散的步伐，每次尝试旋转都会让我头晕目眩，甚至不小心踩到朋友的脚趾。如果在我尚未起步之前，就因笨拙而伤害到他们，我又怎能与他们分享我的舞蹈梦想呢？

于是，我尝试了钢琴，但我的手指在键盘上笨拙地敲击，仿佛在进行一场不协调的踢踏舞。我尝试了绘画，但画笔在我的手中却留下了一片五彩缤纷的混乱。我也尝试了竖笛，但倘若安吉丽娜真的存在，我对《玛丽有只小羊》的吹奏恐怕会让她在空中停滞，笛声尖锐刺耳，在空中翻滚，最终以一个尴尬的劈叉结束，打破了糖梅仙子精心构建的梦幻世界。

然而，从记事起，文字一直是我心中的挚爱。直到四年级的一天，学校图书馆员宣布了诗歌比赛的消息，我才真正开始深入探索写作的奥秘。那夜，当我躺在床上试图入眠时，灵感如同胡桃夹子中的小鼠般在我脑海中跳跃，将我带入了一个神秘而崭新的世界。到了清晨，我已经编排好了这些诗句，用它们讲述了我所知道的关于外太空的奇妙知识，并最终赢得了比赛。

如今，我的铅笔在纸上舞动，勾勒出完美的圆形，编织着关于母亲慈爱、恋人传奇的故事。笔尖的墨水在笔记本的页间点缀出父亲悲伤的故事，它们如同芭蕾舞者般轻盈地移动；当这位父亲在大自然中找到慰藉时，墨水也优雅地流淌，仿佛从纸上跃起，伸向天堂，拥抱着他女儿的灵魂。深夜时分，我的手指在笔记本电脑的键盘上跳跃，敲击出关于癌症研究最新突破的文章、一首描绘无言时刻之美的西班牙诗，以及一个坐在轮椅上的女孩学会跳舞的动人故事。

当世界陷入沉睡时，我沉浸在新鲜墨水的情感节奏中，心中充满了要讲述的故事，它们渴望被融入干渴的纸张之中。我拼凑着短语，直到它们从舌尖跃出，仿佛糖梅仙子亲自将我心中的断章低语编织成连贯而甜美的旋律。当我大声朗读这些文字时，我将我的心、我的灵魂、我的整个存在都融入其中，直到它们几乎成为了一种咒语。在每一次的创作中，我都在寻找那完美的句点，以结束我的作品。当终于找到时，我因熬夜而干涩的眼睛中闪烁着兴奋的泪光，我回想起多年前那个发现写作魔力的夜晚，嘴角不禁泛起微笑。

我或许无法在舞台上如安吉丽娜般翩翩起舞，但我可以在纸上尽情舞动。

Three days before I got on a plane to go across the country for six weeks I quit milk cold-turkey. I had gone to the chiropractor to get a general check up. I knew I had scoliosis and other problems; however, I learned that because of my excessive, to say the least, intake of milk my body had developed a hormone imbalance. I decided it would be best for my health to completely stop drinking milk and avoid dairy when possible. Little did I know, this was only the start of a summer of change; three days later I got on a plane to attend the Minority Introduction To Engineering and Science (MITES) program in Massachusetts.

I was afraid; afraid my support wouldn't be good enough, afraid to show that I cared, afraid they didn't care for me.

I assumed that most of the people were going to be unhealthily competitive because of my past experiences. I thought I would keep to myself, do my work, and come back no different. Living in a building with 80 people I’ve never met in a place I’ve never been while making a significant life style change was not easy. The first few days were not kind: I got mild stomach ulcers, it was awkward, and I felt out of place. That first Thursday night however, all of that started to change. On Thursday evenings we had “Family Meetings” and on this particular Thursday part of our Machine Learning class was working together when the time came to go to the dining hall for whatever this “Family Meeting” was. Honestly we dreaded it at first, “I have work to do” was the most common phrase. We learned that “Family Meeting” was a safe space for us to talk about anything and everything. Today’s theme was, “what’s something important about your identity that makes you unique?” but the conversation quickly evolved into so much more. People spoke about losing family members, being shunned at home, not feeling comfortable in their own skin, and more. So many people opened up about incredibly personal things, I felt honored to be given that trust. The room was somber and warm with empathy as the meeting concluded. Out of my peripheral vision I saw Izzy, one of my Machine Learning classmates, rushing back to the conference room. I realized something was not right. Instinctively, I followed her back to where we were working. Izzy sat down and immediately broke down, the rest of us filed in as she started to talk about what was wrong. It felt as though an ambulance was sitting on my chest, my breaths were short and stingy. I was afraid; afraid my support wouldn’t be good enough, afraid to show that I cared, afraid they didn’t care for me. In this one moment all my insecurities, some I didn’t even know I had, came to the surface. The heavy silence of hushed sobbing was broken by an outpouring of support and a hug. We all started sharing what we’re going through and even some of our past trauma. Slowly that weight is lifted off my chest. I feel comfortable, I feel wanted, I feel safe.

This is the first time I truly felt confident, empowered, and loved. I am surrounded by people smarter than me and I don’t feel any lesser because of it. I have become the true Francisco, or Cisco as they call me. I now, at all times, am unapologetically myself. The difference is night and day. As the program progressed I only felt more comfortable and safe, enough so to even go up and speak at a family meeting. These people, this family, treated me right. I gained priceless confidence, social skills, self-worth, empathetic ability, and mental fortitude to take with me and grow on for the rest of my life. Through all of this somehow cutting out the biggest part of my diet became the least impactful part of my summer.

《在MITES的家庭会议》

Lunch and recess were opportunities to ‘play’ Stephen Sondheim’s Sweeney Todd, so we murdered our friends. We’d bake the dead into meat pies and scream cacophonously, “WE ALL DESERVE TO DIE!” Nine-year-old me even teased my hair, donned my Mrs. Lovett costume for Halloween, and rambled on about Australian penal colonies and how dead fiddle players make for “stringy” meat. You cannot imagine my disappointment when everybody thought I was Frankenstein’s Bride.

Like Gypsy Rose Lee, my siblings and I spent our formative years at rehearsals and performances, where I was indoctrinated into the cult that worships Sondheim. In our household, Sondheimian theatre was a religion (I’m not sure how I feel about God, but I do believe in Sondheim.) My brother and I read Sondheim’s autobiography, Finishing the Hat, like the bible, reading the book cover to cover and returning to page one the moment we finished. At six, he introduced me to Sondheim’s West Side Story, which illustrates the harms of poverty and systematic racism. Initially, I only appreciated Jerome Robbins’ choreography (Sorry, Mr. Shakespeare). When I revisited the musical years later, I had a visceral reaction as I witnessed young adults engaging in deadly gang rivalries. Experiencing Tony’s gruesome death forced me, a middle-class suburbanite, to feel the devastating effects of inner-city violence, and my belief in the need for early intervention programs to prevent urban gun violence was born.

I began to discover political and historical undertones in all of Sondheim’s work. For example, Assassins whirlwinds from the Lincoln era up to Reagan’s Presidency. Originally, I simply thought it was hysterical to belt Lynette Fromme’s love ballad to Charles Manson. Later, I realized how much history I had unknowingly retained from this musical. The song “November 22, 1963” reflects on America’s most notorious assassination attempts, and alludes to each assassin being motivated by a desperate attempt to connect to a specific individual or culture to gain control over their life. Assassins awakened me to the flaws in some of our quintessential American ideals because the song “Everybody’s Got the Right” illustrates how the American individualism enshrined in our Constitution can be twisted to support hate, harm, and entitlement. I internalized Sondheim’s political commentary, and I see its relevance in America's most pressing issues. The misconstrued idea of limitless freedom can be detrimental to public health, worsening issues such as the climate crisis, gun violence, and the coronavirus pandemic. These existential threats largely stem from antiquated ideas that the rights of the few outweigh the rights of the majority. Ironically, a musical about individuals who tried to dismantle our American political system sparked my political interests, but this speaks to the power of Sondheim’s music and my ability to make connections and draw inspiration from unlikely sources.

Absorbing historical and political commentary set to music allows my statistical and logical brain to better empathize with the characters, giving me a deeper understanding of the conflicts portrayed on stage, almost like reading a diary. Theatremakers are influenced by both history and their life experiences. I internalize their underlying themes and values, and my mindset shifts to reflect the art that I adore. I’m an aspiring political changemaker, and Sondheim’s musicals influence my political opinions by enabling me to empathize with communities living drastically different lives from my own.

I sang Sondheim melodies before I could talk. As I grew intellectually and emotionally, Sondheim’s musicals began to carry more weight. With each viewing, I retained new historical and political information. This ritual drives me to continue studying Sondheim and enables me to confidently walk my own path because Sondheim’s work passively strengthens my ethics as I continue to extrapolate relevant life lessons from his melodies. Sondheim’s stories, with their complex, morally ambiguous characters, have solidified my ironclad set of morals which, together with my love of history, have blossomed into a passion for human rights and politics.

《索德海姆的音乐剧》

在我学会说话之前，我就已经唱过桑德海姆的旋律。随着我在智力和情感上的成长，桑德海姆的音乐剧在我心中占据了越来越重要的位置。每次观看，我都会从中获得新的历史和政治启示。这种对桑德海姆的热爱驱使我不断深入研究，也让我更加自信地走自己的路。因为桑德海姆的作品，在我不断从他的旋律中领悟生活教训时，默默地强化了我的道德观。桑德海姆的故事，以其复杂而道德模棱两可的角色，巩固了我的坚定道德观，这份道德观与我对历史的热爱相结合，转化为对人权和政治的热情。

Each time I bake cookies, they come out differently. Butter, sugar, eggs, flour — I measure with precision, stir with vigor, then set the oven to 375°F. The recipe is routine, yet hardly redundant.

After a blizzard left me stranded indoors with nothing but a whisk and a pantry full of the fundamentals, I made my first batch: a tray of piping hot chocolate chunkers whose melt-in-the-mouth morsels comforted my snowed-in soul. Such a flawless description, however, belies my messy process. In reality, my method was haphazard and carefree, the cookies a delicious fortuity that has since been impossible to replicate.

Each subsequent batch I make is a gamble. Will the cookies flatten and come out crispy? Stay bulbous and gooey? Am I a bad baker, or are they inherently capricious? Even with a recipe book full of suggestions, I can never place a finger on my mistake. The cookies are fickle and short-tempered. Baking them is like walking on eggshells — and I have an empty egg carton to prove it. Perhaps beginner’s luck had been the secret ingredient all along.

I became engrossed in perfecting the cookies not by the mechanical satisfaction of watching ingredients combine into batter, but by the chance to wonder at simplicity. The inconsistency is captivating.

Yet, curiosity keeps me flipping to the same page in my recipe book. I became engrossed in perfecting the cookies not by the mechanical satisfaction of watching ingredients combine into batter, but by the chance to wonder at simplicity. The inconsistency is captivating. It is, after all, a strict recipe, identical ingredients combined in the same permutation. How can such orthodox steps yield such radical, unpredictable results? Even with the most formulaic tasks, I am questioning the universe.

Chemistry explains some of the anomaly. For instance, just a half-pinch extra of baking soda can have astounding ramifications on how the dough bubbles. The kitchen became my laboratory: I diaried each trial like a scientist; I bought a scale for more accurate measurements; I borrowed “On Food and Cooking: the Science and Lore of the Kitchen” from the library. But all to no avail — the variables refused to come together in any sort of equilibrium.

I then approached the problem like a pianist, taking the advice my teacher wrote in the margins of my sheet music and pouring it into the mixing bowl. There are 88 pitches on a keyboard, and there are a dozen ingredients in the recipe. To create a rhapsodic dessert, I needed to understand all of the melodic and harmonic lines and how they complemented one another. I imagined the recipe in Italian script, the chocolate chips as quick staccatos suspended in a thick adagio medium. But my fingers always stumbled at the coda of each performance, the details of the cookies turning to a hodgepodge of sound.

I whisk, I sift, I stir, I pre-heat the oven again, but each batch has its flaws, either too sweet, burnt edges, grainy, or underdone. Though the cookies were born of boredom, their erratic nature continues to fascinate me. Each time my efforts yield an imperfect result, I develop resilience to return the following week with a fresh apron, ready to try again. I am mesmerized by the quirks of each trial. It isn’t enough to just mix and eat — I must understand.

My creative outlook has kept the task engaging. Despite the repetition in my process, I find new angles that liven the recipe. In college and beyond, there will be things like baking cookies, endeavors that seem so unvaried they risk spoiling themselves to a housewife’s drudgery. But from my time in the kitchen, I have learned how to probe deeper into the mechanics of my tasks, to bring music into monotony, and to turn work into play. However the cookie crumbles in my future, I will approach my work with curiosity, creativity, and earnestness.

《完美饼干》

我的创造性思维使烘焙这项任务永远充满趣味性。尽管过程重复，但我总能找到新的角度让配方变得鲜活生动。在大学及以后的生活中，可能会有像烤饼干这样看似单调的事情，它们可能会变得像家庭主妇的乏味工作一样令人厌倦。但从我在厨房的经历中，我学会了如何深入探究任务的机制，将音乐带入单调之中，将工作转变为游戏。无论未来我制作的饼干如何不尽如人意，我都会以好奇心、创造力和诚意来对待我的工作。

As I rode up and down the gentle slopes of the Peabody skatepark, I watched my younger brother race down from the highest point on the halfpipe and fly past me at the speed of light. I wish I could do that, I thought, eyeing the enormous curve that towered over me. But I didn’t dare make my way up to the top. Instead, I stuck with the routine I was comfortable with, avoiding the steep inclines at all costs.

Each week during the summer before my fourth grade year, my brother and I would visit that same skatepark, and I would take my mini-BMX bike to the bottom of that monstrous ramp, ready to attack the giant. I started off low reaching only a quarter of the way up at first, too scared to go any higher. But each week, I gained more confidence and kept reaching greater heights. Halfway there, two-thirds, three quarters. Until finally, I mustered up enough courage to complete my final challenge.

With my brother’s shouts of joy ringing in my ears, it seemed as though the concrete mass was calling my name, drawing me closer and closer, until I couldn’t resist its pleading any further. I walked my bike up the stairs and approached the steep drop off. My hands started to sweat and my legs began to shake as I inched toward the edge, staring in the face of doom. Finally at the lip of the ramp, I paused briefly, took a deep breath, and moved forward just enough to send myself speeding downwards. I couldn’t contain my excitement as my, “Woooo!” echoed around the park. I had finally ridden down the tallest ramp!

Throughout my life I have enjoyed having a plan and being in control. When working in a group, I make sure that everyone knows exactly which aspect of the project they will complete. I organize all my homework in a planner so that I never miss a due date. Each night, I outline my schedule for the following day so that I know what meetings, sports events, and other activities I have to attend. When I visited New York City over the summer, I prepared a detailed itinerary to follow. Rarely is there a day when I don’t have a general idea of what I’m going to do, but sometimes my plan doesn’t correlate with how the day truly plays out.

Over the years, I have learned to adapt when situations take an unexpected turn, and, similar to that time at the skatepark, I have been able to step out of my comfort zone more often. It isn’t the end of the world when things don’t go exactly as planned; often times, sudden changes and new experiences make for a more enjoyable and interesting time. As much as I enjoy a strict itinerary, some of my best nights have begun by hopping in the car with my friends, picking a direction, and going wherever the wind takes us. As hard as I try to plan out my day, an unforeseen event is almost inevitable. Although this can bring about some stress, scrambling around to figure things out is not only an essential skill, but can be a fun challenge, too.

I can’t imagine a completely organized life without a little uncertainty. Unexpected circumstances are bound to occur, and making the most of them is one of my favorite parts of life. Regardless of how much I love having a plan, my flexibility and willingness to step out of my comfort zone is something I have and will always take pride in.

《计划的不确定性》

我难以想象一个井然有序的生活能完全摆脱不确定性。毕竟，意外情况总是无法避免，而恰恰是这些意外，成为了我生活中最迷人的部分之一。尽管我热爱规划，但我更为自己具备的灵活性和勇于突破舒适区的勇气感到自豪，这是我会一直珍视的特质。