As Vast as the Ocean

  The Endocrine System               The endocrine system talks to the body by oozing out chemicals called hormones (it’s easy to remember because it sounds like “homie,” and you talk to your homie). They swim faster than Michael Phelps through your blood and affect your brain and all your other tissues. When they affect your brain, they can affect how mad you get, what you wanna eat, and our sexiness.              Some chemicals are basically like your neurotransmitters, which crawl faster than a baby into the synapse next to it and make the next neuron happy or sad. That means that the endocrine system and the nervous system are like brothers; they make something that affects something. Pretty simple, right? But they’re actually different as well; just like how the younger brother is always taller than the older one, the nervous system is faster than the endocrine system, moving in...

       I have really bad memory. If someone tells me something, I’ll say “what?” and respond as they finish repeating themselves, because it takes me a moment to process what they said. Sometimes, my friends won’t repeat what they say and just tell me to “forget it” because they know after the 20 th   time, I still won’t hear them. It’s not that I’m choosing to ignore them, unlike Victor’s father in “Because My Father Always Said...” by Sherman Alexie, who is an alcoholic Native American man that gives his son the advice that “all you have to do is change the memories. Instead of remembering the bad things, remember what happened immediately before” (34). He does this by using his favorite musician, his favorite person in the world, Jimi Hendrix. Jimi Hendrix is used by Alexie as a motif throughout the story and is a symbol of the father’s choice to remember only the positive things in his life. The way this came to be was after his father was released from jail...

     When I was coming back home from SAT prep, I saw my dad yawning in the driver’s seat with his slightly wet eyes and felt like crying. Something about me is that I always feel hollowed out, gutted like a fish seeing someone look not just sad, not just disappointed, but defeated. He had a tiring day, and even when I felt some things he did weren’t the best, I see that he is just trying to get through “day in and day out” and I leave him be.        Silence hangs in the air as we drive by and I type this, and the earbuds with no music is just an excuse to look busy to avoid smalltalk, and I think to myself,  music should cheer me up . So I go to my playlist, but then I feel it again when my dad yawns: what is he hearing when I am going through all the emotions music would allow me to feel as I attempt to ignore those hard-to-bear, weighty ones? My father, driving half an hour to my SAT prep and back, stuck with his thoughts after his tiring day w...

         Some people use the comparison of “the memory of a goldfish” to insult someone’s bad memory. In actuality, fish remember too much, and they deserve an outlet for their fishy feelings. If one of their fellow fish they had a connection with dies, fish exhibit sad behaviors, such as going where their companion died, and even go as far as to starve themselves and die ( Sharkbait19, reef2reef ). Fish not only mourn but can even experience heartbreak. In clownfish specifically, if their pair dies, they also die or are never the same fish they were before. In cichlids, females “become glum and more pessimistic about the world,” ( Vox ).           Fish shouldn’t be going through this alone. As human beings, there is an unsaid obligation to find the meaning of life. There can be meaning found in helping others cope with the loss of life while living your own. If a loved one is lost tragically, or a trace of ...