Here are just a few examples of the raw talent that your peers possess: Dilen Worsoff, Julian Kirsch, Sunday Smith and Grace Papish.

“I’ve felt, in the past, that I was fighting for every cubic millimeter of happiness, instead of living and fully investing myself into the world around me. I felt as though I was watching myself from a short distance away, like my mind rested a few feet behind my eyes, instead of inside my head. But there is no road to happiness, and fighting pushes it further away. Fully invest, you have worth. Your life, no matter how boring and mundane it may seem, has worth. Everything you do, hear, see touch, smell, feel, taste, everything around you is effected by you in some way. The people around you as well, they count. They’re part of the world. You have a massive effect on the way they do things, whether or not your brain likes to tell you so. You have worth. Intrinsically, as a human being, you can create change. The ability to create change through will, that’s magic. So, technically, you’ve got magic in you. You can do whatever you want and you have worth. You are a powerful person. And that’s about it. It doesn’t matter what you’re doing, as long as you’re doing. There is no road to happiness. Happiness is the road.”

-Senior Dilen Worsoff

“I wish I could weep with you,
And drown myself in your sorrows until there is no tomorrow,
But I cannot avoid waking up and seeing the grass blessed with morning dew,
And then I realize there is no point to feeling sorrow.
Why do I long to feel your terrible pain?
My own self-destruction does enough,
To make my eyes like a storm of rain,
Why must I magnify it with your times that have been rough?
I sit staring into space, searching for the reason why,
But there’s no point reaching out into thin air,
Because just like when I reach out to you,
There’s nothing there.
But now I’ve adopted a phrase from a song where Henry Rollins said,
‘In order to survive you, I must first survive myself,’ and it will stand true in my head.”

-Senior Julian Kirsch

“There was one a time

When we had no voice and darkness filled the lives

Of we without a choice

No equal rights, no equal pay

Discrimination blocked out way

With them in charge of everything

They even forced our wedding ring

But we would not stay down

Our voice, our rights we found

Released ourselves from the dress

Pledged no more to acquises

We would ‘not go quietly into the night’

Nor settle for less than equality might

Rang a voice from the crowd:

‘I am woman hear me roar’

See my strength

See my beauty

See my mind, forever more

I am woman, and I will not fade

Fearfully and wonderfully, I am made”

-Sophomore Sunday Smith

A Young Girl And Her Desire To Travel
“The world isn’t round-it’s square
Or at least my world is
Always looking through it
My eyes into a foreign land
With only glass separating me and a dream
But that’s most of us, right?
I mean, I can’t be the only one
Making false promises of learning a language
I will never get to truly hear
Or smell, or feel-warm and smoky
Lingering in my ear
While we look at a tower I can only see
Through a square”

-Sophomore Grace Papish