I Look, Therefore I Am?
Names have been changed. It was the day of my friend Amanda’s bat mitzvah. She was more of a recent friend, someone who, with my implicit permission, tended to degrade me on a daily basis. Nonetheless, I liked her, and at one of the final parties of the year-long bat mitzvah season, I wanted to […]
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Not Your lesson
One afternoon at the beginning of 8th grade, I was sitting in the room where Model United Nations (we called it MUN) met after school. Under the guise of open and inclusive debate, students played the roles of ambassadors. We talked about every political topic under the sun: the Iranian Revolution of 1979, the immigration […]
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Fighting Two Battles at Once
When I was 8, I was adamant about having a strict daily routine. I woke up at precisely 7 a.m., brushed my teeth at 7:05, and got dressed in 10 minutes. I had to follow this schedule exactly. If not, I experienced panic attacks until I got back into my pajamas and into bed, in […]
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The Privilege of Telling My Side of the Story
My younger brother and I grinned at each other from the back seat of my grandpa’s Jeep: We were making a rare trip to Burger King. I was 11. We had been living in the United States for four years after emigrating from South Korea, and most of the time, my mom preferred that we […]
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