Tag: school

all the words we could sow

Reading Time: 4 minutes

I was supposed to join a spoken word event called Words That Matter, but other things got in the way. I wrote these pieces by asking my friends — “what’s your favorite word?” and  having them expound on it a little bit more. They were all pretty much penned on the day of the event itself, but never got to leave the confines of my phone and the almighty internet cloud.

Your favorite word speaks volumes about you. Your favorite word, out of all the other possibilities in the English language — just thinking about how you can isolate a single one and deem it as your own is kind of mind boggling. There are stories. Promises. Memories. All placed behind these words, that people just dare toss around — not knowing how much it can inflict on you, affecting you, taking you. Language is something that I’ve always taken for granted, but have learned to love in a new special way the more I’ve aged. Language is a gift, and to come with words to describe every single thing and every single thing that cannot be described — it’s something that only we can do, really. Figuring out favorite words is like unlocking hearts, and stories. It shifts, it changes, molds, adapts, but nevertheless — in the instant that it is uttered, it is a strength that wavers forevermore.

Here are four of my friends favorite words. Here are some other words that I strung about together for those friends. Here is language, in its purest.

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Effete

Reading Time: 14 minutes

When the parents of my batch first gleefully announced a mandatory career talk, I marched my way onto the fourth and final classroom of the day. Another Saturday stripped away from us with the promise of a better future. After hearing repeats of things that I have heard over and over again (yes – med school is incredibly difficult but rewarding, no, I am not really going to tell you how I got there but instead let me flash you pictures of my astounding achievements) perhaps the very last class would prove itself different.

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Reading Time: 6 minutes

I am so lost, so busy — and perpetually tired.

In today’s English class, we were tasked to write for half of the period – a letter to ourselves, ten years in the future. Not on pen and paper, no blue-and-red striped envelopes or lines and grids to guide me by. It was going to be through an email, using a website that seemed to date from the early beginnings of the internet; no guarantee of it even reaching me in ten years time, or if I would still be using the same email address, moreover if I would actually still be alive.

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