The quote that I carry with me at all times is the simple phrase “This too shall pass”. It has been my mantra for years, and it has gotten me through some extremely tough times. To me, it is a constant reminder to think ahead. Things may be bad now, but they won’t be forever. Things may not be perfect in the future, but they will at least be different. No situation is permanent. This applies to good situations, too, but this doesn’t upset me. Being in the same situation for the rest of my life would be bad, no matter how pleasant the situation. Things might get better or worse or stay roughly the same amount of pleasant or unpleasant, but they will always change. This quote has been significant to me since I first got my teeth drilled. That may seem like a small event to cause me to adopt a mantra that I keep for years, but it was the first time I ever truly understood the phrase. Of course I’d heard the saying before, but I never really got it until I was stuck in a dentist’s chair with a drill in my mouth. I was just sitting there, absolutely miserable, when it occurred to me that in a week, in a day, in three hours, I would be okay. I wouldn’t be uncomfortable or in pain, I would just be okay. This too shall pass; this situation will change. Nothing ever seems quite so bad when you can picture it ending.

My absolute all-time favorite film is Newsies. This has caused confusion before; people tend to first think of the stage adaptation turned Broadway hit. However, I definitely mean the 1992 live-action Disney movie, starring Christian Bale and Bill Pullman. Newsies is simply a fantastic film, and I love it for so many reasons. The main one, though, is the character of Jack Kelly. Jack Kelly is a 17-year old Brooklyn newsie in 1899, and he wants more than anything to go West and make a life for himself as a cowboy. He feels trapped and exploited; he’s independent and doesn’t need help, but he often offers it to others. He fills a big brother role for younger newsies, but he wants to get out and live his own life. There’s a lot in that character that strikes a chord with me. As an oldest sibling myself, it’s very easy to feel trapped by responsibilities and expectations and to just want out. I’ve wanted out myself in the past, and I’ve felt just as stuck. At the end of the movie, Jack doesn’t leave Brooklyn. He has the opportunity, and none of his friends try to stop him; they know it’s his dream, and they want him to be happy. But he stays, because he realizes that what he wanted was never actually to go West. He just wanted to be happy, and with his friends around him, he is happy. This ending used to bother me a little, but now I get it. The point isn’t where you are, it’s how you feel. You could find happiness anywhere, and when you do find it, you should stick to it. That really resonates with me, and it’s the primary reason that I consider this movie to be my all-time favorite.

Last fall, I received the most impactful compliment of my entire life. It doesn’t seem like it should have been a big deal to me; one of my high school teachers paid me a compliment in front of my mother, and since I’ve always been a bit of a teacher’s pet, that was very normal for me. I’ve received many, many compliments on my school performance, on my grades, on “being a joy to have in class.” Those compliments didn’t really stick with me; they’re things I know to be true, but they don’t mean much to me. This compliment, though, was from an art teacher. See, my senior year, I’d had a free period, so I signed up for the Crafts class for a chance to have fun. And maybe this compliment would’ve meant less if I’d taken more art classes, but I didn’t, so it meant a lot to me when this teacher, months after I’d taken her class, said that I was extremely creative. I’ve never considered myself a creative person. I’m not an idea guy, really. I excel in math, in science, in literary analysis. I can solve problems, but even then, not generally in a way that requires me to think outside the box. The only art that I do, cross stitching, follows a pattern, so I wouldn’t really call it creative. I was in the marching band, but even that was just playing from other people’s music. Even while taking an art class, I hadn’t considered the projects I worked on to be particularly creative. It hadn’t crossed my mind in a very long time that it was even a quality I might value in myself. I have plenty of good traits; why should I need to be creative? So when this teacher told me that she considered me an extremely creative person, that stuck with me. It certainly wasn’t something I’d heard anywhere else, but suddenly I thought that I might want to. I was thinking about that compliment for days, and now, months later, I still think about it. It made me want to do more creative ventures, do art and crafts and whatever I could. It made me wish I knew exactly what I had done to be told that, so I could do it again and again. I don’t think she meant to have so much of an impact on me, but it truly meant more than I could express.

In my freshman year of high school, I realized that I hated myself. It seemed obvious as soon as it occurred to me; why wouldn’t I hate myself? I made endless jokes about it, and I was surrounded by people who thought that sort of thing was funny and who made very similar jokes. We didn’t talk about our actual feelings much, but looking back, they probably all hated themselves too. When I had my realization, I had another, larger one- I was miserable, and I didn’t want to be. I wanted to be happy. And I figured that the best place to start would be to not hate myself anymore. The first thing I did was cut out the self-hate jokes. All of them, top to bottom. And I discouraged my friends from making them, too. I’d argue with them, give them compliments, and encourage them to compliment themselves. This took a long time, but eventually, my friends stopped making those jokes around me. Maybe they were making them other places, but that was out of my hands. I wasn’t around people who made me want to say bad things about myself, and I was helping them to say fewer bad things about themselves. The next big step for me was changing my view on vanity. I went to Catholic school, and I’d been taught for a long time that humility was a virtue, and by extension, vanity was a sin. But the more I thought about it, the more I decided that I didn’t want to believe that. Maybe vanity was a sin, but it had to be better than what I had going on before. So I picked a trait to be vain about. After some thought, I chose my hair; instead of joking about hating myself, I made jokes about how great my hair looked, how much attention I paid it, how well I took care of it. Now, I’ve seen the old pictures, and with a gentle indulgence, I can say that my hair wasn’t actually very good freshman year. But I am extremely glad that I chose to believe that. Being extremely proud of and confident in that one trait only led me to find more traits to feel that way about. It was something of a gateway confidence, and one I still have. I take a lot of pride in my hair, and I hope to continue doing so. All in all, I am extremely glad for the changes I made to my lifestyle and my values. I can have a lot of hope for my future now because I genuinely believe I will have one. I am not questioning whether I deserve good things, because I know that I’m a real person with real value, so of course I deserve good things. The journey to self-love has been the most important I’ve undertaken in my life, and I’m hopeful I can influence other people down that same path.

There are many different ways that we as a society will need to adjust to life in the current landscape of our world. Some of these have to happen on a personal level, and some of them must be larger, whether national or even global. For all of these, STEM developments will be important. And given the broadness of the variety contained within the acronym STEM, there are nearly infinite ways that this will need to happen. The most obvious is probably the science angle of it. Science has developed the vaccines that will help increase public safety, science has done the reasearch to inform us on safe practices when it comes to masks and social distancing, and science will continue to experiment and research to tell us what is safe and what isn’t. Researchers are leading the charge, and it’s an extremely important career. I also think the field of Science Communication is particularly important in this area; for people to be able to adapt and thrive to a new normal, they have to be able to understand why. The ability to communicate scientific concepts has never been more important. And of course, scientific research directly boosts technological developments. New mask technology will only continue improving public safety. We must also continue utilizing the technology we already have. Working and learning remotely all require technological literacy, and that will continue to be the case into the far future. Though we will eventually have the ability to once again work in shared spaces, in some cases it simply makes more sense to rely on the technology we have. It makes work more convenient, and it will certainly continue to be employed. Anyone developing this technology finds themself in a crucial position, as does anyone who can reliably explain and fix this technology for others. Developers will only continue to grow in importance as more of the world moves online. STEM careers, particularly those in research and those in developing, are only growing in importance. Our world relies on them more than most people realize, and their impact can only increase with time. The scientific and technological developments over the last year are shaping the globe, and as more developments occur, they will continue to change things as they do.

I am currently working to get my degree in accounting. This is counted as a business degree at my school, but I think the mathematics part of it shouldn’t be overlooked. It is very easy math at a glance, but there’s just enough problem solving that must be done in order to get to the easy math that it still appeals to me. I prefer it when I can find that balance. Because of this, one thing that my degree means to me is a future in which I can do a job I enjoy. I will enjoy my job, even separate from everything else, and that is extremely valuable to me. I also think I will be successful in my chosen field using my degree, and that itself will also bring me joy. It may be shallow, but I enjoy succeeding quite a bit, and I will seek out the feeling when I can. The opportunity to work in a field that I will enjoy on its own merits while also being successful is worth more to me than almost anything else. However, it isn’t the only valuable part of a degree in accounting. With a degree in accounting, I will be setting myself up to be financially secure. This is also extremely meaningful to me. It isn’t just for my own welfare, though that is part of it, but also for the welfare of my younger siblings and parents. I would like to think that they will all be successful and comfortable by their own means, but I can’t guarantee that, and it would be a huge relief for me to be able to provide some safety for them if things go horribly wrong in their lives. Just the knowledge that I can help my parents in retirement and be a safe place for my siblings to turn is worth all of the work I’m putting into this degree. There are more reasons than the personal, though. I plan to work as a forensic accountant; someday I want to work for the FBI. As a forensic accountant, I would be responsible for going through the finances of those being federally prosecuted. If I can use my knowledge and position to prosecute a tax-dodging billionaire or corporation, then I will have made the world better, and I would take pride in that. It was, after all, a forensic accountant who took down Al Capone. It’s a profession I would be very glad to have a part in, and the degree that I’m pursuing would lead directly to my joining it.

This is Scarlett the pitbull, sleepy at the trainer. She needed help with behaving herself on walks, and getting help from professional dog trainers was exactly the right decision for us. She is so much easier to walk now!

The climate change issues that interest me the most are the issues of factory farming and monocultures- vast fields of a single crop that might then be shipped huge distances to be put for sale at a grocery store before probably being thrown away. To me, this has to do with several issues in one. It obviously has to do with the destruction of ecosystems, the transportation has to do with air pollution, and the food waste from grocery stores has to do with both landfills and with keeping food from people who need it. Personally, I plan to live in a community with a public garden, even if I have to start that garden myself. I hope to live somewhere with a farmers’ market, too, since buying from local farmers reduces the pollution from transportation. The solution for this that interests me the most is implementing polyculture farming, but in expanding on that, I think returning control of the land to the Native American groups who had successfully managed the ecosystems for centuries is also a concept that’s very exciting, both ethically and environmentally.

Over a period of time that allegedly lasted 10 months, though it felt much longer, I have been at home. During this time, I’ve learned quite a bit about myself. Some of it I realized directly, and some of it only dawned on me slowly, and some of it I can only realize in retrospect. I learned about my own abilities, the things I enjoy, the ways I show stress. I learned about my strengths, but also about my flaws. I’m not a perfect person, and I’ve had plenty of chances to express that lately. I’ve also had plenty of chances to grow past my flaws, though, and I hope I’ve taken those chances as they presented themselves. One of the earliest things I learned was that I am not cut out to have a job while I’m in school. I worked over the summer at the same time as I was taking two summer classes. I learned a lot of things about my own ability to learn online over the summer, and I learned a lot about my ability to function in a workplace, but I also learned how quickly I could spiral into burnout. It didn’t take long at all before I could barely complete my classwork. However, despite how miserable and exhausted I spent this time, I learned a very valuable lesson about my own abilities. I will be getting a job in the coming summer, but only because I don’t plan to take any summer classes. I have limits, and I need to work within them. One of the most personally significant things I learned can actually be split up into two things. I learned that my family is my favorite group of people to hang out with, and I love being around them. I also learned that I want to live alone. I get along with my family pretty well. We get along well, and we can have a lot of fun together. I love them all very much, and I look forward to staying close as we all get older. I hadn’t realized before we all quarantined together how well we all got along compared to most families. All of that being said, though, I have been able to take this opportunity to assess what difficulties we do have. I think being stuck with my family for so long has given me a very healthy desire to get out of this house. I don’t want to go too far, I know that for sure. I want to be able to visit. But I don’t want to be around my family quite this much ever again. Some of the things I learned do not reflect well on me. I learned that I’m bitter and jealous and unmotivated and kind of neurotic. However, I also learned that I’m determined and optimistic and compassionate and clever. I have to face the reality that I resent my friends who got to live on a college campus last semester, but only as long as I acknowledge that I dealt with those feelings by myself instead of lashing out at people who I knew didn’t deserve it. I have to acknowledge that I had a very hard time in classes that I shouldn’t have struggled with, but only if I also acknowledge the classes that I did well in. For everything negative I learned about myself, it is important that I pay attention to the other side of it. I have positive and negative traits, and it’s good for me to be able to see all of them. I didn’t just learn about myself. Last semester I also learned how much people were willing to do to help me. It would be easy to take a negative lesson about humanity from the last 10 months, and I don’t blame anyone who did. After all, my experience is fully anecdotal. But what I learned through my classes was that people will reach out and make accommodations and work together. I had professors reaching out to make sure I was doing okay, and I had professors adjust their grading scales for me to adjust for the difficulties I was going through, and I had classmates inviting me to class Zoom meetings and group chats to work on homework and reviews. My experience was almost universally that we were all just trying to help each other however we could in these scary, unpleasant times, and that made things just a little easier.

In middle school, I got the first cavities of my life. I had no idea what to expect when I went to the dentist to get it taken care of, but I certainly never expected to have my outlook on life changed for good. Though getting teeth drilled is one of the worst experiences I’ve endured willingly and something I have constructed an intricate dental hygiene ritual to avoid enduring it again, my first time under the drill changed me as a person and the way I interact with the world around me. It may sound like a small event, but it truly shifted my perspective. I was only thirteen at the time, and I was honestly terrified. My fears were validated pretty quickly. Every individual part of the experience was horrible. The injection was horrible, though I’d obviously rather have it than not. The filling was bad, too, and the setting. The drilling, though, was the worst. Inhaling my own teeth, and the miserable cold that my nerves translated from the pain. I spent the whole experience digging my fingernails into my palms and wondering if I was going to spill blood before I was done. And then something occurred to me- this wasn’t going to matter. This wasn’t to dismiss my own feelings, this realization didn’t make me less physically uncomfortable, but mentally I was suddenly projecting myself into the future. Three hours from now- still numb, maybe, but not miserable. Twenty-four hours from now- maybe an ache in my jaw, but all in all a distant memory. A week into the future- just a filled tooth, nothing more. This radically changed my perception of the event, all in a second. I’d never thought of things that way as they were happening to me. In not very long at all, everything bad that happened to me was only going to be a memory. The phrase popped into my head- “This too shall pass.” I’d heard the words before, but I’d never truly understood its significance. I started living by that phrase. It made everything easier. Any given situation, though it may suck, was easier when I could take solace in the fact that my poor memory and the passage of time would quickly drive it into the distant past. There was nothing I couldn’t cope with, nothing I couldn’t get through. After all, it seemed a waste to not push through when I could count on a recovery. I knew I’d be fine, one way or another, and whatever I was dealing with would pass. In different words, I knew I could rely on tomorrow- tomorrow might be better or it might be worse, but I knew it would be different. Whatever I was currently going through would end. I’ve applied this to my life in so many ways since then, and I plan to continue doing so. It causes me to live more in the moment, which makes it easier to enjoy the good times and easier to get through the bad times. It may seem like a double-edged sword, knowing that everything passes, since that includes all forms of happiness. But I have found that it is simply more motivation to enjoy things as they come and worry less about the future and about the past. If everything passes, then I should enjoy what currently is and look forward to what will be without trying to skip ahead.

The song that I based this playlist on was This Too Shall Pass by Danny Schmidt. This song, in a somewhat melancholy way, reflects on the concept that all different emotions shall be present in one's life before passing, and I have tried to reflect on this theme in this playlist. Many of the songs are quite upbeat, and this is because I have found that the mindset this song inspires leads to optimism, even among negative emotions. I attempted to represent a broad spectrum of emotions, while inspired by a positive outlook.

In a small, religious town, one of the boldest things you can do is to be yourself. As a gender non-conforming lesbian, being myself can be absolutely terrifying. This is a picture of me before attending the prom with a senior girl. I had a rented tux and slicked hair, but also makeup and nail polish. I was extremely nervous, but also jubilant to be able to express myself as I truly am.