Stream of Consciousness

Avery I wrote my first book when I was seven. “Book” meaning story – a ten-page story about a goose and a golden egg, my own take on one of Aesop’s fables I had grown to love as a child. In the basement of my home in St. Louis, Missouri, whenever snow prevented my sister and I from playing outdoors, we read Aesop. Or Shel Silverstein, or Hans Christian Andersen. These outlets of pure creation and organic cultivation of thoughts have attracted me to writing ever since I was young, though until recently I just considered it a fun pastime, unaware of the remarkable impact it has had on my 17 years of life. With an extra thirty minutes of free time before bed, I’d write. Three full journals and two full diaries sit on my bookshelf, abundant with scribbles stemming from my anger, cursive inspired from my excitement, and neat print when everything was just fine. Not to mention the file of unfinished word documents and completed short stories I have on my computer. When I couldn’t spea...

Christina For as long as I can remember, I have followed the trajectory to become a doctor, a lawyer, or a financial analyst: a future predetermined by the universe, by my family, and by myself. These career paths were considered to be the norm for a girl like me (a first-generation American with a Chinese heritage), and anything less was deemed unacceptable in my mind. Thus, initially, I feigned a singular passion for STEM-related topics, and while I admit that I naturally excelled more in subjects like math and science, I always felt that there was something integral missing. While searching aimlessly yet desperately for that absent piece, somehow, along the way, I managed to develop an unsuspecting yet keen passion for writing. Writing ignited a creativity within me that taunted and excited me simultaneously as I developed an insatiable longing to turn my unorganized and fleeting thoughts into sensible, permanent words. Amidst my emphasis on arithmetic, logic, and ob...