Stream of Consciousness

Christina Spontaneity: the quality or state of being driven by a momentary impulse. (Or as defined in chemistry and biology, the measurement of disorder in the universe.) I have never considered myself to be spontaneous, or impulsive, or disorganized. Rather, I believe I’m quite the opposite. Composed and prepared, I like to write reminders and tasks in my agenda book. I like to study a week in advance. I like to mark my calendar, even with the tentative dates. You see, even though I understand that life is replete with surprises, I like to attempt to predict what the future has in store and prepare. Thus, on the fateful morning of Thursday, February 28th, 2019, when I was diagnosed with a spontaneous pneumothorax on my right side (or in plain English, a collapsed lung), I was shocked. I remember that I pronounced the diagnosis out loud slowly: “spontaneous.” Then, once more: “spontaneous.” I laughed at the situational irony. A girl like me suffering from a spontaneous pneumothorax. H...

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...