The happiest event in my family took place a few years after I was born. The birth of my younger brother. With his toothless chuckles, big bright eyes, and small fingers that clutched my hair with superhuman strength, he was the new favorite in the house. While I was the victim to my mother’s frustration, […]

[Editors note: The following is a transcription of Zohal Haidari’s Sept. 21. speech during the Upper Years assembly commemorating the International Day of Peace.] A ten-year-old girl is going to school thirty minutes away from her home, hoping that today, her science teacher won’t come to class because she didn’t study for the test and […]

It feels weird without her. As if, something is missing. She isn’t around anymore, she left me. I watched her climb into our car with a huge smile with a lit up face while I was barely keeping it together. What would I do without her? How would I survive without my big sister? Our […]

“Wake up Shivaansh! Wake up!” Mr. Jelaji, my Ridgewood dorm parent, said early in the morning of March 29 last year. I asked him why he was waking me up at 8 o’clock in the morning. He said that there was an emergency at home and that I was to go get my phone from […]

It was the Fourth of July, 2013. My twelve-year-old self was eating a tasteless hot dog; my older, irritating, American cousin kept texting away on her brand new iPhone that she kept bragging about. My sibling had gone to get a beer because she was sick of our complaining. We were in the middle of […]

I was terrified and scared, but there was no one to reach out nor cry out for help. Yet, this experience gave me an enlightenment that I can only rely on these three people when I’m in need – me, myself, and I. It is the first day of my new school. I enter the […]