Bedtime stories used to be the most anticipated part of my day. As a child in uptown Shenzhen, China, there wasn’t much else to do except running around in the vivacious streets with my peers, or occasionally taking over my grandfather’s television. Much of the fun I had thus came from this local bookstore where people older than me spent hours sitting in. My mother would buy the most interesting children's cartoons from there, and almost every night, I would lay in bed in pajamas as I listened to my mother read to me. There are some stories that I would let my mother read time and time again, multiple times a night. She always seemed happy to do so. One indelible story is I Can Defeat the Monster. It is about an adventure of three chickens: Leo, Carmen, and Caroline. As they go out to find food for their fellow chickens, they suddenly notice that everything is going wrong in the world they live in - food is rarely found, chickens are seeking places to hide, and ice statues of chickens are everywhere. Soon they learn from a mighty knight, who is armed in heavy armor, that a monster is living inside a castle. The monster destroys all the grains chickens eat, and it turns chickens into ice statues. The knight is about to go fight that monster. The three chickens follow him to the castle, and as they search in it quietly and carefully, they find it - a gigantic serpent. Alarmed, the serpent stands up, and the knight launches his sword towards it without hesitance. The serpent reacts summarily, shining its glowing eyes toward them, and they are all turned into ice statues, except for Leo, who is looking away. He is the only one left, what can he do against this beast? The fight looks already lost. But at this moment, Leo persists with sangfroid. First, he puts on his sunglasses so that he cannot be harmed by the light. Then he lets out a great chicken crow, so great that it could wake up a whole town.  Overwhelmed by the noise, the serpent explodes into pieces. The knight, Leo’s friends, and all the chickens out there return from being statues. Leo does it: he defeats the monster, he saves the world! Throughout the story, the suspense of the danger ahead builds up incrementally, and it does not stop making me anxious. More generally, however, Leo reassured me that the danger was not as terrifying as it seemed. The story gave me confidence, I felt like I could defeat any “monster” in the world, and that is why I loved reading it. In fact, it is why I enjoyed reading almost every story - they changed the way I feel and forged a connection between me and the characters. This connection then prompted me to sympathize with them, to feel their defeats and their victories; I started to notice the impact of reading on me and how it empowers my emotions.

My emotions were the first to be affected by reading, but then in elementary school other parts of my life were starting to be moved as well. My elementary school (and middle school, they are the same school) were also in Shenzhen, China, but they were international. They teach in English and follow a British curriculum, where reading is emphasized. Every week we had the opportunity to wander in the labyrinthine school library to pick out a book and bring it with us. Every afternoon, right after lunch, is a 30 minute DEAR time (Drop Everything And Read time). We each find a comfortable spot on the carpet at the back of the classroom and read the book we chose from the library. I remember myself lying on one of those bag chairs and enjoying the Diary of a Wimpy Kid. Of course, from time to time I would need to check the dictionary to find out what Greg (the main character writing the diary) was trying to say, but mostly I saw the fun, wild, awkward, and anxious moments of his middle school life, and laughed at them. In fact, I tried to imitate his interesting way of life by doing what he did, including setting up a cozy room to play video games in, doing chores for others to gain extra pocket money, and even keeping a diary of my own. Another book series that I always read during that time was Horrible Science. It told facts about science in a way that I was able to understand as a child, but also in an unpleasant way that some children might find amusing. For example, one of the books in the series, Deadly Diseases, dove into the cruel specifics of the bubonic plague - how human feces and vomit had nowhere to be thrown in cities, so they became ubiquitous. I was just curious, however, about the science anyways; disgusting facts did not bother me; oddly they could even be intriguing sometimes. More abstractly, reading became a way for me to expand my interests and learn about new hobbies, as I read about non-fiction science and the story of Greg’s middle school life. It was beginning to tell me truths about the world, such as science and lifestyles, and it was guiding me in exploring it while I enter into the next stage of my life. 

This next stage of my life involved flying over 8000 miles to the United States and entering high school at the Prep. This is where reading intensified - history, religion, English, and Latin classes all have materials to read. While I did enjoy many books I read for my classes, my favorite one is the Christmas present my aunt gave me - The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexander Dumas. The story tells about a young man, Edmond Dantès, who is leading an almost perfect life. Recently promoted to the captain of a ship, he is also right about to marry the love of his life, but suddenly, all of it vanishes before him; he is accused of having committed a crime and despite being innocent, he is put into prison. For 14 years he could not get out until he managed to find a way to escape. In prison, he learned that it was his jealous friends who accused him, and it was the corrupt judge who put him into prison for political benefit. Now that he is raised from the dead (and from near suicide), he is on his way to vengeance. The book has twelve hundred pages, as thick as a dictionary, but Dumas consistently delivers surprises in the book that retains our attention. I finished the book in three months; it was both a fantastic journey and an achievement for myself to have sat down and completed a book this long. On a broader level though, The Count of Monte Cristo was not merely entertainment. It unfolded the jealousy and avarice of human nature and advocated for patience and hope, making me think about certain conflicting questions, for example when Edmond reflects on whether or not his revenge has gone too far. Now, not only is reading a comprehensive way for me to learn about different topics, but it is also a source that inspires my philosophical thinking, and of course, a form of entertainment. On my journey in life, I will forever commit to reading.

Reading and writing are inseparable - they supplement each other. It is therefore just as important to bring up my relationship with writing. As a typical child, my mind was not thoughtful enough to want to write anything; all I thought about was how to play. The only writing I did, consequently, was practicing my handwriting. From Monday to Friday, we spent time in our pre-school, tracing Chinese characters and English alphabets on books designed for children's handwriting, as teachers watched over us. Sometimes they would place their hands on ours to help us hold and move the pencil properly. What is funny is that some children, including me, just could not sit down quietly and write for that long. Our energy was irrepressible; we always had small talks, drew stick figures on our books, or did anything but practicing handwriting. We obviously did not make the teachers happy but we simply did not care. Additionally, my father was (and still is) a huge enthusiast of Chinese calligraphy. He wanted me to start learning it so I was put into weekend calligraphy classes. I did not learn how to use those writing brushes though, since I first need to be proficient at calligraphy using a pen. Anyhow, it was three additional hours each weekend sitting down and writing, which was hard to endure as that energetic child. More symbolically, however, those times where I settled down in silence and practiced handwriting and calligraphy appear much more beneficial. It trained my ability to keep calm and maintain focus, which had a great impact on my academics - since elementary school I was able to quickly be focused and get tasks done. If I had not spent those time practicing calligraphy I would have easily lost focus and managed my time poorly. Moreover, being able to sit down without a distracted heart builds the basis of writing meaning in the future. 

This ability carried me into the writing challenges of elementary and middle school, where writing evolved from tracing characters on a sheet of paper to expressing my own imagination and telling stories. Mrs. Sun, my 4th grade Mandarin teacher, played a prominent role in my development of this. She had a special writing program in her Mandarin class that no other teacher had, which she named “Campaign Onto the Essay Mountain.” We were required to write a full-page essay, roughly 200 words (Chinese characters), every single day. It could be about any topic we can think of. The next day in class, everyone’s essay would be read aloud in front of the class and be reviewed together. I had a few troubles with this. The first thing was lacking ideas, I thought: how does anyone have ideas that are interesting enough every day to write 200 words about? At one point I literally submitted an essay titled “Don’t Know What To Write About.” The next thing was my essay being read to the whole class. Every time my essay was picked up by Mrs. Sun, I got very uncomfortable, worried about whether my classmates would laugh about what I wrote, and also worried about how it would be criticized. I did not like sharing my written thoughts with others at all. Nonetheless, after enough days had gone by within “Campaign Onto the Essay Mountain,” I overcame those two issues. I learned to observe my day more closely, to fully feel the seemingly mundane experiences, and to value every interaction with others. I also became more accustomed to having my essay read in front of the class; I cared less about my thoughts being judged. On a more abstract note, the latter encouraged me to express freely my thoughts and opinions without being afraid, while the former always replenished my mind with lively ideas to write about. Collectively, they are critical in helping me become a better writer. They allowed me to begin developing some sense of uniqueness and deeper thought in my writing by first breaking the barriers that impede it. I conquered the “Essay Mountain.”

The “Essay Mountain” along with middle school English class taught me many new writing skills that I brought with me to the Prep. The English teacher that I had for both my freshman and sophomore years was Mr. Lederer. He genuinely likes lecturing and inviting the class to join him in his discussion about the books we were assigned to read. From the books, he raises thoughtful and sometimes philosophical questions that make us pensive, such as, “Are we born good or evil, or are we a blank slate shaped by our circumstances?” Because Mr. Lederer loved lecturing so much, he did not assign as many writing assignments, but there would usually be an essay due after we finished talking about a book. The most significant one I remember was writing a creative story based on a theme in The Catcher in the Rye, a theme where the main character hates the environment surrounding him, but later he slowly grows to embrace it. This project took me a long time to even begin writing, mainly because I have not written creative stories in a long time (since previously I mostly wrote argumentative essays) and that there are so many possible directions that the story could go. Ultimately I tied it into a somewhat relatable experience - being consumed by competitive video games. Competitive video games have a system that ranks individual players by the games they played and their win rate. The main character of the story devotes so much time to this game called Valorant that he is ranked in the top 300 players of the server, and he wants to continue playing until he reaches the zenith, but he finds himself unable to maintain his current rank. He wants to gain that rank back, but he cannot, so he plays even more, only to see his ranking drop further. He is enraged by this. Eventually, he gets so determined to climb back up in rankings that he despises everything else in life that would distract him from this goal, including his school work and social life - he becomes misanthropic. Finally, after a snowstorm cuts the electricity and forces him to hang out with his neighbors, he realizes how sweet human interactions are. That is his turning point. More broadly, I enjoyed writing this short story, since it felt like writing about my past self; there was indeed a month or two during my middle school years where I was unhealthily caught up in the ranked system of a video game. I feel proud that I am able to reflect on my past mistakes like this by writing. Writing will not just be a tool for me to communicate ideas, write academic papers, or write reports in my workplace in the future. More importantly, writing will become one of the only ways for me to dig into who I am, and find myself. 

This search for self, however, struck differently over the vagaries of last year as I read and wrote; I deeply empathized with the loneliness of Holden Caulfield in his journey through Manhattan, and I had so many feelings to spill out in my religion class journals. The prohibition of international travel separated me from my family for over one and a half years, and this past summer when there was finally a way home, it turned out to be a very tortuous one. I had to first fly to San Francisco, then to Shanghai, and then to Shenzhen (my home). At San Francisco, I stayed for three days to acquire a COVID negative test proof, and upon arriving in Shanghai I was immediately put into an economic, federal-controlled quarantine hotel for fourteen days. I was on that journey alone for three weeks, two-thirds of which I stayed in a small hotel room, and 25 hours of which I was in the air. Exhausted by the long roads and that year and a half, I was almost brought to tears when I finally saw my parents and my little brother. On a more abstract note, regardless of the harshness of the trip, it was a test of my independence that enabled me to come out stronger. It also made me cherish more this relationship between me and my family that had previously been fading away in the pandemic. 

The pandemic would have been much more unbearable without the company of my uncle and aunt, my friends, and my Rubik’s cube. I fell in love with Speedcubing three years ago. It is a sport where people compete to solve twisty puzzles like the classic Rubik’s Cube as fast as they can. I spent many hours finding my mistakes, learning new concepts, and practicing solving to improve, gradually bringing my time from averaging three minutes down to one minute, 50 seconds, 30 seconds, 20 seconds, 15 seconds, 12 seconds, and then 11 seconds. That is where I got stuck. But during the pandemic, I had more time to pick up Cubing again, and my passion for it became stronger. I got back to grinding and learning, and I finally achieved the milestone that I wanted - averaging below ten seconds (sub-ten). The results are not as important as the fellow Cubers I met along the way though; if it were not for them, for their positivity, their advice, their support, I would have given up Cubing as a hobby. It was a pleasure to get in touch with them online amid COVID to cube together, sometimes to compete for fun or to work together towards our own goals. Significantly, though the Rubik’s Cube will forever remind me of perseverance, it will more so remind me of the Speedcubing community, the people within it, and the relationship we share.

This emphasis on relationships is a crucial objective of this junior year. Two years went by with great celerity, it feels strange that I am already a junior at the Prep without having completed a proper full year, but I see hope. Now that I am back in person, I can get involved with activities and people I was distant from, and even start spreading my love for Speedcubing and lead a new group of Cubers. While a new Cubing Club is being established at the Prep, Cubing competitions are returning outside. I can see myself finally connecting with the rest of the Cubing community offline and competing once again after so long. Having reunited and had fun with my friends and families back home, I feel more motivated and energized than ever to take on difficult classes. I want to learn everything; from the logical thinking of Calculus to the subtle beauty of reading and writing. From sitting in the basement for a full year to engaging with life outside again, it feels as if I were Edmond Dantès who just emerged from the Château d'If. On a more general note, I am looking forward to much of this junior year, a year that I hope would strengthen myself academically, socially, and mentally. No matter what challenges lie ahead, I am looking to embrace this hardest year of high school, keeping in my mind the image of Leo dominating the serpent with ease. Inspired by his story, I, too, will “defeat the monster” and prevail with immovable equanimity.