Are You Really Who You Say You Are?

I consider myself a Floridian born, Bahamian raised, American, South African, Chinese, Jew who has lived in New York, Connecticut, and Colorado. Okay yes, this may sound a bit absurd and possibly false; however, this cannot be closer to the truth. Ever since I could remember, people have asked me, “Where are you from?” This is perhaps because of peoples’ human nature to be curious. The reason why I bring to light my heritage is to ask, where can someone say he or she is from? Can I say I am from the Bahamas? Is it correct to explain that I am a South African? Would it be wrong to call myself an American? I am continuously faced with this issue. I never know where to call home.

            My answer to this problem is quite simple. Instead of facing the “Where are you from?” question with weariness, instead embrace it. Rather than explaining your whole backstory, state where you feel you are from. Being raised in the Bahamas, I feel that my Bahamian roots are more prominent than my South African, American, Chinese background. It is true that I do not hold a Bahamian citizenship or currently reside there, but that is beside the point. I consider myself a Bahamian because the Bahamas has shaped me as a person. During each day of my life, everything that I do has been influenced by my childhood in the Bahamas. Whether it be walking around barefoot or playing outdoor soccer, my habits and interests have been formed around my Bahamian days. No matter where I live, I will always be Bahamian at heart. I now ask the question, what makes you, you? Is it your family’s ethnicity, childhood, or personal interests? Whatever it is, let everyone know who you really are. I am Tai Kerzner and I am from the great islands of the Bahamas.

No Longer a Failure: An Asian-American’s Reflections on the Difficulties of Learning Chinese and how to Overcome Them

      Chinese is a very difficult language, and the fact that my family had spoken Chinese for thousands of years did not make it any easier to learn. Like many other Chinese-Americans, I went to Chinese school as a child and struggled to learn Chinese. In this aspect I am like the millions of first generation Chinese-Americans who have struggled to learn their ethnic language. However, I think that I am especially qualified to write on this topic because Chinese was especially difficult for me. As someone who once failed every single Chinese test he had taken for around seven years but has now improved to an AP level, I am more familiar with the challenges of learning Chinese than most. In this article, I explore some of the challenges that I attribute to the difficulty of learning Chinese for anyone not raised in China.

     One characteristic that makes Chinese so incredibly challenging to learn is the difficulty of practical Chinese. It’s critical to understand this point, because the rest of this article is dependent on this observation. Written and spoken Chinese are filled with difficult, uncommon words that make reading and conversing in this language nearly impossible for many students. In addition, Chinese is full of idioms, allusions, and special phrases that make it even more difficult for those learning the language to communicate. I think that this characteristic is pretty unique to Chinese because my friends in AP Spanish and French don’t have this problem – they can converse impressively, and read newspaper articles and even novels. However, I am far from their level and can’t even stumble through a short newspaper clipping by myself. I've taken Chinese for over ten years but am still less literate than a first-grader.

     The challenge of communicating has some important ramifications that make learning Chinese especially difficult. One of the most effective ways to learn Chinese, and a method commonly used by schools in China, is to read prodigious amounts of Chinese. Articles, short stories, essays, anything that can be read off a screen or a textbook. By reading vast amounts of Chinese, one can further one’s understanding of the language and its grammar while improving one’s vocabulary. In fact, I have found that if I have read a character enough in writing, I can write it without going through the arduous task of rote memorization. However, because reading Chinese is so difficult for students not raised in China, students normally can’t utilize this method and are left with endless rote memorization. Although rote memorization is both boring and inefficient, Chinese students are often left with no other alternative and spend countless hours scribbling characters with minimum return.

Chinese students often spend countless hours memorizing
characters with minimum return.

      There are other ways, however, to learn Chinese that I find much more effective than mindless memorization. Watching the news or other videos that contain plenty of dialogue consistently is an effective way to increase one’s ability in Chinese given enough time. However, the key with this approach is consistency and time. One has to consistently watch these videos over a few months to see the results and many people give up before then. But if one persists, his or her Chinese really will improve at a tremendous rate.

     Replacing handwritten vocabulary quizzes with typed recognition quizzes is another way to better learn Chinese. The idea behind this method is to make it possible for students to read Chinese text, so that the student can improve their Chinese ability by reading. This is probably the most effective way of learning to read and write Chinese, though it is still considerably difficult. However, any one of these strategies are better than just rote memorization.

     Chinese is a difficult language – yes – but learning Chinese doesn’t have to be as hard as many people make it to be. There are significant challenges for those not raised in China, but learning Chinese is definitely possible for those willing to put in the work. And the good news is that it gets easier – the better one’s Chinese is, the easier it is to improve it. The hardest part of learning Chinese is the beginning; afterwards it only gets easier.

How I Got Here.

Lets talk about how I got here. No, we’re not going to talk about “privilege,” because we all (should) know that privilege has been thrown around so much that it no longer carries any meaning, and as such doesn’t add anything to conversations. I’m going to tell you about I got from the beginning of freshman year to the present day.

It all started on one sunny day in early September of 2012. I got to Choate as tubby six-foot-tall pile of awkward. The small middle school I went to previously (and I mean small: fifty people for a K-8 school) had passed fairly uneventfully, and the transition from this tiny school to Choate was a shock, to say the least. I went from a microcosm of a six-person eighth grade class to a eight hundred student school. As such, I developed a very tight-knit group of friends in Mem House over the course of the year.

Sophomore year was when things started going downhill. The group of friends I had in Mem drifted apart. It was hard to make new friends, and eventually I gave up trying. My grades tanked, my social life had tumbleweed blowing through it. I gained 40 extra pounds of gravitational field in that time as well, which not only made people want to talk even less, it made me hate the way I looked. I’d wake up in the morning and look in the mirror and see that achievement of loneliness hanging over my belt. Then I’d put on mask of humor to try to hide the emptiness inside and get through the day, and end up back in bed at the end of the day ready to do it all over again.

So that sucked. There’s a light at the end of the tunnel though. In the summer of last year, I clocked in at my highest weight ever, 257 pounds. That’s almost as heavy as an average baby killer whale. I motivated myself to do something about it. I started going to the gym, and more importantly I stopped treating my face like a garbage disposal. It’s been slow going, but eventually I lost almost 30 pounds. I’m still a social wreck, but at least I’m a slightly less round social wreck.

What’s interesting about the whole ordeal is how alone I felt during it. I never, ever, felt like there was someone who I could talk to. There’s a giant stigma against men speaking their feelings as it shows “weakness,” and that stigma has caused incalculable harm to millions of men who otherwise would have been able to seek help. Even Choate’s own body positivity club was women-only until last year, and to this day almost all of its meetings are women-only.

Just some food for thought.

How to Communicate with Yourself in an Alternate Universe

The concept of infinity can be hazy and confusing. If our universe is infinite and expands forever, does that mean that every possible version of everything must exist? If so there would be incalculable versions of us on different planets who have already altered their life or somewhere down the road will. Now subtracting the versions of yourself that already made a different decision somewhere, think of the you’s who are still living the same life as you but somewhere in the future will deviate from the path. These countless versions of you are also currently reading a philosophical blog post that probably stopped making sense a while ago.

Get ready to experience that hollow feeling that you get when things get too philosophical and your life momentarily becomes a tangle of uncertainty. Lets think back to the versions of yourself that are still reading this. If you point up at the sky (for dramatic effect) and yell “Hi me!” then the you’s who are still on the same course as you also just pointed at the sky and yelled “Hi me!” Then comes the moment of realization that you all just acknowledged each other’s existence. The innumerable versions of you on other planets somewhere in this infinite expanse were just connected in this realization. So if the cosmos really are never-ending, and every possible deviation of life must exist, then whenever you feel lonely you can connect with the versions of you with a simple thought or a point to the sky and a “Hi me!”

Crew = Pain

            There are times when every rower questions why he or she does crew. There are countless reasons to hate a sport that causes so much pain and suffering. Rowing is a synonym for pain, as a former Yale rower once said, “having a vacuum cleaner stuck down your throat while having sulfuric acid splashed on your legs.” You could hate crew when you have hours of practice everyday, and you are always late to every commitment because your practice was longer than expected. After your coach calls across the line of boats that you are doing one more piece, even though you feel like you will most definitely die of exhaustion. When you have practice on a machine called an erg, but better known as the creation of Satan himself.  When you look down at your hands and hardly recognize them since they are covered in so many blisters and callouses. When it seems normal to discuss different methods of not stopping a workout because things start to go fuzzy and little stars begin to creep in on the sides of your vision, or which direction you should lean to when you have to vomit. ­And just when your workout is over and you land on the dock, you have to lift the boat, a torrent of water dumping on your head and go on to carry a 120lb boat back to the boathouse. The list could go on forever.

            So why would anybody who started rowing ever actually stick with it? Because although lows can be incredibly low, the highs more than make up for them. What makes a sport based pain manageable is that you know that your teammates beside you are going through the exact same thing. They become the only ones who can understand some of your stranger habits, such as staring at excel spreadsheets of different workouts for prolonged periods of time intently looking at the differences in milliseconds.Suffering together creates a bond unlike any other. What makes you keep rowing is knowing that your teammates in your boat are going through exactly what you are, and you cannot let them down. The pain is only temporary. Rowing is the only racing sport where you can see the people you are beating, and nothing in the world feels better to watch other crews getting farther and farther away from you. Crew is a sport for the slightly crazy. It shows you pain you never thought you could feel, but because of that pain it shows you determination you never thought you were capable of. Rowing is a sport that is unlike any other in the physical and mental grit it requires, and shows you a part of yourself you never knew existed. 

Love, Defined

Because Gatsby is a complex character, the stubborn hopeless romantic in me refused to believe that he was simply in love with the idea of Daisy for the majority of the the novel. I decided to try to find an actual answer, so I looked up the scientific definition of love. Most people wonder what love really is and why it seems to be so important, but few people seem to look it up. I found a source that suggests people are afraid of bringing science into a playful and artful concept like love. We are probably all questioning something to do with love: what if I don’t love him? What if I’ve never loved anyone before? Does my mom really love my brother more? Am I ever going to be in love with someone forever? Does Gatsby love Daisy at all?

What I found to be the functional, actual definition of love as written by a relational psychotherapist named Dr. Cookerly is complex. It has five parts, or functions, of real love: to connect, safeguard, improve, heal, and reward us with joy. There are a dozen characteristics that do and do not apply to real love. They are logically categorized traits, and Dr. Cookerly’s explanation of how he derived the definition of love is thorough and believable.

As it turns out, the traits most characteristic of Gatsby’s love to Daisy are those that do not apply to real love. Gatsby’s feelings for Daisy manifest as an addiction. He is so enthralled by her that he moves into a house in close proximity to hers, but he also seems to possess some insanity by doing so. Daisy has an immense effect on Gatsby even when she does not do anything, even when she is distant from him in every possible way. This lends to the fact that real love is not dependent. Gatsby is entirely dependent on Daisy’s approval in all that he does; she controls his actions even when she does not intend to do so. Lastly, Dr. Cookerly states that love is not weakness. Gatsby is armed with all the money and resources he needs to carry out his lavish lifestyle. His presence is mysterious, but his business and few relationships revolve around confidence. Gatsby is weak and unconfident when it finally comes time to reach out to Daisy. As a prepubescent middle schooler might do, Gatsby goes through Nick to get Daisy to come to see him. Though no age limit is explicitly stated in the definition of love, I have gathered a general understanding that romantic love requires a certain maturity. Gatsby’s inability to build meaningful relationships because he is so focused on Daisy contribute to his immature, insane, and addictive form of love. While there’s a stubborn part of me that wants to ignore all of the evidence that Gatsby’s love for Daisy isn’t authentic, I can finally admit that Gatsby and Daisy are not an example of true love.

Tennis: The Most Underestimated Sport

Tennis: The Most Underestimated Sport at Choate

At Choate, tennis is one of most underrated sport. Most students think that sports like hockey, lacrosse, and soccer are the most physically demanding sports, but that is simply not the case. The perception that most people have on tennis is just people standing on a court and hitting balls. It is true that when tennis is played at a low level, it often doesn’t require any kind of physical ability, like playing catch. When tennis is played on the varsity level or even higher like the pros, tennis requires both tremendous mental and physical strength. Tennis certainly deserves some respect in the Choate community, as the word “tennis” often correlates with “easy”. For those non-tennis players, it is difficult to understand the actual physical toil tennis has the body.

Anyone can pick up a racket and hit a ball, but it takes countless hours of training and hard work to play at the highest level. Tennis is a sport that requires endurance, strength, speed, agility, and flexible of the physical body. To become better and hungrier for the win, one must have the determination to train at the minimum of 5 hours a day. As the players can play the ball with good pace and consistency, the game of tennis becomes more and more challenging. Tennis matches often last to 2 to 5 hours depending the level of play. In that time, the players are constantly putting stress on their body by running on court with explosive speeds, hitting the ball with spin and power, and enduring the physical fatigue each rally causes. Aside from the physical demands, tennis also requires the mind to be function at a vigorous intensity. During a match, a tennis player is in constant battle with the self. It is an individual sport and there is no one to blame but the self. A player needs to be able to adjust his or her focus and forget about the mistakes that have been made and relax throughout the match. There are no teammates to support a player and that player must take in all the pressure, stress, and pain by him or herself. A match could be suddenly lost because of shift in momentum, and anything could happen before one wins match point because there are no time limits.

Tennis is underrated simply because the lack of understanding of the sport. It is wrong to make assumption of a sport when you don’t even know what the sport is all about. It might take years of practice to develop a stroke, or even return a 120 mph serve. The sport of tennis deserves the recognition at Choate as a physically demanding sport, instead of “easy” sport. It is simply unfair for the lack of acknowledgement by the community of what tennis is. If people would give a chance for the sport by going to one of the matches, they will be surprised by the intensity and physical demands of tennis.

The Reverie

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cdN2bfov9JQ
Peep the link to Fleet Foxes 

“Саша! サーシャ! Sasha!” ringed in my head as my attention was requested by some other. My mother called my nickname in all three languages that I was articulate in to get my attention--she only did this when I really wasn’t listening. My eyes had wandered off towards the window where the warm luster of the lazy August sun was glittering onto the marble countertop. All I could think about was finishing my Japanese homework. “Why do I have to do this? All the other boys don’t have to do work now.” “You’re different from them and they’re different from you,” my mother would reply. In the heat of the moment, I foolishly replied that I wished I was normal.

Although there are many things that a kid does not know, cannot know, and will not know, when the occasional nostalgia kicks in, I wish I knew at a younger age that there is no such thing as “normal.” The youth should not have to worry about conforming to an ideal that is a facade, there is no established model of normality created by anyone. Instead children should focus their time and energy exploring the beauty of that time in their life of innocence and losing that innocence. Instead of separating people based upon an individual’s labels, people should take the time to overlook exterior appearances and to understand a person. Seriously, be as weird, specific, and exceptional as you want to be without that nagging feeling in the back of your mind that you will be judged and ridiculed, because the universe is no more in control of you than you are of your universe.
I merely see my heritage as influences on my character. I have learned how to love and connect with others in a different language and culture. The depth of my compassion is deeper as a result of increased perspective. The sacrifice and love my parents have put into my upbringing to give me an opportunity in our jungle has empowered me to become my own person. While I am still hindered by high school’s restrictive social norms, the egg has begun to crack open as an eye peers through the cracks. As my eighteenth birthday looms closer and closer, I see a long and eventful primary period of my life end as another begins.

Insects Are Invading My Privacy

The world is filled with questions. About the past, about the future, about the present even, but there is one question I would love to have answered: why do insects randomly appear in my home? Now, there are the obvious reasons: maybe someone left a door or window open, maybe your little sister brought it inside with her (it might have flown into her hair or onto her backpack), or maybe your house is that poorly insulated, and that’s where this problem gets tricky. I know that my house, for one, is sealed up tighter than a vault when the windows and doors are shut tight, so how do these little buggers (ladybugs, spiders, pine bugs, and the like) manage to get into my humble abode without my knowing? I could just be that oblivious about giant holes in the walls of the house, but I sincerely doubt that’s the case. We have screens, locks, and seals (not the mammal) to keep our lovely house secure, yet somehow insects manage to squeeze through the cracks to appear on and disappear from my walls without a trace.

This may seem like a silly argument, or straight-up paranoia, but this issue has been on my mind since childhood. And before you go out and question my sanity for spending so much time thinking on this, I have to say that this has been a problem I’ve dealt with for as long as I can remember. The house I lived in until recently was just as sealed off as the one I’m in now, yet somehow hundreds of ladybugs, daddy-long-legs, spiders, ants, and pine bugs were able to find their way into every room over and over again. My sister and I would come home from school and run into our rooms only to find little ladybugs scattered over the walls, ceiling, and floor without any visible cause. Or I would be walking into my dad's office, and on my way out I would see a spider on the wall that clearly wasn’t there before. Once or twice my sister even found a bee that managed to get into her room. We were baffled, and I, for one, still am. It’s not as if there aren’t screens on our windows, but that just begs the question of how a pine bug the size of my thumbnail manages to get in through holes that are no larger than two millimeters wide. I’m sure that having creepy-crawlies in the bedroom is something that nobody wants, and, personally, I can’t stand having anything that crawls, scurries, or flies in my home at all, so I would like to know how a bug can outsmart both me and two square feet of mesh wire. Maybe there is no definite answer to this question (yet) but I know that I cannot be the only person who wants to know. Hopefully there will soon be a well known way to keep critters with six plus legs out of my room, because I’m fairly certain my dad tired of hearing me scream about spiders.

Meet the Next President of the United States of America: Mr. Waka Flocka Flame

It is the news of the month. He is the presidential candidate of the century. Naturally, rapper Waka Flocka Flame is running for the office of President of the United States of America. As an outgoing marijuana advocate and user, it is no surprise Mr. Flame’s first task in office would be to legalize marijuana. As Mr. Flame puts it in his official campaign video, “A blunt a day; it’ll take the pain away.” Despite his unwavering support of the legalization of marijuana, Mr. Flame advocates responsibility with smoking. In his own words, “You wake up, hit a blunt, go to work, shit gon’ be OK. You look around, things ain’t lookin’ good, you roll a blunt, shit gon’ be OK. Schoolwork gettin’ too hard...don’t touch the blunt. Think about it, wait ‘til you old enough.” This campaign video—although given as an interview to Rolling Stone Magazine—should not be taken lightly. Waka Flocka brings a unique perspective to the presidential race and proposes some interesting laws. For instance, Mr. Flame would immediately ban animals, and dogs in particular, from entering restaurants ever again. In addition, he would also prohibit any person with feet over size thirteen from walking in public because “your big ass feet taking all the space on the concrete.” While these vital laws would be Waka Flocka’s first mandates, he also has unique ideas for some slightly more pressing national matters.

Waka Flocka Flame has strong opinions on numerous controversial topics in America today. When Mr. Flame is being analyzed by his opponents, his commitment to the education of our nation’s youth can never be questioned. Waka Flocka would make any child who does not memorize his lyrics by the time he gets out of high school repeat grades three through twelve. Talk about investing in the education of America’s youth. Not only would the student then be forced to memorize all of Waka Flocka’s lyrics, he would also be privileged with ten more years of schooling before going to college. This strategy—coupled with Waka Flocka’s focus on teaching kids “reality skills”—would create one of the most holistic educations in the world. Moreover, Mr. Flame has an innovative idea that could potentially diminish the formality of Congress, which has long hindered productivity. Waka Flocka plans on “going with a tanktop, flip-flops, a box of backwoods, some 1882’s, rolling one up, [and] drinking a coffee.” This relaxed dress code and recreational substance use policy could potentially be the solution to Congress’ problems. However, if it is not, then Waka Flocka has a plan to reshape the separation of power in America’s government. As Mr. Flame explains, “Fuck the Congress, what’re we thinkin’ about? I am Congress, I’m president.” In terms of decreasing poverty, Waka Flocka would raise the minimum wage for all fast food restaurant workers to fifteen dollars per hour, following In-N-Out Burger’s “great fucking idea.” Mr. Flame also provides his own perspective on women’s rights, stating, “Women got all the rights already man. What else they want?...Women are pretty tough right now...it’s not a thing of rights for women, it’s more of a respect thing.”  In addition, Waka Flocka, with his chosen running mate DJ Whoo Kid, has a realistic expectation of his opposition for the presidency. Because “all the women love her,” Hillary Clinton is Mr. Flame’s only serious opponent. Furthermore, there is no need to worry about Mr. Flame and Mr. DJ Whoo Kid holding differing opinions on many topics, as Mr. DJ Whoo Kid’s main priority once his “boy get elected” would be allowing for “unlimited weed smoking.” To become more familiarized with Waka Flocka Flame’s bid for the presidency, you can watch the official campaign video here: http://goo.gl/hgQZcA; and, more importantly, watch for “ya boy” to make a run in the 2016 presidential race.