Letter of Recommendation

National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) has just begun, and writers around the world are taking part. I, too, plan on participating for the first time. While I focus on my voice as a writer and try to increase my productivity, this next month will help me grow a lot in my writing skills. However, this is not just for the extremely committed writers; it is also for anyone who has an open mind. NaNoWriM...

Any trip to a pop-up Halloween store reveals what the holiday means to most Americans. Cheap, plastic costumes, generic accessories, and expensive mechanized decorations adorn walls of the hollowed-out carcasses of superstores. Everything is mass-produced and superficial, ranging from very overpriced clowns with motorized arms to foam and polyester costumes. It is, like every other holiday, a corporate festivi...

I’ve always had an affinity for maps. Not quite Apple Maps or Google Street View, per se, but paper maps, folded and crisp in my hands.  There’s simply something appealing to the notion of poring over a place, a city or region, holistically. The lobby of Council Tree Library is itself a relatively unconsidered location. With a shelf of pamphlets, a smattering of furniture, and a table of bu...

In 1984, Sony released a new kind of product, a successor to the then-ubiquitous Walkman: the Discman. The groundbreaking device offered a portable option to enjoy CDs, mobilizing the new music storage option invented two years earlier. The Discman persisted through the late 80’s, but began to rise in popularity in the 90’s, then anti-skipping technology was introduced. However, this technology saw a ...

I never thought I’d stop at so many Thai 7/11’s. While spending winter break riding across Thailand, I stopped at more gas stations for restroom breaks than I could count. And, much like in America, each one was nearly identical. There was always a bathroom, a Café Amazon (which seems to be the Thai equivalent to Starbucks), and- also like in America - a 7/11. Every hour or so, the routin...

On a rainy day in early October, I met a friend at the Loveland Sculpture Garden. The park was filled with exquisite sculptures-but the rain was pouring, and we found ourselves instead at the Loveland History Museum. Therein was everything one would expect: an exhibit on Loveland’s beet farming, a reconstruction of the downtown, and a panoramic map. In a corner sat a vintage telephone booth. Up...

 At Fossil Ridge High School, we have a club called Photo Club. It is facilitated by president Olivia Doro and is about photography and how you can use it to your advantage. I decided to go to this club and see the whole dynamic and how it's run. Photo club is run every Thursday from 3-4 pm. When I went to the club, a member of the club came up and presented information about DSLRs (digital single-lens...

For my last year of high school, I was invited to join Fossil Ridge High School's T.V. class. As I must admit, since I joined Journalism, I have gained a higher respect for the program that is Ridge TV. I never thought that joining the class my senior year would lead to a newfound appreciation for multiple clubs and programs across the school. I know that I’m not the most optimistic person abo...

One of my favorite memories from my childhood was Sunday afternoons. My dad used to cook pancakes on the stove with a Louis Armstrong CD playing in the living room. I remember going into the kitchen to find my dad snapping his fingers, my mom setting the table, the aroma of brunch filling up the room. Even today, I still have those albums, and I hold them dear to my heart. I downloaded them to my...

Christmas, 2016. After unpacking stockings and cycling through the family, opening gifts, the number of boxes left to rip open was dwindling. When it was once again my turn to unwrap a gift, I reached for the pile of wrapped parcels received from my parents, a guaranteed place to find something given with the amount of thought only a parent could provide. I settled upon a small, cubical box with c...

As the semester comes to a close and it gets into the bulk of the giving season, it is important to recognize those who are shaping our lives. A prime example of this is our teachers - the adults in our lives who are molding us into the people we are going to be. It’s easy to disregard this, as tests are coming up. However, it is more crucial than ever to show teachers what they mean to us, for th...

Photo Credit: The Los Angeles Weekly Counting Crows released their first album in 1993. Entitled August and Everything After, it was released by Geffen Records, known for signing bands like Guns N’ Roses, Nirvana, blink-182, and Weezer. The band came out of Berkeley, California in 1991, and the current lineup includes Adam Duritz as lead vocalist and on piano, David Bryson on guitar, Charlie Gi...

It was in the first semester of my ninth grade year that I ended up sitting in the freshmen locker bay during my only off period to date. The class I had listed for second period had complications arise that required I drop the course, and during add/drop that morning it was discovered that there were no available courses with which I could fill the gap. And so I sat there on a bench that morning,...

Everyone needs a team to bring them together and Unified Sports is perfect for all Sabercat athletes. Unified Sports is an amazing activity to bring the community closer into a team. The Unified team is very unique in the fact that all players are welcomed, no matter the skill. It is amazing that students can participate in a competitive activity since some students have not had that opportunity....