5. Spaghetti 2025

When you are a kid there are times and moments you face that stick with you as the most 'historical' events, things that seem to change your life and alter your own little world. One of those significant events, not surprisingly, is the birth of your sibling. It is not an event worth a national holiday or anything but for a child it is the most significant thing to happen. When you are the first born child, you are used to being the center of everything. For example, you get all the 'firsts': first steps, first words...and if you are the youngest, that is a different story. But being a middle child is not as bad as it is.  I vaguely remember when my younger sister was born, the excitement in the family, my grandparents, relatives, family all gathered. I did not dream to be an older sister, or wish to be the youngest I wanted to stay where I was. I was excited when people asked me "Are you excited to be an older sister?" like I had been promoted to like an olde...

The melodies of our favorite songs have the ability to transport us into the past thanks to nostalgia , as we recall back to a time where that song was most present in our lives, as well as language which impacts us. The reason why we are able to remember all the words and harmonies in our favorite nostalgic songs is because memory is strongly tied to emotion–whether it be sadness, happiness, anger, etc. When something provokes an emotional reaction from us, we are most likely to remember it even long down the road.  Our brains tend to cling to specific sights and sounds that have sparked emotional feelings due to them being ‘marked’ as important; thus having them be saved for later, in a sense. Additionally, it is rare for us to hear a song once, which is why repeatedly listening to a song also contributes to the likeliness of our brains remembering it. Lyrics and melodies activate parts of our brain more often that typical speech, which further cements it into our memory. This ex...

There is nothing more anxiety inducing, nerve wrecking, and heart shattering than a presentation for school. Going up and having to repeat your script that you had spent hours drilling into your memory only for it to get lost in the abyss as you stand in front of a crowd. To this day before presentations many of my friends recount countless nightmares of embarrassing themselves in front of a crowd. However, as the years go by this feeling becomes more and more foreign to me as I break from my shell, yet my younger self is very familiar with this feeling.   It feels like just yesterday, where the young naive freshman me walked into James Logan Highschool to attend my very first debate competition. My partner and I had spent hours preparing for this competition, whilst not knowing what to expect. As we walked into the room we were greeted by a pair of opponents and a judge, who compared to me all felt very composed. As I headed up to the podium to give my first speech, I felt my...

Of all the things that are absolutely decimated in the Harry Potter series— banks, campgrounds, and reputations among them— the randomest of all are memories. From Hermione literally wiping her parents’ memories to Remus Lupin’s memories of Sirius Black being tarnished by the belief that he betrayed their friends , memories not only shape the realities of the characters in the Harry Potter series, but they are also wielded by the plot in a way that can be advantageous—or disadvantageous depending on the circumstances—to the characters.  Memories influence daily life in such a dramatic manner, as evidenced by the importance of first impressions, but in reality, we are not able to withhold memories in order to make something occur. However, in the Harry Potter series in particular, memories are used as a key manner to advance the plot. Hermione, when attempting to protect her parents from Voldemort at the beginning of the Deathly Hallows, took away all of her parents’ memories, parti...

 I walked into my homeroom class and energetically landed in my seat, excited for a new day of sixth grade where I would get to play with my friends and have a good time. Then, I looked up at the board and saw the agenda for the class: Speeches for the Month. My middle school had decided that it was a valuable skill for students to learn how to speak in front of a crowd on a new topic each month—a topic that is assigned a month in advance for students to prepare a one minute speech. Not only had I completely forgotten to prepare my speech, I had little knowledge on the topic of Sustainability Goal 7: Affordable and Clean Energy, and I hated public speaking. With a last name starting with ‘D,’ it was only a few minutes before I would be called up for my opportunity to speak.  I walked up, feeling the weight of everyone’s stares, the expectations of my teacher as an excellent student in all other subjects, and my own personal image among my friends. In the few minutes I had, I w...

  Memory loss is one of the most common tropes across all of fiction. It can be found anywhere, from spy thrillers to slow-burn romances, and, while it may seem to be a result of laziness on the author’s part, not wanting to find a way to incorporate world-building, it can also be a powerful storytelling tool, one that demonstrates just how much our identities are often tied to our memories. Take Bob the Titan from the Percy Jackson and the Olympians series by Rick Riordan, for example. Once the fearsome Titan Iapetus, Bob begins in The Demigod Files as an enemy of the Greek gods ( The Demigod Files ). Yet, when his memory is wiped, the former Titan is reborn, quite literally, with absolutely no memory of his violent past. Thus, he transforms to become a kind, loyal, and curious being, even becoming an influential and pivotal character throughout Riordan’s Heroes of Olympus series. Indeed, when Bob’s memories are completely erased, it creates a clean slate of sorts, a fictional ...

Kaden Khau 15 - The Tunes of Memory April 16, 2025 Have you ever went on the drive home, flipped through the radio stations and heard a song you remember from years ago? You start singing along, knowing every lyric like its muscle memory and you don't know why you still know it. This is because your brain loves rhythm.  Music, unlike any other form of sensory input like touch, smell, or sight, activates a massive network in the brain. I read this study on how rhythm activates a huge neural network in the brain and that a steady rhythm can help activate and regulate certain bodily functions. The rhythm, memory, and repetition of certain songs create patterns within us that our brains latch onto, making music one of the most powerful memory tools we have.  Even in school this happens. We were taught the ABC's, the states songs, and other forms of academic things that rely on lots of memory to actually the retain the information. But putting and making them into songs makes it a...

 I was studying for a math test yesterday. What stood out to me was the obscene amount of memorization that was going into studying. Now that I think about it, a whole lot of what we learn in math class is memorizing how to do specific tasks rather than developing problem solving skills. After all, if we already know exactly what questions that we are getting tested on, that we are supposed to review, that the teacher shows in class, it incentivizes just memorizing things. If it's going to be the same task on the test just with different arbitrary numbers, why not memorize anyways? And then we get students who immediately forget everything. Throughout my class this year, I often found myself in situations where I realized that yes, I have done this before, but I forgot the formula. Just like this article says, "our current education system frequently prioritizes short-term memorization over deep understanding." Teachers frequently give you a formula without explaining it...

At some point in our life, we have all wished for a photographic memory. When I was in third grade, I found Sophie Foster, the female main character from the Keeper Of The Lost Cities, and her ability  to memorize anything just by looking at it fascinating. She could glance at anything and recall every little detail perfectly. If I were to have it, I would just read the textbooks and become a genius! Back then I used to believe it was some sort of superpower, which was gifted to certain people, but is it that simple?  Scientists don't have any solid proof that anyone can recall images with perfect accuracy, "just like a photograph." What some people do have is called "HASM" or "Highly Superior Autobiographical Memory." People with HASM can recall past events "in great detail" along with specific dates when they happened. For example, they might be able to tell you what they had for dinner or lunch on June 2nd, 2021. Though they have exception...

Every year, on the last week of school a line forms outside Room 712, in hopes to get their hands on the latest release of that year’s yearbook. Everyone collectively will rummage through the book looking for embarrassing photos of their friends sharing a short laugh in between. They will then pass it around to everyone they know asking for a signature. This ritual happens every year. As someone who grew up practicing this, I hadn’t really known the process and the difficulty it took in assembling them and capturing the memories of every school year.  It wasn’t until last year that I began to even get a lick of the long and strenuous hours of dedication that went into crafting the yearbook. Hours outside of class  learning how to work a camera  for the first time, hours in class spent filtering through thousands of photos to find a select few that turned out well, and then hours more spent stalking the people to name them in the yearbook, and surprise surprise it didn’t e...

I recently read an article discussing a study in which the “structural quirks” of language proved to impact our perspective and the way in which we remember things. This is due to the fact that language is what enables us to describe certain events or recall memories.  A familiar example is when we might say a phrase such as, “I dropped my phone.” In English, this implies that the person was responsible for this action. Alternatively, in another language, like Korean, the phrase translates more literally into “my phone fell,” which removes the direct blame from the subject—thus subtly shifting the perspective. This represents how people who speak different languages pay attention to different aspects of conversation. People who speak English will most likely remember that it was someone who dropped the phone, while Korean speakers are less likely to recall who specifically dropped the phone or if it was an accident.  This means that while two people may have witnessed the ...

I roamed through my house, living room to bedroom, clutching my laptop in one hand and a grilled cheese sandwich in the other. I lived the same day again and again, attending school, doing a little bit of homework, and being locked at home for over one and a half years starting in 7th grade. Such were the strict Covid 19 restrictions in India as the government mandated lockdown for preventing the spread of the disease. With both my parents at home, my sister, and my grandparents, I lived in a rather crowded house with a new lifestyle to get used to: I lived like a nomad. I got used to working wherever I needed to in my house and being adaptable to new conditions rather than getting settled into something comfortable, and that is what made those years at home special.  Hitting a growth spurt while being idle at home came with a host of challenges, primarily being that my body could not support my weight. I got clumsy and crashed into things all around me: my body had not figured out...

Kaden Khau 14 - Twisting Between Language and Memory April 2, 2025 Ive always been fascinated with the way language and memory intertwine . As a bilingual person, speaking my other language sometimes make me recall memories depending on the language I was speaking at the time. It's kind of like speaking the language make my life exist in different compartments, and switching between makes me bring back certain memories. One memory I had from this was when I was hanging out with a friend that spoke the same language as me growing, but he had to move away and we didn't go to the same school. When I met up with him, we started talking again in it, certain memories I had with him started flooding into my brain and we also recalled same shared experiences with each other. It was like it had been locked away, and that meeting him again was the key to opening them back up again. This made me question whether if the language we speak at the current moment influence the way we store and...

  “So…this guy in my school may have murdered somebody.” That’s the text I open my phone to the second I step out of sixth period. And since my friend cannot just leave me hanging like that, I immediately start bombarding her with the obvious questions anyone who has just been told that there is a literal murderer in their friend’s school might ask. "What do you mean 'may have'?" "What happened?" "Like—actually 'murdered'?" After five entire minutes of an anxious and excruciatingly long wait, she texts me back the details. Apparently a senior at her Texan high school—someone well-known, a football player—had been arrested and charged after a violent altercation at a track meet. The other student involved, one who was from another school, tragically lost his life during the confrontation. By the time paramedics arrived, it was too late. The student died in his twin brother’s arms ( Guerrero ). Memory, arguably, isn’t just based on facts or d...

  Muscle memory is something that I use every day. As mentioned in a previous blog I am a huge fan of cubing and have memorized hundreds of different sequences of moves to accomplish different purposes. And yet, I find it quite difficult to recite the move notation when prompted, or to slowly perform one of those sequences for another to see, while doing it extremely easily without thinking when turning faster. Another example is in Tetris, where I have practiced so much that I can move each piece to any spot without thinking about it, leading me to be pretty fast (this is my PR ). Or typing really fast. Or playing a sport. ( link) All of these things are enabled just purely by muscle memory. But surely, your hands can’t have memories. I read this article on a muscle memory study. Surprisingly, the researchers found that the skills of the participants increased during the breaks in between sessions rather than during the sessions themselves. The device they used to measure brain a...

     You’re sitting down in your eighth grade history class, thinking why in the world is it important for me to know the different battles of World War II? A few years later, you’re in world history, thinking why do I have to memorize all of these reasons for the independence of colonies? I mean, I get that they want freedom, but is knowing all of these things really that important? I thought the same for a while, until I took AP United States History this year.       While teaching us about various events that occurred in the distant past, my history teacher often says, “as sad as it is, you can use current scenarios to memorize these events for your tests,” and that made me truly understand the value of history classes making you memorize seemingly random facts.       A key example of this is the Alien and Sedition Acts, which “gave the president the power to deport any noncitizen thought to be dangerous,” according to this arti...