shaan merchant '19 nashville, tn ldquo biogeochemical. It's a word, i promise! rdquo there are shrieks and shouts in protest and support. Unacceptable insults are thrown, degrees and qualifications are questioned, i think even a piece of my grandmother's famously flakey parantha whizzes past my ear. Everyone is too lazy to take out a dictionary or even their phones to look it up, so we just hash it out.

But it is fleeting, as the small, glossy, plastic tiles, perfectly connected to form my winning word, are snatched out from under me and thrown in a pile with all the disgraced, ldquo unwinning rdquo tiles as we mix for our next game of bananagrams. It's a similar donnybrook, this time ending with my father arguing that it is okay to use ldquo rambo rdquo as a word it totally is not. Words and communicating have always been of tremendous importance in my life: from silly games like bananagrams and our road trip favorite ldquo word game, rdquo to stunted communication between opposing grandparents, each speaking a different indian language from trying to understand the cheesemonger behind the counter with a deep southern drawl i just want some camembert! , to shaping a script to make people laugh. Words, as i like them, create powerful flavor combinations in a recipe or hopefully powerful guffaws from a stand up joke. They make people laugh with unexpected storylines at an improv show and make people cry with mouthwatering descriptions of crisp green beans lathered with potently salty and delightfully creamy fish sauce vinaigrette at girl and the goat. Words create everything i love except maybe my dog and my mom, but you know, the ideas.

The thought that something this small, a word, can combine to create a huge concept, just like each small reaction that makes up different biogeochemical cycles it's a stretch, i know , is truly amazing. After those aggressive games, my family is quickly able to, in the words of a fellow nashvillian, ldquo shake it off. Rdquo we gather around bowls of my grandmother's steaming rice and cumin spiced chicken food is always, always at the center of it , and enjoy. By the end of the meal, our words have changed, changed from the belligerent razzle dazzle of moments before to fart jokes and grandparental concern over the state of our bowels. katherine glass '18 dana hall school, ma a portrait of julia child leans precariously on my bedside table competing for space with sticky notes, pennies, and a plastic alarm clock.

Noughts And Crosses Critical Essay

Julia has been my role model ever since i spent an hour at the smithsonian american history museum watching cooking show after cooking show. As she dropped eggs, burnt souffl s, and prepared a whole pig, she never took herself too seriously and with her goofy smile and accompanying laugh. She taught me that it does not matter what i choose to do, it only matters that i do it with my whole self zealously and humorously. The first traces of my excitement came from a summer camp that i founded when i was seven years old. Motivated by too many imperfect summer camp experiences, i established my ideal summer camp, one in which campers could choose their activities, from banana split tutorials to wacky hat making.

Essay on If Water Supply Fails

For six consecutive years, i ran my summer camp, each year tweaking and improving from the years before. Chebeague island, maine, established a preschool in the spring of 2012, run out of a trailer by a recent college graduate. I took out the trash, cleaned, and sorted toys, all while studying how to incorporate educational material into preschool activities. I wrote curriculum and researched preschool regulations to ensure that we were in compliance.

We created a safe classroom, an academic plan for the upcoming year, and a balance between learning and playing in the classroom. By the end of the summer the intern became the co director of the summer preschool program. This past june, i returned to the trailer to find the space and program in complete disarray. Since the previous summer, the preschool had seen two new directors and the latest was spread thin, juggling maintenance, finances and curriculum planning. After sulking for a week, i decided i was better suited to envelop julia rsquo s mentality. What did she do when she flipped a burger onto the ground? she smiled, laughed at the camera, picked it up, reshaped it a little, and kept right on going. I initiated a ldquo lobster roll rdquo fundraiser, and island lobstermen donated lobsters while their wives came together to pick meat from the shells.

Then i worked to reinstate some sort of educational value into the summer program. We danced to spanish and ghanaian music, crafted wacky hats, and read books about the lobstering industry, an aspect of their community that is so significant. My past two summers have been exhausting and all too frequently frustrating but ultimately the chebeague island preschool, along with many other teaching experiences, has exposed me to the ground level of education policy in the united states.