My room is a sedimentary rock. The encompassing high-paced, high-stress atmosphere gives the strain essential to compress every day into a brand new layer of clothes: Monday’s T-shirt lies beneath Tuesday’s fuzzy socks, Wednesday’s denims, Thursday’s outsized sweater, and Friday’s solar costume. Scattered beside the style time-capsule are colourful scraps of development paper from Saturday’s […]
“Turn the music down!” It is an overused command every teenager hears from annoyed parents in response to the latest hit songs and Billboard countdowns. It invokes the quintessential image of tattooed rock ‘n’ roll fans jamming with a guitar in hand while displaying their “If the Music’s Too Loud, Then You’re Too Old” shirt […]
Hello my name is [blank] and I’d like to be part of your college. I think that I would make a great addition to your academia because I am smart, capable and hardworking especially when it comes to subjects that I love such as history or writing. I love history because I find it fascinating […]
Cue stage lights: A man and woman are sitting on opposite sides of a table, his face hidden behind a newspaper and hers behind a book. They do not speak, but I am already running through the conversations they will soon have and the words that will be left hanging in the air. When the […]
At 7:11 a.m., the morning of August 29th, 1994, my twin brother Ramzi was born. Two minutes later, I used to be born, setting the stage for a lifetime of competitors that will turn into the driving horse behind each of our aspirations and laborious work. All through our total existence, my brother and I’ve […]
“Basically! So what have you been up to lately?” I ask, eager to catch up with an old friend. Silence. I blink and look up from my sushi. She’s typing away on her phone. “What have you been up to lately?” I repeat, only mildly irritated. “Oh… sorry… well last week…” Our world has gone […]
It was my first Halloween in high school and I vividly recall that almost everyone was dressed up in wild and wacky costumes. However, amidst this hilarious scene lurked the shadows of a land-mark event in my school. Considering that my school district is thought to be wealthy, my high school was maintained very poorly. […]
“Wait, I don’t understand, can you go over that again?” One of my classmates shouts out after returning from her reverie. This is what I hear as I sit in the back of my freshman Algebra I class, about to learn the same thing all over again. I look around and see half the class […]
I walked to U.S. Customs in Chicago with my Jordanian passport clutched in my hand and my backpack over my shoulder. The man at the Customs window was dressed in a sophisticated black suit with badges all over his top pocket and a .45 caliber pistol. When I handed him my passport, he began questioning […]
It could have ended horribly, but I am pleased to say that there are happy endings out there. I mean, the marriage had a bad ending – divorce. After fifteen years and two children, my parents decided to call it quits. I was seven years old, and all I knew was that my mom, my […]
