Ball Knowledge

  After Gatsby’s funeral, I stayed back to get things in accord for him. Made sure all of his loose ends were tied up, tidied up the house, and was ready to pay my last respects to him. Just as I was leaving his new butler, Mayor Wolfsheim’s worker, handed me a letter saying to Nick Carraway and instantly I knew who it was from. In his fancy signature was addressed Jay Gatsby. Curious as to what surprised he had left even after he was gone, I opened it:  Hello Old Sport, if you are reading this now then it is like I predicted that I am no longer living. It’s weighed on me for so long, but I haven’t been honest with you or anyone in fact about who I truly am. It’s time you find out. While my past that I told you was true, what I have been working towards in my life is very different from what you perceive.  I presume you are standing on my dock right now looking out at the green light. Now look a little to the right of it and you’ll see a simple, humble house situated righ...

  The past week while we’ve been reading Gatsby , everything always felt so deep and complicated. While I was reading at home, I’d often have to reread some parts and check over things on the internet just to make sure I interpreted a detail the right way. After all that, I’d still get a 2 out of 4 on the Gatsby quiz because I forgot something. In class, we brought up the idea of how Fitzgerald’s purpose for writing The Great Gatsby was to critique the “American Dream” and bring up how people behaved back then, but once we put this into a skit form, it felt so surreal. By converting everything into modern-day slang, adding our own slight personal touches, and acting it out, The Great Gatsby went from being the most sophisticated thing to comedic and almost a little dumb. For example, no way some guy worked insanely hard to get super rich, buy a house across the river from her to stalk her, and throw lavish parties that cost loads of money, just for a girl he met five years ago t...

  The psychological phenomenon of the do not press red button has always intrigued me. If the button were to just be there and exist, no one would pay attention to it. The second that the “do not press button” text is placed onto it, the thoughts that flow into your mind drastically increase. What would happen if I pressed the button? No, I shouldn’t press the button. But i realllllly want to know what happens if I push the button. Are all the thoughts that your brain is filled with, when placed in this scenario. The more your brain tries to suppress the thought of pushing it, the more you think about it and the more appealing it becomes. This is a famous phenomenon known as the Ironic Process Theory. When I was growing up whenever my parents went out somewhere they would tell me to not play on my Nintendo switch. This felt like a big DO NOT PRESS sign placed right on top of my Nintendo switch. The second they ended up leaving, that switch in the corner of my room would always be...

I want everyone to think about someone they admire for something great they did, invented, or changed. Now if all of those people were put together to see common traits, two traits would emerge above the rest: courage and disobedience. No matter what time period or industry, it’s visible in those who strive for change. Starting off with the science industry, Gilbert N. Lewis, who in 1916 proposed the idea of the covalent bond and the Lewis model, which were both met with skepticism, but by not listening to skeptics—who in this case were the “norm”—he was able to make his idea a revolutionary chemistry concept that we used a lot as a foundational topic in AP Chem; going all the way to the sports industry, the tennis legend Billie Jean King, who in 1970 boycotted against the pay gap in the tennis world, leading to equal pay in tennis today, where at the most recent Grand Slam both players won five million dollars. These are just a few examples, but the depth and time this idea goes back ...

  In a tennis match, winning comes from dozens of small points that eventually add up.In high school tennis, a win can take as few as 48 points but can go as far as 150 points. That’s more than triple, but either way, stressing over every single one doesn’t make sense . If your opponent hits an insane shot past you that you can’t do anything about, he still needs to win at least 47 more points. Whenever I play tennis, I think about Roger Federer’s Dartmouth speech: “What percentage of the points do you think I won in my career? Only 54%.” Him being one of the greatest players of all time yet only winning every other point and still earning 20 Grand Slam titles shows the power of his mindset: “It’s only a point.”  Federer’s commencement speech at Dartmouth had one major goal: to have graduates understand that things will not always go their way, but what’s important is how they see the bigger picture and keep moving. On the other hand, David Foster Wallace’s This Is Water com...

I never realized how much went behind memorials until I gained so much ball knowledge about them from class this week. Growing up whenever I traveled to many of these popular memorials, I always understood the purpose of mourning those who lost their lives or honoring important people. However, I never understood all the factors that go into creating those emotions. The environment, colors, materials and symbols all go so far in increasing the depth of the memorial. Seeing all these factors that the designer has to think of often creates multiple meanings and ways for people who are mourning to grieve and have a way to express their emotions. Through my research on the Hiroshima memorial in Hiroshima, Japan for the victims of the atomic bomb, I was able to gain a new perspective that a simple memorial does not mean a simple meaning. The memorial set up the viewer to view everything in a perspective that encapsulates the meaning of the memorial with minimal words. With one line about th...