The Preservation Plate

                    “‘I'm never coming back home again. Once I leave this place, I’ll never come back.’ Oh, if you knew the angsty high school version of me, you’d know that this was my mantra. I used to idolize going off to college and being this grand version of myself that was carefully curated thanks to Pinterest. But...I didn’t know what that fully entailed. 14-17 year old me correlated good grades to success and if I was having a 4.0gpa, I might as well be Warren Buffet. Oh, how I was comically wrong. Not in a bad way, just in a way I never expected.  So, picture this: June 2021, COVID-19 still has lingering effects, our outdoor graduation was given the green light, and I (KSF) was graduating with honors in the top 10% of my class. With a ticket into UC Berkeley for Mechanical Engineering? Woah baby a quadruple. I was riding on a high and I could see it now. 4 years of a grind and then I’d be somewhere in the PNW w...

             *Warning: this essay includes a description of a dog bite. Pursue at your own will*      Merry Christmas to all of my 5 readers! I hope your holiday was lovely. Mine was a very nice time, doing something I’ve never done before. Visiting the in-laws, making sentimental gifts, and meeting the grandparents-in-law for the first time. My day started off irregular. I set my clock for 3AM after having bowels about as backed up as L.A. traffic before Christmas. Hoping to escape the dreaded bathroom break without anyone in the house finding out if I poop or not, I made the perfect plan. Alas, nothing came to fruition. Then I woke up at 7am, bright eyed and bushy tailed. Excited to open gifts, I awoke my fiance in kisses and rushed down those stairs after a quick pitstop of “hello hello” with my in-laws. The night before I set out a glass of water and a blueberry bagel split in half with a note that said “Sorry Santa, budget cuts...

       I recently gave myself windburn after picking up cycling for the first time. If you don’t know what that is, if you ride around crusty AF in the freezing winter with no protection you’re going to dehydrate your skin and look like baked parmesan. I suppose it became a hyperfocus of mine, but let me bring you to the beginning. My older sister, not the one we don’t speak about, my lovely older cool rich sister is one of my inspirations. She’s gifted with words and incredibly passionate. She’s a very cool person and I don’t mean that as a synonym to awesome or rad. She’s not warm or hot (badum tss) or cold. She’s cool.      She loves at a distance and most people don’t understand this. Growing up when she was awake I’d smother her, because that’s how I knew how to love. This of course annoyed her, but I’d rather take a beating from her than not hear from her at all. And as I watched her withdraw from the world, I realized she needed to be loved at a...