Jigsaw Falling Into Place - Radiohead

I don’t have a lot of storage on my phone. Indeed, there are apps sitting patiently on my home screen I don’t often open, playlists downloaded that I rarely listen to –– and I could probably delete everything unused in about ten minutes, if I really put my mind to it, in order to free up a few gigabytes. But that wouldn’t solve the problem. The apex predator of my storage, its most loyal customer by far, is my photo album.

I’ve tried to fix this, with moderate success. Scrolling back periodically and methodically through the thousands and thousands of tiny squares, I found myself able to delete many of them –– and the process was easy, to the surprise and satisfaction of my sentimental self, for my photo stream through the end of eleventh grade.

But as soon as I started in on twelfth grade, it felt nearly impossible. Maybe it’s the recent- ness of these memories, compounded with the fragility and nostalgia of the notion that I have, at press time, a week left in high school. But it’s something more, too –– that these pictures are good. Not compositionally, necessarily –– they’re only as high-quality as my iPhone camera can make them, they don’t follow the rule of thirds, they’re imperfectly framed or something’s in motion or just out of focus or proportion.

So what I mean when I say they’re good, really, is that there are many, and they’re all wholly mine. They paint one holistic and vivid and blurry and therefore extraordinarily perfect portrait of the last nine months. These are pictures I won’t ever delete. I can’t recall ever making a conscious choice to document my senior year this way –– to start taking pictures of everything. But that’s exactly what I did. As I scrolled, I searched for an answer; tried to pinpoint what it was that incentivized me to take them. I realized, eventually, that they’re everything I knew I’d want to remember. I was right.

It feels strange to impart advice at a moment in my life when I’m faced with the advent of so much newness; when, often, the vastness of everything stretching out in front of me forces me to wonder how I could possibly know anything at all. I’m not an expert, but I have (almost) made it out the other side, and I know this: iCloud storage is probably among the very best ways to spend 99 cents. It’s given me so much to look back on, or scroll through and remember.

By Natalie Cosgrove

After hours of scouring my camera roll and Notes app, trying to find something to write about that would sufficiently encapsulate my time at the school and what advice I’d impart, I decided nothing seemed more fitting than talking about my experience as a 10th grader on the staff. The scary transition from the Middle School to the Upper School I had heard about from my older siblings ended up being a transition from the middle school campus to my bedroom. After realizing that unlike my siblings, politics weren’t really my thing –– the 9th grade student body did not like my speeches –– I looked to the news instead. My first days on Chronicle were marked by Mr. Burns’ face on my computer screen, him asking about my day and me describing the constant back and forth between the desk and the bed. My 10th grade year, like most people’s years in quarantine, was a painful one at best. But I had Chronicle –– and often that was enough. In the confusing and unprecedented times we were all experiencing, the simple structure of a news article allowed me to feel at peace. All I needed to do was use the inverted pyramid structure and then throw in some quotes and everything was done. It was something I could consistently do right and well, and I felt good about it. Every day, without fail, Ms. Miller or an administrator of the like would send out an all-school email announcing a Zoom event. Each of these events was hypothetically supposed to be covered by the staff and so within seconds, I would pitch the article idea to my editors and get to writing and interviewing as soon as I could.

As a new 10th grader, I did not know the students and teachers of the Upper School. Sending out emails asking for quick meetings or Zoom calls allowed me to familiarize myself with each department and club. Through every question I asked, we ended up talking, often about topics completely unrelated to the subject of the article. And in some interviews, I developed interests separate from journalism. I interviewed alumni who showed me the meaning of passion and students who could gave me snippets of advice for the next couple of years. When I didn’t feel like doing my math homework or English reading, at least I could write a mini news article where I could fol low a set structure and interact with in teresting people.

Since 10th grade, my world has grown signifi cantly larger than the space between my bed and my desk

(I went to Israel, goddammit), and yet still Chronicle remains the biggest part of it. Chronicle has given me so much and I like to think that I’ve given it a few things too. I’ll miss the halls of Weiler and the people that come with it more than anything.

By Natasha Speiss and Vasilia Yordanova

Natasha: The cross country team was my very first introduction to some of the core aspects of our school culture: dedication, camaraderie and endless drive. While I looked forward to every practice, it was also incredibly overwhelming. However, I instantly felt at home with Vasilia. Even when we first met and were making small talk, our conversations didn’t feel forced. We sat together on the bus ride back from the very first summer race, our laughter warming our hearts and making us forget the soreness that en sued from miles of running.

Vasilia is simultaneously the most honest and kind person I know––two qualities that may seem mutually ex clusive but that she balances beautifully. This makes her incredibly easy to talk to. Throughout 9th grade, Vasilia’s refreshing presence helped me with my “new kid” anxieties, whether we were taking walks during the Big Bear retreat or warming up before practices.

Even though we’ve changed since freshman year and spend less time together, I’m happy to say we still seek each other out during Chronicle layouts and pass our phones back and forth for Notes app conversations in class. I find myself smiling when I’m with her, even if I was in a bad mood before.

For those of you reading, focus on making friends that you feel comfortable around –– who make you feel better just by being themselves, who never fail to make you laugh, who will be there for you, and who you want to be there for. I count myself incredibly lucky to have found this kind of friend in Vasilia.

Vasilia: Before starting at Harvard-Westlake as a new ninth grader, I plunged head first into the world of Cross Country. I met the team for the first time at a race, without attending a single practice prior. I started running my first race dehydrated and hungry, and I ended up crying because of a horrendous cramp. However painful the race was, though, I did make some friends, including News Section Editor Natasha Speiss. Even after only knowing Natasha for a few hours, it felt as though we had been friends for years, and I almost managed to forget my stressful running experience. A few weeks later, I went on the team retreat in Big Bear, where I quickly became incredibly homesick. Natasha was comforting and kind to me like the oldest of friends; without her there, I don’t know how I would have made it through those few days.

I quit Cross Country and Track after sophomore year, and as seniors, Natasha and I don’t eat lunch together often; the only class we share is Chronicle. However, I think the best friends are not just the ones you spend the most time with. Sometimes, they are the people who you know are always there for you even when you don’t see them physically, those you could go months without talking to and still pick up right where you left off.

What I mean to say is thank you, Natasha, for being one of the kindest and most genuine people I have ever met. I am sure our friendship will last a lifetime. And, to anyone reading this, to make it through challenging times (such as four years at HW), find people who always make you feel welcome and encourage you to be the best version of yourself.

By James Hess

The old adage goes that we read books, listen to music and tell stories because we can “never know too many people.” Interestingly, it’s not an argument for these activities apart from everything else we do but rather something to help us understand our selves; there’s something about storytelling that forms trust and empathy between our selves and others.

My favorite part of being on Chronicle has long been the oppurtunity to go up to anyone, unprompted, and talk about nearly any thing under the guise of journalism. In the fall of my junior year, I used Chronicle as an excuse to have a series of lunches with the late Per forming Arts Teacher Ted Walch. The writing was never even published, but I’m reminded of the wit he showed me in those talks every time a teacher makes a particularly good joke or shares a deeply insightful thought . My final byline, moreover, is a spotlight on Sanders Jackson and his lengthy career in Upper School Security. If not for Chronicle, our relationship likely would have been confined to exchanging morning greetings.

The unique ability to learn more about people’s lives just for the sake for sharing their story it is something I cherish more than any debate over journalistic ethics or niche opinion article. And it’s where I feel qualified enough to offer my advice: in our day-to-day routine, we often forget those we speak with in teacher meetings, lunches and bus rides are people themselves. They are some of the most interesting and accomplished we will ever meet, and we should aim to know them beyond the surface-level reasons for our being there. Sometimes, this can happen through a great book or song but remains equally possible with a shared experience or silly memory. However it’s done, redefining our interactions with others in this way turns out not to be just useful but absolutely crucial to living out our high school years as meaningfully as possible. Thanks, Chronicle, for teaching me that.

As a kid, I dreamt of becoming a high school student. Curled up in the corner of my fifth-grade classroom, I binge-read books about parties and relationships and scandalous teenage drama. I counted down the years until I would start ninth grade and undoubtedly make dozens of friends and spend the next four years in a rose-colored haze of pool parties and road trips.

High school, as it turns out, is not exactly that. There are no spontaneous musical numbers during lunch, nor are there entertaining fights between the jocks and the nerds in the cafeteria. Now that I’ve managed to crawl my way out the other side, battered by history essays and SAT retakes, my childhood self only remains in hindsight

Because I have attended seven schools since kindergarten and have become resilient in the face of change, I expected to adapt to high school at a record speed. In reality, my first year was spent skipping lunch in favor of the library to avoid eating alone.

Classrooms swarmed with unfamiliar faces, and the quad presented a sprawl of people that my anxiety convinced me wanted nothing to do with me. Within a year, I transformed from the student council president of my old school to a nervous wreck, yearning for the action-packed, carpe-di em high school experience I had promised myself.

Throughout my teen age years, I immersed myself in a world of my creation, navigating life through writing, music production, product design and video. Rushing home after school to create my next work of art, I found creativity to be the divine intervention I needed and my computer the saving grace. Whether it was writing lyrics during Zoom meetings or editing my novels in the silent study room, my projects coaxed out the details of my life I hesitated to share and turned my personal struggles into plot points and song lines. My happiness was no longer contingent on how many people greeted me or how many social events I got invited to — creating art slaked any need for external validation and became my safety net.

Everything I go through creates a blanket of experiences that envelops me. Instead of dismissing high school as simply a “bad time” in my life, I aspire to see it as a phase of immense personal growth and creative fulfillment that provided the building blocks for my projects. From various relentless afflictions grew a burgeoning love for art that I vow to carry with me into the beautifully unpredictable future.

By Lily Lee

You were just accepted to Harvard-Westlake. Everyone around you is celebrating and everything feels great. And it will be great…most of the time. At first, you may feel invincible, like you can accomplish anything. I hope you feel that way. That was exactly how I felt, until I didn’t make the cheerleading team in 9th grade. It was the first time that I didn’t get something I had

Don’t worry, I’m okay. But at the time, I really wanted cheerleading to be part of my high school experience, and I couldn’t believe I wasn’t cho -

If you don’t have hard moments in the next six years when you are cut from a team, don’t get the grade you think you earned, are chosen for a small part you don’t really want in the musical or lose a Prefect election, then I think you will have missed the entire point of Harvard-Westlake.

If I had gotten all the things I thought I wanted at this school, I would have missed out on the journey I was supposed to take. The hours I planned to spend at cheer practice turned into exploring new and better interests and ways to enjoy my time at the school. While I never stood near the field in a uniform at football games, I cheer for the school as one of the heads of the Student Ambassador program; with each piece I review for Stone-Cutters or write for Chronicle; every time someone recites a powerful monologue in Shakespeare class; or when I co-host a radio show for KHWS.

When we don’t get what we believe we deserve, it can feel like the end of the world. At our school, you may not always get everything you try for, even when you give it your all, but I hope you continue to open yourself up to new experiences and keep striving to achieve in your own way. We are in high school. This is only the beginning. You are surrounded by extraordi nary people, so turn outward, find your purpose, support others and be kind.

Your time at Harvard-West lake will not be defined by your big gest success or greatest failure. I think it’s okay to reflect on our failures, but it’s even more important to focus on all that we have gained — the teachers who taught us more than we ever imagined we could learn, the friends who enriched our lives and the middle school cafeteria chicken tenders that will forever hold a special place in our hearts.

Your next six years might not go according to plan, but I promise you will find a way to feel fulfilled and grateful when you make it to graduation. I hope all of you find a way to make a difference here and find a unique way to cheer.

By Paul Kurgan and Charlie Seymour

A page labeled “Helston Quotes” lay sandwiched between calculus notes covering every inch of the page. The notes took us step by step through the three levels of the Fundamental Theorem of Calculus; through limit proofs and the unit circle I was supposed to memorize during the COVID year. But these weren’t just regular notes. They contained scribbles and tokens of arguably the best class of-

By Alex Hahn

A Gratitude List:

1. NVIDIA GeForce Now:

An awesome piece of software, GeForce Now provided transport to a realm where true heroes and friendships were forged in Middle School: Fortnite. Whether I was valiantly rescuing a classmate, avidly cheering them on or anxiously hiding in a bush with my friends’ frantic

By Danny Johnson, Charlie Seymour and Harry Tarses

There’s no such thing as a normal arm; some got pimples, some turn in a funny way and some got cut off in war.

Some are attached to real lousy people –– bad folks who use arms for bad deeds. My friends and I have six arms, fered at the school: AP Calculus AB, as instructed by Math Teacher Joshua Helston. This hidden gem, a page deserving of a frame, summarizes the energy and commitment that Dr. Helston gave to each one of our classes. The sudden “PIE” he yelled when excatly 3.14 minutes were left in class and the tiny rectangle note sheets he used to tirelessly explain a concept to the class were moments we felt obligated to document. It was a representation of all of Dr. Helston’s best moments, his quirks –– what made him special as a teacher. With his trademark bowtie and unmatched volume, Math Teacher Derric Chien is another teacher that has shaped the learning experiences of so many at the school. At any time of day, event or performance, Mr. Chien will be there for you. Whether that’s helping you with a last-minute study question, coming to your recital or watching you play in a championship, he makes himself available and present for his students. He puts his all into his classes to make them as captivating as possible, believing in his students more than any other teacher and redefining what it means to be an educator.

Mr. Chien and Dr. Helston are just two examples of the people that make this school special. Teachers who love to learn along with their students and who inspire their classes can genuinely make an impact on a student’s education . Calculus is difficult, linear algebra rarely makes any sense, and AP Physics C Electricity and Magne- tism is known around the globe as the hardest AP class. screeching in my ear, playing Fortnite was a mixture of insanity and hilarity that I will never forget. Thanks, NVIDIA.

Dr. Helston and Mr. Chien make these classes enjoyable. They make it worth staying up for hours studying complex equations. When we matriculate out of our math tracks, we won’t remember midterm grades or the problems we struggled through. We will remember teachers like Helston and Chien, whose eccentric personalities and passion for teaching and learning always make the class worth the while.

2. Bottles, of any kind: Nothing captured my fascination quite as much as flipping bottles did in seventh grade. Eventually, my friends and I branched out beyond simple bottles: highlighters, markers, cans — anything that could be flipped, we flipped. The sheer hype of achieving the longest flip streak out of everyone at the lunch table, along with the tedious yet thrilling hours spent attempting the impossible trick shot are memories I’ll continue to cherish.

3. The substantial cardiovascular benefits of attending this school: I never thought I’d be in better shape after my freshman year on the basketball team — until sophomore year when I went to my first history class. No amount of sprinting punishments could have prepared me, physically or emotionally, for the Herculean task of climbing up the stairs from the quad to Seaver Center. Two years later, I, along with my fellow peers, will graduate not only with refined intellects but with Olympic-level athletic prowesses.

4. My friends: Throughout quarantine, junior year and the