MIC

Ghost hunting in Ann Arbor August

SAARTHAK JOHRI Mic Columnist

Ghosts are real. Maybe not in the ways you’ve heard, but I assure you, they’re very real. I’ve seen ghosts nearly everywhere in my hometown all my life — in every corner of my house, in every school I’ve attended, in every nook and cranny of my neighborhood. Every so often, I take it upon myself to collect these ghosts from their spots — not with a positron pack or vacuums or exorcist tools, per se, but to simply visit them and ask them to come along with me. It’s not so hard when you’ve been doing it for as long as I have. You just have to know the exact right thing to say.

Throughout my time in Ann Arbor, I’ve spotted three such ghosts. In my hometown, I have my car, which makes it easier to get to every haunted spot, but it isn’t here. I do have a bike. It’s no ECTO-1, but it’d have to do. I slipped on my New Balances and jogged down the apartment stairs while plotting my round trip on Google Maps. This method of ghost hunting might seem mundane, but trust me when I say these are the best tools for the job. Like I said, I’ve been doing this for a while. As the sun sets, I set out too.

The ride didn’t take much exertion. I rolled down Plymouth Road, conserving my momentum for the changes in slope and switching to the bike lane when I could. The bridge over the Huron River was another small challenge in elevation, but nothing would stand between me and my ghosts that night. Navigating through Kerrytown until I reached the border of downtown Ann Arbor, I saw my first spot. The mostly white, slightly color-sprinkled tiles of the Ann Arbor Hands-On Museum shone in the distance.

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Design by Tamara Turner

ROSHNI MOHAN Mic Columnist

August is undoubtedly my favorite month. It’s the last full month of summer. And to me, it’s the most meaningful. August is the month of late blooming flowers since my father planted them two weeks later than what was recommended by the gardening videos he used to blast at an unnecessarily loud volume back in May. It’s the month of refilling the bird feeder in the backyard so my father can continue recording slowmo videos of blue jays and sending them in our family group chat. It’s the month of strictly scheduled weekly picnics under the beating sun to get the most out of our time before school starts again. And as a result, it’s the month of the tannest skin and the frizziest, puffiest hair that I no longer care enough to worry about in the way I did in high school, combing and slicking it down with coconut oil — the only “hair product” my mother would allow me to put in my hair to avoid damage. It’s celebrating my father’s birthday, with my dog eating most of the cake. It’s the ending of a summer fling. It’s goodbye hugs and bittersweet late night drives home after, not knowing when you’ll get to see them next. It’s Pinterest boards and shopping lists filled with a few apartment essentials but mostly a large amount of decorations that don’t get put up until three months into the school year solely because of how much my roommate (the same one from my first and second year) and I put things off. And at the end of August, it’s finally moving into a new temporary home, the place I’ll have some of the best and worst moments through the next year. It’s wasting my money on too many boba runs with my friends, dancing in random houses with people I just met and will never talk to again, making a day out of finding where all my classes are. And the most memorable, it’s walking through the Diag to my first class on the first day of school with an outfit that I thought was cute but ends up making me sweat from the thick material under the blistering sun, all while blasting “August” by Taylor Swift through my knotted earbuds.

“August,” the eighth track on Taylor’s eighth studio album, Folklore, has become my and many others’ go-to fall song. While fall technically starts in September, the end of August feels like the

Roshni Mohan/MiC

beginning of autumn, disregarding the weather. The school year begins, the back-to-school section at Target now has pumpkins and a couple costumes mixed in, every mannequin now sports the newest trendy sweater or matching sweat set, a couple leaves on every tree are no longer the perfect shade of green, and Starbucks starts advertising and selling their much-awaited fall drinks.

The lyrics of the song and the music behind it contrast with each other, at first. When I put my headphones on, my ears are blasted with the sound of new beginnings. Faster-paced strumming paired with Taylor’s calming vocals along with an overall upbeat coating on the song evokes this cleansing and blooming feeling. The song is a newer sound for Taylor, much different than the rest of the album.

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My writing journey: Why I decided to pursue a writing minor

DAISEY YU MiC Columnist

For many of us, thinking back to when we first started to learn how to read and write seems like a huge mystery. When did I learn to pronounce the word “nonchalant,” and am I still saying “açaí” wrong in my head? The answer is probably yes. In elementary school, I was always in the lowest reading level, heavily struggling with reading comprehension. When I read books, my goal was to finish them as soon as possible. If you asked me who the main character was, I wouldn’t even be able to tell you. In middle school, my essays received average grades, and I dreaded any writing assignments at all.

So, you may be wondering, how did I become a columnist for The Michigan Daily? When did I start to enjoy writing?

My rocky writing journey started during my freshman year of high school. I had just graduated from using generic essay templates to writing specially structured argumentative essays. In my ninthgrade English class, we wrote essays on literary works ranging from epics like “The Odyssey” to novels like “The Catcher in the Rye.” We often had assignments that were only one page long but required us to make an argument in SPA format — statement, proof and analysis — about the reading. I remember enjoying challenging myself to create bold statements but struggling to explain the proof to defend that argument. Each assignment returned to me would include blue ink in the analysis section with the phrases “Explain more” and “Why? Explain.”

This issue continued into my sophomore year. Despite a change in teachers, I still received comments about needing to expand my analysis, specifically with closely examining the connotations of each word in the sentence. (Maybe it was because my sophomore English teacher had been on the track to become a lawyer but decided he liked teaching more.) In his class, I had a downward trend in my grades, and I seemed to be missing this “wow” factor in my writing.

I often met with this teacher oneon-one to discuss how I could improve my writing. I asked him about what I was missing in my writing, and why my analysis section always seemed to be lacking. For the first time, I received detailed feedback, and we had very productive conversations about how to put what I want to say on paper. In the past, I’d only received comments like “How?” and “Why?” which didn’t help me to understand what exactly needed to be changed. I would get frustrated by these one-word questions, and I felt that a teacher was being picky for no reason. However, this teacher thoroughly explained what he was expecting and offered examples of how I could improve and expand on sentences he made comments on. Instead of completely taking out the sentence in question, he would build onto them by adding another sentence that delved deeper into my analysis. Because of his encouragement and clarity, I felt more confident and excited about writing.

While I had well formulated ideas for my analysis, I forgot that people couldn’t read my mind, so I needed to explicitly jot my thoughts down. When explaining my thought process to my teacher, I noticed that I wasn’t including my ideas in the paper. Those additional points would’ve made my argument stronger. To fix this problem, I started thoroughly analyzing blocks of text and organizing everything that went through my mind into bullet points. Then, I would mold together all my points into an argument and eventually a paper. Before, I wouldn’t even outline my argument and tried to be as conservative as possible in my writing. Oftentimes, that bad habit would lead to clunky and disorganized work. But after the meeting, I constantly thought about his advice and applied it to my writing.