3rd Denver

Picture Credit: https://web.colby.edu/cogblog/2018/04/26/you-just-made-my-day/ I don't mean to state the obvious, as it has currently been weighing very heavily upon us all, but we have about two weeks left before the end of junior year. It's crazy to think about. It feels as if our class of 2023 has been suddenly been taken from freshman year, the very beginning of high school, and just dropped into the end. While things are very stressful for us now, I like to think of the future and envision myself ten or so years later, taking a nostalgic look back at these years of our life.  We are actually pretty biased when we form memories from our experiences. Even when we think we are recalling facts about a certain experience, our recollection of events tends to be incomplete and very dependent on the feelings we have during the experience. The peak-end theory says that our memories of positive and negative experiences are dependent upon what we were feeling at the most extreme (pe...

Amratha Rao  Week #16  Failing As high school students in competitive classes, we’re often very precarious about admitting any vulnerabilities, especially with college applications around the corner. We’re always trying to one up each other, be secretive about any summer programs or any opportunities we get. Or, we might flaunt whatever we’ve got to outshine our misgivings. Like most, I entered junior year with that attitude, too proud and too competitive. However, as the year went by, it soon became clear that junior year was doing an incredible job beating me up, maybe a little too much. I lost a lot in junior year, mainly my mental health, my physical health, and my sleep, but many other things as well. I was cheated out of a president position in a club I worked for years promoting and building due to personal grudges and “politics”. I narrowly missed qualifying for NCS in badminton because of one stupid point and some stubborn Mission kids (maybe it wasn't completely thei...

 Week 16: Winter Abernathy - 18 May 2022 [4:47pm] *I will be talking about some mental health related topics(They will all be in a positive light but I know that less has triggered me before), please skip this if that is upsetting to you. In lieu of a response, write a comment that names something that you have learned or something about you that has changed in the past year.  It’s been swell, getting to know all of you, carpe diem <3 As this is the last blog post we will have before our senior year, I’d like to use it to reflect a little.  This past year has been one of major growth and change. Although they will always be a part of me, I will never be the person I was at the beginning of high school, they seem so far away from me now. I hope to make them proud, I hope to be the kind of person that younger me could have benefitted from. My perfectionism has alleviated greatly, my self-deprecation at an all-time low, my eating habits are far better, and I like myself, ...

  Week 17: Memory Athletes   – 5/18 - [4:53PM].      Recently I came across a category of events from The Guinness Book of World Records that tests people’s ability to memorize things. I learned that in 2020, the title of World Memory Champion went to a memory athlete named Emma Alam after she was able to memorize a list of 410 randomly generated words in 15 minutes. I was instantly intrigued by Alam’s special ability and wanted to learn more about memory athletes.  I was completely awestruck when I found out that another memory athlete named Numkshur Narmandakh was able to memorize a combination of 6,000 binary numbers in 30 minutes. I can hardly remember my own phone number for around a year! I really want to acquire amazing memories like these memory athletes so I looked into how they developed and trained their memories. My research led me to a method called the “Major System” (pictured below) which was developed by a historian named Johann Winkelmann i...

  https://www.livescience.com/goldfish-memory.html There is a common saying: “Memory of a goldfish.” We often associate goldfish with poor memory; popular belief even claims that goldfish only have a 3-second memory. However, goldfish actually have memories much longer than the 3-second memory we think they have. They are often used as the model for studying fish cognitive abilities like memory and learning and a wealth of  studies  indicate that goldfish have a good memory. One such study demonstrated this in which researchers fed the fish only on one side of the tank. The goldfish were able to quickly learn and adapt to this change, remembering to go to that side of the tank even if they were not fed at times. Another study exhibited similar results where the goldfish were taught that pushing the red paddle would lead to getting food while pushing the blue paddle didn’t result in anything. In a short period of time, the goldfish again displayed their skill and good reca...

Pranav Sreejayan Ms. Benedetti  Blog 16: The END. And so it all ends. This long journey of APENG 11 culminates in just a few short weeks. To say I will miss the workload is a complete and utter lie, and my course load was something I loved this year, was also a lie. Yet, I found myself wondering if there were good times, if at all, during this course. And more importantly, if there were, why didn’t I remember them. Turns out I was a victim of my own evolutionary psychology. A study found in 2007 found that you were simply more likely to remember bad memories than good ones. Scientists found that negative emotions like fear and sadness led to more activity in the parts of the brain that make memories, and upon thought this does make sense. After all, in the end your brain’s final interest is to keep you alive and remembering things like what is dangerous and what to keep away from is a good way to do this.  Furthermore, not only are you more likely to remember them, but you'r...