Wingspan Volume 2, Issue 1

Wingspan

STATES OF MIND

December 2016 Vol 2, Issue 1

OUR MOODS, OUR FOODS Emotional Eating

COPING IN SILICON VALLEY Behind the Statistics

HARD HITS Concussions on the Rise

by Tara Parimi, Meena Gudapat & Maya Kumar

by Meilan Steimle, Kshithija Mulam & Kaitlin Hsu

by Anjay Saklecha & Julia Amick

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Letter from the Editor December 2016

Wingspan THE HARKER UPPER SCHOOL MAGAZINE

December 2016 | Vol 2, Issue 1

we're alive! After a year-long hiatus, I welcome the Harker community back into the world of longform journalism and Wingspan Magazine.

To those who haven’t seen Volume 1 of Wingspan, alumni Sindhu Ravuri (’15), Shay Lari-Hosain (’16) and Kaity Gee ('16) began this enterprise publication two years ago and released two issues in 2015. This year, the reins have been handed to me.

To those who were on campus to see Volume 1 of Wingspan, I encourage you to dive into this issue and wrap yourself up in the gorgeous layers of words and visuals. Though Volume 2 will inevitably feel different from Volume 1, Wingspan first and foremost exists to serve the Harker community, a mindset that is ingrained in any edition of the magazine.

Volume 2, Issue 1 of Wingspan explores states of mind — from dreams and emotional eating to mental health, concussions and bioethics. I let my contributors push the boundaries of this issue’s theme, and each piece reflects their individual, creative processes.

I cannot sum up in a few paragraphs how much gratitude I have for everyone who has supported me on this journey.

Thank you to my designers, my writers, my family, and especially to Ms. Austin.

Wingspan simply would not exist without your unfailing faith and guidance.

Please enjoy Volume 2, Issue 1 of Wingspan!

Your Wingspan Editor Kaitlin Hsu (‘18)

Anjay Saklecha '19 Co-Features Editor of Aquila. Outside of journalism, he is a member of a competitive tennis team.

Darren Gu '18 Photo Editor of Talon.

Third year in the program. In his free time, Darren enjoys exploring the city at night.

Derek Yen '18 STEM Editor of the Winged Post. Outside of journalism, he competes in Quizbowl and does science research.

Julia Amick '19 Asst. Photo Editor of Talon. In her free time, Julia enjoys playing soccer, rock climbing, and volunteering.

Katherine Zhang '19 Asst.STEMEditorofthe Winged Post. Outside of journalism, Kat does programming and math.

Kshithija Mulam '17 Co-Editor-in-Chief of the Winged Post. She does science research and is the president of the Harker Green Team.

Maya Valluru '17 News Editor of Aquila.

She enjoys writing short stories and doing service with Harker Key Club.

Meena Gudapati '18 News Editor of the Winged Post. She also plays on the girls’ varsity soccer team and is treasurer of Red Cross Club.

Meilan Steimle '17 Co-Editor-in-Chief of the Winged Post. In her free time, she enjoys creative writing and existential comics.

Sahana Srinivasan '18 Managing Editor of the Winged Post. She is also an officer for the school’s Women in STEM club and French NationalHonorSociety.

Rose Guan '19 Co-Copy Editor of the Winged Post. Her other interests include reading, writing, listening to music and learning piano.

Trisha Dwivedi '17 Managing Editor of Aquila. Apart from enjoying journalism, she partakes in science research, art and Challenge Success.

The student-run wingspan is advised by Ellen Austin and published by the Journalism program of The Harker Upper School, 500 Saratoga Avenue, San Jose, CA 95129.

Annual subscriptions are $25. Checks may be mailed to the address above and addressed to Wingspan Magazine, The Harker School.

Wingspan publishes in-depth news & feature reporting in an unbiased and professional manner and serves as a public forum for the students of The Harker School. Opinions and letters are the personal viewpoints of the writers and do not necessarily reflect the opinion of Wingspan. All content decisions are made by student editors, and the content of Wingspan in no way reflects the official policy of The Harker School. The opinions expressed in this publication reflect those of the student writers and not the Harker board, administration, faculty or adviser.

Advertisements are accepted in Wingspan. However, Wingspan reserves the right to deny any ad. Letters to the Editor may be submitted to Manzanita 70 or emailed and must be signed, legible and concise. The staff reserves the right to edit letters to conform to style. Baseless accusations, insults, libelous statements, obscenities and/or letters which call for a disruption of the school day will not be considered for publication. Letters sent to Wingspan will be published at the discretion of the editorial staff.

No part of this publication may be reproduced in whole or part without prior permission from publishers. Copyright © 2016 the Harker Journalism program. All rights reserved.

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Wingspan

THE STATES OF MIND ISSUE

12

26

36

Hard Hits: Concussions in Sports

Coping in Silicon Valley: behind the Stastistics

The Science Behind Dreams

By Meilan Steimle, Kshithija Mulam & Kaitlin Hsu A deeper look into the lives and minds of Bay Area students.

By Kaitlin Hsu Uncovering Freud's royal road to the unconscious.

By Anjay Saklecha & Julia Amick Concussions damage the brain. Sports concussions are on the rise.

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LETTER FROM THE EDITOR

5

EDITORIAL

Never Fear? Student Phobias 6

By Sahana Srinivasan Students with phobias discuss their experiences with having irrational fears.

Our Moods, Our Foods 7

Varun Baldwa explores the elementals of earth, water, air and fire. From San Francisco to Puerto Vallarta, Varun documents his experiences with the surroundings.

By Tara Parimi, Meena Gudapati & Maya Kumar The foods we eat are linked to our emotions, and these four entrees will show you how.

A Guide to Procrastination 10

By Maya Valluru Analyzing the motivations behind procrastination, and how can you prevent it?

Traveling in the Middle 17

ARTIST SHOWCASE Darren Gu investigates the significance of our surroundings through photography.

To Cut, or Not to Cut 22

By Derek Yen & Katherine Zhang With the advent of technologies like CRISPR, what role should gene editing play in our society?

Corrections: In Volume 1, Issue 1 of Wingspan, the population of San Jose in the 1950s was incorrectly stated to be 30,000. At the time, it was 100,000 and growing. Wingspan regrets the mistake.

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Photographs page 3 by Kshithija Mulam. Illustrations by Kaitlin Hsu.

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Editorial December 2016

STATES OF MIND:

The Politics of Certainty and How To Proceed After the Election

THE SHOCK OF HAVING ONE'S WORLDVIEW PULLED FROM ONE'S FEET.

We were so sure. For weeks, articles and polls predicted Hillary Clinton’s inevitable ascendancy to the presidency, reassured anxious citizens that, yes, Clinton would indeed win and reminded us she was the favorite of the presidential race.

Whether through digital or print media, the notion that Clinton had secured the election seemed to take root in our collective psyche, on a party, a state and perhaps even a school wide level.

Democrats across the nation looked forward to retiring early and stress-free on election night.

But, as the hours slipped away, Clinton's path to the White House only grew longer and steeper.

The night culminated in Donald Trump becoming America's President-elect.

In the hours after the results were announced, citizens across the country rejoiced and mourned, rallied together for celebration or protest. But, the election victory was overshadowed by a general sense of uncertainty from both sides on how our new President-elect would proceed.

The fear Trump incited during the campaign is real, and his racist and sexist comments cannot be ignored. But, we are still here, and America will not crumble this easily.

If we look to our history classes, we should truly try to envision the events related to us across the stretch of time and often only through textbooks. America, the ongoing experiment in democracy, has survived growing pains, a whole slew of sectional crises, a civil war and an assorted collection of economic troubles, to name a few.

Regardless of who our president is, we live in America, and it is up to us to change what we don't like.

If we don’t reflect, if we aren’t spurred to action, if we don’t hope, what can we do? In a time when our longtime head of school Mr. Christopher Nikoloff is also leaving, it may feel like there is no one we can turn to with our feelings of shock, disappointment and grief.

But, now, especially, is the time to start effecting our own change on a local level. We should reach out to those around us and listen. We must keep our heads up and keep on hoping. ●

Wingspan Magazine

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Never Fear? December 2016

never fear?

WORDS BY SAHANA SRINIVASAN

E

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milie Sanche ('19) did not always have a phobia of needles. When she was younger, she would sometimes watch the needle being inserted into her arm during blood tests.

She still did have a negative experience with needles—during a blood test at age two, five hospital employees held her down to allow an additional two to draw blood.

“Besides that, there wasn’t really any traumatic event involving needles that would cause me not to like them or to be afraid of them,” she said. “It just sort of happened: starting a few years ago, due to having more frequent blood tests, something just flipped in my mind and it just became terrifying for me.”

Now, her phobia is pervasive enough that she avoids shots and blood tests whenever possible, making it more than just a fear.

“When I had to have my blood drawn, I had a panic attack that lasted about half an hour, and it took another half an hour to calm me down,” she said. “In the end, it took over an hour and fifteen minutes to just get my blood drawn, and this happens every time.”

Specific phobias like Sanche's differ from fears in being more extreme and having a significant, tangible significant effect on everyday life.

The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5), published by the American Psychiatric Association, enumerates that fears are diagnosable as phobias when they produce an immediate anxiety response; are irrational, unreasonable, and out of proportion to the real danger of the feared object or situation; cause extreme avoidance of the fear-inducing object; and persist for more than six months.

“Everybody has fear. Fear is a natural emotion to feel, especially when you’re in trouble; like, it warns us that we should be wary of whatever’s going on,” AP Psychology teacher Kelly Horan said.

“Phobias are taking that to an irrational level.”

Maile Chung ('17) fears falling and any pain or injuries incurred from falling, but she doesn’t believe it affects her everyday behavior enough to be classified as a phobia, nor does

she try any forms of therapy for her fear.

“When I was little, I was a roughhouser, so I would always like play really rough and then I would fall but then I would just get back up,” she said. “I think I kind of ignored the pain, and as I got older, the pain kind of lingered and I was more aware of it, and that kind of made me afraid to do things because I was afraid of the pain.”

Another common fear of many students—as evidenced by the art wall, where the largest, boldest response to the “Fear is…” prompt was “Dec. 15,” the release date for some early college application results—is failure, in conjunction to either their parents, school or college applications.

“What I [have been] most scared of during high school is that I won’t be able to get into the colleges that I want because I think that every student should be able to be accepted into the college they want,” Vivian Wang ('18) said. “Everyone works hard and they try their best to be the best

they can be, and it’s sort of unfair that a lot of students don’t get their dream to become true.”

Therapy can help in overcoming or working through phobias. In exposure therapy, a patient faces the object of their phobia under guidance from a professional, while in cognitive behavior therapy, therapists help patients evaluate their behaviors to minimize harmful thinking.

“I think fears are something that everyone can at some point in their life come over, but I think [you should] just take it slow and be comfortable with how you deal with it,” Chung said. “Fears are a real obstacle in [people’s] life, and they should take it slow, like baby steps.” ● Sahana Srinivasan is the Managing Editor of The Winged Post. Contact her at 18SahanaS@students. harker.org.

[Fear] warns us that we should be wary of whatever's going on.

Phobias are taking that to an irrational level.

KELLY HORAN AP PSYCHOLOGY TEACHER

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Our Moods, Our Foods December 2016

MEENA GUDAPATI & MAYA KUMAR & TARA PARIMI

our moods our foods

Our ancestors ate for sustenance and thus chose carb-heavy foods over lighter ones, so experts consider healthy eating a more contemporary concept: happy people often choose more nutritious options, while sadness can trigger unhealthy cravings. Check out these four emotion-linked foods— they'll make your mouth water. >>>

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guilt: stack attack Toast four plain buttermilk toaster waffles until golden brown.

Stack the waffles, using a knife to spread a chocolatenut spread on top of each before placing the next one on top.

Garnish with raspberries, crushed sliced almonds and

joy: brussels bake Halve 15 Brussels sprouts, and place in a bowl.

Add two diced cloves of garlic, two tablespoons of olive oil and one teaspoon of salt. Mix until the Brussels sprouts are thoroughly coated.

Let sit for 15 minutes. Place on baking tray and bake for 20 minutes at 400 degrees Fahrenheit. Garnish with roasted couscous to taste.

Paper Straws

surprise: hole in one Use a cookie cutter to cut a hole in a piece of bread, and cook one side of the bread on medium heat for around one minute.

Flip the bread over, and crack an egg into the hole. Top with cheese, vegetables and spices of choice.

Remove the bread from the pan once the egg has cooked to taste.

anger: fowl ball Wash one-by-two-inch slivers of thawed chicken breast, and douse them in buttermilk or plain yogurt.

Mix with a clove of garlic and a half-teaspoon each of paprika, cayenne pepper and salt, and refrigerate for a half hour.

Coat each chicken slice in crushed Hot Cheetos, and fry in a pan over medium heat. Top with excess Cheetos crumbs.

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Help Column: Procrastination December 2016

Help Column: Procrastination Whether it's warm soup or phones, find a way to avoid these time killers School has ended early today, and you’re ILLUSTRATIONS BY KAITLIN HSU home at 1 p.m. This is exceptional.

Yes, you do have a unit test tomorrow, but you have so many extra hours to study. You’ve handled studying for an entire unit a few weeks ago in only six hours, so you make sure you allot that time for later on. And if you promise to remain disciplined with yourself — like, no looking up from the book for the whole time — you’ll make it. You got it. You throw some popcorn into the microwave and get your very necessary dose of Stranger Things on a Tuesday afternoon.

If this situation sounds familiar to you, then you probably procrastinate. And when you procrastinate once, you can never go back. You are either a chronic procrastinator or not one at all.

To me, acts of procrastination are continually failed attempts at trying to manage time.

Procrastination is not laziness — it’s an effort to overcome your sloth.

Leaving duties off for later grants the procrastinator a few things: comfort, joy, and a sense of control.

First,the procrastinator feels some sense of salutary justification for leaving

WORDS BY MAYA VALLURU

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things off for later. Procrastination is like cuddling a puppy or eating warm soup on a rainy day. Take Sunday mornings, for an example. You’ve already finished your math homework on Saturday, but you went to bed pretty late the previous night. After you wake up on Sunday at 10 a.m., you want to treat yourself to some cartoons to spiritually prepare you for your day. You find yourself snuggled in bed with your laptop and promise yourself to begin working at exactly 12:35 — but then you have to eat breakfast (or lunch?) and do all that other routine stuff that are out of your hands. The next time you sleep is 1 a.m. the next morning after finishing a project that took an unexpected amount of time.

So, how can you solve this first aspect of procrastination? You can start by making yourself comfortable while working. It’s silly to force yourself to study in a stale or restrictive condition that absorbs you entirely into a world of words and ideas. Instead, what seems to work for many is finding one thing to do while working to mindfully stay engaged — allow for a healthy distraction that isn’t watching an episode of TV or playing Facebook games. The continual small distraction every few minutes actually provides a great continuity to work time.

Next is the issue of experiencing endless joy while delaying work. It’s not so much that we procrastinate so we get happier; it’s just that once we begin procrastinating it’s too hard to stop. By allowing yourself just that one YouTube video, you may find yourself clicking on items in the suggested

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tab for far longer than expected. You can take breaks, because that’s only human, but if you know that you easily fall victim to enjoying something other than your job, then you should avoid doing it. Find something that allows you to take a break but doesn’t draw you in. For example, you can sit in your chair and take deep breaths for a few minutes rather than run through BuzzFeed quizzes. Find what works for you.

And finally, procrastination is the result of a failed attempt at attaining a sense of control over time. People often set aside a period of relaxation in their schedules.

This can be an extremely powerful tool or a horribly harmful one. For those who follow their schedules closely, including free time as an essential part of their day allows them to start and finish their relaxation as planned, therefore leaving the designated amount of time to work and sleep in place. But procrastinators see scheduling free time as a wonderful idea because it gives them an excuse to enjoy their time and save work for later. Actively writing down certain hours to relax or promising to begin work at a certain time is counteractive for those who know can’t manage time well. Procrastination is like an addiction. You do it once and promise yourself to never do it again, but the need to do it just keeps coming back. To avoid fooling yourself that you’ve actually got things under control, eliminate mandatory relaxation from your schedule until you can actually handle it!

I hope that if you’ve found yourself in situations that deem you a procrastinator, this article will provide you an idea of how to more effectively take control of your time. And remember, I’m not asking you to get strict on yourself — find what makes you comfortable, happy, and in-control while you work, not while you waste your time. Good luck! ●

YOU’RE A CHRONIC PROCR ASTINATOR!

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Hard Hits December 2016

HARD HITS EACH CONCUSSION DAMAGES NEURAL PATHWAYS IN THE BRAIN. FROM BEING KNEED IN THE HEAD UNDERWATER TO A HARD KNOCK DURING FOOTBALL PRACTICE, SPORTS CONCUSSIONS ARE ON THE RISE.

BY A N J AY S A K L E C H A & JULIA AMICK I L L U S T R AT I O N S BY K A I T L I N H S U

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Concussions

I WAS LYING MISERABLY IN BED. I WAS VERY SENSITIVE TO LIGHT AND NOISE. I COULDNT EVEN LOOK AT MY PHONE. N O R M A N G A R C I A ( ' 17 )

“I

got kneed to the head. The opponent was coming for me and he jumped as I was going for the tackle. It didn’t go as I planned and it came straight to my head… At first I got up and I felt perfectly fine, and then I was like ‘Whoa,’ and I felt [like] I was [not] even inside my own mind or body anymore. When I fell to the ground, my team and coach came running for me,” Norman Garcia (‘17) said, recalling the third Harker football game of last year. “I’ve had three concussions. The last one I had was pretty bad.”

A concussion is a mild traumatic brain injury that is caused by a sudden blow to the head or a hit to the body that results in the brain rapidly accelerating and decelerating within the skull. This movement of the brain injures the cerebral cells and creates biochemical changes that make it difficult for the brain to function normally. These changes occur within the minutes and hours after the impact and lead to a multitude of neurological symptoms that can persist for weeks or longer. Individuals with such injuries may often note temporary loss of consciousness, memory problems, dizziness, headaches, fatigue, difficulty concentrating, and sleep disturbances.

Norman’s symptoms lasted for nearly two months, during which time, he was out of both school and sports.

“I was lying miserably in bed. I was very sensitive to light and noise,” he said. “I couldn’t even look at my phone.”

Norman’s situation is not a trivial problem.

According to the CDC in 2010, there were about 2.5 million emergency department visits associated with traumatic brain injuries. About 10 percent of these injuries are concussions in individuals less than 19 years old and related to sports and recreation. A recent report by CNN notes that these numbers continue to rise. Not only does it seem like the condition is underdiagnosed, but according to former NFL player and now Stanford Health Care physician, Dr. Russell Stewart, the

A line of three athletes represents the 47% of athletes who report symptoms of a concussion.

increased incidence is “likely multifactorial and partially attributable to the increasing size and speed of players and the subsequent higher energy collisions, along with improved rates of diagnosis and increased social awareness and media attention.”

Despite being such a major problem in this age group, concussion protection rules only began to emerge in the late-2000s. In October 2006, 13-yearold Zackery Lystedt collapsed from a brain injury when he returned to a middle school football game just minutes after sustaining a concussion. He spent the next three months in a coma and took nearly three years, after intense rehabilitation, before he could even stand with assistance. In May 2009, Washington State passed the Zackery Lystedt Law and became the first state in the country to mandate a comprehensive youth concussion state law. It wasn’t until January 2014 when Mississippi signed a similar law into action, that all 50 states had a concussion law in place.

These state laws provided for the creation of guidelines and education for schools, coaches, parents, and athletes. The California Interscholastic Federation (CIF) is the state’s governing body tasked with creating and implementing these guidelines for all high school and middle school sports. The organization mandates that not only must all coaches receive training on concussion treatment, but a head injury or concussion information sheet must be signed annually by both the athlete and a parent or guardian prior to participation in any sport.

More importantly, these laws allowed for the immediate removal of a player if a concussion is suspected and required written consent for a player to return to play by a licensed health care provider who has specific training in the management of concussions. However, any such guidelines are complicated to put into place due to having multiple stakeholders and varying interpretation of how these rules should be carried out.

The CIF rules definitely help to prevent athletes _ Wingspan Magazine 13

from getting injured, but when a head injury does occur, these individuals are typically taken to a medical center or local ER for evaluation.

Interestingly, even though concussions are so prevalent in our medical system, it is still a diagnosis based only upon a physician’s examination of the patient as all objective tests, such as CT scans and lab work, are normal.

According to Dr. Tina Tsou, Coordinator of Neuropsychological Services at El Camino Hospital, physicians look for “signs such as delayed verbal responses to questions, confusion, balance problems, irritability, and memory deficits.”

Suspicions of concussion are typically confirmed by neuropsychological testing and repeat neurological examinations over a period of weeks and months.

As Director of the NBA’s concussion program

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Photograph provided by Kate Chow. Infograhic by Meilan Steimle.

and the team physician for the United States at the 2014 Olympic Winter Games, Dr. Jeffrey Kutcher feels that the some of the biggest issues center on awareness that an individual even has an injury and then understanding an individual’s deviation from the baseline. He has been instrumental in developing protocols for education and evaluation.

“It’s incumbent on team physicians, trainers, and coaches to make sure that their athletes are informed and that everyone is observing for signs and symptoms of head injuries,” he said. “The competitive spirit within sports can lead to underreporting and neglect of injuries.”

What worries both families and coaches is what to do next. Questions around monitoring, treatment, returning to school or work and when an individual can be cleared for sports are not always easy to answer. UCLA senior athletic director Tandi Hawkey describes the intensive monitoring protocol for her players including a daily evaluation that involves the selfreporting of symptoms and objective neurocognitive testing that assesses memory, processing, and balance. She notes that the initial focus is to remove all external physical and cognitive stresses such as phones, computers, and video games. As symptoms normalize to baseline, the athlete is exposed to gradually increasing levels of physical activity eventually leading back to contact training and full competition.

The main concern is that players could get cleared to play too quickly, putting them at risk for a condition known as Secondary Impact Syndrome, which involves a second insult to the head following an initial concussion, sometimes weeks later.

The first concussion leads to an alteration of the cerebral metabolism and the second blow causes the healing brain to lose its ability to control and regulate its internal blood flow. This rare, but devastating process, can lead to diffuse cerebral edema, brain herniation and even death.

“You can only get second impact syndrome if you go back too soon while symptomatic,” Dr. Holly Benjamin, Director of Primary Care Sports Medicine at the University of Chicago said. “Any athlete who has any signs of lingering concussion symptoms or any difference from

baseline should not be cleared to return to play.“ However, this is easier said than done. Hawkey notes that “coaches often want to push athletes to be tough and play through pain, but head injury symptoms should not be ignored.”

Students also feel the guilt of disappointing their team members. Swimmer Kate Chow (‘18), who had a concussion during a match last summer, acknowledged that “being taken out of a sport is quite hard because you see your team doing all the work, and emotionally, you feel like you need to help.”

“We understand the risks of trauma and what return to play means in sports better than other specialists often do,” Dr. Benjamin said, asserting that clearing players for a return to sports requires providers who are trained in assessing and treating.

While California’s first youth sports concussion safety law was signed in October of 2011, it wasn’t until January 1, 2015 when an amended law, AB

2127, placed limits on full-contact practices and mandated graduated return-to-play protocols of no less than seven days. Prevention and precaution are beginning to take an active role in concussion management.

Even with the tremendous amount of recent education and awareness campaigns around concussion, Dr. Stewart feels there is so much more to learn about head injuries in sports.

“The NFL in particular has strict policies for evaluating, monitoring and clearing players with head injuries,” he said. “They are also trying to make rule changes to limit helmet to helmet hits and shots on defenseless players.”

However, the impact of such alterations in policy and play need to be measured and understood.

The NFL has a vested interest in understanding this injury process given the intense scrutiny the organization has faced over the last several years involving chronic traumatic encephalopathy _ Wingspan Magazine 15

(CTE), a progressive degenerative disease from repeated head trauma, found in the brains of former players.

Dr. Benjamin is working to answer such questions by leading a national study on concussions involving 25,000 National College Athletic Association (NCAA) student athletes and 30 major hospital centers. This longitudinal three year multi-center trial will follow the natural history of concussions from a comprehensive preseason baseline evaluation to monitoring after a head injury. The research will give an unprecedented view into this disease process and allow physicians to better understand both short and long-term evolution of head injuries and the effect on these players.

Other researchers, such as Stanford University’s Dr. David Camarillo, are approaching their research from a different angle by focusing on the biomechanical effects of concussion through the use of sensors built into the helmets and mouthguards of football players. By understanding the force and direction of the impact involved in a head injury and by following clinical data through radiological images and blood testing, Dr. Camarillo’s lab hopes to eventually develop athletic equipment that will prevent the concussion from occurring in the first place. Until that happens, all individuals at risk for concussion need to continue to be proactive.

Experts feel that most concussions will heal given enough time. But significant and repeated injuries may not allow that to happen. Norman Garcia knows this first hand. “My memory hasn’t been as strong as it usually has been before that,” he said. “My memory has deteriorated a little bit and I still have headaches too.”f Anjay is the Features Editor of Harker Aquila.

Contact him at 19anjays@students.harker.org. Julia is the Assistant Photo Editor of Talon. Contact her at 18juliaa@students.harker.org

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Traveling in the

Middle

T

he wind howls, gently ruffling my hair and numbing my ears with its icy cold grasp. I sway silently like the canopy of tall tree leaves above me that whisper, “Whoosh.”

Though the night is sweet and chilly, my body is warmed not only by the green cardigan covering my chest, but also by an inexplicable feeling of bliss. Soft, pulsating music emanates from my earphones, magically enveloping me in a warm sphere. My sockless feet glide over the soaked grass, and I feel each blade playfully tickling my sole.

WORDS AND PHOTOS BY DARREN GU DESIGN BY TRISHA DWIVEDI AND KAITLIN HSU

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I mainly started exploring areas such as the park around my neighborhood this past year; I didn’t go out because I thought that it would waste my work time. However, during these escapes, focusing on the refreshing perceptions that invigorate my body and calm my heart helps me regain the motivation to tackle tasks like homework.

With my senses awakened, I unfurl my tripod and camera from my backpacK, translating my idiosyncratic experience into a photo with a pronounced click of my camera’s shutter.

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Traveling in the Middle

As I sit, waiting for the second click of the camera to finish its exposure, in a strange duality, I feel isolated but also connected to my surroundings.

Wingspan Magazine

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I’m alone with only my reserved thoughts, but seconds later, as I absorb the sights around me, trying to see the scene the way the lens of my camera does, my eyes illuminate something unfamiliar: eerie and unmoving houses that reflect a vividly orange color from the streetlamps surround the luscious, unrestrained flow of the trees in the park. Because of the sharp contrast, their synthesis paints a beautiful picture.

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Traveling in the Middle

In this mystical, picturesque landscape, I am tucked away, and my mind is fully separated from all the complexities of the real world. I tend to internalize most of my thoughts and feelings, so instead of confronting all of them, I now empty out the bad and focus on the good, feeling rejuvenated.

Wingspan Magazine

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As I look up at the vast cloudy sky above me, I feel like I am no longer grounded. I’ve transformed from a physical, rigid body to structureless, wiggly perceptions and emotions. I feel like a rocket ship, blasted off from its launchpad, travelling towards the welcoming moon.

Upon completing my journey and returning back to Earth, relaxed and tucked into an invisible warm, cozy blanket, I close my eyes and lie down.

Although the popular saying is to face your issues, these experiences help me escape from my problems. The lifestyle of a Harker student can be hectic; we are constantly bombarded with various responsibilities. Instead of attempting to take everything head-on, it’s useful to take breaks like these and escape.

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After a long rest in my bed of grass, I prop up my bike and pedal back home. Removing my earphones, I only feel the whip of the wind in my face and hear the sound of my bike chain whirling; at this moment, I am truly carefree.

Indeed, everyone has a special thing thing that makes them happy; for me, it’s going on these excursions. Although you might have figured yours out already, don’t be afraid to experience new things even if you don’t think that they will work, or that you don’t have the time. Because, it might end up being that special something that helps you escape to your paradise.

As I leave my own Xanadu and approach my house, I take a last glimpse before I end my voyage, recalling the entire experience, now ready to tackle the world with a renewed, calm mindset. ● Darren is the Photo Editor of Talon. Contact him at 18darreng@students.harker.org.

_ 23

A New Era for GENE EDITING? As CRISPR and other gene editing technologies perfect and disseminate, the prospect of precise control over the very architecture of human biology itself becomes less of a science fiction and more of an imminent reality.

Gene editing as a concept is as simple as it is controversial: by making modifications to the genome of an organism, one could manipulate Few topics are as controversial in the scientific community. Gene editing excites as it terrifies. >>>

WORDS BY DEREK YEN & KATHERINE ZHANG ILLUSTRATIONS BY KAITLIN HSU AND MEILAN STEIMLE

_ 24

F

ollowing the advent of CRISPR and other strides in genomic technologies, genetic engineering has emerged as one of the most controversial topics in the modern scientific community.

Gene editing is founded upon deceptively simple premises. A person’s genome, or collection of genes, encodes for unique characteristics such as height, eye color and intelligence. It also accounts for negative traits, such as diseases and disorders.

(Some traits are acquired from the environment – the extent of the influence of nature and nurture is hotly debated even to this day.) Accordingly, edits made to an individual’s genome will alter their inherited traits. Anything encoded for by genes can be changed by editing the encoding gene.

While scientists have explored the idea of gene editing for decades, previous methods of editing the human genome were unreliable and costly, rendering any actual implementation theoretical.

Recently, however, researchers have developed faster and more reliable gene editing techniques.

The CRISPR-Cas9 method, which uses the bacterial Cas9 enzyme to cut out a targeted gene in a DNA sequence and allows researchers to add new ones, has recently risen into the scientific spotlight.

CRISPR’s accuracy, simple construction and low cost make it the most promising option for making genetic engineering viable. This development has not come without its warranted measure of caution – with gene editing becoming a reality, discussion about whether and how it should be used has resurfaced both within the scientific community and beyond.

Debilitating diseases like Huntington's chorea could be cured with gene editing techniques like CRISPR.However, unanticipated downstream effects could lead to harmful results.

“There has definitely been a lot of conversation and debate within the CRISPR community about the responsibility that we have as researchers for how we use these tools and what kind of implications and impacts that it will have on society at large,” said Marie La Russa, a Ph.D. candidate at the Stanford Stanley Qi lab, which conducts extensive research with CRISPR. “I think this

GENE EDITING IS RIDDLED WITH QUESTIONS OF ETHICS AND MORALITY – EVEN IF IT PROVES SCIENTIFICALLY VIABLE, IS IT NECESSARILY MORAL? question cannot and should not be answered solely by scientists – it needs to be something that engages the community, engages global government, ethicists, people informed and interested citizens to kind of come up with ideas for how we should move forward.” *** One of the most exciting potential applications of gene editing is gene therapy, a theorized technique to treat genetic diseases by replacing defective genes with their “normal” versions.

Genetic diseases, which are caused by mutated forms of genes, represent some of the most debilitating diseases known to physicians, such as Huntington’s chorea, which causes neurological degeneration and uncontrollable motor movements, and cystic fibrosis, which causes mucosal buildups in the respiratory tracts and immense difficulty with breathing. A growing body of evidence further suggests that genetics can play a role in causing seemingly nongenetic diseases as well, such as Alzheimer’s disease and breast cancer.

As of now, physicians and doctors have not found ways to cure genetic diseases.

Unlike other diseases, which have an interactable agent, an individual’s own genome causes genetic diseases, making the patient and the disease inseparable. While the _ 25

use of medication can mitigate some genetic diseases, these treatments are reactive, expensive and incomplete.

In theory, there an obvious and simple way to cure genetic diseases is to replace the mutated gene with a copy of the “normal” gene. Using this method, physicians could completely cure any genetic disease – provided that the disease-causing mutation is known.

If proven effective, gene editing could be used to cure genetic diseases, representing a massive boon in improving public health and quality of life. No longer would parents suffer the ravages of incurable congenital disorders such as Tay-Sachs disease, which causes the degeneration of nerve cells in the brain, usually killing victims before the age of four. *** While gene therapy can be used to cure genetic diseases, it could also be used to lessen the impacts of less severe conditions, such as asthma or myopia.

It is unclear whether these conditions constitute necessary gene edits – while they clearly can negatively impact quality of life, they aren’t lifethreatening.

“It’s hard to say what defines whether or not we should make an edit,” said Rajiv Movva (‘18), who conducted research with CRISPR over the summer. “I think that there is a bright line that has to be drawn as to what is something that has a detrimental effect on a human’s quality of life, and what doesn’t. That's definitely a slippery slope that we’ll have to tread lightly on, but I think that for certain things like, for example Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s, it’s very fair to say that the embryo and all of its possible descendants will be better off without this crippling disease.”

Taken further, even beyond curing genetic diseases, gene edits could be used to enhance other characteristics, such as intelligence and height, or even purely cosmetic ones, such as hair color.

Provided enough knowledge about the genome, it could become possible to edit a fetus’s genome to enhance their physical characteristics, such as beauty, strength and intelligence. Some have even proposed that allowing widespread gene editing will result in babies who have been tailored to their parents’ tastes – “designer babies.”

The American public has reflected these doubts over the appropriateness of these enhancement edits as compared to strictly pathological ones.

According to a Pew Research Center poll in 2014, while 46% of American adults responded that modifying a baby’s genome to reduce their risk of serious diseases was an appropriate use of _ 26 The New Era for Gene Editing?

medical technology, only 15% found it appropriate to modify for increased intelligence, with 83% responding that it was overtly “taking medical advances too far.” “[Something] that has been addressed more in science fiction than in science, there is another bigger concern [that] by opening the door to addressing genetic diseases, we are also now opening the door to other reasons for modifying the genome, less health oriented,” Spenner said.

The primary appeal of gene editing comes from the idea of being able to cure a debilitating disease or improve a person’s life in a way that could not be done otherwise.

“If you’re having a kid, and your doctor comes to you and says, ‘Well, we can do this procedure that will maybe not ensure, but with some confidence, pretty certain[ly] will prevent a disease or make him or her healthier over the course of [their] lifespan’ – if that was all a new parent was told, I think a lot of parents would be in favor of doing it,” research teacher Chris Spenner said.

Gene editing is not to be taken lightly – changes made to an individual’s genome live with them forever. Furthermore, changes made to individual’s sex cells will be passed on to their descendants, permanently altering the lives of their offspring as well – edits done after cell line differentiation could avoid this, but edits made before would be heritable.

“We really don’t understand how the genome works,” Spenner said. “We’re still learning about epigenomics and all these other subtleties – more than just subtleties, these other complications – that suggest that just knowing the primary sequence of the gene code does not show entirely what's going to happen, and that also we don't know how to predict how genetic modifications might interact with the natural environment later on.”

Though some argue that using gene editing to produce more intelligent, strong or attractive children could increase the potential of the human race, others believe that access to cosmetic gene alterations could further stratify people into social classes based off of intelligence, talent, strength or appearance. This outcome has most prominently been depicted in Aldous Huxley’s dystopian futuristic novel, Brave New World, in which the the government modifies human embryos to be less or more intelligent depending on their social

Scientists discoveredCRISPR by analyzing the immune systems of bacteria.

CRISPR works by utlizing Cas9 and guide RNA to find the target DNA it needs to cut.

caste, concretely and inexorably committing them to their ordained future. Permitting parents to use gene editing for cosmetic purposes could further exacerbate extant socioeconomic differences due to unequal access to the technology, as only those who can afford to genetically modify their children could do so.

“Right now there’s clearly some relevance with

technology we already have in the world, like access to better technology or medical treatments or cosmetic surgeries, for example,” Amy Jin (‘18), who participates in discussion about gene editing’s ethics, said. “That is already something that some people cannot afford while others can. With gene editing, that would be the same thing because the wealthy and the powerful would have the means of _ Wingspan Magazine 27

getting access to this, even if it’s illegal.”

Allowing widespread use of gene editing techniques for cosmetic purposes can also lead to abuse and misuse of these methods. Although scientists who are familiar with this technology may be able to use it safely, those who are inexperienced or have malicious intentions can use gene editing incorrectly and thus negatively impact the person receiving the treatment.

“Once this technology is introduced and is more developed, then those who want to abuse it will definitely try to get their hands on this technology and it also would empower the wealthy while marginalizing the poor,” Amy said.

In addition to ethical and moral concerns about the use of gene editing, some question whether current gene editing techniques are safe and reliable enough to be used on humans. Even if

ONCE THIS TECHNOLOGY IS INTRODUCED AND IS MORE DEVELOPED, THEN THOSE WHO WANT TO ABUSE IT WILL DEFINITELY TRY TO GET THEIR HANDS ON THIS TECHNOLOGY. society accepted gene editing as ethical, CRISPR has a long way to go before it can be considered safe for therapeutic use. Several technical complications challenge the scientific feasibility of gene editing.

Scientists have discovered that in some cases, gene editing techniques like CRISPR inadvertently modify sequences besides those being targeted.

These unintended edits, known as “off-target gene editing,” could cause detrimental and potentially life-threatening changes to the organism being modified.

“In terms of precision, we know the exact base pair that [the Cas9 enzyme’s] going to cut if we direct it to our on-target site, but if we give it a sequence to direct it to a target site, how often will it go to that site rather than cutting or affecting other sites that might have a similar sequence?” La Russa said. “We know the sequence of the whole genome, so we can design a guide that can be reasonably very highly specific just based off of knowing it's not going to target any other sequence in the genome. It can be very precise, but I think if we want to use it for therapeutic applications, there definitely needs to be a lot more work done to characterise specific target sites and how often the Cas9 will cut or bind other sites just to make sure that we’re only affecting the genes that we want to when we put the _ 28 A New Era for Gene Editing?

CRISPR marks the newest development in gene editing technology.

Doctors and scientists come ever closer to making science fiction a reality.

CRISPR system into cells.”

Even if an edit is successfully made without changing any other genes, editing a gene that impacts a certain trait or condition may inadvertently affect other characteristics. Many genes are pleiotropic, meaning that they affect multiple seemingly unrelated traits.

An edit meant to improve a person’s quality of life could inadvertently detrimentally affect the person in unforeseen ways.

“We do need a clearer understanding of the effects of genetics on disease traits, and right now it’s hard to know when we have a good enough understanding of the disease,” Amy said. “As of right now, we wouldn’t be able to carry through with gene editing because we don’t know the potential unintended effects that perhaps altering or splicing DNA could do when we’re trying to cure a disease.”

Our current incomplete knowledge of the complex genetic interactions within the human body makes it impossible to determine what editing a certain gene will ultimately do to the person being treated.

“We have not yet used these kinds of technologies and we have not seen [their full effects,]” Spenner said. “It would take a full lifespan to know for sure what the downstream effects are – it’s a few years into the technology, it’s way too early.”

Furthermore, it is usually rare that a particular allele is completely negative, or completely positive – some traits we currently consider “diseases” can have beneficial side effects. It is sometimes unclear as to what constitutes a disease, both in the scientific sense but also in the philosophical one.

For instance, take the genetic disorder sickle cell anemia. Those who have sickle cell anemia produce malformed hemoglobin, causing their blood cells to ineffectively carry oxygen and clot.

While the full-blown disease is debilitating, those with merely the Sickle cell trait, or just a single copy of the sickle cell anemia gene, actually have an advantage over “normal” blood cell people in certain circumstances. Sickle-shaped blood cells are resistant to infection by the malaria parasite, meaning that sickle cell trait individuals are more resistant to malaria. (It is observed that the sickle cell trait is more prevalent in areas where malaria is common) Sometimes, the ambiguity lies not with the trait having multiple positive and negative effects, but with whether the trait’s one effect should be characterised as positive or negative.

“Another great example is Asperger[’s syndrome],” Rajiv said. “We see with Asperger’s that patients often have decreased cognitive ability in the EQ [emotional quotient, a test of “emotional

intelligence”] sense, but often times they're very talented in mathematics and other patterned subjects. This goes back to the question, ‘Should we characterize [diseases] before [gene editing] enters medical practice?’ [. . .] There’s always a possibility for error, that we will miss something, but as much as we can we should try to be exhaustive in our scientific study.”

These ethical issues aside, technical difficulties also hinder the implementation of gene editing procedures.

Some traits and diseases are polygenic, meaning that they are actually the product of not one gene, but multiple different genes at different places on the genome. This represents a significant obstacle to gene therapy – until the disease is sufficiently well-characterized, we may not currently recognize all of the contributing genes and lack the knowledge to properly edit all of the necessary sites and actually cure the disease.

Knowledge about the mutations which cause the disease varies greatly between diseases. For instance, sickle cell anemia is caused by a single point mutation in the hemoglobin gene – the switch of just one nucleotide base for another.

But other diseases, such as type 1 and type 2 diabetes may depend on multiple genes and even environmental factors. In these cases, to eliminate or modify the trait would be more difficult than simply altering or removing a certain sequence: gene-editing techniques are currently unable to accommodate for complex polygenic diseases or characteristics.

“Too many traits are controlled by hundreds or thousands of genes, like intelligence and even eye color or hair, or skin color is polygenic,” Amy said. ***

Altogether, the prospect of gene editing should be considered with utmost gravity and caution. Gene editing is confounded with multiple questions as to the extent of its ethical use, its scientific viability, and the limits of our current knowledge as to its validity.

Ultimately, a consensus must be reached about the use of gene editing – what it will be considered appropriate for, and in which circumstances. Within the scientific community, biologists from across the globe called for a moratorium on editing the human genome in 2015.

But a proper decision about gene editing should engage people outside of the scientific community.

“There have already been factions in the scientific community that have fallen in different areas as far as the ethics go.The scientific community is already having their own internal

debate, and that is ongoing,” Spenner said.

“I think that [the debate] has to be eventually opened up to not just policy makers, but to the public as well. I think good science needs to be democratic in that sense and transparent. I always worry about the level of science education, and how informed the decisions will be that are made later on, but I think it will be far better to have an official forum for policy makers and for the public rather than to have discussions happen or decisions being made under the table and without transparency,” he said.

Regardless of the decisions made, gene editing will drastically shape the nature of human disease and medicine in the years to come. Like as the discovery of electricity and nuclear fission, gene editing will represent a landmark technology in science history and change society forever – for better or for worse. f Derek is the STEM Editor of the Winged Post and Harker Aquila. Contact him at 18dereky@students. harker.org. Katherine is the Assistant STEM Editor of the Winged Post and Harker Aquila. Contact her at 19katherinez@students.harker.org

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WORDS BY KSHITHIJA MULAM, MEILAN STEIMLE & KAITLIN HSU ILLUSTRATIONS BY MEILAN STEIMLE

_ _ 3030

Editor’s Note: Wingspan would like to express it's gratitude for the students and alumni who decided to share their stories in this piece. Mental health is a deeply personal topic, and it takes more than a little courage to talk about these experiences.

Although most of the subjects in this piece approved the use of their actual names, Wingspan’s strategic leadership chose to keep them anonymous. Currently, our culture is in the process of shifting from a position in which those with a mental illness were stigmatized, but we’re not there yet, and until we are, Wingspan will take the necessary steps to protect its sources.

A

*** nother student dead. Two suicide clusters in five years. Parents fear their child is next. Teachers blame academic stress. CDC called in.

Where was the epicenter of this maelstrom of pain? According to one writer, right here.

In December 2015, The Atlantic published a piece entitled “The Silicon Valley Suicides,” documenting suicide clusters in the Palo Alto area. The article painted a grim picture of the story behind the success of Silicon Valley’s youngest generation, with anecdotes of adolescents pushed to suicide by the pressure cooker of academic stress.

The piece tells the story of a community — the broad trends that led to a tragic loss of 232 teens from 2003 to 2015 — and the efforts to heal and help the living. In an immediate response to a suicide cluster in Palo Alto at Gunn High School and Palo Alto High School, former English teacher Marc Vincenti and Gunn student Martha Cabot formed a group in 2014 called “Save the 2,008,” aiming to create hope for Palo Alto’s high school students by proposing an action plan to reduce stress in the classroom.

But there are other important elements to the story of mental health in Silicon Valley that often go overlooked. This is a story about the individuals that make up the statistics, about living in the face of death. This is a story about how Silicon Valley kids survive. *** In Silicon Valley, stories of mental illness are often linked to or triggered by the high-pressure academic environment.

For Tammy, that wasn't the case. With a flushed face and a love of hugs, Tammy endears herself to people effortlessly, offering support and a shoulder to cry on for friends and acquaintances alike. She began displaying mild depression in sixth grade, then hypomania her eighth and ninth grade year. At the beginning of her sophomore year at a rigorous

Silicon Valley private high school, she crashed into major depression.

"That’s when I started struggling with rapid cycling bipolar, which is when you have more than four episodes in a year," Tammy said. "I was cycling between depression and mania; within a month I would go through a cycle of each. That’s very damaging to your brain, so it’s not healthy to be in that state."

Tammy spent the rest of sophomore year working with doctors and trying different medications, with mixed results. At the end of the summer, she cycled from mania into depression again and attempted suicide. After being rushed to the emergency room and recovering in the hospital, she left with a renewed purpose to beat her mental illness.

"Because of the regret I felt after doing that [attempting suicide], I was re-inspired to live," Tammy explained. "I started working really hard to live and find hope in any situation. That’s been rough and not always easy, but I’m definitely in a better place today than I was before."

Tammy left her high school after her suicide attempt, and she is currently in an intensive outpatient program. She emphasizes the importance of assistance battling mental illness.

"It takes a lot of support from professionals to fight something like this," she said. "But you also have your friends and your family, and even your acquaintances. There are people who care about you and want you in their life, no matter how small of an impact you think you’re making on them."

Reflecting on the help she received from those closest to her Tammy thinks that the most helpful conversations from loved ones are the trivial ones.

"It’s so important to hear those things and to keep thinking about those things, because those are the kind of things that we live for: the little things. We just have to keep living our life, so we have to enjoy the small things,” Tammy said. “Keep talking to them like they’re a human being. Don’t treat them any differently because they’re struggling. Just exist as a friend and always talk to them and never give up on them."

But, Tammy acknowledged, it's difficult to be a mental health ally.

"It might be really hard to be friends with someone who is struggling with mental illness because they’re going to try to reject you. They try to isolate themselves. I know I definitely tried to isolate myself from my friends, and it was really hard for them to just keep supporting me even though I was trying to reject that support. I am so grateful that they continued to support me, because that’s exactly what I needed at the time," she said. _ 31

Surviving High School November 2016

To someone struggling with mental illness currently, Tammy offers some advice.

"It’s going to sound horribly cliche to say this, but really, you are never alone. You always have people supporting you, even in the darkest hours. There is never a reason that you have to completely give up, because there is always hope. There is a hope that is great enough and big enough and strong enough for every single human being on this planet." *** According to survey results collated by the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI), half of the cases of disorders that humans suffer from in their lifetime begin by the age of 14. Twenty percent of adolescents from ages 13 to 18 struggle with mental disorders.

The importance of these key formative years in the mental development of young adults cannot be discounted, especially in high school, according to University of San Diego School of Leadership and Education Sciences Assistant Professor Dr. Erika Nash Cameron.

Dr. Cameron has worked in counseling various demographics ranging from primary school students to university graduates, considering the different ways in which students may face personal adversity through their developmental years.

Currently, she serves as an educator for future counselors.

“If you were to take underclassmen in a high school, there’s going to be a different set and intensity of problems than maybe what a junior and

THERE IS A HOPE THAT IS GREAT ENOUGH AND BIG ENOUGH AND STRONG ENOUGH FOR EVERY SINGLE HUMAN BEING ON THIS PLANET.

senior may see. When you get to junior or senior year, it’s now a bit more high stakes, especially depending on the high school that you’re in. If it’s one that’s very much a college-going group, you’re going to see more signs of anxiety surrounding college applications, AP courses, Honors courses, things like that. Juniors and seniors are going to be more on edge in that regard,” Dr. Cameron said.

“Whereas, a freshman coming into that hasn’t gotten to that anxiety and may very well be involved in the transition of now going to high school and figuring out the dynamics that are going on in the _ 32

Coping in Silicon Valley: Behind the Statistics

18.2% of the population experiences mental illness, and there have been 63.3 million hospital visits with mental illness as the primary cause.

high school and what crowd do you hang with and what teachers are good, so it’s going to be a different level of intensity.”

Although specific sources of anxiety vary among individuals and ages, adolescence as a whole is a stressful time, with pivotal mental development and the strain of high school combining to an immense pressure. *** "All of a sudden you’re very on edge, and it’s very hard to pay attention. You become hyper aware of everything around you, you’re just very stimulated. Everything seems so consequential when really it’s not at all."

Nidhi is a high-achieving Harker upperclassman whose ardor for learning is matched only by her enthusiasm for social justice. With a quick gait and seemingly boundless physical energy, she gestures eagerly when elaborating on one of her passions.

She also struggles with anxiety and panic attacks, like the one described above.

"I’m someone who is aggravated by small things," Nidhi explained. "If I see someone in my class understanding something more quickly than I do, and responding more quickly to questions, and I’m still completely confused, I take that very personally and I’m all of the sudden making really dramatic assumptions, like now I’m not smart at all, like I’m not competent enough for this class.”

According to the Anxiety and Depression Association of America, anxiety disorders affect 18% of the population, making them the most common form of mental illness. It’s mostly commonly characterized by excessive worry about everyday events and tasks.

“I get to a point where I’m not really in control of those thoughts that I’m having, and I get very anxious and just very overwhelmed for a kind of stimulus that wasn’t so strong to begin with," she said.

In her junior year, Nidhi's anxiety began to increase, especially in the face of a perceived culture of ‘excellence without effort’, in which students minimize time and effort spent studying, in upper level math and science courses.

When her teachers became concerned about her fluctuating emotional state, they referred Nidhi to the counseling department, which recommended she see a therapist.

"When it was first suggested to me that I see a therapist, I was very set against the possibility. I guess I saw having a therapist as a sign of weakness or I perceived it as meaning I couldn’t cope myself, I couldn’t handle it myself. Looking back on it,

it must have been a product of my stigmatizing mental health issues."

Despite her initial misgivings, Nidhi has found her therapist very helpful, especially in helping her understand how she thinks.

"I have disproportionate reactions, I stop consciously thinking the steps that lead me from the stimulus to the response, all of those are things that my therapist helped me understand,” she said.

“I think almost knowing what’s happening to you on a more psychological level helps you rationalize it and take steps towards resolving it. If you personally go back and try to reverse those neural pathways, maybe eventually you’ll get to the point where your brain doesn’t fire in that way."

Since starting therapy second semester of her

junior year, Nidhi has been working on finding coping mechanisms to help manage her anxiety.

"It sounds so cheesy and almost insincere to just say you should think positive thoughts about yourself, because most of the time you can’t come up with anything positive if you’re in that mental state. Honestly, I wish I had more illumination on this subject,” Nidhi said.

“The only thing you can really do is be aware of what it is that’s going on in your mind and treat it seriously as opposed to just 'Wow, I don’t cope well' or using those trivializing statements,” she said.

“Knowing that, at least when I do have a breakdown, I’m not like 'Wow, I’m crazy.’ It’s more like, 'That was a hard day and this is what happened.'"

As Nidhi finishes senior year and prepares to Wingspan Magazine

_ 33

venture into the world, she does so with a dedication to finding a more stable mental state.

"You can have a great mental health and be maintaining a really positive mental state, and you’re still going to have bad days. What I hope is that one day I can get to a point where I have proportionate responses to the things that go wrong," she said. *** The Harker counseling department can be easy to miss - it's a small nook of a building nestled in a corner of Shah. Anyone who enters one of the individual counselors' offices is greeted by warm lighting, plush rugs, couches and candy.

"We're going for cozy," said Greg Roumbanis, one of Harker's counselors. Lori Kohan and Greg Roumbanis, two of Harker's three academic counselors, both hold master’s degrees in psychology. Kohan is also a licensed marriage and family therapist; Roumbanis is a marriage and family intern.

Both had strong personal motivations to go into counseling.

For Kohan, a 40-something woman with an elegantly tousled brunette bun and a prodigious supply of fuzzy cardigans, counseling isn't so much a career as a way of life.

"I've known my entire life," Kohan said. "In high school I was a peer counselor. I've been doing this job for 25 years. I was licensed in 2000. To get licensed, you need 3000 clinical hours; I did 6000.

I've worked in group homes, hospitals, clinics, public schools, private schools, private practice, but my passion has always been high school kids, to try to be there for them in a way that people were for me."

For Roumbanis, 39, a slim but muscular man with salt and pepper hair and a soft smile, his interest in therapy stems from a time of personal crisis.

"When I was about 17, my parents divorced. I remember at that age in my life, I really felt like I needed someone, but stigma was a huge reason why I didn't reach out to somebody," he recalled.

"Once I finally did, it made a huge impact on my life. In my mid twenties, I realized what I was doing with my career path wasn't really fitting for me, and I kept going back to the fact that I really wanted to reciprocate [the support I got] back to someone else, and be there for someone else when they needed. It led me to the path I'm on now," he said.

A Harker counselor's job is two-pronged: each counselor acts as both an academic adviser, providing tutoring resources and time management help, as well as an emotional support system. Often, the two are intimately related.

"The amount of stress that you guys experience _ 34 Coping in Silicon Valley: Behind the Statistics

on a daily basis, both academically and socialemotionally, is tremendous. Everything is intertwined. If a grade dips, it's very rarely because of a lack of understanding of the material," Kohan said.

"Each student and each family is unique, 3-dimensional, and it's so important for us to try and understand exactly what that is, where they're coming from. What works for one person is going to be the antithesis of what works for another person,” she said.

On a daily basis, counselors talk to students and the parents, teachers, coaches and other adults in those students lives, as well as further correspondence by email. Of the students who have appointments, the majority are referred by a friend or teacher.

"The training we try to do with students is where is that line between 'I'm here to support you, you just had a bad breakup, eat a tub of ice cream with me' versus 'You're really not okay, you're really not enjoying the things you used to love, I think this is bigger than both of us, and if you're not ready to go tell someone, maybe I am,” Kohan explained.

Harker provides numerous resources for anyone who is struggling.

Each student identification card renewed at the start of every year has three hotlines on the back: the Teenage Health Resource Line (1 (888) 711-TEEN), the YWCA 24 Hour Rape Crisis Line ((650) 493-7273) and the Suicide and Crisis (24 hours) ((408) 279-3312). The three anonymous and confidential phone numbers make up the “Teen Resource List” provided to every student.

“We did that 10 years ago because you guys take those cards with you everywhere,” Ms. Kohen said. “If you’re alone, and you feel like you’re not safe, use one of those numbers.

You’re not alone. Let’s find a way to get you connected, because part of what goes on often is that isolation, that you feel like no one else is going through this, no one else is in as much pain, no one else can understand.”

“If you’re in isolation, you can’t change it.

You can’t get better,” Mr. Roumbanis said.

Although they guarantee confidentiality to an extent, Harker counselors must follow legal provisions, as must all counselors in California: if someone might imminently harm himself, others, or be harmed, you are legally obligated to break confidentiality. *** Non-symmetrical shapes.

Out-of-tune music. Death, cancer, suicide, rape. All of these are triggers for Katherine, a student who fights with anxiety, paranoia, obsessive

compulsive tendencies and depression.

"I want to beat mental illness every single day. I put me against my brain against chemicals in my brain," Katherine said. "Sometimes it works and I come out on top and sometimes my brain comes out on top and I have to learn to be ok with that. To be ok with those discrepancies."

Every day, Katherine greets her peers and teachers with wide eyes and a bright smile as she marches through Harker’s halls. She began struggling with self-harm in middle school, when she had negative experiences in her search for professional psychological care. Afterwards, it was difficult for her to trust adults with her illness, something she's been working on throughout high school.

"I think I am getting a lot better with that now," she said. "I trust one of my past teachers, and one of my current teachers. I think that as long as I have a support system of adults that if I ever am in danger that I will have someone to go to."

Katherine acknowledges that it’s difficult to know

the best way to protect student safety.

"There are things that students may be afraid of telling you for fear of retribution," she said. "There are people who love their abusers and don’t want them to go to jail. There are things that students won’t tell you. But they also won’t want you to tell their potential abusers the things that you know about them."

For herself, Katherine copes by focusing on the future. When she feels unwell, she talks to a friend about their plans together.

"What we plan to do during college and the kind of house that we are planning to live in together," Katherine said of the things they talk about. "The kind of pets that we want to get. Just the idea that there is a better future out there than the present I am living right now is really comforting and will help me get through."

To anyone currently battling mental illness, Katherine said the following: "You are all valid. The things that you go through

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are valid. Do not consider yourself weaker than others because of what you go through. The fact that you are surviving day by day with these imbalances in your brain, these neurochemical imbalances in your brain means that you are waging an internal war with yourself and you are winning." *** In addition to the counseling services provided at most high schools, other groups have formed in the Silicon Valley as a response to concerns of stress and mental health issues.

Recently, a junior at Los Altos High School began a new initiative in early 2016, aimed at stimulating more conversation around mental health issues and putting faces to stories. Nadia Ghaffari created TeenzTalk as a direct response to The Atlantic’s article on Silicon Valley suicide clusters, which she learned about in her AP Psychology class. Right now, Nadia’s team at TeenzTalk aim to post videos with the stories of teenagers from around the globe who are struggling with mental health issues and are willing to share their stories.

“I wasn’t really seeing anyone take severe action.

It should stand out to everyone that a suicide cluster is not okay and shouldn’t be happening,” Nadia said. “What I was trying to do was work with other teens in creating a positive community environment where they don’t need to worry about those pressures of educational norms and school.

It’s just a place for us to inspire each other, and it’s all teenagers. We’re eliminating the generation gap and just focusing on teen to teen connection.”

As of this summer after spending time at Yale, Nadia’s project has expanded to include teenage ambassadors around the globe who have been spreading the mission behind TeenzTalk. Her team includes 11 ambassadors from India, Ghana, Switzerland and other countries internationally, all of whom are interested in encouraging the conversation around mental health.

“I started talking to people [at Yale], and I was just curious about how stress was in their countries and where they’re from because it was a global program,” Nadia said. “I started talking to people from Pakistan, Ghana, and Tanzania, and I realized that they are also going through the same stress, experiencing the same stressors; they have the same pressure on them to perform well academically.

I opened my eyes to this new aspect that this was a global issue. Teen stress isn’t just here in Silicon Valley, it’s literally everywhere.” *** The summer before his junior year, Dylan, then a Silicon Valley high school student, took an East Coast college tour with his parents. The academic opportunities were exciting, but as Dylan began to _ 36 Coping in Silicon Valley: Behind the Statistics

The Harker Counseling Department provides a list of resourcesstudents can contact if they feel stressed.

get attached to the ivy-covered buildings, he also felt the mounting stress of the requirements and achievements necessary for admission.

“I approached my junior year in high school with a lot of uncertainty over whether I could meet my parents’ and now preferred colleges’ expectations," Dylan said.

Dylan is a slim dark-haired boy who hunches over when he works, absorbed by the problem at hand.

Gregarious and easy to talk to, he listens to anyone who needs to talk. Dylan had always been held to a high standard by his parents, but at the beginning of his junior year, he started spending more time with the more competitive students in his class.

Peer, personal and parental pressure, combined with a strenuous course load, finally compounded

THE THINGS THAT YOU GO THROUGH ARE VALID. DO NOT CONSIDER YOURSELF WEAKER THAN OTHERS BECAUSE OF WHAT YOU GO THROUGH.

into an unmanageable anxiety level.

“Parental expectations definitely influence [my stress levels]. You feel the pressure to do what your parents expect of you, always, because they give you so much," Dylan said. "This kind of competitive stress coupled with family expectations seriously made me feel cornered to perform better and reach an even higher degree of achievement."

Dylan initially used exercise and sports as coping mechanisms, but even those became sources of stress with he failed to make the Varsity tennis team second semester Junior year. Going into senior year, college decisions proved another source of anxiety for Dylan.

"This seems to be the worst kind of stress because there is nothing you can do about it. You just have to accept it," Dylan said. "But I also I discovered that sharing my problems with friends helps to improve my mental state, particularly concerning my interpersonal relationships.”

Dylan graduated from a Silicon Valley high school last year and is currently a freshmen at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign majoring in Electrical Engineering. Looking back on his high school experience, he reflects that he was lucky in the support systems he found.

[Counselors] seem to be available at school and having known a friend that benefited from a

counselor, it helped me to find help in a similar fashion," Dylan said. "I do believe the support system is there. But in regards to society accepting and helping people with mental health I just think that we are not going to see it soon." *** TIffany doesn’t so much walk around campus as bounce, muscular legs propelling her from class to class. Early in her freshman year, Tiffany was diagnosed with anorexia. Despite a few episodes of hospitalization, she continued to finish off her freshman year with minor interruptions.

However, in the summer before sophomore year, she struggled with a bout of weight loss, leading to her missing two months of her sophomore year at Harker. As a result, Tiffany left Harker for another local public school to finish off her sophomore year with the goal of returning to Harker.

“I wanted to come back to Harker just because I liked it better, and Harker said ‘Okay, we’ll take you back as long as you redo sophomore year like we told you originally,’” Tiffany said. “And I was like ‘Okay, it’s worth it,’ but then throughout that sophomore year in [my new high school], I knew that to come back to Harker, I needed to get better, so it was a lot of me telling myself what was important, what was just in my own head.”

While away at her new school and out of therapy, Tiffany researched her illness, talked to other teenagers to try and learn more about how the science behind her illness, and tried to keep her mind off her own body to focus on gaining back weight. “[It felt] like everything you do seems wrong. You want to eat because you know it’s right, but then once you eat, even if it’s a grape, it’s not okay, you want to go hide in a corner and not eat for the next two days to compensate,” Tiffany said. “Once you have a meal or something, just go do something else right after. Don’t think about it. It’s not going to hurt you.”

Tiffany also ran an Instagram account through which she was able to talk to people who were in the same situation as her.

“I was never going to see myself the way that other people saw me, the way I actually looked,” Tiffany said. “So knowing that what I was saw was not what I looked like, it helped a lot.”

Now, Tiffany can be found roaming the halls of Harker with her friends, having successfully returned to Harker to redo her sophomore year and now attending the school as a junior. Part of her life, however, involves reaching out to others who are struggling and helping them by talking to them about their situation and extending a hand to help as an ally through her Instagram.

“In a way, technically, [my biggest ally] was myself, which sounds sad, but it wasn’t because it’s the only way I got out. Relying on other people didn’t help me because it would be that I could only rely on them for this amount of time, and then I would realize it wasn’t helping,” Tiffany said. “Also, [it helped] just talking to people in the same situation as me. That helped because I knew other people thought the exact same way I did. It’s so weird, but you’re never alone.”’ *** The Atlantic’s “The Silicon Valley Suicides,” reduced Bay Area high schoolers to a few thousand words that caricatured students as stressed, privileged children collapsing under the weight of academic pressures.

Each individual in this article is so much more than what we’ve been able to represent. They have friends, favorite subjects, life dreams, pet peeves - young people with full lives. We are each more than what words and statistics represent, and we’re working everyday to survive. That, like the stories of the incredible people in this piece, deserves recognition. f Meilan is the Co-Editor-in-Chief of the Winged Post. Contact her at 17meilans@students.harker.org.

Kshithija is Co-Editor-in-Chief of the Winged Post.

Contact her at 17kshithijam@students.harker.org.

Kaitlin is the Editor-in-Chief of Wingspan. Contact her at 18kaitlinh@students.harker.org.

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The Science Behind Dreams December 2016

We all have dreams.

But for what purpose?

THE SCIENCE OF

DREAMS SMAERD WORDS AND ILLUSTRATIONS BY KAITLIN HSU DESIGN BY ROSE GUAN

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Tucked away in the upper-rightmost corner of Shah Hall is Dr. Ruth Meyer’s room. Handmade history projects decorate the walls, and books ranging from ancient Egypt to India are crammed on the shelves. A particular cozy clutter softens the atmosphere, especially when Dr. Meyer herself is in the room.

But, when she isn’t teaching her world history, Dr. Meyer hosts Dream Club.

Dr. Meyer became interested in dreams starting from a young age due to her fascination with recurring dreams and the underlying symoblism she found in them.

“I've got teenagers, now, coming to my dream club, and they're telling me about dreams that they can remember," she said. "Even though they're juniors, they can remember their dreams they had when they were five. They're questioning what they mean."

Like Dr. Meyer, most members of Dream Club originally joined to better understand their recurring dreams.

“While dreams might just be random neural activity, I’ve noticed that my dreams often have motifs that recur, especially during stressful or intense situations,” Soham Khan (12), President of Dream Club, said. “Still, I think that dreams are intrinsically meaningful even if we can’t quite grasp their significance.”

Dream Club Vice President Isabella Spradlin (11) also shared Soham's sentiments.

“My earliest of having a really clear dream was when I was really little. I would have the same reoccurring dream about me and my friend and her mom and we were lost at this summer camp that I went to. But it was a part of the summer camp that didn't actually exist,” Isabella said. “So, it was a really interesting dream, and after that I wasn't sure where it came from, so I just became more curious. And ever since then, whenever I have dreams that I can remember, it's always something significant for me.”

Whether discussing recent dreams, meditating or practicing lucid dreaming, Dream Club plans to continue exploring the meaning behind their dreams by applying various schools of thought, including Jung's teachings and recent scientific research.

Q&A with Dr. Mark Perlsweig Dr. Mark S. Perlsweig, MD is a practicing

psychiatrist in Burlingame, CA, specializing in child and adolescent psychiatry. He has been in practice for 30 years.

Wingspan interviewed Dr. Perlsweig by phone to clarify the scientific underpinnings of dreams.

Why do we dream, and do dreams have a function or purpose?

From a scientific point of view, there is no why.

Science has some limits in terms of what it can figure out. And there has been a very long tradition of doing things like saying, ‘Hey, the brain has different parts. Well, let’s figure out what parts do what. We ought to be able to do that like with a car. We still haven't been able to do that. It's been worked on by experts for over 100 years, and we still haven't figured anything out.

Imagine that you have the camera on your iPhone. And you are interested in observing the fact that you’re outside somebody's house, and the family is inside having dinner. And you are asking the scientific question, ‘Why is the family having dinner?’ And you only have your iPhone to detect why.

You can do things like measure the amount of light coming out of the kitchen and other parts of the house. Or you can measure the amount of heat coming out of the kitchen because they are using an oven to cook the food. Or maybe you could put measurements in their water system to see if they are using more water during dinner time. These are the kinds of experiments the one is doing with the brain in trying to figure out, what is going on inside this thing from things we are able to measure outside.

A good short rundown of what we can measure outside would be, brainwaves. We can measure the overall electrical activity as a sum from this entire organ inside.

Another way is through a physically looking at the brain.

That would be an MRI or "Dreams arise from CT scan. And the complexity of that allows human experience you to look at the physical and possess structure of intrinsic meaning the brain.

So it kind of that can help us tells you what lead our lives more is going on. thoughtfully."

If you have everyone SOHAM KHAN ('17) sitting around the table. _ 39

The Science Behind Dreamsw December 2016

Where the people are getting the food from.

Another way to look at the brain is from a functional standpoint. This would be called positronic emission tomography or PET scan. And what does is attaches a radioactive isotope to certain dyes that are put into the bloodstream so you can tell which parts of the brain are taking up more of this radioactive dye during certain functions.

At the moment those are the only ways people really have at looking at brain activity. So you can kind of understand why the science is physical.

Even asking a more basic question like, which structure in the brain are actually responsible for forming these images that you somehow see.

Because you you think about it, dreams are primarily visual and emotional. So you think ok, what part of the brain is doing visual input, which is the optical cortex which is in the back of your brain.

Somehow that has got to be involved in dreams because otherwise you really couldn’t visualize anything.

There also some structures like the cingulate gyrus and deeper brain structures which are involved in the emotion and those are probably somewhat involved to. But I don't really think beyond kind of knowing in general what these structures or like.

You could imagine what could be involved. They probably are but we don’t exactly know how.

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What are the other schools of thought that have influenced dreams?

The Science Behind Dreams

The next way to look at it would be from a psychological point of view. If we go back to the earliest psychological theory the first person you would go to is Sigmund Freud.

He considered the fact that your dreams contained memories and events that occurred that day. He called dreams the royal road to the unconscious. What he meant by that was that you could understand a person’s emotional experience that was not conscience.

What is your impression of what the unconscious is?

The unconscious is essentially a collection of experiences. Freud called the drives. And also things that you have learned. And teachings that are influencing your behavior yet you are completely unaware of them.

Another idea of conscious existence is to be to say that this part of the water underneath, it's part of you. It’s part of your unconscious. If you go even further down. It's part of the collective unconscious of all the people in the world. But you are only kind of really aware of the top part most of the time. Because that is where your ego observing function is, in a boat on the surface. And if we were made differently we could go observing parts down deeper than you would see that more primarily then what we do. So, in other words, if you look at the Buddhists, and you look at Jung, and you look at Freud, they are all kind of saying that dreams are the way we observe a different part of our own spiritual being that is unconscious and normally not observable to us.

How would you describe the more scientific or standard neuro scientific approach to what a dream is?

Honestly, I can’t really say what a dream is. There is no scientific definition of what a dream is. But the things I think would be applicable from a scientific standpoint would be that dreams occur during REM sleep. REM sleep also occurs in this thing called sleep architecture which is there are different phases of sleep.

REM sleep is one of the stages that occur more frequently in the early morning hours rather than the first stages of sleep and that is the part where dreams usually occur. There is simultaneous motor suppression going on during a dream.

Otherwise, have you ever watch a dog have a dream, if you watch carefully, you will see their paws moving around and every once in awhile they will make little barking sounds. What you are actually observing is that they are having a dream and the motor activity is be suppressed by the brain at the same time as the dream.

Otherwise they would actually get up and run around. People are the same way the other thing you could say on a neurological basis is that dreams are not limited to humans because there is clearly evidence that animals are having dreams as well.

From a scientific point of view once, about 30 years ago, I heard a guy propose of the dream state is to cool off the brain from a temperature point of view.

The other thing that is also clear about dreams is that there are definitely more dream recall and more dreaming per se at higher altitudes as opposed to lower altitudes. So if you ever take a vacation and go skiing at 4000 feet or better you will notice you remember your dreams more and dream more.

That’s the major neurobiological thing about dreaming from a scientific point of view.

Dreams occur during REM sleep. As the sleeping brain cycles through the five stages of REM sleep, people process their conscious stressors and influences.

Is it normal to have a recurring dream, and what does that mean?

‘Is it normal to have a recurring dream?’, I would say yes. I would say most people have had recurring dreams in their life. I think if you ask more religious, spiritual people they would say that the recurring dream is symbolically important because it’s a life message to you from god that’s helping you figure out your unique role on this planet. Freud would never go that far. He would say it is a continuous psychological conflict that you are trying to resolve. And you are going to keep having the recurring dream until you have resolved it. I think the reason for having a particular kind of dream is more individual and it kind of depends on what the individual’s life is about and what the dream is. ● Kaitlin is the Editor-in-Chief of Wingspan. Contact her at 18kaitlinh@students.harker.org Wingspan Magazine

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Five Elements, Five States of Mind WORDS AND PHOTOGRAPHS BY VARUN BALDWA DESIGN BY TRISHA DWIVEDI

I

do my best to uphold the natural essence of what is around me while surrounding it with my perspective of the world. When I take pictures of nature, I aim to capture the wide spectrum of conditional elements -- fire, water, earth, wind and aether.

__ 4242

AETHER: Overwhelming sight shows no ends to depth, inspiring me to discover the unknown. Taken in the barren lands of the Atacama Desert in Chile.

Wingspan Magazine

_ 43 43

WIND: A crisp touch that amplifies my movement, motivating me to push past what goes against me. Taken in the vast Bay of Banderas in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico.

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EARTH:Anomnipresent smell that we fail to acknowledge lays the foundation for my connection to nature.

Taken on the undulating hills of the Marin Range in San Francisco, California.

WATER: A tasteless element that still has the power to satiate my thirst for adventure.

Taken in the pristine waters near Kauai, Hawaii.

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FIRE: The crackling sound ignites a lively ambience in my surroundings, filling me with warmth that goes beyond heat.

Taken amid the pitch black night in PuertoVallarta,Mexico.â—?

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E-mail: info@svchineseschool.org (415) 502-1512 Friday 7:00-9:00 PM September – May Argonaut Elementary School, Saratoga, CA 95070

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