May 24, 2023
hwchronicle.com
Senior Supplement E3
No Bitterness - Alex G By Georgia Goldberg Los Angeles! The city of angels! The city of stars! The city with more white Teslas than people!* Growing up in LA has made me smarter, worldlier, better. Than whom, you may ask?
Everyone. So yeah, I’ll admit it: I’m a coastal elite. Only in LA can you buy a small plastic bottle of water for $6. Only in LA can you experience seasonal depression in 70 degree weather. Only in LA can you call feeling slightly congested seasonal depression. As an LA native, I was raised to be an elite. Starting at birth, I was built to be superior to any Midwestern rube or country bumpkin. The doctors at Cedars-Sinai pumped Evian water and creativity-inducing psilocybin into my mother’s IV drip. Throughout toddlerhood, I was tasked with learning the juiciest Hollywood gossip
to ensure I always had talking points when rubbing elbows with Hollywood’s nepoest of babies. In elementary school, my prodigy knew no bounds. I passed the California state bar examination, invented the Croc and won a Daytime Emmy. As I’ve grown older, I have been trained to be in the finest physique, eating a pack of cigarettes each day to stay in tip-top shape (as instructed by my unfortunately Greek nutritionist, Dr. Yanni Vourgourakis). I’ve become an expert in train conducting, a close friend of the HAIM sisters and wanted in the former Yugoslavia. I’ve mastered the didgeridoo and have only been canceled twice. I’m far more cultured than
the common American. I’ve been to London. I’ve eaten Korean food made by Korean people. I have very cosmopolitan shoelaces. The guy who produced Mo Bamba came to speak at my school. I have a diverse group of friends: some grown in test tubes and some made au naturel. I’ve met Judge Judy, Dolly Parton and that kid from “The Maze Runner.” And I have never been to New Jersey. So now I’m worried about college. What if I meet people who are different from me? What if I’m forced to face a perspective from outside of my echo cham-
ber of white guilt and political correctness? What if someone tells me anti-zionism is not anti-semitism? Worst of all, what if someone asks me to join their improv troupe? But then I remember I’m a coastal elite. I can handle anything —probably even college improv. *Fact-checked by the Chronicle Opinion section.
Letter To An Old Poet - BoyGenius
By Becca Berlin
My relationship with the school became particularly difficult during the college process. I began to question if I would have been better off at a different high school where I might have a higher GPA, where my junior year wasn’t tainted by burnout, leaving a hole in my application and an explanation in the dreaded additional info section of the Common App. On Dec. 15th I was rejected from my early decision. And life went on. As the condolences rolled in, I questioned why so much of the school’s culture surrounds where
you go after graduation. A single rejection seemed to overshadow the past six years of my life and all I had accomplished, both academically and personally. And then last week, something shifted while I was studying for a quiz in Organic Chemistry, the hardest and best course I have taken in my high school career. Working on a review problem, the mechanism of the reaction suddenly clicked and I felt a rush of pride and validation. I have the resources to learn and understand material students outside of our school typically wouldn’t encounter until college. In that very moment, the school became worth every
instant of self-doubt I have experienced in my time here. As I graduate, I can confidently say that I am leaving smarter than I arrived. And that’s really all you can ask from a high school — not to ensure your acceptance to esteemed universities but to make your experience a meaningful and invaluable part of your life. Only a few days after my rejection, my best friend called me to tell me Southern Methodist University decisions had been released. So, with little hope, I checked my email. I was accepted with a
merit scholarship, but it would be dismissive of my hard-work to say the school’s reputation got me here. It’s because during my time here, I discovered my interests, experienced successes and failures and most importantly learned. The past six years of my life have been defined by being a Harvard-Westlake student both at times when this fact fed my academic pride and when it felt like an unnecessary weight on my shoulders. I wish I could graduate without acknowledging my struggles and the times when it felt like I didn’t have the school’s support, but these challenging times are part of the reason I am glad I came to the school.
Jigsaw Falling Into Place - Radiohead By Daphne Davies I don’t have a lot of storage on my phone. Indeed, there are apps sitting patiently on my home screen I don’t often open, playlists downloaded that I rarely listen to –– and I could probably delete
everything unused in about ten minutes, if I really put my mind to it, in order to free up a few gigabytes. But that wouldn’t solve the problem. The apex predator of my storage, its most loyal customer by far, is my photo album. I’ve tried to fix this, with moderate success. Scrolling back periodically and methodically through the thousands and thousands of tiny squares, I found myself able to delete many of them –– and the process was easy, to the surprise and satisfaction of my sentimental self, for my photo stream through the end of eleventh grade. But as soon as I started in on twelfth grade, it felt nearly impossible. Maybe it’s the recent-
ness of these memories, compounded with the fragility and nostalgia of the notion that I have, at press time, a week left in high school. But it’s something more, too –– that these pictures are good. Not compositionally, necessarily –– they’re only as high-quality as my iPhone camera can make them, they don’t follow the rule of thirds, they’re imperfectly framed or something’s in motion or just out of focus or proportion.
So what I mean when I say they’re good, really, is that there are many, and they’re all wholly mine. They paint one holistic and vivid and blurry and therefore extraordinarily perfect portrait of the last nine months. These are pictures I won’t ever delete. I can’t recall ever making a conscious choice to document my senior year this way –– to start taking pictures of everything. But that’s exactly what I did. As I scrolled, I
searched for an answer; tried to pinpoint what it was that incentivized me to take them. I realized, eventually, that they’re everything I knew I’d want to remember. I was right. It feels strange to impart advice at a moment in my life when I’m faced with the advent of so much newness; when, often, the vastness of everything stretching out in front of me forces me to wonder how I could possibly know anything at all. I’m not an expert, but I have (almost) made it out the other side, and I know this: iCloud storage is probably among the very best ways to spend 99 cents. It’s given me so much to look back on, or scroll through and remember.
Yes I’m Changing- Tame Impala By Natalie Cosgrove After hours of scouring my camera roll and Notes app, trying to find something to write about that would sufficiently encapsulate my time at the school and what advice I’d impart, I decided nothing seemed more fitting than talking about my experience as a 10th grader on the staff. The scary transition from the Middle School to the Upper School I had heard about from my older siblings ended up being a transition from the middle school campus to my bedroom. After realizing that unlike my siblings, politics weren’t really my thing –– the 9th grade student body did not like my speeches –– I looked to
the news instead. My first days on Chronicle were marked by Mr. Burns’ face on my computer screen, him asking about my day and me describing the constant back and forth between the desk and the bed. My 10th grade year, like most people’s years in quarantine, was a painful one at best. But I had Chronicle –– and often that was enough. In the confusing and unprecedented times we were all experiencing, the simple structure of a news article allowed me to feel at peace. All I needed to do was use the inverted pyramid structure and then throw in some quotes and everything was done. It was something I could consistently do right and well, and I felt good about it. Every day, without
fail, Ms. Miller or an administrator of the like would send out an all-school email announcing a Zoom event. Each of these events was hypothetically supposed to be covered by the staff and so within seconds, I would pitch the article idea to my editors and get to writing and interviewing as soon as I could. As a new 10th grader, I did not know the students and teachers of the Upper School. Sending out emails asking for quick meetings or Zoom calls allowed me to familiarize myself with each department and club. Through every question I asked, we ended up talking, often about topics completely unrelated to the subject of the article. And in some
interviews, I developed interests separate from journalism. I interviewed alumni who showed me the meaning of passion and students who could gave me snippets of advice for the next couple of years. When I didn’t feel like doing my math homework or English reading, at least I could write a mini news article where I could follow a set structure and interact with interesting people. Since 10th grade, my world has grown significantly larger than the space between my bed and my desk
(I went to Israel, goddammit), and yet still Chronicle remains the biggest part of it. Chronicle has given me so much and I like to think that I’ve given it a few things too. I’ll miss the halls of Weiler and the people that come with it more than anything.
ILLUSTRATIONS BY ALEXANDRA LIU