In composing creative works, I’ve always wanted to be different. Clichés, while useful and recognizable, may satisfy me when well done, but what is guaranteed to reel me in is a completely innovative idea. This applies to the works of media I see in addition to the ones I create myself. What has always intrigued me in literature was the concept of the fourth wall and various ways of deconstructing it. In fanfiction, a new genre is steadily...

In a world where magic and superpowers are a common occurrence, villains with such powers become a major problem. Especially when said villains are mentally unstable. I first began reading the Batman comics as a toddler, not in any particular order or with any attempt at piecing together a continuous story. The vigilante dressed as a bat with his loyal young sidekicks that came and went…none of those heroic characters intrigued me. No, the characters I continually wanted to...

I first became interested in psychology while still in elementary school. When my mother brought home a secondhand book written by Torey Hayden, a special education teacher, she initially meant for my grandmother to read it. As a second grader, I found it where it lay first and was captivated by it. Through the years, our home gradually began to contain a collection of all the author’s books and I read them all eagerly. In middle school, I took...

It began as a once-a-week unofficial Dungeons and Dragons club. Six people unfamiliar to me and I met a time when the sun hadn't even risen yet for me in Taiwan, to roll dice and describe character actions, and otherwise roleplay, over Skype. As an activity during which one can be anyone and anything one wishes to be, this activity was an escape from reality for me that also challenged my creative and improvisational abilities at the same time. The...

As a freshman, I participated in the Duke University Talent Identification Program, partaking in its Abnormal Psychology course. I enjoyed it immensely and, though I did not feel that I was putting any unusual amount of effort into the assignments, my instructor wrote in my final evaluation report that they had been surprised at the quality of research displayed in my reports. For me, the case studies we examined naturally prompted such level of detail, and I found myself engaged...

I’ve always wanted to be different. Every person who claims that has professed that very sentiment in more or less those words. I have always wanted to shock and turn heads; the option of notoriety over fame appeals to me more. When a representative from the University of Chicago came to Taiwan to present at the Taipei American School, he mentioned the Zombie Readiness Task Force. As a participant in such events in my current high school, the events...

Living in a world swiftly converging on hosting seven billion people, how easy it is to get lost as one ant among many. Everybody hates feeling insignificant and even being completely passed over. Even the recluse and hermit, who shuts himself away from the rest of the world, finds a sense of self-importance exactly by separating himself from all others for his singular purpose. An anomaly possibly, but only because he gains self-importance from his own conviction that his life...

“Find the unknown” is a less commonly heard sentence in mathematics nowadays, having largely been replaced by the similar sentence “Find [letter or symbol here].” With the challenge to “find x,” this becomes akin to me as a dare to find the unknown. Find that which cannot be found for what it is in the first place people cannot define. What is the unknown? Well, we don’t know; that is the whole premise behind the word. What is that...