A Life Changing Experience Of My Life

Hidden in the Parentheses

It has been 1.42 seconds since I last told a lie (or, more like, omitted the truth). Someone asked me to tell them all about my wonderful summer (again), and I replied with,”It was amazing… a truly life changing experience (but I would appreciate it if you would stop asking me about it because the ever-present lump in my throat starts to hurt every time I talk through unshed tears of nostalgia).” The truth is that I have not gone one day without crying since I left Stanford (the place of my dreams). Everyday I struggle to remember who I was before I went away (and how to introduce the new me to my old world). It is a constant cycle of doing everything in my power to ensure that I will be able to return in two years (God willing) and trying not to revert back to who I once was (not that there was anything terribly wrong with the old me). My life is now divided into two distinct periods: pre-Stanford and post-Stanford because in the two months (a.k.a. eight weeks, sixty days, 1440 hours, or 86,400 minutes) that I spent there, my life completely changed.

My name is Zoe (which means “life” in Greek). I have three brothers that are pretty annoying (but I love them with my whole heart most days) and a dog (that I love with half my heart...twice a month). I am sixteen years old (and I still do not have my license), and I go to Deerfield Windsor School, a small private school in Albany, Georgia. (I endearingly call it Smallbany, Georgia.) These facts have not changed. They apply to the new me just as much as they applied to the old me, but this is where most of the similarities end.

I have failed a midterm and still came out of a class with an A. (Curse you computer science.) I now know what failing feels like a...

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...tion and secluding it from the rest of the problem. The rule is to proceed from the inside out, reaching the final figure after all the excess in between the two curved lines has been addressed. They protect this fragile figure from the messiness of the math equation (multiply, divide, add, subtract). In English, I was taught that the parenthetical words are meant to be an aside, an afterthought reduced to the end of the sentence. My teacher told me that parentheses are like the less-important commas. “If the sentence can stand alone without the phrase, put it in parenthesis (that way the reader can skip over them if he is pressed for time or not quite interested in reading).” I argue that parenthesis are necessary, but nasty. They sit in the peripheral of a sentence and conceal truth and fear. Parentheses are the best places to hide. It is the last place people look.