Once, in grade school, I was given a blank map of the world and asked to label every country (in pen—yikes). I may have gotten a lot wrong on that test, but it turns out the map I was working with may not have been accurate to begin with! I was probably being tested on the Mercator projection, one of today’s most common [...]
In high school, we had three foreign languages to choose from: Spanish, French and Latin. I decided to take Latin, hoping it might take me on a school trip to Italy as a senior. Although I didn’t make it to Italy in high school, I did study Latin throughout and learned quite a bit about ancient Roman culture. One thing I learned was [...]
When I see ants running around my yard, I’m usually not impressed. Those little guys seem so vulnerable and can get trampled on so easily. Then again, that was before I knew that several ant species began farming long before humans ever did. Small, black ants, called Philidris nagasau have their own form of farming and have been doing it for around 3 million [...]
National Portrait Gallery /American Art Museum In the eighth grade, I researched Sam Houston for one of my classes. As a final part of the project, we spent a class period acting out the person we researched. I had never considered anyone I studied that deeply until I was assigned that project. The Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery has a program it [...]
As a child, my favorite activity at the beach was digging through the sand for lost objects. Old coins, keys, painted shells and tarnished rings lined the pockets of my beach shorts after a day by the sea. But what if there were an easier way to look at buried treasure, a way without having to get my palms dirty and sand under [...]
I love collecting old books. My favorite piece of my collection by far is a grammar book from the 1800s. It’s nearly falling apart and held together by unraveling twine. On the inside, you’ll find doodles from its original owner, Agnes. She wrote her name in large, antique cursive and even played tic-tac-toe in the margins. When I flip through the pages, I [...]
One of the more exciting prospects about moving to Boston was the chance to live in a seaside city. Boston has been a port city since the colonial period, when it was a hub of shipyards and bustling maritime trade. Although Boston has an extensive seaside past, San Francisco has perhaps an even greater presence of marine history. As a matter of fact, [...]
This morning, I woke up to the sound of my alarm clock and went to the kitchen, where I pulled out milk from the fridge and used the toaster to make a nice breakfast. Then I changed into a blouse and skirt, which I bought at a fast fashion retailer, and came to the office. You might be wondering why I’m describing a [...]
If you’re like me, you dug in your backyard as a kid, hoping to find fossils and make some sort of groundbreaking discovery. Unless you were really lucky though, you probably didn’t find much more than rocks. If you lived in northern Kenya, your search could turn out differently—it’s home to Lake Turkana, where fossils have remained for millions of years. Lake Turkana, [...]
If you could have dinner with one person from history, who would you choose? For me, that person is Ray Bradbury—famed science fiction author of several short stories and novels, including Fahrenheit 451. I love all his works and credit him for inspiring my own writing. In high school, while writing a paper on Bradbury, I decided to write him a letter expressing my gratitude. [...]