Letter to a Location

Letter to a location

Dear Dance room,

Oh how I wish you didn’t smell like a wresting locker room but since you are the wresting room too I guess it is an occupational hazard.  You poor abused mirrors you not only get kicked by some of our turns and leaps but a few wrestlers have been known to do you in too.  To the floor, we have a love hate relationship.  You are really painful when gravity takes in and during drops, but you also support my turns and let me fly.  Oh the countless hours of dancing and bounding that you have provided.  Long days full of zero periods and the occasional after school practice have allowed me to memorize your every corner without even being awake.   You have seen the good the bad, the highs and the lows of our team and practices.  You have taken our abuse; from drops, kicks, leaps, to “living” moments.  You have provided a safe creative environment to grow new bounds, and new styles.  You have taken abuse from the thousands of dancers that have passed through your doors to the actually crack in the floor (that we currently have duck taped) from a rally day where the bleachers weren’t too nice to you.  I will always remember all of the falls that have come from your slippery floor.  There is a feeling of home that comes simply from walking through your doors, any four of them.  To the speakers you have played countless beats of music, many I have even edited.  You provide some of the soundtrack of my life.  When you grow up and more of your alumni have become wealthy dancers I hope you will be blessed with air conditioning.  You are the hottest room on campus, especially when PE classes are in the gym on 100-degree days.  Please dear dance room do not take my constructive criticism as a whiners tirade.  I feel so blessed to attend Los Osos High School where not only academics and sports are valued but the fine arts are valued as well.  I do wish that dance was considered a fine art and a sport, but you’re just the room you don’t make the policy.  I hope you will continue to be there for many more generations for aspiring dancers and students who are just exploring the amazing world of dance.  If your walls could talk they would reveal the hopes, the dreams, and the sorrows of many.  You can take pride in the fact that you have given thousands of Los Osos students a chance to explore and excel in the fine arts.  I will not miss your 120 degree temperatures during the summer months but I will miss the people, the teachers, the choreographers, the team mates that you have housed for the four years I have been a Grizzly.   You were the first to witness my recovery from a hamstring injury as a JV dancer and the first to witness my fouettes, floats and turns that I have worked for years to perfect.

Love and sometimes hate,

Aimee Ermel

Senior Memoir Why I Create

Working on my senior memoir was a lot of fun and it made me realize how fast the school year has gone by.  I think that through writing all of these personal journey essays I really realized how far I have journeyed.  One that I really enjoyed was the Why I ___ prompt.

      I create because it brings joy to others and me.  It is my passion and where I find happiness.  Creating encompasses all of my passions: dance, drawing, animation, science and multimedia.  Dance is my oldest friend out of the fine arts.  Starting when I was eight and just learning it has provided a place for self-expression and memories.  Dancing provides the chance to soar and push past what I once thought was my limit.  Thanks to the dance team at school I have developed a passion for choreographing.  It isn’t easy, in fact choreographing has been more challenging than learning a new step, but the final product is very rewarding.  I have had ups and downs in dance; this alone has helped shape who I am.  When I pulled my hamstring and had to take a break from dance I discovered art.  I had always had a love for drawing things but it wasn’t until 7^th grade that I discovered I actually had talent.  Drawing provided an outlet for the pain I felt from dance, it was and is truly the best therapy.  Creating is the way I can take out my frustration and turn it into something beautiful.  I love being able to take what was once a blank page and give it life, a face, or memory.  Animation defines creating.  It is one of the only art forms where a character truly comes to life.  People watch Disney animation and see what were once just blank pages that were turned into characters that can resonate with the audience.  There is an inexplicable feeling I get from seeing my art come to life.  When I create there are no limitations and no ways to fail.  I have grown up with science.  I have two scientists as parents, how could I not?  It wasn’t until recently that I have realized that the boundary between science and the arts really doesn’t exist.  It takes a creative person to come up with a hypothesis to be tested.  In its own way science is its own genre of art.  Art and animation are also necessary for making the public able to understand discoveries at the molecular and sub molecular level.  More and more science needs art to speak for it.

       I create for the feeling of accomplishment.  No matter how it turns out I find joy out of the process and knowing I have grown a little bit as a person simply by trying.  I have found the drive to my dreams through creating.  I am blessed to have more than just one talent pathway to find joy.  It is this joy and passion that I want to share with others.  It is fun to impress people and make some ones day by just giving them a drawing.  I like being able to take what could be seen as something simple and turn it into something deeper and more meaningful.  Simply, I create because I cant imagine not doing it.

Up-Hill

I just read a poem titled, Up-Hill, by Christina Rossetti. When I read this poem, it made me think about how some of us feel as graduation is approaching. The poem is basically a person asking a questions and another person answering back. It begins by stating that the journey is long and continues on to talk about if there's a place to rest and when it talks about this place it hints that this place is a place for comfort and help.As we get closer to graduation, we feel excited to finally be done with one chapter in our life, but at the same time we may feel afraid or uncertain of what the future holds for us. The long journey that the poem is talking about can symbolize the long journey that we will have to experience in order to get to where we want to be. The place where the person in the poem can sleep symbolizes that there will be people there to help us get past our struggles and help us feel comfortable as we go through our new journey.

-Jamie N.

What I've Learned in AP Lit

As I flip through the pages of my English journal, I have noticed that we learned a lot in this class. I have learned more things this year in English than in any of my English classes in the previous years. From allusions to sociological/philosophical approaches this class became one of my most interesting classes during my senior year. I am glad that I chose to take this class because it gave me a chance to learn about what literature really is and how much knowledge I can gain from it. Before this class I thought literature wasso boring and I assumed that I wouldn't learn much, but I was definitely wrong. In this class I was given the chance to learn about what a dystopian novel is and how to a write a sestina. This is a class that I will miss a lot and I will definitely carry the knowledge that I have gained from it to college.

-Jamie N.

Nature is what we see

This past month I found my favorite poem and it is called Nautre Is What We See by Emily Dickenson. This poem would have to be my favorite poem because Dickenson it gives us a different perspective on the extensiveness of nature. Dickenson makes us think about how we perceive nature ourselves, what we hear, what we see, and finally what we know and how little it is compared to its full meanings. This poem yet short is packed with literary meaning, imagery with pictures and sound, metaphors comparing the sound of a little cricket and the roar of thunder, two very different things, and diction the way she uses Nay, as “nature” is one of her friends.  Everyone should ask themselves these questions and interpret them for themselves after reading the poem. I also really like DIckensons poetry she has a very calming effect on my mind, she makes things so relaxing. Her imadgery is very vivid and beautiful. Below is the link to to the poem if any of you are interested: http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/nature-is-what-we-see/

The Age of Innocence Book Review

Wharton, Edith. The age of innocence. Charlottesville, Va.: University of Virginia Library, 1996. Print.

Reviewed by Jamie Narimatsu, Los Osos High School, Rancho Cucamonga, CA


The Age of Innocence is a novel that is set in the1870s in upper class New York City. The novel introduces us with the main character, Newland Archer. He is watching an opera and across where he is seated, he sees his fiance, May Welland. He is happy that he is engaged to her and he wants to let everyone know that they will be getting married. After a while he gets up from his seat and walks towards where May is seated. There, he approaches her and she introduces him to her cousin, Ellen Olenska, who Newland knew as a child. After Ellen's arrival, Newland's life is turned around as he begins to realize that May is a girl who acts how society wants her to be, while Ellen is a woman who he is in love with because she is different than society and fights for her freedom.

Wharton made her society seem realistic and created it to be similar to the society in the 1870s. She created certain characters such as the Mingott family to show how upper class society was at the time and she created an outcast like Ellen to show how the upper class judged the people that were different or were not a part of their class.

 The Age of Innocence is a novel that was cleverly created. The setting and theme were interesting choices and the drama filled plot will make readers want to keep on reading the book until the end. This is a book that is worth reading and readers be yearning to find out how the relationship between Ellen and Newland will end up.

-Jamie N.

HIGH SCHOOL, the lessons, the life, the rewards.

To everyone in our class, I think we can all relate to some very common thoughts. The first being, "Woo hoo, we're done!", the second being, "What am I going to do in life now.", and finally, "Gee, we sure did learn a lot in high school." Not only in high school do you learn a lot about liturature, math, history and the very general academic things, things which are all very rewarding, but you also learn a lot about yourself, and the journey you have finally, hopefully, finished. Now I could go into what the 4 years were like step by step but instead I think I should just get to the point. At the end of this long journey, now, we all come out of this place productive memebers of socety ready to go onto the next steps of our lives, ready to learn more, and ready to gain the rewards of a new journey in our future. High school has changed everyone, this is a great reward, we know what we were then and what we are now and how much we have changed for the better. Some rewards we can use when we move on to college are the skill of managing our study life and social life, something everyone has had to learn to balance. Its crazy for me writing this right now, its really making me think about all the great times high school has brought me. That is probably one of the biggest rewards we can all take from high school, we have all made memories at or around Los Osos High that will never be taken from us. It has truly been an honor to go to school at Los Osos. And finally good luck to everyone in their future joureys, may the rewards be great.
-Kyle Fischer