Writer's Desk Blog

At the age of 14, I left China to go to high school in the United States. At my school, we had all school meetings every Monday and Thursday, where faculty and students gathered together to share news and thoughts with each other.

I’ve always been someone who takes control of my own life. At the age of 14, I started to learn French by myself because I wanted to travel more broadly and understand different cultures.

When I realized that Covid might not have only spoiled my senior year of high school, but my freshman year of college, I was overcome with anxiety and concern. I could feel this thing that I had worked so hard for and was so close to, get taken away with each new story of skyrocketing cases.

In late May, after the death of George Floyd, an unarmed African American man murdered by a Minneapolis police officer, protests and riots erupted in the United States, and eventually around the world.

A life without podcasts would be quite an empty existence! The truth is I fill every little gap in the day with a podcast.

Organized by the Journalism Education Association (JEA), the China Youth Observation Contest “aims to encourage students to carry out surveys and researches in the society, to obtain valuable and in-depth findings, and make their voices heard.”

This past fall Writer’s Desk student Flora Zhai was honored with a Scholastic Writing Award. A high school sophomore, Flora was one of a small number of students who won a Silver Key in the Personal Essay and Memoir category for her story “The Hungry Nation.”

It’s National Poetry Month! To be honest, when I use the word poetry, it’s usually not with an exclamation point.

In the last week, my school announced that for the foreseeable future, classes will be conducted remotely, over video conferencing software.

It’s midnight. My paper is due in the morning. I’ve researched, outlined, written, and revised it. Now I want to refine my sentences and perfect the grammar.

At first I hated Beloved. The book was an unrelenting slog. A blurry, never-ending march forward without a clear purpose.