Quills & Typewriters Anonymous

While our teacher was explaining the impact of COVID-19 on international trade, I was creating a fairytale: finding a savior amidst warring global economies. When the textbook spoke of symbiotic relationships, I was weaving a fable on luminescent bacteria and their mermaid friends in the oceans for the school newsletter. When school was teaching theoretical knowledge straightforwardly, I was relying on storytelling to escape from the mundane into the extraordinary.

I have always enjoyed writing; its beauty lies in just how many ways one idea can be expressed. There's something truly powerful about penning down a story that impacts others in mysterious ways. And there's something even more memorable in creating a story about things that exist right under your nose. Through each story, I am given an opportunity to be a small part of a piece of history.

Time travel, which not even science can grant as yet, is what drives me to make my lessons memorable. When I must mentor 6th to 10th-grade students at the JPIS Summer Camp, I use poems, flash fiction, and descriptive writing to teach 'Neuroscience & Psychology.' When I make mind-maps for research papers - I scribble limericks into literature margins and redraw gene diagrams as...