Photo via The Wall Street Journal After retiring from professional figure skating a 2020 World Junior bronze medalist, Junior Grand prix silver medalist, and youngest ever U.S. women’s national champion at age 13, Alysa Liu has come back to skating on her own terms. She made her unexpected return in 2024, and this year, she won second place to Amber Glenn at the US Championships (skating to Promise by Laufey, which only made me love her performance more). This secured her a s

The following is a transcript of a speech delivered at the Lycée Concours D'eloquence, which took place on February 5, 2026. It won the People's Choice and Best Performance awards. Welcome to the time store, come one, come all! One fish, two fish, red fish, blue fish, wide, thin, up, down, spinning in circles or flat on the ground! We’re your one stop destination for predestination, your little slice of reason – with a capital R – that separates nothing from nothing, heaven

The following is a transcript of a speech delivered at the Lycée Concours D'eloquence, which took place on February 5, 2026. Good evening, ladies and gentlemen, We’re told we’re free. Free to choose our future. Free to become anything we want.   Apparently, I’m free, But freedom is limited; it doesn’t come with any old get-out-of-jail-free card.   And if we’re really so free, why does choosing feel so terrifying?   Before we argue about free will, let’s define it. Free will u

Photo via To All the Boys I've Loved Before Most girls recognize the familiar name of Lara Jean Covey, protagonist of the “To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before” series, known for her sensitive mannerisms and polite charms. Since reading the book series when I was younger, I deeply admired and related to her, catching her references and subtle remarks with ease. Whether it was her baking, movie marathons, or her reading, I found myself comforted by the presence of such a characte

Thirty days have September, April, June, and November. All the rest have thirty-one, except for February, which has twenty-eight (except in a leap year when it has twenty-nine). That simple rhyme has helped me keep months straight for, well, as long as I can remember. So much so that every time the next year rolls around, as it inevitably does, I revisit my handy tune to discern the precise amount of time we will be spending in each month. The longer months, the shorter month

You  Life is happening for you, not to you.  Each misstep, each pitfall, and each obstacle  Only empower you.  Only if that's how you see it of course. You  Will encounter struggle. There is no doubt that destruction, despair, and darkness Will follow you.  The type of uneasiness, weariness, that snatches the breath from your lungs, leaving you gasping in its wake. You  Will feel each and every offensive word like thorns raking across your skin, each one leaving a mark.  It w

Photo via Amazon In the early morning of January 3rd, 2026, the US Armed Forces launched Operation Absolute Resolve. In the pitch-black darkness caused by a US-orchestrated power-outage, the Delta Force crept into downtown Caracas, Venezuela, and after a brutal gunfight with the Venezuelan presidential guards, took President Nicolas Maduro into US Custody, bringing him to the US mainland by the end of the day. In the late morning of that same day, the President Donald Trump a

Photo via Alizaasif on Pinterest Soraya’s ratings (and warnings): Rose Market This article was partially inspired by the fact that I have been absolutely craving the Rose Market matcha for forever. This seems to be an underrated spot in the Lycée periphery, but the matcha is amazing. My go-to everywhere is an iced matcha latte with oat milk and vanilla syrup, but no other matcha I have had tastes quite like the Rose market one. It’s a solid color, medium green, and has an inc

Constable Hodgkins was not a particularly intelligent man, though not a particularly stupid one either. He belonged to that rather unfortunate category of people who spend their whole lives drifting about in the current without causing the slightest ripple on their own. He was a somewhat portly man of around fifty with dark, slowly graying hair and lips that had become stuck in a permanent frown from disuse. He had a curious way of communicating solely through small grunts an

As Stranger Things  has come to a close and we got to watch our favorite characters on the screen one last time, many people can’t help but feel let down by the final season. This shared sense of anticlimax and disappointment could stem from various factors, which we, two seasoned Stranger Things  fans, discuss here. From poor pacing from episode to episode, not nearly enough character deaths and suspense, and massive plot holes, did Stranger Things  5 really live up to the h

3 weeks ago, 14 teams entered the NFL playoffs. On February 8, the Seattle Seahawks and the New England Patriots are set to face off in the Superbowl. So, how did we get here?  It all started with Wild-Card Weekend. 12 teams faced off, and only the 6 winners got to move   forward. Many games were close, only being decided in the last few minutes, and in some cases   the outcome came down to the final play of the game. In the NFC, the Rams scored a touchdown   to seal the win

Les gens m’appellent Leila. Ils n’ont pas tort, c’est le nom que mes parents m'ont donné, et je l'aime beaucoup. Néanmoins, la façon de présenter quelqu’un par son nom, son âge, et tout ce dont ils rêvaient dans une phrase semble un peu banal. Comment est-ce qu’on peut deviner la nature de quelqu’un par une expression, toute seule dans une jungle des mots? Alors, je vais essayer le mieux que je peux. Je suis une fille, d’à peu près seize ans, avec une adoration pour les human

Dear January, sweet old January  I hate you January  Out of all the months, you remain anything but cheery Finals, alarms, Redbull, assignments,  You make me want to hide in confinement  The solidarity of your presence  Feels like a punch in the face every single day And is completely absent of pleasance  Dear January  Next year, don’t be so scary Messy Desk. Photo via Courier Journal

There is nothing like being on stage. One may attempt to dispute this, but they would be decidedly wrong, in every sense of the word. To say the stage is unique is simply a fact. Of course, one may mistake it for a pithy epigram, but, once again, they would be mistaken. The stage is unlike any other human experience – a proscenium matchbox illuminated by nothing but the fluorescence of spotlights a life unto itself. The tech booth above is heaven, the orchestra pit hell, and

As the year comes to a close, many people are left reflecting on months filled with heavy headlines and constant uncertainty. War, climate disasters, and political conflict dominated the news cycle, often making it feel as though the world was moving backward rather than forward. With so much focus on crisis, it has become easy to overlook quieter moments of progress happening beyond the spotlight. Yet, in December, several stories emerged that showed meaningful change contin

This year, for the first time in Lycée MUN history, our very own delegates attended BearMUN 2025 at UC Berkeley, December 6-7 (yes, I am aware, and the jokes did get old). The trip began with a 7-and-a-half-hour bus ride up to the Bay area on Friday. We arrived at the hotel and were given free rein to explore the area for dinner. I think one thing we underestimated other than the length of the trip was how cold it would be. As Angelinos, a lot of us don’t even own coats to be

In early 2025, physicians at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia and Penn Medicine made medical history by treating the world's first patient with a personalized CRISPR gene editing therapy matched to his unique genetic profile. This personalized intervention may mark a turning point in how rare genetic diseases might someday be treated.   The young patient, known as KJ, was born with a rare metabolic disorder called severe carbamoyl phosphate synthetase 1, or CPS1, a gen

It was a full moon, the iridescent light reflecting off the surface of the waves and shining through to the bottom of the lagoon. Here, under the cover of darkness and waves, shadows elongate and shift like the tides of the sea. This is the place where creatures come to satiate their hunger and devour their dinners. This unique restaurant is called…. “Fast FOOOOOOOOOOD,” famously named and known after its loooooooong menu. The eerie glow of green lanterns bobs with the curren

I hate movie theaters. I genuinely avoid them and will do ANYTHING to dodge going to the movies. But, somehow, thanks to the TikTok hype around “Regretting You,” I ended up in a movie theatre on a random Tuesday. I really wasn't expecting much… mostly because whenever TikTok grows obsessed with a movie, it becomes one of those unescapable ads that stalk you across every platform. Usually, I boycott those movies out of pure self-preservation. But, this trend was different. It

Following a dismal performance in the 2024 US Presidential Election and congressional elections, the Democratic Party came to a relative consensus that it needed a reset. Electing a new party-chair, Ken Martin, in early 2025, leadership realized they needed to focus on the issues that pushed people out to the polls in droves to elect Donald Trump in 2024. The debate, however, lay in what was the best way to message it. The DSA-aligned progressive wing lamented the ineffective