Category: 2022 Ignite Publication

Samuel McGee ‘22

I was small (at the time), quiet, and a little dumb.

I saw him on the first day of school and consciously or unconsciously decided I wanted to be more like him. I wanted to answer questions the way he did, I wanted to make friends the way he did, I wanted to dress the way he did. Here’s an example: I remember during recess him describing a movie that his older brother watched with him, which was a big deal as this was an R-rated movie. So, of course I tried to watch the movie that night and of course my parents said I under no certain circumstances could watch that movie.

I “watched” it that night anyways. And by watched, I mean I watched the trailer on YouTube that night and then tried to keep up with a conversation about it the next day on the playground with the knowledge of someone who’d watched the trailer. I have no idea why this was the way it was; that’s just how it was.

He was tall, loud, social, and smart.

He didn’t see me on my first day of school, or rather he didn’t notice me. As he tells it to me, he’d been there for a year already and was more concerned with catching up with friends than making new ones. However, he tells me as time passed, he did come to notice me. Ironically, the first thing he noticed was my quietness.

“You were quiet as a mouse.”

He noticed how during classes I almost never would raise my hand and during recess I preferred to read rather than to talk to others or play around. According to him, it was this quietness that he began to admire. He tells me he wanted to embody that aspect, “probably because [he] was tired of getting told by teachers to quiet down.”

We look back on these times where we saw the beginning of our friendship take root; we are awash in waves of warm nostalgia for a time long since passed.

As we got to know each other more, we started to replicate each other’s behaviors. A year had passed, and I had hit my growth spurt; however, we weren’t standing equally to each other just in height. Socially, I was still on the quiet end; however, he’d introduced me to some of his friends, I started to warm up socially, and by the end of that first year my friends were his friends, and his friends were mine. Curiously, the way I dressed also changed because of him. Here’s an example: I remember begging my mom to pick up a pair of these bright firetruck-red Vans—still a piece of clothing I find in my closet always—that my friend absolutely raved about. That day he had chewed my ear off about the comfort, style, and (oddly enough) the smell of the shoes; he really loved and still loves the smell of fresh canvas. So of course, after such glowing reviews, I wanted a pair of my own in the same style and color as the ones he had.

He reminds me that he changed a lot after getting to know me as well. He tells me that he took a page from my book and learned how to talk less when he shouldn’t have been talking—or at least how to take on a hushed voice. He reminds me of how I got him into one of his favorite book series of his childhood, Percy Jackson. He reminds me of how after I had introduced him to the series, he went as far as dressing up as Percy Jackson for Halloween. He straightened his wavy hair and got a Camp Half-Blood shirt, the full nine yards. It was a good costume, in hindsight. According to him, prior to meeting me he never would’ve considered picking up a book for fun. And, again unexpectedly, he says that the way he dressed also changed. Apparently, my taste for blue colors rubbed off on him, as he started wearing blue jeans more often instead of sweats, which surprised me seeing as jeans are piece of clothing that is a mainstay in his closet to this day. I mean seriously, as far back as I can remember, he’s never been without a pair. His favorite brand is Levi’s—same as mine.

Looking back on how we’ve grown up and affected each other, I’ve realized how much of an impact he had on my personality and how I chose to express myself, and vice versa. The true impact we’ve had on each other is probably impossible to “measure” by any reasonable means. If we hadn’t met, I’ve got no idea what kind of a person I’d be; from how I choose to interact with others to something as simple as how I’d get dressed in the morning, I’ve got no clue. But it’s just that that makes me that much more grateful that I got to know him and that he got to know me. I love the personal style I choose to express myself with, and I wouldn’t change any of the events or people that led me to arrive at it.

Max Tran ’22 

When I was in 7th grade, a rare display shelf opened up in my mother’s elementary school library. The shelf was short enough to be reached by younger students, tall enough to be seen by classroom teachers, and deep enough to hold improvised mechanisms. As a frequent visitor, I knew that this display space was an opportunity that comes as often as winning the Mega Millions Jackpot. A few rolls of tape and cardboard boxes later, I had turned the display into Readbox, a cardboard vending machine covered with crinkly red butcher paper. What I was most proud of were the paper locks and cylindrical key, a foot-long cardboard stick that could poke around inside to dispense books. 

Putting the Readbox under lock and key was supposed to protect it (and to prevent worrying about unauthorized usage outside of school hours). 

What is worry? You might think worry is a thought of an impending deadline, a point at which no more tape can be added, and your unfinished contraption is left to stand on its own. But I’ve noticed that my worrying often begins when the deadline ends. When I’m working on a project, with things I can see, understand, and control, like writing a program or protecting a server from attacks, there are few things to worry about. Instead, it’s often the things I can’t see that spark new worries, such as ripped red butcher paper to get to the books inside a Readbox. Sometimes, I worry about the subtle ways I can be changed by others, potentially losing connection to myself, my identities in values and culture. While I cannot always control the environments I am in, I still do what I can, making locks and keys to guard the important parts of myself from changing — especially through popular culture, or a desire to conform and fit in. 

But, when the Readbox broke and was decommissioned, it also opened an opportunity for a new display. 

 

Hidden behind Artificial Intelligence (AI) is the neural network, an electronic representation of the human brain. At first, neural networks seem to be solely about computers, especially, how to translate human concepts of learning (such as making mistakes) into languages that can be understood by a computer. But in the process of translation, you also realize that you’re learning about yourself. By digitizing human problem-solving, you can become more aware about how you learn and approach problems in the world. 

Like drawing a blueprint, the first step in Artificial Intelligence is to design a neural network by creating and organizing artificial neurons. Then you have to train the neural network. Like teaching a younger cousin to ride a bike, you give a neural network examples and tips, and guide its attempts to learn. This is also a time when a neural network can break down. 

Whether it’s due to bad examples or poor planning, breaking a neural network can be frustrating. The process is similar to losing an important essay in Microsoft Word, except that machine learning models often take weeks or months of borrowed computer processing time to train. Sometimes breaking changes in a neural network propagate so quickly, you don’t have time to pull the power cord. 

 

A few years after the Readbox had been taken down, my younger sister and cousins conspired over Zoom to convince me to play Roblox, an online game that we could play together. For months I was surrounded by incessant sister-led sales pitches, messages, and advertising to create an account. My aversion to Roblox stemmed from a slippery slope: if I gave in to this element of popular culture, what would be next? 

 

One of the strengths of training a neural network is its persistence. After you design the network architecture and prepare examples for it to study, it can spend weeks, months, or even years teaching itself. Until it’s told to stop, neural networks persist on training, looking for patterns in your examples, and attempting to copy them. 

But what if your examples are flawed, incomplete, or are even broken and incorrect? 

For example, imagine you’re training a neural network to recognize pictures of apples. If you only give it example pictures of red apples, it might not be able to recognize a green apple. Whether you couldn’t find pictures of green apples—or haven’t seen a Granny Smith for some time—in this scenario, the neural network’s perseverance is a hindrance, making it overly specialized in recognizing pixels of red apples. This is where the translations fall short. Currently, neural networks see through the eyes of their creators. When a creator expresses biases, neural networks amplify them, voraciously turning the smallest flaws (implicit bias) into a learned pattern (explicit bias). 

 

Both humans and their neural networks have persistence. But what currently makes humans different is our haphazard approach to it. Sometimes our willingness to change our goals helps us dynamically grow and change in ways we wouldn’t have if we’d have followed our original path.  

Sometimes, our willingness to give in and play Roblox can lead to enjoyable new surprises.

Ian Orejana ‘22

Midnight Mass, Squid Game, Move to Heaven, and Jesus Christ Superstar. What do they all have in common? They’re all shows that I’ve watched in the past two weeks… just kidding. Death. Yup, just straight up death. And you know what that means. It’s time to get existential, and I’m gonna bring you with me, because I desperately need to get my feelings out.

I’m not sure that it’s coincidental that literally all the shows that I’ve been watching lately deal with topics like death, grief, and sadness. In Midnight Mass, a supernatural thriller with Catholicism as its horror, everybody dies. In Squid Game, an intense K-drama about those in extreme debt who play life-or-death children’s games for money, everybody dies. In Move to Heaven, a wholesome K-drama about trauma cleaners, everybody dies. In Jesus Christ Superstar… well, you probably know what happens to him.

Don’t take those “everybody dies” things as a spoiler; they’re really just exaggerations, but that’s beside the point. The point is seeing all these people die has made me feel… existential lately. It’s not fun to realize, especially because I am a person who is always optimistic and uplifting. In facing these existential thoughts, I’ve become scared. In these shows, the characters more or less end up moving on. Whether they positively or negatively changed from the events that led up to people’s deaths, they still dealt with death. Through their grief they persevered, and if I’m honest, I envy that.

I haven’t had anybody very close to me die. Knowing that, I feel so unprepared for when one of my loved ones dies, and that is terrifying, to say the least. Now, having to watch all these people in shows I love die, makes me fear it more. This leads to more questions, like, “When will I die?” “What will people say about me?” or even, “Am I even living right now?” So, yeah, questioning reality and fearing death is a great combination.

Again, since I haven’t dealt with a death that is close to me, seeing these characters be able to live their lives makes me jealous. I also think about whether the actors would feel the same. At the end of the day, though, I have no answer, and I can’t give you one either. Nobody knows what happens when we die. We don’t know how it ends. Whether or not we get resurrected, reincarnated, or it just ends. We will never know until it happens.

I say I’m scared and unprepared, but if I turn on my optimistic attitude, that is all okay. I don’t want to believe that my life will end when I die. I don’t want to know what it will feel like to die. What I can do right now is just make sure I make the most of every moment I have with my friends and family. If it’s just a small drive to drop my friend off at their house, I’m going enjoy that moment. If it’s just me going into my sister’s room to say hi and leave, I’m going to enjoy that moment. I may not ever have the answers to the questions I have, and who knows if maybe in the next week after I’ve written this, I will forget this period of my feeling existential. I will feel scared and unprepared, but that’s just life, and life goes on. I can’t keep myself hung up on this, and its exactly why I decided to write about this in the first place. These thoughts have inspired me to find connection, live better, and just have more fun, because it could all go away.

I plan to use my newfound perspective on life and death to keep myself alive, because I’m just a human.