作者： chenchen

Winner
Ruby N. selected a piece from Tiny Love Stories called “I Never Saw My Parents Kiss” and wrote:

Dinner at my friend’s house was an alternative universe, surrounded by warm smiles and flowing chatter. At home, our dinner table was unused, left cold for the ghosts in the walls to occupy. My upbringing mirrored the author’s: “Their marriage, like my childhood, was steeped in sarcasm and silence.” In a Vietnamese immigrant household, exchanging love confessions and expressing emotions was unlikely. As a result of the cultural differences between my Western friends’ outbursts of “I love you” compared to my parents’ nods in acknowledgment, I struggled to understand the concept of love.

The author revealed a love story between their parents that lasted a lifetime, even if it wasn’t transparent to the modern eye. This story helped me reflect on my parents’ love language, from the washed strawberries left on the kitchen counter by my father to the Costco pack of Martinelli’s my mother bought (after I mentioned liking it once). Despite the empty dinner table, homemade food was on the stove, and groceries were in the pantry. As time passed, the grudge I held blossomed to a realization that love could be silent but still hold value.

Today, I continue to return my parents’ love in small services they were familiar with, a massage after a tiring day or translating at their doctor appointments. The author and I shared a discovery, which I hope can bring attention to hidden acts of love that could foster beautiful stories.

Winner
Jolie, from Long Island, N.Y., chose an article from the Health section headlined “How Teens Recovered From the ‘TikTok Tics’” and wrote:

As I learned of teens whose tics emerged and dissipated in about a year, I felt a sense of isolation as sharp as a jerk of my neck.

I’ve had Tourette’s syndrome for over three years. Like these individuals, my involuntary outbursts, physical and audible, arose during the pandemic. Despite my late-night thrashings and over-enunciated exclaims, despite classmates’ crass imitations and snide remarks, I overcame my initial insecurity. I’ve become more accustomed to my tics: they are simply an annoyance I tolerate. They are a new part of myself.

Though I’ve grown to accept them, my tics fuel an ardent quest to understand my condition. I attempt to draw meaning from erratic whistles, flailing limbs, and rapid-fire blinks. I want to clarify a disorder that is inherently senseless.

Obsessively rereading, I couldn’t help comparing myself to these teens, hoping to determine what made their tics slip away and mine continue. As I read about their short-lived “bout with tics,” I seethed with envy and resented myself for not outgrowing the diagnosis. That familiar self-consciousness pricked at my skin. I had not felt that way in years.

The article I scoured for answers only rehashed an old insecurity, leaving me more confused than I started. But more importantly, it withheld my reality and deprived readers of a full picture.

Like my Tourette’s syndrome, my ardent quest for answers persists.

Winner
Aaron Kim, 16, from Tacoma, Wash., chose an article from the Well section headlined “How to Make a Staycation Feel Like an Actual Break” and wrote:

It’s late July already. But, for so much of the summer, it felt like it had not even started. Each day of my break had been so much like the previous one — getting up at 9 a.m., working on college apps until 5 p.m., and then playing video games until sleep took me — it was as if there had been no summer at all, no time passing in a living world.

This is one of my last summers as a high schooler. I could not help but ask myself: What, if anything, could be done to make it special?

Reading Catherine Pearson’s article made me realize that the answer was right in front of me. She cites Dr. Lyubomirsky’s concept of the “three buckets” of happiness (social connections, meaningful contributions and personal growth) to recommend prioritizing activities in and around one’s immediate surroundings that fulfill one or more of these categories.

This weekend, I volunteered at my local church’s food drive. Never in the past would I have associated such activity with anything like a vacation. But I endeavored to think of it as one, enacting the “mental flip” Dr. Kurtz describes. And I did so not only to meaningfully connect with other volunteers and the people we served, but also in order to spend my time engaged in something that mattered to me. For the first time this summer, I felt alive. And yet so great a part of that vivacity came from the simple conviction that what I was doing was an end in itself, like going to the beach on vacation.

Winner
Yugottam Koirala, 18, from Nepal chose an article from the Climate section headlined “Himalayan Glacier Loss Speeding Up, New Report Finds,” and wrote:

In an airport, a friendly immigration officer looks at my passport and smiles. Then out of the blue, she asks me if the Himalayas are as beautiful as they appear in photos. “Uh … they look even better in real life,” I reply.

Wherever I go, I find comfort in knowing that the Himalayas are etched onto my Nepali identity. Clad in white, these mountains are more than just peaks, they are symbols of faith for people across cultures and religions.

So when I first read this article, my heart was racing. As temperatures soar and glaciers melt, the world’s third pole may soon be stripped of its freshwater reserves and biodiversity hot spots, strangling those of us who depend on them for a living.

I see farmers in my country suffering from crop losses due to erratic water supply. I hear warnings that glacial floods will exacerbate living conditions in my riverine hometown. I read depressing projections that a fourth of our Himalayan wildlife may go extinct within this century. Everywhere I look, the fate of our Himalayas seems sealed.

But this article, alongside red-flagging these alarming findings, also reassures me that the world is slowly understanding the dire effects these changes can have on people. So this gives me hope that soon, a slew of research and interventions will follow this shift in public perception.

But until then, at another airport, if an officer asks me about Nepal’s mountains again, what should I say?

Winner
Smrithi Senthilnathan, 17, from Chennai, India, chose a guest essay from the Opinion section headlined “I Teach at an Elite College. Here’s a Look Inside the Racial Gaming of Admissions.” and wrote:

I’m an Indian high school senior. Applying for college will probably be the most brutal experience of my life, and I have tons of things to worry about without considering whether schools will only look at my application through a diversity lens.

My conflicting views on affirmative action stem from recognizing its importance in the fight against institutionalized racism, while also grappling with the concern of being admitted for the sake of a diversity quota and not actual merit.

Dr. Harper expresses my standpoint perfectly, discussing how affirmative action has fostered a society focused on capitalizing on their race.

I don’t want to write my personal statement about race. I want my essay to convey my passions and personality, rather than factors I cannot control. However, I would also want admission counselors to take into account the opportunities I missed out on because of my identity.

Essentially, both proponents and critics of affirmative action want the same thing: equality.

The only possible solution is evening the playing field. Instead of making reservations for historically underrepresented communities, remove the barriers that prevent these people from being on the same level as the dominant classes.

Although I understand this might be idealistic and not achievable in the next few decades, I am hopeful for a future where this dream will become reality.

Winner
E., 16, from Vancouver writes about T Magazine’s “The 25 Most Influential Works of Postwar Queer Literature”:

My bookshelf at home is a glass closet; Woolf and Wilde next to anthologies about Stonewall.

But it wasn’t always like this. My love for queer literature started with my ninth grade English teacher recommending Whitman and Lorde. Poems printed out. pocketed so they couldn’t be seen by anyone else. The shove of a book into my bag when met with a “whatcha reading?”; paperback covers creased with shame.

I read “Stone Butch Blues” in my tenth grade socials class, slamming my laptop shut any time anyone asked what I was doing. “Giovanni’s Room” was the only Baldwin my school library didn’t have, and my face was warm when I asked our librarian to buy it for me.

Pride overtook my shame, eventually, but I spent a lot of my (relatively short) life feeling alone in my body and experience as a queer person. Like the writers in this article talked about, I found something so powerful in literature’s capacity for helping me phrase my thoughts and shape my understanding of my identity.

Today, when someone asks me what I want to study in university, I’ll tell them I want to minor in Gender Studies. I’m usually met with laughter, which is why I want to study it in the first place. These stories, though formative to me and to the six interviewees of this article, are obscure to most. So is our history. I wonder what growing up would have felt like if I or anyone else had been told more stories about girls like me.

Winner

Jack Cole, 16, from Boca Raton, Fla. writes about playing Wordle, a Times game that gives you six chances to guess a 5-letter word. (If you, too, would like to play, here is a collection of tips and tricks.)

When I first accepted your challenge, I thought you were a refreshing way to start my brain for the day. Well, 648 days later our relationship has, shall we say, evolved. There are days that you and I are as one. When this happens, I enjoy a challenging but solvable puzzle, smile, and move on with my day. Other mornings, you are exceptionally easy, leading me to believe that I am obviously an expert Wordler.

Then there are the other days. Wordle, although you vehemently deny it, I know you are getting sneakier over time. When you used the triple vowel for the unbelievably random word “CACAO,” I gave you the benefit of the doubt. Despite this courtesy, there are the days that you slide in the double consonant words when you know full well people aren’t thinking of two “N’s in “ENNUI.” I mean, that’s not even English! Then, you get downright subversive. For example, “PARER” is a word that may be used outside of a professional kitchen once a year. I fully admit that I threw my (encased) phone at the couch when you told me on guess four that “PAPER” was incorrect. You knew that would ruin people’s days, right?

And the worst part, Wordle, is that I can’t clean out my phone’s history because I’m terrified of losing my 232-day winning streak. Until tomorrow, Wordle!

Winner

Katie Chung, 17, from Paramus, N.J., chose an article from the Style section headlined “What Is a ‘Beige Flag’?” and wrote:

What is a “beige flag”? One person I dated had a knack for reciting random historical facts at the drop of a hat; another had a penchant for organizing their bookshelf by the color of the spines rather than the author’s name. These traits were neither deal breakers nor instant attractions, but rather curious aspects that added individuality to their character: “beige flags.”

What fascinates me most about beige flags is their subjectivity. What may be an endearing quirk to one person could be utterly repellent to another. As I ponder beige flag TikToks and their comment sections, I witness a microcosm of the world’s opinions converging, showcasing the vast spectrum of human perspectives.

But the significance of beige flags extends beyond social media trends. It prompts us to reconsider the rigid expectations we impose on potential partners. In our quest for the perfect match, we tend to focus on red flags, fearing the pitfalls of poor compatibility. But in doing so, we overlook the beauty of embracing our partners’ quirks — the very things that make them unique.

Embracing beige flags means acknowledging that perfection is an elusive ideal, and relationships thrive on cherishing our differences. In an age marked by polarization and categorizing people as good or bad, welcoming the in-between becomes an effective tool for encouraging empathy; if we can extend this acceptance to other aspects of our lives, we can begin fostering a more compassionate society.