"And I remember thinking, 'I'm going to remember this for the rest of my life.'" So I have in abysmal memory. It's not something so terrible to where it has to be diagnosed as a standalone condition. It doesn't make my life unlivable, but it does make it sometimes quite frustrating. It mostly makes it frustrating for the people that I'm having conversations with because I will be quite comfortable, actually, I'll forget a lot of things alone in my own little ignorant bubble, but then my friends — I can't answer simple questions, like, "What did you have to eat today?" or "Yo, you remember what XYZ said last week?" or "during yesterday's lecture?" And it's especially bad when a friend is recounting something that they told me during like, really deep personal conversation, or anything that they deemed important about themselves enough to tell me at some point and they'll be like, "Don't you remember? I told you when my birthday was," or "this dramatic thing that happened when I was a child." And I will have to kind of bite my nails and be like, "I'm so sorry. I don't remember." Because how long can I keep up with this when I don't actually remember, any of the details? It makes me look like a terrible friend, but it's really just my brain arbitrarily sorting all of these memories into important and worth keeping around and unimportant or distressing for some reason, which is why I think I've had trouble studying over the years because memorization is just not my strong suit. But of all the memories that my brain decided to arbitrarily keep around, one of my most vivid memories — vivid and earliest, aside from really, really, really, really young. I was in fourth grade, and I was sitting during story time — it was story time or some classroom announcement, but it was at the teacher's big rocking chair that was at the very back of the classroom, there was a big blue, yellow, red carpet which I think is just a general color combination that's pretty ubiquitous in elementary schools. But I remember sitting on the edge of that carpet, not at all listening to what the teacher was saying, looking up at the tall blue store closet that was positioned at the edge of the carpet to kind of wall off the…

"I was like, 'Mom, mom, guess what, guess what?' and her friend went, 'Chicken butt!'" I remember this one time, my mom had a friend over, and I had some things I think I made something or found or something cool, and I wanted to tell them about it. I didn't want to interrupt her and her friend. I was like waiting for a while, and finally, I ran over, I was like five, I ran over, and I was like, "Mom, mom, guess what, guess what?" and her friend went, "Chicken butt!" And I had never heard this sentence before, I didn't know what chicken butt — like, I didn't know that that was a saying or a thing, and so naturally, I just immediately started like sobbing and like crying, and I was — I like ran from the room, and I like went and hid. And then my mom had to come and like console me and tell me this was just like a saying, that like, sometimes people will joke and like, say, "Guess what, chicken butt" and — but I was just like, I felt like whatever I had to share wasn't important, or like I was being made fun of. And so I was very emotional about it. And so now from that point on, anytime that anyone in my family says like, "Guess what?" someone else will say "Chicken butt!" and then I'll like pretend to get all emotional about it because you know it just — it really hurt my five-year-old self.

“I've heard that a dog will never die at his home, so maybe he just knew something, so he left” And I want to talk about the dog. It's not my dog. It's my grandparents' dog. I first met him when I was 12 or 13, maybe. He was very cute and very lovely. Yeah, his name is Yellow. We called him yellow because he's a yellow dog apparently, but actually he's orange. Yeah, but the yellow is a really common name for dogs in China, so there are many dogs are called Yellow, Big Yellow, Little Yellow, or something like that. Yeah. We really like him because he's so clever and very kind. You know, he can tell who is one of our family at the first time. There was a time when I was shelling peanuts with my grandma and mother. He was just sitting near us as a guard. It seemed like he wanted to keep us safe, you know. I could tell that he's really sleepy because it was really hot, but he still stayed on the job. But we lost him about two or three years ago. He just disappeared. Also, actually, he was very old — I think he was very old as a dog. But he was still full of energy. Yep, but he just disappeared. I don't know why. My grandpa tried to find him but failed, so we still don't know, yeah, what happened to him. I've heard that a dog will never die at his home, so maybe he just knew something, so he left. My girlfriend also like him, and she always wants to have a dog. But we don't know if there is a dog better than him in the world.

“It wasn't a real hug, but it was something phenomenal.” I was trying to think of the last time I felt genuinely happy and that was on February 15th 2024, because on that day, I got a massive hug of encouragement. It wasn't a real hug, but it was something phenomenal that gripped my heart and kept me moving throughout the semester. I really did love that day so much. Um, I was having a very difficult time writing this paper for my LGBTQ+ studies course. And that was -- the, the, the topic of the paper was to find a couple artifacts, dig through them, get everything out of them, find the codes, find the true meaning, find everything, find all the interpretations, and tie it up with class topics and submit. But I was having a horrible time because I just had no confidence in my ability to write. I -- there's nothing worse than looking at something that you did and saying, “Wow, this is awful.” And that's how I felt on that day, so. But before I get into that I want to talk about the artifacts that I chose and that -- er, those were zines. They were “blue floral gusset” and “Travesty #2” by, uh, Spurzine, who's an Australian zinester. And the thing I love so much about zines is the completely unfiltered nature of the, of the zine. It's so phenomenal. It's a window into the mind. It's true passion, and that's what I can sniff out. That's what I love to see. I love to see true passion radiating off of my computer monitor or holding it in the palm of my hand. It just feels powerful. I was researching these zines and I felt awful about ‘em because I didn't have any confidence in myself. But I went to the writing center. I went to the writing center at my university. I sat down with somebody. They were a sounding board for the, for the ideas that I was creating in my mind. And at the end of the session, they looked at me in the eyes after listening to me ramble on and on and on for like an hour and a half, and they say, "Don't undersell yourself. You're a phenomenal writer. All of the things that you said made sense." And I like stood up from my chair,…

"I'm grateful that I have people that I can rely on and have fun with." So the prompt is what are you grateful for this week? I'm grateful that I was able to get a good grade on my chemistry exam after studying for entire week, but also had the chance to spend some quality time with my friends and family. My friends and I decided to go around and explore the campus and eat some delicious food afterwards and have some deep conversation about our lives. And we talked about what we plan to do with our lives. And later this week my other friend helped me out with my homework that I was stuck on. I'm grateful that I have people that I can rely on and have fun with. So yeah, this is what I'm grateful for this week.

"I am really excited to look back on these in a few years and see what my mind was going through the moment, I suppose." I am a person who has very weird dreams. Although I guess by definition, dreams are pretty weird already. Like, once I dreamed that a giant pigeon was chasing my tour group through the ruins of Ancient Rome. And the main reason we were concerned about the giant pigeon chasing us was because we were afraid it would poop on our heads. So that was an exciting dream. I'm happy to inform you that I eventually did escape the pigeon. And another time, oh! Another time, I was an alchemist peering through a telescope - no not a telescope - a scope that lets you see far, but not like into space - at a fascinating phenomenon of alchemy that I could see happening in like the ocean below the cliff that I was on. And this alchemy transformation was a bubble amongst the waves and this little boy - and the bubble was turning into a boy, and the boy was turning into a bubble. And I was just absolutely fascinated by this. And this is kind of embarrassing but when I was in middle school, I used to dream a lot about anime characters. Looking through my dream journal, I was just so surprised at how frequently in my dreams this or that anime character would appear and just do completely random things. I mean, I'm in college now and I guess it hasn't changed because sometimes I still dream about novel characters. I have been getting more into journaling my dreams recently. I very first started journaling about my dreams in elementary school, but I didn't really do it that frequently. I would maybe do, you know, one dream journal entry every few months or something like that. And I didn't remember my dreams that often, although I think I remember them more often than most people do. But recently, I've been basically journaling about my dreams every day, or at least trying to. And it's really interesting to see all the different variety of things that my brain comes up with like, day-to-day. I am really excited to look back on these in a few years and see what my mind was going through the moment, I suppose.

"I'm just really grateful to be in a new place..." Hello, my name is Lena and I'm going to be answering the question "What are you grateful for this week?" Because this is my third day in Michigan, and I guess I'm just really grateful to be in a new place because I'm from California and growing up, I didn't really travel very much, but once I got accepted into college, like new opportunities to travel began to arise and this is one of them because I'm doing an internship here with MI Diaries and I'm super excited about it. But yeah, Michigan … my first impressions were that, like, there hasn't really seemed like there's a whole lot to do here - at least, thus far. And this is someone coming from a college in, like, Los Angeles County. So obviously there's a lot of, like, hustle and bustle there. But I really do love, like, the greenery here. It's quite beautiful. And just being outside in nature is really nice and very refreshing and it's been nice meeting new people here. I'm already starting to make friends and form relationships, that's really nice. And also I'm very grateful for my parents for supporting me in coming here and taking me to the airport, like, really late at night - I think it was like 10 PM or something - and taking on a lot of the stress, so I wasn't as stressed. So, I guess, those are a few things that I'm grateful for.

Note: There is language that is excluded in the transcript but not excluded in the audio. "And then he said "Best two out of three?"" This is a story about Uno. I and my friends, we used to play Uno a lot on the computer, and we always like used it to settle arguments and settle like debates if we were like too tired to actually debate something. And the running joke in our friend group was that I never win. I every -- every single time that I got close, someone just 'plus foured' me and then I had to draw and then I had to keep drawing and then I had thirty cards and everyone else had four. And then I would lose catastrophically or I would just get to thirty cards and just sit there right at the beginning the game. Or like some other random b******* would happen, and I would just be there like third or fourth place out of the four. And like we play with the rule where you need to draw until you match the color or number and we played with like stacking and jumping in, so that should have helped but it never really did and like every single time that I had an argument someone - with a friend they were like "Yo, let's settle this with Uno!" and they'd have this big ass grin on their face and I'm like, "Okay cool. Yeah. Sure. Sure, buddy. Let's let's see how many - how many dozen cards you have less than me when we - when we end." And like every single time that I played I couldn't win at god d*** Uno, which it's not even a skill based game, it's just luck and I just couldn't win. And like one time - one time one of my friends was like trying to decide where to - this is something stupid. I think it was where we should go eat and it was debating between one my favorite restaurants and just the like - just one down the street because it was easier to get to. And this friend he wanted to go to the f****** local Arby's and like I didn't want to because I had been eating Arby's for the past like three days. And we played a game. It was actually close. I got down…

"...a good line to describe sort of my perspective, which is that the places that you go shape who you are and the way that you see the world." So two years ago I was in my senior year of high school and it was I think around January-ish that everybody in the senior class got an email saying, "We're going to do senior quotes for the yearbook. If you want to do a senior quote, you can send us-" I think it was -- you had to give two dollars to the English teacher or something who was in charge of running the yearbook- "and then you can pick a quote, and we'll put it in the yearbook." And so I was super excited because I have wanted to do a senior quote since I was in -- started high school. But I realized I hadn't really thought about what I wanted my quote to be and so I thought, "I want to do something from a poem," because I really like poetry. And I eventually managed to get it down to two options- so this is after I had paid the two dollars and everything- and one of them was from a Percy Bysshe Shelley poem called Ozymandias. And the line is, "Look on my works, ye Mighty, and Despair!" and I thought you know, that would be kind of funny to do because within the poem it's a line that's the inscription on a statue that has been destroyed by time, and so, you know, it's sort of about how nothing, you know, lasts forever, even great power is gone, and so I thought it'd be kind of, like, funny and ironic because it's like- it's this super high and mighty line about something that is no longer high and mighty, but eventually I decided, you know, maybe that could be taken the wrong way. And so I decided to go with a line from a Sylvia Plath poem and the line is, I think, "And what if the sky here is no different/ And it is my eyes that have sharpened themselves?" And so the reason that I chose that was because I thought, you know, I, I've moved around in my life and I've learned to call different places home. And so, you know, I thought that it was sort of a good line to…

"My heart was beating outta my throat and I, like, looked behind me." Have you ever had a strange or paranormal experience and what happened? And as embarrassed as I am to say, I think that yes, during middle school, I had one of these strange or paranormal experiences. Um, but in middle school, I, uh, was living -- like my bedroom was in the basement and our basement was set up in this u-shape. Um, so the middle of the U was where the stairs would be coming from the main level down to the basement and then on either side of like the long legs of the U was my bedroom and then my brother's bedroom. So like we shared a wall but you would have to walk all the way around the U for me to get to my brother's bedroom. And it was a fairly long basement, cause it was a ranch style house and so the basement, um, was really long and kind of narrow. And my mom had set up these mirrors down there to make it seem even, like, longer, I guess, I dunno. But they would be on either side of the entrance to the stairs such that if you like stood in front of the mirror, you could see all the way down the leg and then back into whichever bedroom, either mine or my brothers. And they were really nice mirror with like good lighting above it. And so that's usually where I would do my hair in the morning. And so I would be sitting in front of the mirror braiding my hair like Katniss Everdeen, like an -- into a side ponytail kinda situation. Um, and then I could see all the way behind me to my bedroom. And then there were two other doorways on my side of the basement that my brother didn't have. There was a door to a bathroom and right across the door was it -- er, yeah, right across from the bathroom, there was a door to under the stairs. And we -- when we moved in had never been able to get into that room. And we just couldn't get it open and it didn't really seem important to open it, so we never really tried. Um, but during the mornings when I was braiding my hair, I would sit in…