Metal creaked and groaned, people ran to and fro, ash and smoke invaded the air and the first plane had just crashed; New York would be forever changed because the Twin Towers were being targeted and crashed into by commercial airplanes that were overtaken by Islamic extremists that instead of destroying or country, united it and brought everyone together in both clean-up and search efforts then we rebuilt not only the building, but our country; our flags flew at half-mast during this time, but our patriotism soared above the rest and our need to keep our country safe intensified ten-fold. (Marren Abernathy)

On one foggy, cold, rainy day the clouds left the world below dark, gloomy, and quiet–the only thing I could hear was the slow gray waves hitting the rough, abandoned shoreline, the occasional seagull the sound of the rain slowly trickling down and hitting the almost flooded deserted roads, and the slow, quiet, eerie, whisper of the wind dancing through the sad, bent trees– I stood there watching beyond the desolate rocky beach, beyond the dark fluffy clouds, and beyond the calm waters that were in front of me, only to see a break in the clouds and watch the sunset from home one last time before I left. (Carla Aguirre)

Though many will experience it in years to come, the wasting away of time, ever so slightly ticking down, further and further until it is four in the morning and you have your alarm set to; two hours from then; and not to mention the pile of laundry on the bed, each garment, each sock joining together to produce this monstrosity, the reminder of your laziness, responsibilities, and tasks you have once again failed to manage appropriately in regards to the time you have had to do it, up until this dreaded night in question where each hour got you closer and closer to your goal, but also closer to sleeping the minimum amount capable of making someone oversleep and arrive fifteen minutes late to their class. (Kristian Arreola)

Yesterday, I was so busy and could do nothing but work on my homework assignments from classes such as math, history, and science, even though i really wanted to hang out with my friends and go to the movies so i could watch Flatliners, since I had waited several months for it to come out in theaters, but unfortunately I had to wait another week as i was overwhelmed with work and had to finish it this weekend, even though my counselor told me to take time to relax and do things I enjoy as a way to rest my mind, because I could eventually burn out. (Shant Baghramian)

It’s not that doing homework is difficult, the issue is more finding a quiet place, like a library, for example, to sit down and work heard with no one coming near you and sitting down at the table next to you to talk to their friends about how their weekend was or how that new acai bowl place they found is really expensive, which makes sense because acai bowls are generally not cheap because they consist of five of more different types of fruit, coconut, granola, chocolate, honey and an additional charge for whatever else the customer wants to put on it– and when you think about how much these companies are charging for, say, extra bananas it’s ridiculous because it only costs them like 20 cents for a whole banana and they’re charging you like a dollar for half of it, and the whole time you’re watching them make it the employee is complaining about the long hours and wanting to go to sleep because her shift starts at 6am and she woke up at 4:30 because her drive to work is approximately 30 minutes and she has to get ready and pour her daily cup of coffee that she can’t go without, otherwise she will not be able to function, and after listening to her rant, you’re starting to wonder if she didn’t have her morning cup of coffee or that it’s just another Monday. (Tatiana Barbone)

As she stands alongside the runway, her feet trembling, she thinks about every correction her coach gave her but knows it is time to trust her body, for she has trained for this moment all her life and before she has a chance to process what her body is doing, she steps onto the runway, feeling the squishy blue foam carpet underneath her feet while she raises her arms to signal the beginning of her skill; her heart is pounding harder with each sprinting step she takes towards the vault and she feels the energy of the springboard electrocute through her body as she hits the vault, flying into the air; somehow she finds the ground, raises her arms to signal the end of the skill, and knows that the countless hours spent training in the gym were worth it. (Emily Beck)

She nervously waited in line for her turn as she watched the people before her perform the same test over and over again, the test was short and simple but one you had little control over, it would determine whether she would stay with her father or if she would be shipped off to a farm in the middle of nowhere with her mother, she would be asked to shake her head as a pencil was pushed into her hair, if the pencil remained in its place then she would be classified as “coloured”; the objective was to determine the racial identity of people categorising them as black, coloured, or white, this was the reality of Apartheid South Africa, a time period characterised by great racial inequality and segregation. (Isabel Corti)

Lives entwined, inextricable from each other, what first began as insignificant blossomed into something more palpable, an uninterrupted line; Not one that is straight; but, rather, one that twists and turns toward an infinite destination–unbroken, it will swirl up and drop down but it will never cease to be; This line never falters, it can not be broken, a line that connects and created– pushing through ups and downs, reaching new and unknown heights and climbing back from desolate lows; From the beginning of time until some unforeseen future, it will be there–steadily following this journey through life. (Emilie Dawson)

During the economic collapse of 2008, people lost their homes, jobs, and any economic stability they once had, due to a few greedy plays by big banks and the apathy of the United States Government who had failed to observe and regulate the banking industry while it created a new financial product that eventually brought the country to its knees, stricken with fierce partisan gridlock and a lack of accountability. (Nico Dennis)

Despite the fact that writing a very elongated sentence is a major challenge to overcome, I am now attempting to write a sentence that is at least one hundred words, and my wonderful, thought out strategy consists of writing down a lot of prepositional phrases, because they are just fillers and do not cause a run-on sentence; this assignment is for my First Year Writing class taught by Professor Evans at the University of San Diego in a classroom with a pen on campus inside the city of Linda Vista on a hill below the sky in the planet Earth beyond the solar system. (Andrew Felix)

The old man sat on the edge looking down at the land that had been sculpted by the elements of the earth for millions of years as he thought to himself about all that had come before him to lead him to where he was at that very moment. (Tom Hollerbach)

The state fair is a landmark of Californian events and will continue to be so for many years to come, as it has always offered a variety of entertainment and interactive opportunities, which range from watching and betting on horse races, riding roller coasters and ferris wheels, exploring the uniqueness of different regions in the county exhibit, crafting activities and petting zoos for young children, live music and performances from hundreds of famous musicians, to tasting food from across the state and shopping for souvenirs, the state fair is the ultimate event for family and friends to celebrate California in the summer. (Mari Jones)

A crispy, quiet, and relaxed Sunday March morning I felt when I opened my sleepy, tired, and puffy eyes that had smiled incessantly, graciously, and delightfully the stuffy day before in that cold, little, crowded, nerve- wrecking plain hospital room, where there in the middle laid my exhausted, beautiful wrinkled sixty seven year-old grandmother sleeping peacefully; that same chilly, frosty, and breezy night I had promised my muffled grandma that I was going to be there the next morning, and of course I was there to visit her, only to realize that she was fading, decaying, perishing in her cadaverous, colorless and hopeless death bed. (Maria F. Marmolejo)

A man escaped into a desolate, peaceful forest, and he soaked up the beauty and exquisite details of nature: the bright blue sky with sun rays piercing through the white clouds, the delicate sound of the birds chirping, the bright greenery and fresh scent of the trees and plants by the stream; there was so much going on in the forest, yet at the same time, everything felt incredibly still—he finally found his peace in the calming arms of nature, and stripped free of the corruption and bitterness which he faced in civilization; he was free at last. (Kimia Mostafavi)

With each passing moment I can feel my eyes getting heavier along with my stomach rumbling louder, and it is not like I have not eaten anything over these last couple of days, nor am I sleep deprived, but there is just something about a 7:45am class that makes me feel like I should in fact be in a zoo, for I am always as sleepy as a young koala snuggling against its mother and always as hungry as a bear that has been forced to put on shows for the public all day long without so much as a proper meal to reward its efforts. (Perry Nesbet)

Makenzie’s family came to San Diego for the homecoming and family weekend that the University of San Diego was hosting, but Makenzie was really stressed the whole time because she had more homework than she had ever had up to this point in her brief college career — two books to read, a seven hundred and fifty-word essay, two chapters to read to her psychology class, one reading guide, one sleep log, a sculpture and a project statement — and she had absolutely no idea how she could possibly get everything done by Tuesday and still have time to spend with her family. (Makenzie Nickel)

When considering ideologies of race, it is certainly incumbent upon to acknowledge the implications of that conversation not only in a cultural sense but also through the socioeconomic, legal, moral, and narrative imaginations as rooted in their epistemological conceptions relevant to the social construct of their notion– an abstraction that was born out of the inception of domestic law and foreign policy– that which serves as a catalyst for the creation of a new taxonomy and the invention of a subordinate category of humanity identified as any non-white, non-European by Johnson Reed Immigration Act of 1924, also known as the National Origins Act which sought to assign a numerical quota for the amount of immigrants that could come to the United States based on the percentage already in the country according to the 1890 census. (Alexa Ripa)

All of the colors that exist in our world are created by the reflection of light on different objects, for each object has their own reflection; however, the variety of colors is so broad, and though two colors may be the “same,” they are truly different- as we can see just in the four seasons of mother nature: the warm oranges, browns, yellows, ambers, and golds of fallen autumn leaves seem to differ from the shiny yellows, fiery oranges and reds of the summer sky, and the evergreens, coco cola reds, deep blues, crystal whites, purples, and grays of winter, differ from the translucent blues and foamy whites of the ocean in summertime,  just as these blues differ from the bright spring sky matched with spring’s new green growths, all of the colors may be similar, but bring along with them a different vibe. (Delancey Showers)

As I walked into the Apple store, located in the mall of my hometown, I couldn’t help, but notice the busy yet curiosity inducing environment around me, the variety of people communication with each other, discussing both their likes and dislikes with Apple’s new product, the laptops and phones that were displayed  on the countertops, fresh, new, and unreasonably priced, yet people were willing to spend their hard earned money, mad through working a grueling nine to five job, on a handheld device that is basically the same as its predecessor. (Ben Stephen)

In order to truly enjoy a Christmas movie, such as Santa Claus 3: The Escape Claus, you must grad a warm, cozy blanket, put on some soft Christmas pajamas and fuzzy socks, light a yummy sugar cookie or fresh smelling balsam candle, warm up some hot chocolate just right so the marshmallows will melt, throws some popcorn in the microwave or pull some freshly baked cookies out of the oven, sit down with your family, and finally press play. (Katie Vretzos)

In the bitter, breezy, brutal winter’s night, the glowing, cream-colored moon shown bright through the bear, leafless trees lined with snow; the young, ambitious traveler wished to avoid the hustle and bustle of daytime traffic, so he opted to travel in the dead of night, where the only other living things moving were the wise great horned owls hunting their helpless prey, little white mice who picked the wrong snowy night to venture out of their den in search of a midnight snack—which would have consisted of juicy, red berries buried under five inches of glistening, powdery, fresh snowfall from the particularly cold day before. (Kelly Wlodychak)

“Considering how common illness is, how tremendous the spiritual change that it brings, how astonishing, when the lights of health go down, the undiscovered countries that are then disclosed, what wastes and deserts of the soul a slight attack of influenza brings to light, what precipices and lawns sprinkled with bright flowers a little rise of temperature reveals, what ancient and obdurate oaks are uprooted in us in the act of sickness, how we go down into the pit of death and feel the waters of annihilation close above our heads and wake thinking to find ourselves in the presence of the angels and the harpers when we have a tooth out and come to the surface in the dentist’s arm chair and confuse his ‘Rinse the mouth—rinse the mouth’ with the greeting of the Deity stooping from the floor of Heaven to welcome us—when we think of this an infinitely more, as we are so frequently forced to  think of it, it becomes strange indeed that illness has not taken its place with love, battle, and jealousy among the prime themes of literature.”
– Virginia Woolf, “On Being Ill” (Alexa Ripa)