Hidden in Parentheses It's been 1.42 seconds since I last told a lie (or, more likely, omitted the truth). Someone asked me to tell all about my wonderful summer (again), and I responded with, "It was amazing...a truly life-changing experience (but I'd appreciate it if you'd stop asking me because the lump always present my throat begins to hurt every time I speak, through unshed tears of nostalgia).” The truth is, I haven't gone a day without crying since I left Stanford (the place of my dreams). Every day I struggle to remember who I was before I left (and how to introduce the new me into my old world. It's a cycle). constant where I do everything in my power to make sure I can come back in two years (God willing) and try not to go back to who I once was (not that there was anything terribly wrong with the old me). . My life is now divided into two distinct periods: pre-Stanford and post-Stanford because in the two months (that's eight weeks, sixty days, 1440 hours or 86,400 minutes) that I spent there, my life completely changed Zoe (which means “life” in Greek.) I have three brothers who are quite annoying (but I love them with all my heart most days) and a dog (who I love with half my heart… twice a month. I have). I'm sixteen (and I still don't have a driver's license), and I go to Deerfield Windsor School, a small private school in Albany, Georgia. (I affectionately call it Smallbany, Georgia.) These facts have not changed. They apply to the new me just as much as they applied to the old me, but that's where most of the similarities end. I failed a semester and still walked out of a class with an A. (Curse IT.) Now I know what it's like to fail like... middle of a sheet of paper and isolate it from the rest of the problem. The rule is to proceed from the inside out, reaching the final figure after eliminating all the excess between the two curved lines. They protect this fragile figure from the disorder of the mathematical equation (multiply, divide, add, subtract). In English, I was taught that words in parentheses are meant to be a digression, an afterthought reduced to the end of the sentence. My teacher told me that parentheses are like less important commas. “If the sentence can stand alone without the sentence, put it in parentheses (that way the reader can skip them if they are short on time or not entirely interested in reading).” I argue that parentheses are necessary, but unpleasant. They sit at the edge of a sentence and hide truth and fear. Brackets are the best places to hide. It's the last place people look.