Eli Khuri-Reid

When people are asked the question: If you could travel anywhere, where would you go? Most of the time people will answer somewhere with nice sights to see and activities to do. Many people would answer somewhere with a tropical climate, like Hawaii. Others might answer somewhere personally special to them, like a family members home country or a place with a location important to them. A friend of mine once answered that question by saying he wanted to go to the North Sentinel island, an island off the coast of India who's inhabitants are still though to be in the stone age. He said he wanted to only go as a visitor, to be the first person to be able to study and observe this rare glance back into the past. But my answer is a little different from the one's I have heard from other people. Sure you could go to a nice tourist destination but why bother with something you could reasonably go to already assuming you have the funds for it when you can magically transport yourself t...

 One of the best pieces of advice I got was from a tutor I had several years ago. I was applying to Uni and was being tutored for the SSAT. I was incredibly tired that day and my session was almost over. All that was left was one math problem that, while not particularly hard, was incredibly timely. It was a several part problem with long numbers and variables that I had to check over several times so that I didn't make a small mistake that would ruin my whole process. After I had finished the problem, I went into another lengthy process to check my work. When he asked me what I was doing, I explained my entire process back to him. At this point I was reaching my limit for the amount of energy I had left to work on math. As I was halfheartedly re-explaining my work, my tutor stopped me. He asked me why I was going through all of this trouble to check my work when I had gotten an answer already. When I told him that I was checking my work to make sure I didn't make any mistakes ...

     I'm sitting in my room bored. My parents and brother left an hour ago and I've just finished my homework. I am now alone and unoccupied and as such, my thoughts begin to wander off. Although it would be absurd to say that the sounds made it all the way too my room and convinced me to go outside, a part of me truly believes that I was subconsciously called by the sounds of faint strumming. Nonetheless, I walk down the stairs and head outside. Nightly walks are a fond pastime of mine so it isn't unusual for me to be out at this hour. what's remarkable however, is the event that would come during my walk. As I step outside, I can't help but take in the presence of the late-summer evening. The sunlight is refracted in the sky, leaving only the feint blue light to mix with the clouds to form a dark, blueberry-like color. The weather is perfect in that I can go outside in a t-shirt and shorts and still feel a light breeze brushing across my face and clothes. The chir...

     "If it's open it's open," "Si esta abierto esta abierto," or " si c'est ouvert c'est ouvert." What one might think is a simple saying has been a guiding principle for me for a significant part of my life. This statement has set a baseline for how I view people, interactions, objects of desire, and even the makings of the natural world. It has allowed me to alter my perspective and allowed me to have confidence in situations where I might feel uncomfortable. People who partake in this ideology, I feel, begin to develop a strong sense of leadership. When a group or organization you are in has times of uncertainty and ambivalence, those who can not only see the openness of the possibilities, but how they feel it should go tend to, whether they realize it or not, shape the environments they reside in and rise up as leaders and directors. In discussions, when there is a period of silence or halting, the conversations is "open" for...