My Name

Can you imagine a person having the name "cusp"? The word "cusp" is used in mathematics, psychology, and when describing the shape of a shoreline. However, this word is rarely used for names, because it simply does not look like a name. It is definitely not a conventional name, and it seems to not mean anything. As a result, it is natural for most of my classmates to laugh when I declared the cusp to be my name. Despite these oppositions against naming myself a cusp, I believe that the word "cusp" is a suitable name for me because it represents a "big change."

The mathematical cusp refers to a "pointy" part of a function which is not differentiable. The cusp is not differentiable because a function rapidly changes its rate of change near a cusp. In order to differentiate a function, the function must be able to be approximated to a line when magnified. However, because the rate of change suddenly changes near a cusp, the cusp cannot be approximated to a line even if someone observes the cusp with an electron microscope. In addition, a cusp in a function makes a jump discontinuity in its derivative, as shown in the picture above (the blue graph is a derivative of the red graph). The jumping change in the y-value of the derivative proves that the rate of change rapidly changes near the cusp, since a derivative represents a rate of change. The psychological cusp is a behavioral cusp, which indicates a change of behavior that enables one to meet with new environments and has long-term consequences. When people use the word "cusp" to describe a shoreline, they are referring to the shape of a cusp.

I sometimes differentiate my mind. I divide the curve of my life history into infinitely many parts and see the individual incidents that happened in an instantaneous time period.   I sometimes review my life by calculating the instantaneous rate of change based on individual incidents. For most of the time my life history changes gradually, so I am always able to calculate the rate of change. This means that I can compare the past and present. For example, because a typical Wednesday and Thursday in KMLA are not significantly different, I can say that Thursday is "better" than Wednesday, and that the rate of change is a positive number.

However, there are some moments when I cannot compare the past with the present. Sometimes I suddenly feel that everything I saw until yesterday would be completely different from the things I will see tomorrow. I feel that I have acquired a completely new perspective about the world. In these moments, I notice that a new cusp is drawn in my life history curve, causing a jump discontinuity in my life-derivative. Many people call these moments "epiphanies."

When I use the word "cusp" as my name, I am referring to the epiphanies I felt in the past and might feel in the future. For example, when my mother whispered that she gave my Christmas present on the night of Christmas Eve, my belief about Santa Clause collapsed, drawing a big cusp in my life curve. Learning that the camel cricket was not as harmful as the legend while doing the group project "debunking a myth" drew another cusp. Moreover, the shape of my life curve as a whole is close to a cusp because I am gradually changing my perspective about others. Big and small epiphanies often occur to me, and every epiphany forms a cusp in my life history curve. So, my life curve looks like a fractal filled with cusps, similar to the picture above.

Most names mean something. For instance, my Korean name represents the hopes of my parents for me to grow beautifully and become a leader. My self-bestowed name, a "cusp," also means something. This name represents my life because my life curve is full of cusps and its derivative is full of jump discontinuities. This name also shows my hope to experience more cusps in the future, because cusps help me to grow. The cusps provide me a new way to look at the world and thus help me to escape from the old, wrong way of looking the world. For example, before experiencing a cusp, I thought that my life was the most miserable one on earth, but after experiencing an epiphany I now think that my life is not miserable as I previously thought. Because no humans, including me, are perfect, most cusps help me to escape from biases and see the world as it is. Therefore, because the word "cusp" fairly represents the shape of my life curve and contains my hope to experience more "cusps" in the future, I declare my name to be the "cusp."

Presentation: Debunking the Camel Cricket Myth

Caught in an egg

“One who wants to be born again must destroy the world. The egg is the world.”

This is a famous quote from the novel “Demian.” This novel deals with the painful growing-up process of a young boy. The boy, who spent his early years in a bright world called “home,” exposes himself to the dark world and feels sinful all the time. The boy feels conflict between the bright world and the dark world, and sometimes thinks that the dark world would be better than the bright world. The conclusion of this novel is that one must not restrict oneself to being “good” or “bad.” The black-and-white distinction of human behavior itself is wrong, and one must break through the black-and-white world in order to be born again. According to the author of this novel, people who restrict themselves to being good all the time are trapping themselves in an egg. In the novel “Demian,” most people are caught inside a stiff egg, and they are afraid to break it because the egg is their world.

I was caught inside a stiff egg for 12 years. Everything started when I was threatened by my classmate when I was in the United States. My classmate took me to a quiet place, pushed me to a red brick wall, pulled out her knife, and said “you are my toy.” Because I was only five years old, I couldn’t do anything about it. I just cried a lot and begged my classmate to let me live. She made a villain-like smile and let me free to run. I ran to my house right away, and cried for a long time in my bedroom. I couldn’t tell anything to my mother because my classmate told me that it was “a secret between you and me.”

After living a year in the United States, I returned to Korea and enrolled in an elementary school. When I saw many kids packed in a classroom, I was afraid. To me, one of my classmates could suddenly stand up, hold a knife, and run towards me, the foreigner. Because I was afraid of my peers, I did not dare to approach them and have a peaceful chat. I was a stranger, and many of my peers were belligerent and violent. Many of them lacked respect, and they kept themselves away from a stranger like me. They called me a robot, because they thought that my emotions were different from theirs. Some of them whispered that I did not know how to make friends. I was alone. To be more precise, I isolated myself away from those “monsters.”

When it was breaktime, my female classmates divided into small groups and chatted. I was not a part of any group. I was always alone, and was often busy doing homework and preparing for tests. My knowledge grew faster than any student in my middle school, but my ability to open myself to others ceased to grow since that day I was threatened with a knife. My mouth was always caught by an invisible force, so I couldn’t talk to anyone. When I see my middle school years through the perspective of today, I was certainly caught inside a stiff egg and did not allow anyone to enter my world.

Because I was caught, isolated inside my own world, the world seemed gloomy. Studying ensured good test scores, but I could hardly feel pleasure while studying. Contrary to my world, the world of others seemed too happy. My classmates were still beings to be feared, but they were laughing happily inside their own world. I was afraid of them, but I also envied them. So, when I became a 9^th grader, I realized that I had to break my gloomy egg. However, until middle school, many students were so hostile that I seemingly couldn’t.

When I came to KMLA, small changes began to happen. There was only one person in my room before; but in KMLA, there were two other people living together. I did not know their names and where they came from, but it was obvious that I should not be afraid of them, because they were my roommates. I tried to be fearless of them; I tried to break the stiff shell which caught me inside a gloomy world. Breaking the egg was not that easy, but I tried as hard as I could. When the first semester at KMLA almost passed, I could tell jokes to others, and laugh with them.

However, I feel that my egg is not completely broken. I am sometimes afraid of something I cannot explain. I also feel afraid of some of my peers and cannot talk to them. I am in the stage of breaking the egg, but some pieces of its shell are still remaining. I wish to be free from the egg that caught me, and I will try continuously to break it. The egg “caught” me, but I will not let the egg to “catch” me.