 Wednesday, August 10, 2022 — 5
Michigan in Color
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

Ghosts are real. Maybe not in the 
ways you’ve heard, but I assure you, 
they’re very real. I’ve seen ghosts 
nearly everywhere in my hometown all 
my life — in every corner of my house, 
in every school I’ve attended, in every 
nook and cranny of my neighborhood. 
Every so often, I take it upon myself to 
collect these ghosts from their spots — 
not with a positron pack or vacuums 
or exorcist tools, per se, but to simply 
visit them and ask them to come along 
with me. It’s not so hard when you’ve 
been doing it for as long as I have. You 
just have to know the exact right thing 
to say.
Throughout my time in Ann Arbor, 
I’ve spotted three such ghosts. In my 
hometown, I have my car, which makes 
it easier to get to every haunted spot, 
but it isn’t here. I do have a bike. It’s no 
ECTO-1, but it’d have to do. I slipped 

on my New Balances and jogged down 
the apartment stairs while plotting 
my round trip on Google Maps. This 
method of ghost hunting might seem 
mundane, but trust me when I say 
these are the best tools for the job. Like 
I said, I’ve been doing this for a while. 
As the sun sets, I set out too. 
The ride didn’t take much exertion. 
I 
rolled 
down 
Plymouth 
Road, 
conserving my momentum for the 
changes in slope and switching to the 
bike lane when I could. The bridge 
over the Huron River was another 
small challenge in elevation, but 
nothing would stand between me 
and my ghosts that night. Navigating 
through Kerrytown until I reached 
the border of downtown Ann Arbor, 
I saw my first spot. The mostly white, 
slightly color-sprinkled tiles of the 
Ann Arbor Hands-On Museum shone 
in the distance.

For many of us, thinking back 
to when we first started to learn 
how to read and write seems like a 
huge mystery. When did I learn to 
pronounce the word “nonchalant,” 
and am I still saying “açaí” wrong 
in my head? The answer is probably 
yes. In elementary school, I was 
always in the lowest reading level, 
heavily struggling with reading 
comprehension. When I read books, 
my goal was to finish them as soon 
as possible. If you asked me who 
the main character was, I wouldn’t 
even be able to tell you. In middle 
school, my essays received average 
grades, and I dreaded any writing 
assignments at all.
So, you may be wondering, how 
did I become a columnist for The 

Michigan Daily? When did I start to 
enjoy writing?
My rocky writing journey started 
during my freshman year of high 
school. I had just graduated from 
using 
generic 
essay 
templates 
to 
writing 
specially 
structured 
argumentative essays. In my ninth-
grade English class, we wrote essays 
on literary works ranging from epics 
like “The Odyssey” to novels like 
“The Catcher in the Rye.” We often 
had assignments that were only one 
page long but required us to make an 
argument in SPA format — statement, 
proof and analysis — about the 
reading. 
I 
remember 
enjoying 
challenging myself to create bold 
statements but struggling to explain 
the proof to defend that argument. 
Each assignment returned to me 
would include blue ink in the analysis 
section with the phrases “Explain 

 DAISEY YU
MiC Columnist

more” and “Why? Explain.”
This issue continued into my 
sophomore year. Despite a change in 
teachers, I still received comments 
about needing to expand my analysis, 
specifically with closely examining 
the connotations of each word in the 
sentence. (Maybe it was because my 
sophomore English teacher had been 
on the track to become a lawyer but 
decided he liked teaching more.) In 
his class, I had a downward trend in 
my grades, and I seemed to be missing 
this “wow” factor in my writing.
I often met with this teacher one-
on-one to discuss how I could improve 
my writing. I asked him about what I 
was missing in my writing, and why 
my analysis section always seemed 
to be lacking. For the first time, I 
received detailed feedback, and we 
had very productive conversations 
about how to put what I want to 

say on paper. In the past, I’d only 
received comments like “How?” 
and “Why?” which didn’t help me to 
understand what exactly needed to 
be changed. I would get frustrated 
by these one-word questions, and I 
felt that a teacher was being picky 
for no reason. However, this teacher 
thoroughly explained what he was 
expecting and offered examples of 
how I could improve and expand 
on sentences he made comments 
on. Instead of completely taking 
out the sentence in question, he 
would build onto them by adding 
another 
sentence 
that 
delved 
deeper into my analysis. Because of 
his encouragement and clarity, I felt 
more confident and excited about 
writing.
While I had well formulated 
ideas for my analysis, I forgot that 
people couldn’t read my mind, 

Design by Tamara Turner

Ghost hunting in Ann Arbor

My writing journey: Why I decided to pursue a writing minor

Read more at michigandaily.com

SAARTHAK JOHRI 
Mic Columnist

so I needed to explicitly jot my 
thoughts down. When explaining 
my thought process to my teacher, 
I noticed that I wasn’t including my 
ideas in the paper. Those additional 
points would’ve made my argument 
stronger. To fix this problem, I started 
thoroughly analyzing blocks of text 
and 
organizing 
everything 
that 
went through my mind into bullet 
points. Then, I would mold together 
all my points into an argument 
and eventually a paper. Before, I 
wouldn’t even outline my argument 
and tried to be as conservative as 
possible in my writing. Oftentimes, 
that bad habit would lead to clunky 
and disorganized work. But after 
the meeting, I constantly thought 
about his advice and applied it to my 
writing. 

August

August is undoubtedly my favorite 
month. It’s the last full month of 
summer. And to me, it’s the most 
meaningful. August is the month 
of late blooming flowers since my 
father planted them two weeks later 
than what was recommended by the 
gardening videos he used to blast at 
an unnecessarily loud volume back 
in May. It’s the month of refilling the 
bird feeder in the backyard so my 
father can continue recording slow-
mo videos of blue jays and sending 
them in our family group chat. It’s 
the month of strictly scheduled 
weekly picnics under the beating sun 
to get the most out of our time before 
school starts again. And as a result, 
it’s the month of the tannest skin and 
the frizziest, puffiest hair that I no 
longer care enough to worry about in 
the way I did in high school, combing 
and slicking it down with coconut oil 
— the only “hair product” my mother 
would allow me to put in my hair to 
avoid damage. It’s celebrating my 
father’s birthday, with my dog eating 
most of the cake. It’s the ending of a 
summer fling. It’s goodbye hugs and 
bittersweet late night drives home 
after, not knowing when you’ll get to 
see them next. It’s Pinterest boards 
and shopping lists filled with a few 
apartment essentials but mostly a 
large amount of decorations that 
don’t get put up until three months 
into the school year solely because of 
how much my roommate (the same 

one from my first and second year) 
and I put things off. And at the end of 
August, it’s finally moving into a new 
temporary home, the place I’ll have 
some of the best and worst moments 
through the next year. It’s wasting 
my money on too many boba runs 
with my friends, dancing in random 
houses with people I just met and 
will never talk to again, making a day 
out of finding where all my classes 
are. And the most memorable, it’s 
walking through the Diag to my first 
class on the first day of school with 
an outfit that I thought was cute but 
ends up making me sweat from the 
thick material under the blistering 
sun, all while blasting “August” by 
Taylor Swift through my knotted 
earbuds.
“August,” the eighth track on 
Taylor’s 
eighth 
studio 
album, 
Folklore, has become my and many 
others’ go-to fall song. While fall 
technically starts in September, 
the end of August feels like the 

ROSHNI MOHAN 
Mic Columnist

beginning of autumn, disregarding 
the 
weather. 
The 
school 
year 
begins, the back-to-school section 
at Target now has pumpkins and 
a couple costumes mixed in, every 
mannequin now sports the newest 
trendy sweater or matching sweat 
set, a couple leaves on every tree are 
no longer the perfect shade of green, 
and Starbucks starts advertising 
and selling their much-awaited fall 
drinks.
The lyrics of the song and the 
music behind it contrast with 
each other, at first. When I put my 
headphones on, my ears are blasted 
with the sound of new beginnings. 
Faster-paced strumming paired 
with Taylor’s calming vocals along 
with an overall upbeat coating 
on the song evokes this cleansing 
and blooming feeling. The song is 
a newer sound for Taylor, much 
different than the rest of the album. 

Roshni Mohan/MiC

Read more at michigandaily.com

Read more at michigandaily.com

