Նիկա Ասատրյան

Mkhitar Sebastatsi EduComplex has many advantages and I’ll start with our very usual trips. Sometimes it’s cities in Armenia, like Gyumri or Jermuk, but we also travel to other countries like Egypt or Georgia. The teachers, sometimes along with the students always make a program for the whole trip, which includes the plans for cooking, activities for the day, and pretty much evrything else that a trip could have. One of the most loved and often went places to travel in our school is Arates. Arates is a village in the Vayots Dzor region of Armenia, and our school has built camp houses there so that our students could travel there every year, which is a necessary point when singing a contract with our school, to go to Arates at least once a year. This allows students to know more about our culture and get to know to other cities in Armenia and other countries. And there are also another two advantages of our school that I wanna talk about, so I’ll go with our media education first. In our school we learn to work and study with laptops and tablets from the very first grade, it’s not just a temporary project but another necessary point when singing a contract with our school. Every student is supposed to have a laptop or tablet, or sometimes a phone, cause it’s considered as main studying device. This helps students be aware of how to use devices from a very young age, which can and most likely is gonna be very useful in the future, both for future job and just in daily life. Not only it helps to be aware of how to use the device itself, but it also helps to get to know to the whole media around the world through it, especially since nowadays phones and technological devices are a part of a daily routine. We can call, text, watch, write, read, order, teach, and learn with just a single phone that’s in our pocket, and it’s just a part of things that it’s capable of to do with. And now, the last advantage of our school I’m gonna talk about will be the freedom that our school requires, specifically I’ll talk about the free will to express ourselves, and wear to school not what we’re supposed to but what we want to. Our school is one of the only schools in our city that I know that lets students wear what they want, without forcing them to wear a school uniform. I think that this is a very important thing because school uniform can be very uncomfortable, and its one design for everyone and it blends students’ unique features and tastes into nothing but black and white. And when the students are allowed to express themselves through their clothes and style, it makes everything lighter, it gives a feeling of some kind of freedom and maybe even strength, and sometimes it even helps to find new friends. Everyone has their tastes and preferences, and it’s very important to let everyone have it in their own way without judging them or forcing into somehting called «standarts».

I’ve always loved music, dancing to it as a kid and listening to my seemingly endless playlist today. There was never one specific genre that i listened to. Sure, there’re some genres or artists that i prefer more or less, but i still like all of them. For example, I listen to rock and heavy metal as much as i listen to pop and hip hop. And even if it seems like these kinds of songs are incompatible, i never have a problem with listening to all of them and enjoy every song in its own way. There’s even a Russian term called «Меломан» which unfortunately doesn’t have a translated word in English. That term basically describes a person who appreciates all kinds of music and its genres and is very passionate about it. It comes from Greek words ‘melos’ (song) and ‘mania’ (passion). I personally think that i’m meloman, because i really can’t imagine my life without music. It makes my day, it motivates and inspires me, and in general just keeps me alive, and it’s all thanks to the artists. I have many many favorite bands and singers, and if i talk about all of them it might make this text way too long, so I’ll talk about only one. It will be Billie Eilish, she’s a 24 year old singer and songwriter, born in Los Angeles, in 2001 18th of December. Her full name is Billie Eilish Pirate Baird O’Connell. She has 3 official albums, which are «When we all fall asleep where do we go?», «Happier than ever» and «Hit me hard and soft» And her 2 extended plays (EP’s) are «Don’t smile at me» and «Guitar songs». (Extended play is a musical release that has more songs than a single but less songs than an album, EP’s are also called ‘mini album’). She makes her songs with her brother Finneas, who’s technically both her composer and producer, so they always create the lines and lyrics together. She always puts a lot of effort into her songs, and most of them, if not all, are very deep and meaningful. Because of that, i had a bit of trouble choosing a singular song of hers to write about, cause there’re so many of her songs that i relate to and that i love from the very bottom of my heart. But eventually i did choose one, and it’s called «Watch». The song is sang by Billie and composed and produced by Finneas, it was out in 2017 29th of June, being from her first extended play «Don’t smile at me». The song is about love that felt real but wasn’t, about loving someone who never gave the same effort and emotions back, it’s about someone putting a fire inside of you and never actually caring to put it out.

I’ll sit and watch your car burn
With the fire that you started in me
But you never came back to ask it out
Go ahead and watch my heart burn
With the fire that you started in me
But I’ll never let you back to put it out

These are one of the lyrics, that i think matched with my last sentence. It describes the love towards someone who doesn’t care, but Billie also shows that instead of trying to somehow fix it, she’s letting it go. A bittersweet release of finally walking away from someone who you loved but weren’t loved back from. There are actually lyrics that i love the most in this song, and it goes:

When you call my name
Do you think I’ll come runnin’?
You never did the same
So good at givin’ me nothin’
When you close your eyes, do you picture me?
When you fantasize, am I your fantasy?
Now you know
Now I’m free

These lines describe how Billie embraces that she’s given nothing, and she also says that now she’s free, it’s the symbolism of the same release of walking away from someone who doesn’t care about her and finally choosing herself. And, by the way, i was saying all that from Billie’s perspective because this song isn’t made up but is actually about her real life experience, and in her 2022 interview with Vanity Fair, Billie stated that this song was her least favourite of everything she had released at that very moment, not because of the song itself but because of the reason behind why she wrote it and because of what it’s based on.  There was also an alternate version of this song which was called ‘&burn’, with both of the titles spelling out «watch & burn». Yet the song was cut and replaced with her another song ‘bellyache’ due to fans demands, however, it was later released in 2017 15th of December and was included on the re-release of the extended play as the ninth track. And i also want to place the YouTube URL of the song a bit lower so that if anyone’s curious they can listen to it.

The YouTube link to the song «Watch» — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9dobJDxPEzM&list=RD9dobJDxPEzM&start_radio=1

Vanity Fair interview with Billie Eilish — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PsHx7bMIFC4

The internet is obviously a big part of our lives nowadays, it helps us in a lot of terms, but also sometimes does the opposite. Or is it actually the internet or rather how we use it? Internet is one of the biggest progresses in technology in human history, its ‘birthday’ is considered January 1 of 1983 when internet protocol allowed different networks to communicate which led to creating the modern internet. If back then internet was seen as something near magical and even unreal, then now it’s just a part of daily basic life. I mean, then people had a hard time believing that for example you could instantly deliver someone a message while being in another city, but now people make friends from whole different countries without much trouble, even i have a friend from Spain and I’ve never met them in real life. And as much as internet brought so much comfortableness and new possibilities into our lives, this also leads to how dangerous internet actually is. Unfortunately, there are people that use internet with not so good intentions, and what is worse is that there are thousands of victims and the scale of them isn’t going down yet. Internet helps us in many things, such as finding a recipe to the dish that we wanted to cook for the dinner, or communicating with loved ones, or watching our favorite shows, or studying, or maybe going to therapy. There are bunch of advantages that internet has, the thing is that there aren’t less of disadvantages. For example, recently i saw a reel of a kid that had no idea what the word ‘cartoon’ meant. Why? Because that boy’s used to the words ‘YouTube’ and ‘videos’, he simply didn’t know what ‘cartoon’ meant. Some people call it horrible and others call it future. Some debate on what is true, but maybe it’s both? After all, in the very first place internet was created as an easier method to communicate, share and learn, but i think that we should’ve expected that such creations as humans couldn’t use something so extending and powerful in the right way and right amount.