The Dpsi Post

May 2021 issue | #1| Contribute at [email protected]! THE DPSI POST Service Before Self Founders and Editors: Amira Bhutani & Srishti Agrawal Battling Online Learning Simply Creative by Adityan Ajay We all spent the past year confined between the four walls of our houses. We Menon thought that by shifting school online or by talking to our friends over the internet we had figured out a way to live normally during the pandemic. However, we An expressive didn't. When we used to go to school, we didn’t just study, we socialised, we writing blog interacted with our friends and we exercised. However, now when everything is possessing 15-year- online, we just study during the school hours. The time spent exercising by old Adityan’s inner teenagers has dropped drastically. This has made teenagers more lethargic, thoughts and many slow and mentally exhausted. However, this doesn’t just affect our physical original stories! health but our mental health as well. It has been found that children staying at Now contribute home due to lockdown spend more time in front of TV and the internet which can your own original lead to psycho-social problems, like lower self-esteem. Excess use of the pieces to Simply internet can lead to internet addiction disorder. Some can also experience Creative! cyberbullying which can affect their mental health. The Parchment and Ink club “Teenage years are filled with physical, emotional, and cognitive changes. There are also hormonal shifts, more independence and responsibility, and peer challenges,” said Brittany LeMonda, PhD, senior neuropsychologist. “It is therefore not surprising that teens have been more susceptible to declines in psychological health over the last year.” The number of teenagers going through hormonal changes has increased exponentially. Many people believe that the menstrual cycle in a girl resides in the uterus, while it actually resides in the brain. Doctors report seeing a spike of BY AMIRA BHUTANI BY MUSKAAN SURI BY AVISI BHASIN An initiative taken by students of grade 10 to encourage young students from classes 5-8 to unleash their inner writer!

20-25% in the number of patients coming to them with irregular periods. Stress and overeating are being cited as the main culprits behind these trends. Hormonal imbalance in teenage girls has led to a 30% rise is PCOD cases with girls as young as 7 starting to get their periods. Teenagers have been feeling more frustrated and alone, and this is a very serious problem as we are still trapped at home. By Medha V-C Through these difficult times our devoted teachers and seniors have been able to get all of us out of our mundane lifestyles, even if just for a few hours. Activities had been planned for all the students till the 11th grade. To make economics more interesting, for the ninth grade, they were told to design an entire economy. For economic students of 10th and 11th grade a very engaging activity of trading stocks had been organised, while, 10th grade history students were debating on the spot over historic events. By Mudit Pandey Activities such as these are one of the many things teenagers need at this point to stay sane. We have all adapted to the ‘new normal’, but while this situation is temporary, it is essential to stay healthy through it, and the only way to do that is by having a balanced diet, exercising and leading a healthy lifestyle - Srishti Agrawal X-B Through the Lens of an Educator “value of time at which we By Snigdha Mishra are interacting is not given its due” T he Coronavirus pandemic has taken the world by storm, leaving the entire system of schooling shaken. Here at Sports in the Pandemic - Pranika Bhutani DPSI, the entire staff and students have had to completely overturn their schooling lifestyle, especially with the Covid-19 forced everyone to stay inevitably ubiquitous influence of technology becoming the indoors. This meant less physical dominating power. activity. Still, our teachers Dolly With many still adapting to this new medium of study, the ma'am and Chetan sir charged communicatory atmosphere of class remains a dream for ahead! Nothing can stop them now. Taking a glimpse through the lens of our teachers, from helping us stay Ait and active! one learns that due to technical difficulties, the class They sent us multiple videos on remains unenthusiastic which reduces morale as a whole. easy to do exercises, conducted The strain inflicted on students seems a perpetual concern online PE classes and arranged a at the back of every teachers’ mind as they try to make webinar on Aitness, also giving us classes more interactive as well. the opportunity to participate in online competitions based on physical education!

“It is difficult to trace whether the students are understanding” said Mrs. Priyanka Sen. She went onto further state the difficulties of bringing the same rigour and presence to a screen that one finds in a physical classroom. Especially in the cases of the sciences and arts, where practicals are a must, online teaching proves lacking. On the other hand, as stated by Mrs Unnati Gulaty, online teaching “expands the knowledge of both the students and the teachers”. Mrs Gulaty explained how it introduced her to various new mediums such as Google Classroom, Gsuite etc. Online teaching allows one to explore and gain unprecedented experiences pertaining to technology. She believes online teaching should become more of a norm in society and more “inclusive of the world” , for it is our undoubted future. DPSI and its educators continue trying to cope up with todays technology infiltrating the schooling sector and completely overturning it. But the baffling question still lingers in the air - will online classes ever be a match for attending physical school? - Amira Bhutani X-B Bear or Bull - A Stock Trading Activity For the advent of emerging economists, the cultivation of real-life stock traders, this year’s economics activity week consisted of the competitive ‘Bear or Bull’ event, hosted and organised by A2, in which teams of three grappled and traded, buying and selling stocks in order to maximise their revenue and emerge victorious. Prior to the competition day, all participants were provided with a list of companies including FMCGs, those in the technology industry, healthcare, aviation and the like. This real-life exposure to important economic key terms, stock market jargon, and making the chains to link the horrifying pandemic and its equally brutal ramifications in the economy allowed us all to view the subject and textbook knowledge in its holistic sense; making the application of these skills and ensuring their use in the broader scope of it as a whole. The three-hour long event in which we spontaneously received news headlines and anticipated the corresponding changes in stock prices allowed those who maximised their revenue to continue in the playing fields and eliminated those who went in loss —accustoming us to the tumultuous pool of the ever-changing stock market and thus making for a brilliant simulation of the latest stock market—an indispensable part of macroeconomic supply and price determinant. - Sarah Sahdev X-B By Rohan Rana

The Unseen A CREATIVITY FORUM The Outcast 'Stop' said the feet, tired from running around to find an approval so generous ‘Stop' said the sign \"Just believe and settle\" on the road ahead. But how does one believe, But how does one stop when they don’t when trust itself has proven to be know where they're going to treacherous or from where exactly they fled? 'Stop'...the word echoed 'Stop' said the people. stop trying, stop feeling, stop being \"You don't belong here\" different but where does one go but is it that easy to stop being yourself when they're labelled a 'misfit' for a world so ignorant? everywhere? Beaten down and left hopeless when 'Stop' said the tiny voice at the far end of the mind. \"Go\" said the heart \"This is not where your path lies\" but how does one see the path when all \"your uniqueness is your charm, carve your guiding lines have been blurred and the eyes made blind. own path. 'Stop' said the aggressive oppression Being lost is temporary but being yourself forcing you to give up your ways But how does one become like the rest, is an art”. - Armiya Sultan X-B when the rest always gave them that indifferent pernicious gaze? By Mishti Goyal By Gagandeep Singh (in French)

A Warm School Morning In other news… I wake up just minutes after the sun, when the sky outside my window is still split with beams of pinkish red. The sun is ascending, lending that hushed golden morning glow to my room. The first thing I do when momentary consciousness returns to me is turn off my alarm with fumbling hands and go back to sleep. It rings again after five minutes but this time I am prepared. In that time, when one floats between the realm of the sleeping and the realm of the living, it feels as though you have been granted hours more of sleep, when in reality only a few minutes pass. It is a curious aspect in our lives, how an eternity passes in just a few minutes, and I have always thought it is the closest we come to time travel. Once I am satisfied with my level of sleep the second time the alarm rings, I reluctantly remove Yashna Bhutani of the blanket baring my arms and legs to the chill air of the A.C. Shivering, I head toward the grade 8 is officially bathroom and find the geyser already switched on, courtesy of my grandmother who I can now a published hear preparing tea in the kitchen. Intoxicated by sleep and half-drunk of drowsiness, I take a author! Her story shower and dress myself. True awareness only returns to me after I have washed my face with a “Three Betrayals cold splash of water. Now I am fully awake. Away” can be found on page 181 Afterward I sit in the common living room to eat my breakfast. My grandmother can be heard of the book packing lunches in the kitchen while my parents get ready for work. My grandfather lounges on \"“Pastel Skies - the sofa, the day’s newspaper in his hand. I want to tell him to help my grandmother too; why Stories to Reflect should the woman be the only one doing household chores? But then again, my grandfather goes Upon”! to work in the afternoons while my grandmother sleeps. I suppose he does his needful too. Furthermore, it is not like I am offering to help my grandmother either; who am I then to demand he does so? Still, it leaves me with an uneasy feeling. But I suppose that is one not instilled in me by my Grades 11 & 12 family’s ways, but the ways of typical Indian society as a whole. I cannot change it and there is recently hosted an no point in questioning it. I suppose I must learn to live with that uneasiness, always a poison in orientation for my stomach. students of grades 6-9 to explain the I leave home at about 7 AM, the sun has now taken its perch above the clouds, the world is now structure of MUN. bright and clear. School is about an hour from home so I shift my gaze toward the scenery So get ready, MUN outside. We are just exiting the gates of my house, behind us a man is riding his bicycle on his 2021 is soon to way to deliver milk. As the car carries me forward I see my house turn smaller and smaller, then a come! mere dot on the horizon, and finally vanish out of existence. I have always considered leaving By Reya Khanna home both a fascinating and tragic experience. Alas, I suppose that can be said for everything in life. About halfway to my destination there is a red light. We stop at it everyday. As it is still quite early in the morning only a few cars wait beside us. On the left there used to be a cobblestone walkway for pedestrians, giving way to a bigger chunk of dirt-land. Now there are tents made up of the green plastic material set up on it, supported by precarious bamboo sticks. Under the hood, on the walkway and dirt sit an assortment of people; elderly grandmothers leaning against the sides, middle-aged women holding their babies in the centre, little dirt-smeared children running around near the outside. The teenagers and the men cannot be seen under those tents, for they have already begun today’s duties and now pour into the traffic like a torrent scattering into little distributaries. One such distributary, a girl looking to be around the same age as me with a narrow face and sad eyes, halts its current before my window. I hate moments like this. Custom with the rich has taught me I must turn my face away in denial, and I do so, but more so because I want to hide my expression. I keep my face hidden and my gaze downward until the car begins to move again, the wheels propelling the vehicle forward with a definite churning sound. I look behind me as the view of those tents recedes; I cannot see the girl anymore; she has once more coalesced into the undistinguishable masses we call The Poor.

I cannot help it though; that thought that pops into my mind about how I could have been just like her. It was only a twist of fate that I ended up being the person within the shelter of the car, but just as easily I could have been the one left out to weather the world. What controls our fates? What decides whether we are to be the person within the car or without? How can one make sure their fate is not the latter? Is it us who decide our fate or is there a greater power? I have never really understood people who say we create our own destinies; people who are born into education and literacy inevitably walk the road of success and further education, and people who are born into poverty inevitably walk the road of more poverty and illiteracy. It is a rare case indeed in which one born into the road of poverty reaches success which is why these cases are exceptionally famous. We are assorted into decided roads, and I suppose rather than the destination what is upto us is what we make of the journey; whether we make it a desperate crawl or a jubilant skip. But that still leaves the question; who controls which road is sorted to us in the first place? And on what basis? I feel as though I know nothing about the world outside, those tall buildings and the crowds within them, and what goes on inside the brains of each member of those crowds. The world is made up of every diminutive thought that enters and exits every consciousness in every tiny crevice of the earth. And I do not know the flow of those thoughts, or their nature, or their effect, therefore, I cannot understand my surroundings. I wonder when I will understand the world, if ever. The car skids to a stop; we are here. I open the door and reach out, the white and green pyramidal structure rising tall before me. As I walk to the gates I smile to myself. People often ask me how I pass the hour coming to school; whether I read, or sleep, or finish work. But I do not do any of those things. Instead I do something which can be considered a colossal waste of time or it’s best possible use by varying personalities : I reflect. —- What I did not realise then is that what I took as pride in my inquisitiveness was my mind’s subconscious way of keeping me blind to the truth. For the truth is not that these road-trips to school were a beacon of light for me, but that they shoved me deeper and deeper into the dark depths of denial. It is true; I did not understand the world. But it was not because I did not know enough of it, but that I kept myself utterly blind to its harsh truths — I digressed from topic to topic until they were all an eddy of meaningless words in my mind; until I forgot what was most important. I always forgot what was most important. And the harshest truth of all, that I know now but did not then, is that this method of staying blind and unaware of the universe is something that operates in every corner of every mind of every wealthy fortunate creature who has the great misfortune of walking the road of success. - Amira Bhutani X-B Peace The dense groves of the trees and the sweet sound of the chirping sparrows render melodious music to the ears as the first rays of morning tiptoed silently into the profusion of yellow. This light is so beautiful that we forget all solemnity within the peace of the universe. The cool, fresh air which is part of nature’s bloom makes us forget all the other bad things in the world. The serene, calm, quiet and peaceful life of the golden globe with the sky greying into horizon is what brings me peace. The cacophony that rises to a crescendo as the chirruping birds carefully drift away to sleep. It’s when the sun is starting to set and the sky knows how to outshine everything in the world. I see shadows merging and interweaving with one another, the sky at the bliss of its hues. The gentle breeze caresses the sky’s face, yet, the pristine and perfect scene never loses a race. The sun kissed bloom entwining the unknown, halcyon nature. Its beauty is as blinding as the fiery ball. The shiny shawl of splendour encompassing the blue horizon and the sun setting into the underworld. The world lets out a cry of beauty as the colours streaked across the meadow like dappled sunshine trying to set. The brother sunset a little bit murkier than his morning sister with the skyline’s hues radiant and mellow. This wondrous sight is what brings me peace. - Ayana Sabharwal VIII-C