Article December 26, 2016 Issue

Through a new lens—our brilliance!

Catherine Upton

Ultraviolet light is invisible to the eye. The frequency of its wavelengths is so fast that the eye doesn’t register its existence. “Ultraviolet” is also the name of a song in one of my favorite romantic comedies, which is how the word first made its way into my life outside the classroom. But to understand the importance of ultraviolet light in my life, first I have to rewind to middle school.

In eighth grade, two years after my family made the life-altering decision to move to the United States, I was hit by a staggering feeling of my own imperfections. The feeling soon wormed its way into my everyday life, following me like a storm cloud wherever I went. I began to believe that everything that went wrong was inherently my fault, and so I started overthinking everything that I did. Nothing ended up the way it was supposed to, and this made me feel even more like an outsider. This feeling spread like mold throughout me for much of high school.

Then the song “Ultraviolet” came along. After watching the romantic comedy in which the song is featured, I began to think about why Robby, the love interest of the movie’s protagonist, would write a song about her in which he likened her to the “invisible” light, ultraviolet. This took me a while to work out. After a week of listening to the song on repeat, I came to the conclusion that her light—her good qualities—were difficult to see on the surface, but brilliant when looked at through the right lens.

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