I, Bella Varghese, am an author and amateur journalist. My favorite book is William Golding’s Lord of the Flies.

My journey as an author began when I was in middle school. At the time, our world had fallen victim to a global pandemic, and I was attending school virtually. I felt powerless watching the world fall into disarray, and used reading as an escape.

By the end of 2020, I had read well over one hundred books. School, by that point, seemed like a joke. Kids played video games during lessons, watched Netflix during lunch, or showed up to class whenever they finally rolled out of bed. We hopped onto Google Meets or Zoom Meetings, used break-out-rooms that were almost always silent, and told ourselves that we were definitely getting a good education.

To me, school was just a big joke.

It seemed that our education system had failed, not just in America, but globally. Individuals doubted science, and valued opinions over facts. Violence was seen as an appropriate way to express dissatisfaction. So, from my house where I was cooped up, watching this chaos unfold, it seemed that there was no hope at all for the future.

That was until I was presented with a project.

My seventh grade English teacher assigned a year long passion project. For the first few months, I lacked any ideas that were really compelling. I thought about learning more about my ancestry, but the extent of records about my family were largely word-of-mouth and physically limited. After hitting a major roadblock, I decided that it would be best to look at the present and the future for my project. What things was I passionate about now? What things would I be passionate about in the long term?

I had grown more and more outspoken as the Trump Presidency went on. I grew more and more aware of the injustice in our world. Because of that, I then decided to take the time to consider just how passionate I was about making a positive social change in the world. Finally, I decided to combine my love of writing with my desire to make a difference in the world. Then, Does Anyone Care To Ask What I Think? was born.