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USA250 Journal Project
Personal Chronicle: July 4, 2025 – July 5, 2026
A gift for reflection. A record of now. A story for what’s next.
🖋️ Opening Reflections
To be written in the days or weeks leading up to July 4, 2025.
There is no deadline for knowing yourself. Just begin.
📓 “Who am I?”
Begin with truth—even if it changes.
I’m Elijah Samuel Roth, but everyone just says Eli—like they’re trimming off the parts that make things complicated.
I’m the kid with a hundred browser tabs open and noise-canceling headphones in. The one who knows how to build a chatbot that can pass your Turing Test but still flinches when someone calls my name in public.
I’m Jewish. I’m queer. I’m someone who lights Shabbat candles with my mom even when we’re too tired to say the prayers right. I’m someone who writes Python and poetry in the same breath and then deletes both because neither feel good enough.
I’m Jules’s maybe. I’m my dad’s cautious pride. My brother’s confusing shadow. My grandma’s echo. I’m trying to be brave, but most days I settle for functioning. Deep down? I believe I’m more than what they see—but I’m scared to show it.
Sometimes I think the realest parts of me exist in the spaces no one looks—like the hidden lines of code or the drafts I never send.
I don’t know if I’m meant to build the future or survive it. Maybe both.
📓 “How did I get here?”
Tell it like you’d want it remembered.
I was born in Lower Bucks County in the tail end of December—a winter kid with summer thoughts. My dad read me The Hobbit as a bedtime story and my mom taught me to keep Band-Aids in every backpack.
At ten, I built my first website. At thirteen, I coded a weather bot that actually predicted a snow day. At fifteen, I stopped trying to pass as someone I wasn’t.
And I remember—vividly—the night I came out to my parents. My mom hugged me so tight it hurt. My dad cried and then apologized for crying. I don’t know what I expected, but it wasn’t love that scared.
We lost my grandfather to cancer, then my grandma to dementia—but not her body, just her memory. Visiting her now is like sitting with history on shuffle. But when she’s clear, she calls me “her little resistor.” She says that surviving with heart is a kind of resistance. I hold on to that.
Books got banned. Teachers got silenced. Jules started organizing. I started tracking school policies, coded a private Discord with friends, made spreadsheets of safe libraries. My kind of protest is quiet—but it runs deep.
So how did I get here?
I followed the wires. I mapped the quiet. I hid and I glitched and I tried to breathe in the margins.
Life has taught me this: Algorithms remember everything, but they don’t feel. People forget—but we feel everything. That’s our power. That’s my start.
Family, Friends & Associates
Rebecca Roth – Mother.
David Roth – Father.
Ari Roth – Brother.
Miriam – Grandmother.
Jules Kramer – Best friend.
Mrs. Langor – AP Computer Science Teacher.
