Hopkins is a diverse university where an incredible mix of cultures, academic interests and personalities coexist and thrive. Here is the section where you can publish your unique thoughts, ideas and perspectives on life at Hopkins and beyond.
I’ve spent the last few months of college lounging in my roommate’s room. Her walls are full of tidbits, posters, postcards and two photo strips: one of us and the failed attempt right before. As I lazily lay in her bed and stare at her sitting cross-legged on her giant gray chair working on her laptop, I feel a sense of longing despite only being a few feet away.
I’ve always had this fear that, if I stop being productive, I’ll stop being valuable. But maybe it’s okay to fall down rabbit holes sometimes. Maybe “wasting” time isn’t always a waste if it brings you back to yourself (even if that self is clutching a copy of a TooFar Media book and questioning every literary instinct you’ve ever had).
To The News-Letter: I’ve given you four years, my whole college experience. In return, you’ve kept me laying out pages until 5 a.m. Your Gatehouse has given me stomach aches from what I’m convinced was black mold. You’ve turned me into a person who’s passionate about the difference between hyphens, en dashes and em dashes.
Some people move through life like it’s a test they didn’t study for. They try hard (harder than anyone sees) to be kind, to be useful, to be good. But beneath the polished surface, there’s a quiet ache. Not the kind that cries out, just a hum of sadness that settles in the bones.
There’s this quiet noise in my brain that never really leaves me. It’s not loud or aggressive, but it lingers, telling me to do something. Not in a productive way. More like a continuous tap on the shoulder reminding me that whatever I’m doing is probably not enough.
Back in preschool, our teacher wanted to fill the classroom walls, so she handed out these massive posters with questions about ourselves — our birthdays, favorite colors, favorite animals. For the ones about best friends and role models, I didn’t have to think twice. Every answer was the same: my mom.
There’s a peculiar exhaustion that clings to us these days. Not the kind cured by a nap or even a week off. It’s deeper — spiritual, maybe. Existential. The soul equivalent of endlessly refreshing your email and still waiting for something good.
Sometimes the universe stitches itself together in improbable ways that make normal people wonder: Is this one large, elaborate prank the world is pulling on me? Like you’re a baby again, but this time the square peg really does fit inside the circle hole. What to do then? What to make of this?
On an average day where I have an exam, I tend to devote every single second of the day to consuming, absorbing and mastering any knowledge that’s slightly relevant to the topics that will be on the exam. On such days, I don’t function as a human and rather turn into a machine.
Every evening during our trip to New York, my friend asked me for the highlights — what she defined as the best parts of our day, or the worst. The stories we’d want to tell our friends and family.
I have never experienced a more ridiculous sensation than purchasing a Sausage, Egg & Cheese sandwich from Gilman Hall’s cafe.
Last week, I was riding the bus to the med campus with a friend when we started talking about why we ultimately chose to go to Hopkins. In explaining her college application process, she told me that she had only applied to schools that would excite her to attend; there were no “just in case” safeties on her list, she was content to try again in the next application cycle if it meant preserving her desire to attend a college where she could constantly have intellectually stimulating conversations with her peers.
At some point, I think every student who gets into Hopkins encounters questions along the lines of: “So, you’re going to be a doctor?” “Don’t they have a good med school?”
Writing my Voices column has been really therapeutic for me. It’s surprising, because I’m someone who has tried and failed to get into journaling for her whole life, which I’m sure is not a unique experience. But I’m also someone who has been drawn to books and reading and writing for her whole life, so I guess I just had to find a form of journaling that works for me.
For years, I’ve let numbers define me. The number on the scale. The number of calories consumed. The number of minutes spent exercising. It was a battle I fought silently, a war waged against myself, my body and my mind.
Unbeknownst to me, however, I, with that one click of an Outlook “Send,” ended up submitting four pages of drafts on this poem with all my personal thoughts on the subject matter: my ex-boyfriend. I was blissfully unaware of this for a while. But when workshop rolled around two weeks later, I realized my mistake.
On Election Night 2024, I went to bed feeling something I hadn’t felt in years: hope. Surely, I told myself, America has learned its lesson. Surely, we are a nation of progress and reason. I even reassured my friends — Don’t worry. We’re waking up to good news.
When my parents and I decided that I would study college abroad, we signed a silent agreement: Long breaks were for them; otherwise, I was free. Despite quietly signing this tacit negotiation, deep down I’ve known that I had to give up summer holidays to internships and research programs eventually. I dismissed this thought and made it my future self’s problem to breach the contract, yet when I got accepted to the intern abroad program I applied to, I knew I couldn’t postpone the discussion any further.
I started working at BobaPop in January, motivated by nothing but pure curiosity and my love for milk teas — specifically brown sugar lattes. I thought: Hey, I like drinking boba, so why not try making it? How hard could it be to make drinks and take orders? Turns out, pretty hard.
I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve eaten oysters in my life, mostly because my mom is allergic to them, but a couple of weeks ago, I found myself eating an exorbitant amount of them with some college friends because of a 75-cent deal. There I was with my friends, ecstatically ordering oyster after oyster and laughing away, thinking, will life always be like this?
