Wicked: For Good continues the story of Wicked, which is a spin on The Wonderful Wizard of Oz where Elphaba, better known as the Wicked Witch of the West, is discriminated against for her green skin. She eventually finds companionship in a cast of characters at Shiz University, most notably G(a)linda, who later becomes Oz's Good Witch. After learning some devastating truths about her idol, the Wizard, Elphaba vows to fight against him in defense of the animals of Oz. The sequel to the first film, better recognized as Act 2 of the musical, explores political upheaval and tumultuous relationship dynamics introduced in the first film, especially centering on the friendship between Elphaba and Glinda.

Longtime fans of the stage show are unlikely to be surprised by the more tepid reception the sequel has endured thus far: Wicked has an infamously weaker second act, with many of its iconic tunes and story beats taking place during Act 1. The film, although over twice the length, remains faithful to its source material for better or for worse.

Inevitably, many of the story's weaknesses carry from stage to screen. While many of the ways the plot ties into that of The Wizard of Oz are lovable winks to the audience, the attempt to shove in the fundamentally incompatible plot unnecessarily stifles the chance for Wicked's original story to become fully fleshed out: the Wicked Witch of the East plotline in particular has never felt very organic. The sequel ramps up the political and darker elements touched upon in the first film, pushing the fascistic undertones of the Ozian government and the commentary on propaganda to the forefront without grappling fully with the ideas spotlighted. By the second time Fiyero waves around a gun to assist a dramatic escape, the cracks in the suspension of disbelief begin to appear.

If I can offer any defense, the film does succeed at stating the essence of its thesis statement: that propaganda, public opinion and the squabbles of those in power hold greater sway than the truth alone. Do not be fooled by the broomstick: for all her magic, Elphaba wields very little meaningful ability to enact the changes she strives for, especially in comparison to a certain someone with no magic at all. While Chu does sweeten the ending, he retains the ultimate tragedy of Wicked, and most importantly, the promise that at the end of it all, there is hope that the characters won't "let good be just a word."

The movie's small changes do improve the shift in focus from the first act's college shenanigans to more complex relationships and political intrigue. For one, Elphaba is actually seen trying to help the animals that drive her motivation throughout, including with a new song that ironically opines "There's no place like home." The focus on the love triangle is also mercifully reduced from Broadway, although I must express disappointment that its strongest moment - a reprise of "I'm not that Girl" transitioning directly into "As long as you're mine" - is sadly discarded in the film.

The "Wonderful" sequence must be especially commended: The movie presents a far more convincing version of Elphaba's brief initial temptation to put her cause to rest, and likewise through a cleverly edited sequence juxtaposing Glinda's and Elphaba's situations makes her reaffirmation much more compelling. This also marks one of the few times the movie bursts with color; for a film with such strong ties to perhaps the most famously technicolor cinematic achievement, most of Wicked: For Good looks washed out and dull, watering down the impressive achievements in practical effects and costuming behind the scenes.

The movie's slower pacing also introduces tonal whiplash that the audience did not have time to grapple with in the stage show's breakneck pacing, with the few comedic sequences feeling misplaced with the generally dour mood.

Luckily for the movie, the key emotional beats are anchored by the film's best songs (which were always a saving grace for a musical). "No Good Deed" explodes with desperation, a booming orchestra chasing to keep up with Cynthia Erivo's powerful vocal showcase. Ariana Grande does an excellent job with the complex characterization of "Thank Goodness," although the cleverly incorporated depth of emotion is reduced when the later ballad "Girl in the Bubble" clunkily renders the subtext overt. Fortunately, the emotional climax "For Good" is about as good as a farewell duet gets in musical theater: say what you will about Grande and Erivo's endlessly memetic press tour, but pink does go well with green.

Wicked: For Good is far from perfect, and I would wager many will hold the first part much closer to their hearts. Nonetheless, it has a place as a suitably expanded and bombastic character-driven second half culminating in what is, at its core, a tragedy about a society unwilling to accept those that are different. It is made with clear heart and love for the story that shines through despite its stumbles, and it is worth the watch for longtime fans and those seeking to complete the first film's journey.

And yes, I would be lying if I said I didn't smile when I saw the final shot.

We're getting to the time of year when it's easy to be lost in the past. The same red bows are tied on lampposts in parks and outside dingy shopping centers. The same massive wreaths decorate even more massive malls. But with every passing year, the bows seem a little more at eye level and the wreaths are a little smaller. You bake the same cookies, and then suddenly a research project on salmonella makes you no longer want to lick the batter out of the bowl. While wading through homework, I've been reflecting on the holidays, which used to be documented by where I performed and when, but can now be tallied by which Christmas movies I watch, which treats I decide to enjoy and which cities I want to visit.

I started ballet when I was three or four. I was never flexible or invested enough to end up doing much more than taking classes and performing as a background character now and then. Still, it was a musical way to get my abundant wiggles out, so I kept at it throughout high school. When I was in second grade, I was cast as a mushroom in the Washington Ballet's Nutcracker. This meant that for three months, I spent my weekends in windowless dance studios drilling my two minutes of stage time. I learned those two minutes so well that I could to this day perform it flawlessly, with or without the music. I was always a little sad to miss, or make an early leave from, yet another fall birthday party or sleepover, but the fun of putting on a show and my excitement for when I'd be under those stage lights in a pretty costume, smiling out at the formless audience, made it all worth it.

I started performing more frequently as elementary school became middle school, then high school. I played different parts in the Nutcracker, including at one point, a giant frog. I sang at Christmas masses and in choral winter concerts. I sacrificed a lot of social experiences, but performing was always exhilarating enough for me to consider myself the lucky one.

I don't have any Christmas performances this year. I haven't had any Christmas performances since going to college. Now the time I used to spend in dressing rooms under concert halls and opera houses is spent watching the Hallmark Channel and visiting Christmas Markets with my friends while visions of the Rockefeller Center Christmas tree dance in my head.

My friend and I spent this entire semester, like last fall, discussing the super awesome, unbelievably cheap trip to New York City we were going to have once they put the big tree up. We both followed that tree as it made its journey across the country on Instagram. We didn't actually end up planning our trip beyond sending each other reels of holiday markets and skating with the words "this will be us," so we're coming to terms with the fact that we'll be staying close to Baltimore again after all. We'll watch all the best Christmas movies and drink hot chocolate and bake Christmas snacks and go see Santa come to Fells Point on a Tugboat and watch the Washington Monument get lit up and venture into DC for the DuPont Circle Holiday Market or Old Towne Alexandria's Holiday Market - or we'll, more likely, get to do a small combination of a very tiny fraction of these plans that require no planning ahead of time.

When I go home, I'll make the rounds with all my hometown friends and our traditions. I'll go ice skating with my oldest friend at the very rink we frequented as eight-year-olds. I'll end up at my high school's Christmas celebration because my closest high school friend's mother is making her go, and she doesn't want to suffer alone. I'll go to my old choir's winter concert and watch the class who have never aged past sophomores in my eyes as the leaders of the group. I'll probably find myself in the audience of that same Nutcracker show whose choreography I could perform in my sleep. I'll relive past Christmases with no less enthusiasm for Christmas present. Over the years, whether I've spent my Christmas as a mushroom or dreaming of being a New Yorker for a day, the bows outside the shopping center have never ceased to make me smile.

Amelia Taylor is a sophomore from Potomac, Md. studying Writing Seminars and Voice Performance. In her column, she draws insights from seemingly random experiences that present themselves in the course of ordinary life.

There are few things so contagious as Christmas in Manila. The streets come alive with spiraling lights and glowing parols. Mariah Carey reigns in every mall and, out from each corner of every barangay spills the sound of belting karaoke and sappy ballads. With everyone home for the holidays, the usual city crowds multiply. People pour out onto the church steps at mass, some so far away as to only hear the sound of the sermon from outdoor speakers, keeping the heat at bay with abaniko and pamaypay fans. The city stays awake for Noche Buena, with whole pigs skewered on the table for lechon, pancit and lengua and platters of baked kakanin ready for grazing throughout the night. Temperature aside, the Philippines warms even more at Christmastime.

Christmas at home was a childhood highlight. My Lolo would string the stairs up with tinsel, and the papier-mache snow man I'd made as a child would somehow find its way back onto a table. A dancing life-sized Santa Claus (long story) would wiggle in a corner beside a Christmas tree laden with ornaments and flickering with rave-like strobe lights. My mom would take me around my favorite bookstores until we'd meet my Lolo at the only Cinnabon to catch one of the last English movies before the Metro Manila Film Festival took over, showing exclusively Filipino films at all cinemas from Christmas through to the new year. At various lunches and dinners in the days to follow, we'd see more family than I remembered having.

All my life, there has been so much joy tangled up with Christmas. It only made sense that, when joy became difficult for me, Christmas was hit the hardest. It's hard to forget the years I spent fighting to feel anything in December. Though this was at a time when joy was difficult all year round, Christmas festivities introduced a new level of dread and guilt. I teetered off the edge of joy and into a quickfire fear. A fear that I would fail to feel joy enough, that I would fail those around me by not rising to the level of happiness meant for the occasion.

With work and time, this fear has loosened its grip. I'm thankful to be able to say that I found my joy again - for Christmas, and for life. But, remembering this dread as a passing echo in this grim late November, I'm reminded of how strong emotions can often occupy neighboring spaces. A step too far in wanting to feel joy and I pushed myself into despair. A step too far and care morphed into fear.

With senior year upon me, there has lurked this sense of finality. Fall's end has meant the end of a college fall. With every shift in color on campus trees, I'm reminded that this is the last time I'll ever see each particular tree in these specific shades. Recounting this fearful rumination to a friend, I was met by the surprising remark that maybe seeing blazing autumnal leaves was beautiful because it meant that I'd see more beautiful trees in the future. Each tree was a proof of concept, seeing one now shouldn't ignite the fear that I'd never have this particular moment again, but instead serve as evidence that more was to come. "Like how every end," my poetic friend said, "is also a beginning."

I try so hard to be present. I try so hard to be a good student, a good friend, a good daughter that sometimes I worry that I cultivate my care from fear. Like with Christmas, when I wanted so badly to care for the thing I loved the most - even when I couldn't - that I put myself in a constant fear of doing wrong by it.

In philosophy the other day, we talked about the paradox of hedonism: how pleasure-seekers, ironically, push themselves further away from a pleasurable life by making choices that will result in long-term dissatisfaction. We also touched on the paradox of utilitarianism, how defining your morality by trying to minimize the suffering caused by your actions becomes unachievable if the expectation is to run moral calculus for every little thing. In both paradoxes, too much of one thing shoots it in the foot. To achieve that Goldilocks level of "just right," rules must be slackened.

My mistake with Christmas, when I was at my darkest, was to soften it into a one-dimensional ideal. I couldn't feel sad, otherwise I'd fail. But that meant that I'd started seeking joy from a place of fear. A far, wrestled cry from the joy I'd had to begin with. Re-learning my joy meant learning to be okay with having some sad Christmases. In that same way, wanting to be a good person for fear of being a bad person has to be intrinsically different from wanting to be a good person for the joy of it. Wanting to savor every moment of my senior year before it's over must be different from embracing it.

I think too often in terms of losses and finalities, ideals and achievement, but as the weather gets colder, I'm trying to get closer to that early instinct to be driven by joy, not fear. This Christmas, I won't be home. My Lolo and Lola have passed on. Just months ago, their house was locked up for sale. I won't hear Tagalog into the new year. But instead of running from the uncertainty of this Christmas, of this fall, of whatever's to come with the new year, I'm choosing to face it. If every autumn tree is an emblem of beauty to come, every experience not a door closing but a new room, then there is much joy to guide me.

​​Kaitlin Tan is a senior from Manila, Philippines, majoring in Writing Seminars and Cognitive Science. She is the Voices Editor for The News-Letter. In her column, she tries to parse through the everyday static for something to hold onto.

When I was a child, I thought that eating turkey on Thanksgiving was a historical myth, like finding a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow on St. Patrick's Day or getting hit by Cupid's arrow on Valentine's Day. Each November, I would make as many hand turkeys as I could possibly fit in my sparkly pink backpack, and then go to my Abuela's house to eat a traditional feast of pan de bono, empanadas, ajiaco, mazorca, platanos, arroz con leche and jugo de maracuya. Like we all do every year, right?

It wasn't until third grade that I realized not every family was following the same traditions as mine was. When my best friend told me that she was helping her mother prepare that year's turkey, I was shocked, probably responding with something along the lines of "My family has never done that," with an air of eight-year-old superiority. I quickly realized that I was indeed the odd one out, and that not everyone had a special soup to look forward to once a year. How tragic for them. Naturally, I went home and asked my mom why Camryn's family was eating turkey for Thanksgiving while mine was not, and thus discovered the backstory to explain the lack of stuffing and cranberry sauce at my Abuela's house each year.

Thanksgiving can be a contentious holiday: not only because your relatives will most definitely ask you about your plans for graduation that you have not thought about at all, but also because of the roots it has in colonization and political oppression. As Colombian immigrants, my family was able to build a better home on land that did not originally belong to the administration that had reluctantly let them cross the border, a country that hoped that they would quickly and seamlessly become as American as possible (although, I must note that their way of doing this was certainly interesting, as my mother was required to take an ESL class at the exact same time that everyone else in her year took U.S. history). Nevertheless, my Abuela, the matriarch, was determined to make the most of the major U.S. holiday by celebrating something else to be thankful for.

Her first fall in the U.S., my Abuela had a potentially cancerous cyst removed. When her lab results came back benign, she decided that the American holiday of gratitude was to become a new family tradition. That year, ready to throw a Thanksgiving feast that Uncle Sam would be proud of, my Abuela marched to her local library and borrowed a traditional Thanksgiving cookbook. She cooked all day, serving up stuffing, sweet potatoes, green bean casserole and, of course, a turkey. After all of that elbow grease, my family hated it. Why would this celebration of thanks involve eating food that did not hold a candle to her arroz con pollo or her sancocho?

That was the last year my family attempted a traditional Thanksgiving, and by the time I was born, the new tradition had been longstanding. As we drench our Colombian food in my Abuela's homemade aji, we remember all that we do have to be thankful for: health, food on our table, a family to share it with. We get our pan de bono from the local panaderia, and it tastes just like what it feels like to be sitting in my Abuela's living room, comforting and soft.

This year, before taking the Amtrak back to New York, my friends and I had our own little "Friendsgiving" celebration. We made all of the traditional fixings: mac-and-cheese, mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes with cinnamon and marshmallows, green bean casserole, corn bread and dino chicken nuggets (you can't really expect us to attempt to cook a turkey in our teeny tiny kitchen).

As a newcomer to this sort of cuisine, I was put on chocolate chip cookie duty. Despite my roommate's impeccable mac-and-cheese-making skills, and eating until I felt like my stomach could not expand even a slight bit more, I still found myself not understanding the hype of the traditional Thanksgiving supper. I think that I feel similarly towards turkey on Thanksgiving as I do to eggs for breakfast: I know it is traditional, and I certainly wouldn't mind enjoying it from time to time, but it will never be my first choice.

I feel lucky to have a Thanksgiving tradition that reflects my family's unique history, the specific things for which we like to give thanks. I am thankful for the flavors and textures of my mother's homeland, of the Spanish and English that float around my Abuela's home and mix into one language, and most of all, for the heaping bowls of arroz con leche that remind me of the simple sweetness of sharing a meal together, no matter what day of the year.

Hailey Finkelstein is a junior from Ardsley, N.Y. majoring in Medicine, Science and the Humanities. Her column shares miscellaneous prose on current issues, the collective Hopkins experience and growing up with a pen in hand.

I've always found peace in the sky. When I was younger, I'd look up at the clouds during long car rides and let my imagination go wild with stories of a fictional man jumping through the clouds. Even as I got older, my appreciation and admiration for the sky only grew stronger. I am from an area known as the Sun City. As such, I've always been able to define my home through beautiful sunsets and sunrises. When I came to Baltimore my freshman year, I was surprised by how different the sky was - sunny days felt like a cage and cloudy days were only dreary. I felt as though I was caged up by an unseen force that prevented me from being able to relax and take in my environment.

Leaving home for me was both exciting and terrifying. The idea that I was beginning a new part of my life was amazing. I was looking forward to making my family proud by being the first to attend college and I was determined to make the most out of my college experience. Additionally, I had imagined college life to be similar to the movies - late nights out with friends and large grand lecture halls. I even recall one time during orientation, when I was learning more about PILOT and how to be a PILOT leader, arrogantly thinking, "Wow, I just need an A? I'll be a PILOT leader for all my courses next semester!" (Oh, how naive I was.) As my freshman year began, everything seemed bright and I was optimistic about my 18-credit course load.

Three weeks into my freshman semester was when everything hit me. The excitement of beginning school ended, and the course work began to pick up. What I thought were supposed to be "Midterm Exams" turned into "Beginning-term Exams." I wasn't prepared for how intense the workload at Hopkins was going to be, and I felt anxious all the time. As the weeks went by, the temperature began to drop and the days grew shorter. Clear skies were quickly overtaken by cloudy and dark days, and the comfort I used to find in the sky was overtaken as well. During that time, I felt so isolated from my friends and peers, and I was overwhelmed with the feeling of not belonging. What I had originally imagined as late nights out with friends turned into late nights at the library by myself, and grand lecture halls became dreadful places. This feeling persisted throughout the semester, but I knew my family back at home was so proud of me, and I didn't want to let them down.

Over time, I learned to adapt to Hopkins and found solace even in darker days. I enjoyed sipping on hot tea from the FFC (hot take, the FFC is not as bad as everyone says) and sitting in Keyser Quad at night. Occasionally, I would catch the Entertainers Club practicing. I remember one night in particular, when there was something so cathartic about seeing those synchronized flames dance around. The sense of peace I found during that night carried on with me throughout the last few weeks of the semester. I began to go out of my way to meet new people and reached out to resources to better myself. The work I put in paid off and I was able to finish off the last few weeks of the semester with the same optimism I originally had when it started.

As a senior, I look back on my experience at Hopkins and I'm proud of how I've changed. I've been able to grow as an individual. I used to be so intimidated by new experiences, and now I seek them out. I've been able to adapt to the intensity of Hopkins and am no longer afraid of taking on more challenges - outside of Hopkins, for instance, I enjoy volunteering around Baltimore at soup kitchens, and it's made me appreciate the city. I've finally been able to enjoy late nights out with friends, and lecture halls do not feel dreadful anymore. Years later, and the sky at Hopkins is still very different from my home, but it's no longer smaller. Instead, the sky is a reminder that I can find peace anywhere that I go.

Gabrielle Chavez is a senior from El Paso, Texas majoring in Computer Engineering with a minor in Entrepreneurship and Management.

Another sunset seeps through my windows, staying for a moment. It paints my white walls with an orange and pink tinge, the type of color you think of when a warm hand rests on your shoulder. Each ray of sunlight finds its place: on the mirror hanging from my door, on the boxes filled with my belongings and on the suitcases leaning against the wall.

Beyond my door live my roommates, the two women I truly came to know just months ago. The ones that were sewn to me by invisible strings of life, strings that were pulled together when it was our time to meet, when our hearts were ready to love one another. They have taught me something I never expected to learn so late in my college career: the feeling of "home" is far closer than I had expected. Sometimes it's a laugh, a voice calling my name from the end of the hall or a light left on for me late at night, waiting for me to come home.

My happiness now curls itself into the sound of their laughter, mixing with mine. It stays within the rituals we have made in the months we have lived together, how we sit together in the living room without speaking, sharing silence as if it were a soft blanket, or perhaps in how we have late-night debriefs by the fridge.

If anyone ever asked, I could tell them endless stories of my college experience. Chapters varying in length: some about past loves, others about friends, classes and the things I had to face on my own. However, I know for certain that I would never be able to stop talking about my amazing roommates; those stories fill volumes of my life. Each word of our stories would ring in tremendous harmony on the page, they would dance as we do when we need to unwind with Just Dance on the TV.

For years, I doubted that friendships like this could exist, the kind where silence becomes its own language, where a glance can say I'm here or I get you without needing words. Where you begin to trust so deeply that you forget there was ever a time you didn't. Because with them, it feels as if our love has always existed.

When I moved to the U.S., I already knew I couldn't live alone. I knew myself well enough to know that isolation would pull me into shadows I didn't want to revisit. But since I moved into this apartment, not a single day has felt dark. These walls, once strange, now feel like they breathe with me. In time, the floorboards have remembered all of our footprints combined.

I have always loved the story in Plato's Symposium, where Aristophanes explains that humans once had four arms, four legs and two faces. After they attempted to attack the gods, Zeus separated them, forcing each to wander eternity searching for the other half. If this were true, I would argue for a triple human - one with six arms, six legs and three faces, because if soulmates exist, then soulmates of three must exist too. My roommates and I are proof of this: three separate hearts somehow beating in harmony. Three souls woven together by those invisible strings, or perhaps by the Red String of Fate, which in East Asian belief, states that certain people are destined to meet no matter the circumstance. Each of us is the perfect balance, the perfect contradiction, the perfect complement to the others.

We fit together effortlessly, like the ingredients in those recipes we make when one of us is hit by a craving. The most seamless combination since the invention of buttered popcorn, a small delicacy in our kitchen and our favorite form of comfort food, which tastes of softness and laughter when the machine pops far too many into the floor.

Our apartment is more than a place with three beds, a sofa and a kitchen; it is the small home we have created for ourselves. Where our hearts beat easier, where the word "home" finally stretches enough to include me. The quiet miracle of finding people who make the simplest moments, pink sunsets, airplane rides and laughter, feel like something holy.

Johnalys Ferrer is a junior from Arecibo, Puerto Rico studying Medicine, Science and the Humanities. Her column explores how culture, identity and the fight to belong live on, reminding us that heritage is not only remembered but echoed daily.

The person I am today was beautifully woven and built piece by piece by my mother; she built my wings to fly. The transition from having my mom right beside me to being 8,000 miles away from her is tough.

I remember my school day mornings. She would wake up as early as 5 a.m. to prepare breakfast for me, the most delicious food on this earth. [Mumma, I miss your food.] After getting ready, she would stand by the door with my snacks for the day (mostly nuts and water bottle), fuel for me to have a productive day.

When I came back home, before I even took my shoes off, the first person I sought would be her. From new friends I've made that day to interesting facts I learned in school, we would embark on hours-long conversations with my head on her lap. These moments felt like heaven.

I feared my annual dance performances when I was a kid. Yet, spotting my mom in the audience would ease my anxiety. She would applaud so loudly that I'd forget I was even on the stage. In the span of just a couple of seconds, the performance hall would become my living room, and I'd feel the comfort of putting my head on her lap.

I am who I am because of her - a daughter molded by grace and authenticity, by my mother who gave me roots to hold on to and wings to fly high. Throughout my 19 years of life, there hasn't been a single day in which I didn't learn something new from her. She has shaped me the same way my nanu (maternal grandfather) shaped her.

The way I talk, dress, live: she has been the person to shape these. Years will pass and I will grow into an adult, but I know that I will always be a child in her eyes.

She is the person who helped me explore my inner talent. In kindergarten, she taught me how to draw and kept supporting me until I started sketching much better in high school. When I was 7, she introduced me to Bharatnatyam, an Indian classical dance. This journey changed how I thought and expressed my emotions. At the end of middle school, she enrolled me in a little orating without telling me. This was my first public speaking experience, and I was incredibly nervous about it. Yet, the first person I looked towards from the stage was my mom. Her smile was so bright and shiny that I forgot that anyone else was listening to my speech. Only one thing mattered to me: my mom.

I used to sit beside her whenever I had to spend hours studying in high school. Her presence was a symbol of comfort and warmth for me. Since I was a kid, my mom taught me "Hanuman Chalisa," a religious manuscript, which we would recite together every Saturday. It was a symbol of strength and togetherness. I still recite this prayer every time I have an exam or whenever I am missing my mom. It was a core part of my memory as a child, which helps me even now.

One of my favorite memories before leaving for Hopkins was my visa interview in Chennai, which was followed by our first interrupted trip - five days of simply being mother and daughter. From wooden boat rides in Mangrove Forest to endless pictures, street shopping and shared meals, my favorite moment was standing beside her in matching white silk saree at Tirupati Balaji. Through her closed eyes and devotion, I saw the same strength my nanu once instilled in her - a strength she now passes on to me.

As I try to navigate through my mom's absence, I try to relive the moments we shared together and hope that it will give me the strength to keep going. During these times, I thank God for blessing me with a person who understands and loves me to this extent. Now, eating a meal without her presence feels empty. But even from a distance, she is still the wind beneath my wings.

When I miss her and the tears come out, I remind myself that she spent years building my wings. Every lesson she gave me, every moment she stood beside me, was her way of teaching me how to lift off. As I face the hardship of being away from her, I try to fly using the strength she poured into me. Her influence will never leave me - it's stitched into the wings she helped me grow.

Hitarthee Tank is a sophomore from Surat, India majoring in Molecular and Cellular Biology and minoring in Business.

When I was little, I always made sure to turn on my nightlight before heading to sleep. From the concept of monsters hiding under my bed to other unknowns in the darkness, I had my fears and suspicions. However, a tiny, dim light capable of warmly illuminating my whole bedroom was all that I needed to give me the assurance that it was probably just my mind trying to play tricks on me and that if a monster were really hiding underneath my bed, I would at least be able to foresee it instead of being blindly frightened by it.

Now that I live in a college dorm, of course, I have the classic dorm essential, a string of fairy lights hanging on the wall above my bed. It compensates for a nightlight, and although I may not possess those particular fears and suspicions to the same extent as when I was younger, I still enjoy falling asleep gazing at the twinkling lights.

Going to bed with a light on has been a non-negotiable part of my routine ever since childhood, its physical presence allowed me to see in the dark (so that my younger self could keep an eye out for monsters), but today/now, it also internally and symbolically provides me with a feeling of security and comfort amid the darkness. There have been days full of excitement and fulfillment that I never wanted to end. On days like those, I am resistant to falling asleep. On the contrary, there are days when it seems to take forever for time to pass, and that drains the life out of me, leaving my head clouded with doubt and negativity. But no matter how I'm left feeling from the day I've had, the warmth that my light emits is always the same. This warmth sets an ambience that quiets my inner monologue so I can properly rest and recharge. So, although my use of a nightlight may have initially served as the solution to my fear of the dark, its role has gone beyond that, serving to enlighten my mind as well.

Now, since we have officially entered the holiday season, with Christmas less than a month away, I have grown especially fond of my fairy lights. This is because they give the impression of incandescent lights wrapped around Christmas trees, garlands, light poles, the list goes on. As part of the holiday festivities, we have the opportunity to adorn these ordinary objects, making every detail of them come to life. It's a little unfathomable that just the simple addition of a string of lights on a tree can put me in awe, happy to admire it for hours on end, but it does. Light really just makes everything shine. There must just be an instant connection between radiating light and radiating joy as Christmas lights never cease to bring about a smile on my face.

When thinking about the joy of the Christmas season, there are endless moments I can recall, but my ultimate favorite has always been and still is the drive back home at night and seeing all the houses in my neighborhood lit up with Christmas lights and decor. No house is exactly decorated the same; each has its own special flair. However, no matter if a house simply hung warm-toned string lights around its trees or if a house went all out, making sure no part of it was without light, the magical holiday spirit is still the same.

I obviously won't be able to enjoy the lights around my neighborhood while I'm on campus, but as I walk back to my dorm from a late-night study session, I never cease to take my time admiring the strings of lights spiraling around the lampposts. I have overcome my childhood fear of the dark and now rather appreciate it because only in darkness are you able to witness how brightly light can shine, whether it's the darkness outside or inside of you.

Catherine Chan is a freshman from Potomac, Md., studying Molecular and Cellular Biology. She is a Social Media Manager for The News-Letter. Her column consists of reflections on various moments in her life, from the distant past to the current present, in pursuit of discovering the underlying impact they have on her life's story.

As expected, my first semester at Hopkins yielded a welcome amount of intellectually stimulating conversations. Yet one that occurred recently has stuck in my mind. It prompted a thorough self-examination of my beliefs, which is a place I didn't think I would reach after only a few months on campus.

To preface the story, I had been writing a foreign policy paper on the Iraq War (stick with me here) when a friend asked me what I was working on. Despite being in the early, rough-drafting period, I provided a brief description of the war itself and its various causes. When I finished, he looked mildly amused and wished me the best of luck. As I walked out of the building, he left me with a thought.

"It will be interesting to see how you keep your own bias out of your work."

To say that I was immediately taken aback at that point would be an understatement. I hadn't previously considered myself to be the pinnacle of intellectual humility, but it seemed a bit odd to be judged in such an outright manner about a topic that I had no stake in. Sensing my questioning look, he pointed out that each time I had referred to America in my explanation, I had really said "we." Momentarily dumbfounded, I walked to class thinking about why I put myself in the shoes of America, even in an event that had happened before I was born. Also, why would I even want to, given what we now know about the unspeakable tragedy that accompanied the invasion?

An identity is a complex mishmash of physical, psychological and social characteristics that make us who we are. And by us, I mean all humans. The part of me saying "we" with reference to the Iraq invasion felt a close enough tie to the notion of an American identity that it sounded like I had been on the front lines. That part quickly separated ingroups and outgroups into Americans and non-Americans, something that I wish I had been more cognizant of during the conversation, especially at Hopkins, where I have experienced firsthand the world of difference from the homogeneity of my hometown.

Being proud to be an American citizen and endorsing everything associated with America are not the same. Pride is often conflated with "Don't Tread on Me" lawn signs and a bald eagle posed defiantly behind the nation's flag. The stigma behind being on "Team America" lies in the inseparability of one's own identity with that of a group, even one in which they've always been a member. The intrinsic bias within my paper didn't come from cheering on the president or having my views summed up by a D or an R, but merely from growing up American. That isn't a bad thing, but it is something crucial to recognize when discussing US security policy with a friend from a different country.

Part of our identity is how we divide ourselves, whether that be through sports teams, political parties or geographical spaces. Teamsmanship is a double-edged sword. Forming these groups, whether consciously or unconsciously, allows people to create cohesive coalitions and hierarchies that benefit them. It also makes us strangely tribal, associating our identity with our favorite bands of twentysomethings on a sports team from our birthplace. To put it another way, teams are necessary, but the all-encompassing association of identity that blurs the line between the team and the individual can be problematic.

Americans are not a monolith. Teams are not inherently harmful. I was not in George W. Bush's cabinet during the Iraq War. These are fundamental facts. But what's greater is the realization that while bias and identity may be our first instincts, learning how to adjust and rebalance our (and when I say our, you know who I mean) mental calculus, we can try to understand how lines in the sand are drawn before we take out the stick.

Bryce Leiberman is a freshman from Madison, Conn. studying Political Science and Philosophy. His column records a search for authenticity exploring the past, present and restless work of becoming oneself.

"What's going on here?"

It was the first question our guide asked as my First-Year Seminar (FYS) clustered around a statue of three brown rings at the Baltimore Museum of Art (BMA). I side-eyed my friend. Literally nothing, I thought. As we stood in complete silence, I could feel my STEM brain scrambling for a definition or some data to interpret, anything measurable or concrete. Instead, all I saw were… rings. Yet, the guide didn't look impatient or concerned at our obvious discomfort. She waited, as if the statue was offering more than I knew how to look for. Over minutes of looking and looking away, details revealed themselves: grooves, the texture of the marble, the impossible smoothness of the statue's curves, the deliberate shadows cast by the museum lights. At the BMA, I realized you aren't asked to solve anything; you're asked to truly see. That shift felt both unsettling and addictive.

During my first week at Hopkins, I spent more time surrounded by art during the Baltimore Arts pre-orientation than I had in my whole life. Wandering through the Walters Art Museum and the American Visionary Art Museum, I recall feeling overwhelmed by the talent and history that I was so woefully unprepared to understand. In front of a Mary Proctor collage of buttons and fabric, a guide unraveled stories of race, gender and spirituality seamlessly. It was like there was an invisible curtain separating me from an entire world I hadn't known existed. I wasn't an artist, and I was terrified of public speaking, but I wanted to belong to that world - to speak about objects that appeared ordinary with clarity and conviction until their histories spilled off the wall. So when my FYS professor forwarded a one-line email about a new BMA student guide program, I applied without thinking.

In our first training session, I stood before a hazy Matisse landscape without knowing anything about Impressionism or the industrial Europe it depicted. The other trainees included art history majors, physics students and pre-meds, and we built the picture together. Someone noticed a shadow that someone else turned into a boat. Someone pointed out faint sticks that, after two comments, reassembled themselves into smokestacks. I added an observation about the light on the water, half expecting it to be dismissed, but the instructor turned it into a discussion about the time of day the painting was depicting. It was the first time I felt that my eye mattered. I didn't need to be an "art person" - I just needed to trust that what I saw was worth saying.

Those questions at the core of our Visual Thinking Strategies (VTS) rewired the way I directed my attention: What do you see? What do you see that makes you say that? What else can we find?

As training continued, they became a framework for approaching the world that felt radically slower than how I was used to thinking. Using VTS, we practiced examining sculptures from every angle, paying attention to orientation, mass and balance. We used the museum's arrangement to give us clues, and discovered how curators manipulate lighting not just to illuminate but to reveal: a ridge worn down by hands two centuries ago, a hairline groove left by an intentional chisel or an accidental slip. We lingered in front of portraits for half an hour, long after the average visitor's twenty-seven seconds had evaporated. The questions didn't go away; they kept multiplying, asking me to notice what I didn't know I'd seen.

Writing my first tour tested that for real. I spent a week trying to connect the Buddhist Water Guang-yin statue carved thousands of years ago with a Cézanne painting from the 1900s. At first, the pairing felt absurd. But the deeper I looked, the more patterns emerged: the human body shaped by devotion; the natural world softened, abstracted, made symbolic; the way artists keep returning to the same longing for stillness, transcendence and form. Guiding turned out to not be about delivering the "right" interpretation, but rather building a story with strangers. It was a mosaic of observations offered tentatively and held up to the light. Together, we moved from texture to intention to cultural meaning and then back to the work itself.

The invisible work mattered just as much as the visible. Choosing the order of artworks became a kind of choreography: when to shift rooms, when to linger, how to pivot from silence to discussion without demanding either. I learned to read the micro-signals - a visitor's foot tapping, hesitation before a comment, the instinctive glance at a label. I got to decide what to reveal, and more importantly, what to hold back so viewers could discover it for themselves.

One of the first questions we were asked in training was, "What makes you feel at home in a new space?" I wrote down warm lighting, somewhere to put my stuff, someone who expects me to be there. Later, I realized that was exactly what guiding asks of us - not to lecture, but to host. To create a space where visitors feel anticipated, where the bar for participation is simply being present and paying attention to what is already in front of them.

The museum has become a counterweight to Hopkins' acceleration. My academic life moves in deadlines, problem sets and meetings double-booked on my Google Calendar; the museum moves in stillness. There, I stand in front of a painting until my eyes stop scanning and start noticing the bristles stuck in the paint, intentional imperfections that point to a human behind the frame. That slowness has leaked into the rest of my life: how I walk across campus, how I listen to my roommate, how I remember to look twice before assuming I understand anything at all.

I entered the BMA student tour guide program convinced someone would tap me on the shoulder one day and expose me as an impostor. I thought guiding required authority in the form of knowledge I didn't have and language I hadn't learned, but the museum's visitors don't need expertise - they need space. These past few weeks, I've peeled back assumptions, returned to the evidence and built outward again. I've stopped trying to extract meaning from art and started creating an environment to look, wonder and share, where interpretation is collaborative rather than a personal performance. I may not be an artist, but I've become a translator of attention, a facilitator of curiosity, a witness to the moment a roomful of strangers begins to see together.

Vidhi Bansal is a freshman from Upper Saddle River, N.J., studying Neuroscience. In "Meanwhile," Bansal finds meaning in the unfinished and the unglamorous, showing how the in-betweens are often where life actually happens.

There's a poem I keep thinking about: "Replica of the Thinker." In it, a copy of Rodin's famous statue sits at a museum, hunched over that familiar pose of "deep thought." But he isn't thinking. "His head is filled with iron and bronze," the poet writes, "not neurons and God." He looks like a thinker, but is he actually thinking?

I read this and feel an uncomfortable echo in myself.

There are mornings when I sit with my breakfast the same way the speaker imagines his father did years ago - with oatmeal, coffee, a newspaper and a blank stare. The poem suggests something I've been circling around in my own life: that we can move through the world looking like people who think, decide and shape our lives intentionally while actually living as replicas. Copies of parents, copies of expectations, copies of a life we haven't had the chance to pause long enough to choose.

Real thinking is slow. It's messy. It requires an inwardness that can feel intimidating. And yet we treat thinking like the default state of being present, as if it simply happens while we check our notifications or rush from our current task to our next priority. Thought becomes background noise, running behind everything else.

But what the poem gets at, which intrigued me, is the difference between appearing thoughtful and actually thinking. Between living life and performing life. Between being the original and becoming a photocopy of a photocopy.

Each version of a copy loses something.

The speaker in the poem imagines the replica trying to access profound ideas, like "patterns among celestial bodies" and "free will." But his expression ends up "somewhere between agony and falling asleep." It's funny, but it also reminds us of the moments where we push ourselves to be insightful and creative yet actually end up mostly exhausted. When we strain for meaning with the same tense posture as Rodin's Thinker, we hope some answer will finally arrive.

But maybe the problem isn't that we aren't thinking hard enough. Maybe it's that we confuse the posture of thinking with the practice of thinking.

It seems that most of our lives are lived in the space between thought and non-thought. We drift into routines. We imitate the habits and expressions of the people who shaped us. We copy what seems to work. There's comfort in that, sometimes even relief.

But there are moments when mindless living is not only allowed but necessary. The brain needs rest, of course. The heart needs stillness. There are moments when we need to pull back from the constant pressure to define or redesign our lives. Not every moment needs to be original.

But when copying becomes the default, when we move through life without asking why, our days start to flatten. We become like the replica: shaped by someone else's mold, holding a pose that suggests depth but feels hollow.

The strange paradox is that thinking is what makes life meaningful, yet we often avoid it. Even I sometimes make myself busy and distract myself from my own thoughts. Genuine thought makes us confront who we are, what we want and our fears. It forces us to ask: am I living this life or repeating what I've seen? Am I choosing or copying?

If we stay in our minds too long, nothing ever changes. However, thinking too much may be problematic as well. Thinking alone makes us stuck in the bronze stillness of the statue, full of longing and potential, but unmoving.

So what does it mean to be an "original" in a world full of replicas?

Maybe originality isn't about being different from everyone else. Maybe it's just about being fully present in our own choices. Paying actual attention. Asking even the smallest questions. Slowing down enough to notice when we're acting out of habit instead of intention.

Maybe life in the making is exactly that, in the making. It's not perfected nor sculpted into permanence. It's a gradual, ongoing process of choosing how much we think, how much we rest and how much we allow ourselves to become who we are.

The poem ends with the replica holding his pose as if some part of the world around him is about to make sense, almost. I feel that "almost" too. The near-answer.

I think that the point isn't to force clarity but rather to stay awake to the possibility of it. To think when we can, to rest when we need and notice the difference between the two.

Kathryn Jung is a freshman from Silver Spring, MD, majoring in Biomedical Engineering. Her column reflects the process of creating and how the small things we make, notice and hold close bring meaning to everyday life.

Yesterday I took the MBTI test again for the first time in eight months: ISTJ-T. I didn't think much of the four letters themselves - I've seen them enough times by now. What caught my attention was the last letter, a subtle change from A (assertive) to T (turbulent). It made me stop and think about when I became more worried and prone to overthinking, not because I believe in a personality test like it's my Roman Empire, but because some of the prompts in the test do reflect my current feelings toward my own stage of growth. For context, assertive people are usually calm and self-assured, while turbulent people tend to be more anxious and self-critical.

Lately, I've noticed that much of my mood is tied to external validation. What I look forward to most days isn't necessarily rest after all my classes, hanging out with friends or even small forms of comfort. It's the possibility of opening my Gmail or Outlook and seeing the word "congratulations." An interview… An acceptance… Even just a results notification. Some sort of sign from the universe - or a selection committee - that I'm doing things right. It's embarrassing to admit how much power a subject line can have over my day. A rejection can sting for an hour or two, and then I move on to the next thing to chase after. On the surface, this looks like resilience, but sometimes it feels more like I'm just hopping from one potential source of validation to another, trying not to sit still long enough to feel the emptiness in between.

I've been asking myself a lot of questions because of this. Am I not mature enough to be secure about my abilities? Am I not working hard enough or working in the wrong direction? None of these questions have clear answers. I know that facing these undesired results over and over isn't a bad thing at all. In some ways, it has made me less fragile. But it also feels like I'm avoiding processing my emotions and feelings by jumping into a new resume edit or application page. It feels unhealthy - like I'm constantly trying to prove myself to a ghost, and I'm never fully satisfied with who I am without some validation on paper to back it up.

When I was in China this past summer for a summer camp, I thought I had become more confident in a place I spent 10 years of my life in. It was my first solo trip abroad. I was making decisions on my own and navigating the thousands of changes that had happened in the area over the last six years. I was eager to speak up about my experiences and excited to meet new people. I felt more independent and confident about myself. But after coming back, tripping into the cycle of classes, deadlines, applications, a lot of that confidence felt more shallow than I expected.

It was easy to feel strong when my life looked different and I had distance from the routine here at Hopkins. In the familiar setting of school, with everything running aside me in their own directions, I was quickly reminded that confidence built only on small achievements and "new experiences" is still pretty fragile if it isn't rooted in something deeper. However, as I'm writing this article, I know that I am thinking about what I truly value and what these new experiences actually meant to me; it feels empowering to be able to let this out.

I don't think ambition is the problem. I really want to see how far I can go in my twenties. These years are dramatic life transitions - from school to work, from being a student to being some undefined "adult in society," from being guided to guiding others. Every step feels a bit uncomfortable. What worries me more is how narrow my definition of "doing well" has become. If I only recognize my own growth when it's confirmed by someone else that I have never interacted with, I'm always going to be one email away from feeling like I'm not enough.

I'm still trying to find ways to show myself that a lot of important growth occurs every day: learning to communicate effectively, setting boundaries or even just being content with not doing anything "productive" for a day. However, I'm still the same person checking my emails a little too often, constantly switching between being proud of myself and feeling like I have so much left to improve on. But I like to imagine my future self, maybe at 25 or 27, stumbling across my current state through this article. I hope she can look back at these words and smile, not because I figured everything out at 19 years old, but because I was honest enough to reflect and write this down and keep trying.

I don't know what my life will look like then. I've always had an idealized vision of my future, but the more I experience, the more I realize how unpredictable life is. Every month, every year, I change a little. I meet new people, own new things, have new jobs and identities on campus. Maybe the one thing I can be confident about is this: I will keep going, keep learning and keep reflecting. Even if the MBTI says I'm "turbulent" now, that could just be another way of saying I'm still in the middle of becoming who I want to be.

Linda Huang is a sophomore from Rockville, Md. majoring in Biomedical Engineering. Her column celebrates growth and emotions that define young adulthood, inviting readers to live authentically.

I recently finished the latest season of Dancing With the Stars. For those who weren't keeping up, Robert Irwin and his professional ballroom partner, Witney Carson, brought home the highly coveted Mirrorball trophy.

Every year, a new season of this show premieres, and it becomes one of the only things I can talk about and the thing I look forward to the most on Tuesday evenings. This year, I was rooting for Whitney Leavitt from The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives. Sadly, I couldn't text "WHITNEY" to 21523 because voting is only available to the United States and Canada, and I'm in… Scotland. But I was supporting her from afar!

In case Reality TV isn't your forte, or you decided to skip this season of Dancing With the Stars, Leavitt was eliminated during the semi-finals due to a lack of fans voting for her to stay in the competition. The third season of The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives had aired right before the semi-finals, and to say it hadn't been to Leavitt's benefit would be an understatement. But this was the first time I had seen a vast number of people on social media band together and actively decide to vote for every other couple except her (I think psychologists call this groupthink).

While I am not one to lecture people on the dangers of obsessing over Reality TV or developing a black-and-white form of thinking, I had never quite seen how social media could be wielded as a destructive tool in real time.

Naturally, as a Political Science student, I began to think about how easy it has become for our society to succumb to dangerous forms of thinking - seeing things not on a spectrum, but as either all-or-nothing. We've already begun to see this mentality infiltrate our politics.

The recent government shutdown, the longest in U.S. history, serves as a prime example - Congressional Republicans largely refused to compromise with Democrats on a spending budget and vice versa. Throughout the entire shutdown, I would see comments on TikTok or Instagram either blaming Democrats for the shutdown entirely or insisting Republicans were single-handedly responsible for the stalemate. Very few people seemed willing to admit what political scientists seem to repeat like a broken record: that a gridlock is rarely the fault of one person or party, but rather the product of institutional incentives, polarized media ecosystems and elected officials who ultimately benefit from refusing to budge.

But that kind of nuance doesn't trend.

What does trend, however, are the posts that declare "This side is evil" or "That side ruined everything." Social media rewards outrage, certainty and villians to point at, because life is always a little easier when you have someone else to blame. And once the algorithm finds the narrative you're most likely to engage with, it feeds it back to you until your entire worldview feels confirmed - no matter how distorted it becomes.

This is how we get from voting against a contestant on Dancing With the Stars because TikTok told us she's "problematic" and a "horrible person" (when most of us don't really know her at all), to voters insisting that one political party alone is responsible for government dysfunction. It's the same impulse dressed up in different stakes: we want someone to blame, someone to cancel, someone to remove, so we don't have to wrestle with complexity.

And the political system thrives on this. Politicians don't get reelected if they make things complicated for their constituency. They know that if they provide a simple enemy - a person, a party, a scapegoat - social media will do the rest of the work for them. Outrage spreads faster than any policy briefing ever could.

In the end, maybe the real Mirrorball trophy goes to the platforms themselves. They've mastered the art of choreographing our attention, pushing us into neat little corners where the world makes sense only if there's a hero and a villain, a winner and a loser, a right and a wrong. No shades of gray and definitely no middle ground.

But politics - like people, like ballroom dance - has always lived in the in-between: the messy, complicated, imperfect spaces where the real work actually happens. We need to dive into the nitty-gritty and actually understand what is going on. Or else we risk becoming victims of the very system we claim we want to fix.

If we want a healthier political culture, maybe the first step is learning to log off once in a while and touch some grass. Remember that not every conflict needs a villain. It takes more energy to think about nuances and retrain yourself to look at the shades of gray, but it's worth it.

Sometimes it's a controversial semi-final round of Dancing With the Stars, a broken Congress or a system that needs more cooperation and less choreography.

And unfortunately, you can't fix all that by texting "WHITNEY" to 21523.

Alyssa Gonzalez is a junior majoring in Political Science and International Studies.Her column approaches the political atmosphere through an individual lens, grounding the conversation in empathy and clarity in an attempt to humanize the field.

One fun project I took on this semester was tracking down the best ceviches in Baltimore. The restaurants I visited include Puerto 511, La Calle and Clavel (unsurprisingly).

Putting my criteria up front: freshness of ingredients was the baseline, and every restaurant on this list delivered that without question. The differences came down to flavoring, portion size, aesthetics and ambience.

Puerto 511

For anyone who finds it hard to decide on their order, Puerto 511 makes it easy: they have a fixed five-course routine designed by their culinary team, which rotates seasonally. Yet no matter what other courses might change, ceviche made with this season's freshest harvest is a staple of the menu. When we visited in late August, ceviche of the time was Causa Acevichada, a dish composed of marinated fish and mashed yellow potatoes dipped in tiger's milk, a rich sauce with citrusy tang, garlic and chili that adds a refreshing tone to this dish.

Beyond ceviche, we also enjoyed roasted veal heart, tamales, fried rice and ice cream as the ending dessert. The use of fruity flavors is threaded across dishes, tomatoes, pineapples, lemon, in ceviche, skewers and fried rice. Despite the multi-layered tangy notes, everything was well-balanced, with the slight sourness complementing the freshness of white-flesh fish perfectly.

Portion was generous with the price, $59 for each person for a five course meal, and we felt quite satisfied. The overall ambience leaned homestyle and approachable - perfect for a dinner with friends. We also enjoyed the little anticipation of not knowing what the next dish would be, since the choices were left to the team. Without a doubt, the courses and combinations they presented were thoughtful and cohesive.

La Calle

La Calle is a beautiful spot to dine in Inner Harbor: a spacious dining room, warm lighting, an open kitchen and a bar. Many couples sat by for a romantic night. For ceviche, we ordered two. Ceviche del Día, their daily special that changes every day, was our preferred one. The tuna was succulent, and the overall flavor was full and well-integrated. The rosy pink sauce interspersed with grass-green avocado made it a feast for the eyes as well. If you like ceviche, this is a solid pick. We also tried Aguachile de la Pasión. It was fresh, but the seasoning skewed too sour for both me and my friend.

While the seasoning lightly missed the balance compared with Puerto 511, the environment was aesthetic and elegant, and my friend and I really enjoyed their Barbacoa de Cordero - tender lamb that detached effortlessly and was well-seasoned. We finished the whole dish without even touching the supplemental corn tortillas.

Portions were sizable, around $60 or so per person. I'd recommend it for both dates and small friend groups of 2-6. The only caveat is that seating is almost always crowded, so I'd suggest making online reservations ahead of time.

Clavel

Citywide favorite. James Beard bar. I had heard a lot about it before visiting, yet only on my second time was I really convinced by the buzz around it. The first time, I focused on the tacos - lengua and barbacoa. They were good, no doubt, but not mind-blowing, which made me question whether the Clavel hype was really justified. But everything changed during my second visit, thanks to a friend's recommendation - I finally discovered the right way to enjoy Clavel: the ceviches!

If I had to recommend just one dish, I'd go with the Salmon Crudo. It's not a traditional ceviche, yet it still appears in the "ceviche" section of their menu. The salmon slices were like custard in flan: creamy, fresh, with a dreamy mouthfeel. The crispy tortilla underneath added a lush texture that stitched everything together.

The other dish my friend and I wooed up was the Campechana. It boasted plump sweet shrimp, octopus, and scallop bathed in lime juice in a goblet-style glass. It was abundant with seafood cuts, perfectly paired with crunchy cucumber, onion and totopos. It also came with crispy pork strips, adding another tactile touch to this multifaceted dish.

The price for each person ranges from about $50 to a little over $80. The dishes are huge and don't skimp on seafood. The ambience is passionate and welcoming, with simple wooden tables and chairs as well as plenty of greens. Yet do expect to wait from 20-40 minutes or more. It's the norm for Clavel, but the food makes it worth it. The background is indeed a little loud, due to the casual, no-strings-attached atmosphere. It's a place where people laugh and joke freely. Definitely a spot for friends of varying group sizes, family gatherings, celebrations and a good place for dates for more familiar couples. For a first date, the con is just the likely long wait and the full-of-chatter backdrop.

Yet please don't get me wrong: purely for taste, Clavel tops the restaurants I mentioned today - and the vast majority of spots in Baltimore. Its long-lasting popularity speaks for itself. If you're interested in learning more about Clavel's stories behind the storefront, take a moment to read our previous interview with the founder and mind behind the bar, Lane Harlan.

As the iconic dish of Peru, I believe ceviche inherits something special from this country: the embrace of both coastlines and mountain ridges, and the intersection of many ethnic groups. Baltimore's businesses interpret this beautiful dish with their own local catch and cultural influences, nurturing distinct flavors of their own.

That said, my recommendations reveal only a fragment of what these restaurants offer - many of them have much more beyond ceviche. Just as ceviche's tang sets you up for more food adventures, feel free to step ahead and venture into the unmentioned deliciousness.

One interesting aspect of the smooth coordination needed between the two cities will be pulling off the cauldron lighting for the opening ceremony. Editing TV coverage to make it appear as if countries with several flag-bearers participating in parades in different cities are marching in unison is another point of focus. Among the venues, the largest is the Anterselva Biathlon Arena, which seats up to 19,000 spectators. Others stand out for their historical roots, like Verona Olympic Arena, built for gladiator battles in 30AD. Some also hold significance in both Italian culture and the sports world, with several having been used for the Nordic World Ski Championships and World Cup Races, or being the home to Italian football clubs.

In lively spirit and display of local culture, stoat mascots Tina and Milo were chosen, inspired by the city names Cortina d'Ampezzo and Milano. Milo, the Paralympic mascot, was born without a leg and, by learning to use his tail, is now a figure of resolve and ingenuity. Notably, the idea of these stoat siblings was influenced by a nationwide primary school drawing competition. The design submitted by students in Taverna, southern Italy, contributed to the symbol set for the Olympic stage. The intentional choice of stoats primarily stems from their engagement with nature, agility, liveliness, and resilience in their mountainous habitats - all highly reflective of characteristics necessary to endure for the upcoming Winter Games. They are additionally representative of the spirited, adaptable and contemporary Italian identity, organizers describe.

A total of 16 sports disciplines will be featured. They can be grouped into three broad categories: Ice sports (like bobsled, ice hockey, skeleton and curling), Alpine & Snowboarding, and Nordic Events (like cross-country skiing and ski jumping). The International Olympic Committee (IOC) commonly refers to sport disciplines to denote and differentiate 'sub-sport categories,' such as figure skating and speed skating, within the broader sport of skating. Four of the sixteen disciplines will be held indoors: curling, figure skating, ice hockey and speed skating. Significantly, the last category features a debut sport: Ski Mountaineering, where athletes use specialized equipment to traverse mountainous terrain at the Stelvio Ski Centre. This was originally a segment of a now-discontinued winter Olympic sport called Military Patrol that combined ski mountaineering with cross-country skiing and rifle shooting. Other new changes include a large-hill event for women's ski jumping and a women's luge doubles event, in line with the ongoing movement for gender equality. The cross-country skiing distance will also be the same between the men's and women's events. The Paralympics will feature six events in the Arena di Verona, including Para snowboard, Para alpine and cross-country skiing, Para biathlon, Para ice hockey and wheelchair curling.

Closing in on the Feb. 6-22 Olympics and the March 6-15, 2026 Paralympics (also marking the kickoff of the 50th anniversary of the first Paralympic Winter Games), athletes hone their focus in the final stretch of their training. From the IOC's announcement of Italy's selection to host the XXV Winter Games in 2019 to the start of the iconic torch relay on December 6, Italy moves forward in its preparation for nations to unify through sport. The race for 195 medals will deliver nothing short of a breathtaking showcase and experience in the heart of winter… truly making for a winter wonderland!

To give a quick recap about what the scene looked like before the cars graced the Yas Marina Circuit, I must first mention the chaotic Las Vegas Grand Prix and Qatar Grand Prix. These three races all happen within a week from each other, giving the drivers little to no rest.

Two races before, in Vegas, Oscar Piastri crossed the chequered flag first, followed by his teammate Lando Norris. To the complete shock of viewers and absolute dismay of McLaren, who were chasing the championship the whole season, the FIA released a statement in the early morning hours declaring the two Papaya cars had been disqualified. This was a major blow to McLaren, as the lack of points failed to advance either of their drivers and the first place finish now going to Max Verstappen put him on par with Piastri for points. Until then, almost no one had believed Verstappen was in the running for a championship since at one point he was over 100 points behind. Post summer break had been nothing but an outstanding comeback run for the Red Bull Racing driver.

They then traveled halfway across the world to Qatar, where Piastri qualified in pole position during both the sprint and the race. He managed to take home points in the sprint and pull in front of Verstappen in the standings - a promising start to the weekend. However, I would never have predicted the absolute mess of a strategy McLaren gave their drivers in the race. Their choices possibly set up the next race to allow them to fumble the championship. An early safety car saw all drivers but the two Papayas pit, a smart move because they lost no time and got one of the two necessary pit stops out of the way. McLaren was then forced to pit twice not under a safety car, and acquired an inescapable loss of time, even with their stunning pace.

The final standings after Qatar saw Norris keep P1, but Verstappen moved up to P2 knocking the early championship contender Piastri to P3. I also want to highlight Williams driver Sainz, who finished on the podium and put up a fierce defense. This secured P5 for the Williams team, their highest finish in the team rankings since 2017. Additionally, Red Bull was now catching up to Mercedes in the battle for P2 of the Constructor's Championship. Each rank provides many more millions to the team for the next year's car development.

On to Abu Dhabi, the race where fans would hold their breath and cross their fingers, because any of the top three could win. How? No matter what place the others get, if Norris finished on the podium he won. But, Verstappen took pole in qualifying over Norris which made this just one step more difficult to achieve. On the opening lap of the race, the top three stayed in their qualifying positions through turn one, but shortly after Piastri pulled his Papaya around the outside of Norris' car, an impressive move as the Aussie had the hard tires on his car instead of the mediums. The overtake placed Norris in another precarious situation, as Ferrari's Charles Leclerc was attacking with fervor from behind and threatening to steal P3.

A series of pitstops led to a series of overtakes by Norris, Russel and Leclerc. They came out of the pit lane with a series of cars in front of them that would slow their pace, which required skilled overtakes as to not crash but also not get held up. The Stewards later noted Norris for overtaking off the track and Red Bull's Yuki Tsunoda for forcing Norris' car off the track. Although Tsunoda made Norris' job of overtaking a challenge, he let Leclerc pass easily. The Red Bull team evidently wanted to allow the Ferrari to continue pressuring the McLaren, to hopefully strip away his podium - which would allow Verstappen the win. Luckily for Papaya, the stewards noted that no further action was needed and Norris had been forced off the track by a dangerous maneuver. However illegal it was, this strategy implemented by Red Bull is part of what makes this team sport so entertaining.

Later in the race, Ferrari told Leclerc to box for medium tires, their last effort to try and fight Norris. The Papaya pit crew reacted fast, and told their driver to box. A brilliant pitstop in possibly the most crucial moment of the race allowed the McLaren to come out in front of the Ferrari, preventing the undercut. The top three continued to drive with immense skill, as even a track limits penalty and a forced five-second stop could change the rankings. The final order was Verstappen P1, Piastri P2 and Norris P3. Verstappen had been champion for 1457 days, and this was his first season since then as the underdog.

At the beginning of the year, Norris would have never predicted this life changing moment. But consistent racing and an effort for points at every opportunity finally landed him the World Champion honor after seven seasons. In a heartwarming radio call at the end, he proclaimed to his team, "you made a kid's dream come true, thank you so much." No matter who you were rooting for, it's undeniable this was a fascinating way to end the season.

I always thought I enjoyed Jane Austen as much as the next person. In middle school, I read almost all of her books, and my mom and I have seen the 1995 Pride and Prejudice too many times to count over the last five years. My friend and our moms spent the summer before eighth grade going to a historical home nearby our houses and watching a different movie every week in the backyard. We'd sit on picnic blankets and debate the various attributes of Jane Austen's heroes. My friend liked Mr. Knightley from Emma the best. My favorite was Edmund from Mansfield Park. At the conference, I learned just how deep Jane Austen obsessions could go. I also discovered that I knew about as much as the other moderately educated but no less enthusiastic participants.

The conference lasted a weekend and took place at a hotel overlooking our own Baltimore Harbor. Jane Austen nerds, usually appearing in large groups of young women or smaller groups of older women with the occasional delighted husband tagging along, could go to talks about Regency society, fashion or literature. They could take a deeper dive into her novels than even Miss Austen may have in talks about word-choice, Jane's reading list, and so much more. Between sessions they could stop by pop-up stores that had been erected in the smaller ballrooms. One was full of books about the era, women in literature, the Austen family, and Jane Austen heroes. The authors of many of these could be seen wandering around the hotel in full regency garb. In another room was a tailor shop where you could buy historically accurate dresses, hats, gloves, jewelry and lots and lots of feathers.

That particular weekend I had a concert and several upcoming major assignments due, so I figured I'd spend my days hanging around the hotel, and I'd catch a few sessions if I could. Instead, I was completely sucked in.

I learned about the constant use of the word 'very' in Emma (and why it's ok for her to do it and no one else). I listened to two women discuss the sexual undertones I'm sure Miss Austen didn't mean to put into Northanger Abbey. I browsed books about Jane Austen's favorite nephew and religion in her very specific region of England, and realized that even beyond all the fun costumes, I was in a world I hadn't ever seen before.

I can't remember the last time I did something beyond a movie night or something like that simply because it was enjoyable. I'm studying voice and creative writing because I enjoy both disciplines (certainly not for the paycheck), but most of the choices I make about those two areas of interest are building towards higher goals. I sing in competitions and take auditions because I want to beef up my resume for grad school. I network whenever I can because you never know when someone might lend a helping hand that furthers your career along. I make so many decisions so that as many avenues as possible may be left open to me in the future. This hotel full of Austenites, at least for that weekend, had no such cares. They skipped work and spent money on plane tickets and hotel rooms and who knows what else, all because Jane Austen had impacted their lives in some way and meant something to them. There was nothing to win or gain from this experience on paper. In practice it was the purest love of learning I have ever seen. It was as pure as the love churchgoers are supposed to have for Christ without the fear of Hell to motivate the less convinced.

After the banquet, there was a ball. People poured into a ballroom where a string quintet played all night. A man with a microphone shouted out the steps to various line dances, but it was clear to me that many people knew all the dances by heart.

When I left there were people in regency gowns congregating in the lobby. The few people in 21st century clothes barely seemed to notice them as they rushed to wherever they needed to be. I'm sure I would usually be just as unobservant as they were, but I'm grateful to Jane Austen for helping me to be part of such a beautiful community, even if it was only for a few days.

N-L: Before we get started, could you introduce yourselves and share what you did before starting Chachu's Chai?

Prateek: I was born and raised in India. I came to the States for grad school about nine years ago at UMD College Park, and I came to Baltimore in 2017. Professionally, I work as a bridge engineer for a firm in the downtown Baltimore area.

Kayla: I actually grew up in the Baltimore area - been here my whole life. I started out getting a fine arts degree, then I pivoted and realized that plants were kind of my medium, so I got into horticulture and went to grad school for landscape architecture.

N-L: How did Chachu's Chai get started?

Prateek: After spending time together in India, which was Kayla's first trip to India for our wedding, Kayla got to try an authentic chai, which is very different from what you get here in the cafes. In India, there are vendors called chai tapri, and all they sell is just chai on the roadsides. I had always missed fresh, authentic chai, so when Kayla also saw and had that experience in India, the both of us were really missing that here in Baltimore.

Kayla: And Prateek is really modest. He didn't mention that, actually, the first time I had authentic chai, he made it. As soon as I tried it, I was like, "Wow, I've never had anything like this before."

N-L: What makes a good authentic chai?

Prateek: I think the main difference is that it's made from fresh spices instead of a concentrate or a tea bag, as they use in most cafes. When people think of chai, I think there are some ingredients, like cinnamon and cloves, that seem to be very popular, but it's very Americanized.

Kayla: It's also a different process. At cafes, they'll steam the milk, add the concentrate or the tea bag. But, as Prateek was mentioning, we have the fresh ground spices and fresh ginger - that all gets boiled together with milk and water and sugar for all kinds of mixing and mingling. That's where a lot of the flavor comes from!

N-L: That makes sense. I've been to your Farmer's Market pop-up and I noticed you have seasonal flavors. I think it was rose and lavender the last time I was there. Could you speak a little to how you craft these specialty items on your menu?

Kayla: Actually, it's funny that you mention that because we kind of went back and forth a lot - should we have any sort of unique flavor that you wouldn't find at a typical Indian chai tapri?

Prateek: Kayla's very artistic and crafty and creative, and that shows in our menu too. Any interesting, cool flavors that you see are most likely Kayla's ideas.

Kayla: That's where the true fusion of me and Prateek's creativity with the chai happens.

Prateek: We'll come up with an idea of a flavor that makes most sense for a given season. And then we will practice, make lots of sample batches and experiment. We actually came up with this point-based system where we would lock a recipe if it was like a 10 on 10, consistently. It was just a lot of improvising and tweaking the proportions of different ingredients.

N-L: That lavender is definitely a 10 out of 10. What are some flavors that didn't make the cut?

Kayla: Just this past fall, we were experimenting with a golden milk chai. We were really excited about that concept, but we just couldn't get it to a tenner.

Prateek: I was very skeptical of dirty chai at first. I'm a coffee lover myself and when I tried chai with an espresso, I was a huge fan immediately, and so we sell dirty chai as well.

N-L: Where does the name "Chachu's Chai" come from?

Prateek: That's a good question. We went back and forth with our business name, and then we landed on Chachu's Chai. Chachu in Hindi and Urdu means "uncle from your brother's side." The formal word is Chacha, which is your uncle, but the endearing term that nephews use is Chachu. I have a seven-year-old nephew who calls me Chachu. So, we thought the word Chachu and Chai go well together. It's fun to say and it's catchy. And then, we became Chachu's Chai.

N-L: That's so sweet. You've touched a bit on working jobs aside from Chachu's Chai. What's this whole process been like for you all, building this business from the ground up?

Kayla: That's a big question because there's been different iterations of Chachu's Chai over these two years. It began with us working full-time jobs during the week, then we started to do the market every other weekend, we found success and an audience and began doing the market every weekend. We quickly realized that doing the market every weekend with the full-time job would be difficult - so we had to make the choice, do we go all in with Chachu's Chai? Do we go back to part-time?

We went all in with Chachu's Chai, and we started to do the 32nd Street Market every weekend. We began setting up near the Baltimore Museum of Art during the weekdays. It began at the end of summer, but it quickly became very rainy and freezing cold. There was a lot of construction in the area, and we realized that it's difficult to just sell chai on a sidewalk and be out in the elements and feel physically healthy doing that every day.

We set up from the ground up with the tent and with all the equipment. We don't have a cart or anything. So, we had to kind of juggle back. Right now, we're working during the week and doing markets on the weekends again.

N-L: You mentioned a point of decision where you had to figure out whether or not you were going to go all in on Chachu's Chai. Do you remember what informed that choice?

Prateek: I think we were consistently seeing growth and higher sales at the Farmer's Market. That gave us really good confidence. A lot of our customers at the markets were students from [Hopkins]. And chai is very popular in India, it's very popular near college campuses.

But I think it was also one of those things where, if we never tried, we would have never found out the potential of our business and built that customer base. It was a risky decision, but we had to test its potential.

N-L: As you've noticed, so many Hopkins students loved your stands at both the Baltimore Museum of Art (BMA) and the Farmer's Market. Could you speak a little to what it's been like working within the Charles Village community?

Kayla: We have just really had such a wonderful time working with Hopkins students. We did a bunch of different fundraisers with different student groups, and that really felt rewarding, like we were able to play a part in building a little bit of community. That was a really great thing that we were able to do while we were near the BMA.

We just now feel even more connected in the community where you can walk around and it's like, "Oh, hey, see you on Saturday!" Or hey, there's that little kid that we saw grow from a newborn to two years old who's now walking that we met through the Farmer's Market or being at the BMA stand. The Charles Village community and the broader Waverly community and Baltimore City in general has been so supportive and so wonderful. It's just really heartwarming.

For masala and lemongrass, we have the sliding scale and people will say, "I'm gonna pick the higher price. That way, the next person who can't, they can." It really gives you a picture. What you realize is that actually everybody just wants to help out their neighbors when they're picking their price. It's really everybody having a hand in and giving the gift of chai and supporting each other.

Prateek: Some of our customers have actually become our helpers at the Farmers Market stand because they just love our product and business so much.

Kayla: We've made so many friends from doing this, so that's been really wonderful.

N-L: That's so great to hear. What was the inspiration behind the sliding scale system?

Kayla: I would say that I don't really align with capitalism per se. Prateek and I don't have the exact same views, but I think we're aligned to the point where we want people to be able to afford it. We know what it feels like to not be able to afford a simple pick-me-up in your day. We really want to give people the opportunity to give themselves a treat without breaking their bank. And then in India, the chai is…

Prateek: Yeah, the chai is very affordable and there is a common sentiment of just sharing food, even if it's for free - be it at the stand or at the market, too. If someone didn't have enough money or no money, we've never not served them chai.

Kayla: It kind of comes back to how we want to take care of everybody who is coming and patronizing our business. The sliding scale gives people that opportunity. In turn, we've been taken care of by the community.

N-L: That's an incredible system you guys have in place. What's one piece of advice you'd give to the students reading?

Kayla: If there's something that you feel deep in your heart that you would like to see, just go for it and do it in a way where you can play it safe at first. For us, putting our toes in the water was the Farmer's Market.

Prateek: We found solutions the more we wanted to minimize the risk and be creative. I think the key thing is to just get out there, but take baby steps and start small.

Kayla: Also, I think one thing that does ring true in me and Prateek is don't let your education and background hold you back from your vision or idea of what you want to bring into the world. Because you can be limited in that way. Prateek is an engineer. I'm an illustrator, animator, horticulturalist, landscape designer - like, all this stuff. We're still that. It's still true, but we're also now entrepreneur Chai slingers. So, don't let your background hold you back from doing something else.

Tangshan was ravaged by a 7.6 magnitude earthquake on July 28, 1976. An earthquake report written years later said that within minutes, "85% of the buildings collapsed or were rendered unusable, all services failed, and most highway and railway bridges collapsed or were seriously damaged." An article in the Building Safety Journal described how, because the earthquake struck during the humid midsummer season, "survivors scrambled out into the open naked, covered only in dust and blood, to see the entire city levelled."

My grandparents lived through that earthquake, and I understand why no one ever talks about it. When I asked Grandma, she said my dad was turning one-month old that day. Having refused to sleep all night, he kept my grandparents awake just in time for the first tremors to be felt, for them to rush out before anyone else, for them to find safety - only to hear later news that Grandma's eldest sister did not survive.

Thirty-one years later, I was born. Before immigrating to Canada with my parents, I spent the first year of my life in Jinchuanyuan, a small countryside village on the outskirts of Tangshan, about a two-hour drive east of Beijing. Unless you live in one of the few apartment buildings that jut out of the farmlands to form the village's sparse skyline, you have no postal code - the mail is delivered to a single, rusted mailbox at the side of the road, a ten-minute drive on the dirt paths, through the cornfields and past the corner stores.

Apart from a single location pin on the map, Google knows little else of my home village. Tucked away in a cluster of villages surrounded by farmland, Jinchuanyuan remains a secret only the locals can tell. On a map, it's unclear where the village starts or ends. It resembles a poorly stitched patchwork quilt: dashed with forgotten railway tracks, intersected by gravel roads and rudely cut off by a transnational train line.

We stay at Grandma's every summer when we return to our village. There's no direct train or bus to Jinchuanyuan, so every year, landing at the Beijing International Airport, we are forced to be a little more patient before we are home. The sun always manages to be setting when we land, our first day already ending. Sunset spills onto our laps through the car window as we watch the horizon dip the cornfields in honeycomb gold.

Here, the telephone lines hang loosely in the distance, limp wires stretch out into the expanse and the air is always warm. Every morning, I wake up to a vendor hawking his wares in the distance. The chicken coop in the backyard is usually silent, its tin roof dotted with the morning dew, when I follow Grandma outside to the tingzi. Mellow incense permeates the air as she starts to steep tea. The tinkling trickle of water against her collection of tea pots and her steady singing voice are the only things I hear as I let the notes of chrysanthemums, goji berries and red dates stray into the dream of these mornings.

In the evenings, the cicadas chirp loudly as Grandma passes out her handmade straw fans. She nags me to spray pungent herbal insect repellent to relieve the phantom itch of my mosquito bites. The air cools enough for everyone to gather near the koi pond outside for tea. Soon, my cousins will join us, and we will take our bicycles out from the shed my aunt built for us years ago, and we will ride our bikes in the falling dusk as we race each other through the empty dirt roads. Our voices will echo far into the cornfields as we avoid the bumps and craters we have known all summer. For now, I sat with a plate of sugar-sprinkled tomatoes in my lap while Grandma grew misty-eyed and repeated the same stories from when I was one, the last time we really lived together, about how I stuck stickers onto her bedroom door or about my very first art piece, a plastic pink flower still taped to her thermos.

On our last day, everyone gathers around our car as we finish loading the last of the suitcases, backpacks and plastic bags of steamed corn picked for our flight out. Grandma hands me a thermos through the car window filled with the tea we were too rushed to have this morning. I want to ask her about her stiff leg. I want to ask her to tell me about my great-aunt again. I want to ask her if she will feel well enough to take the two-hour drive and see us to the airport.

But instead, I sit in silence.

As the car reaches the single rusted mailbox, the scent of chrysanthemum, goji berries and red dates fills the back seat. The morning sun follows us through the tinted car window, its light spilling onto our laps as we gaze into the distance and take a last look at the fields.

Angel Wang is a freshman from Vancouver, Canada studying Writing Seminars. In her column, she writes about the people, places and passages that help make sense of what's in her mind.