Unlike traditional organ transplants, Brandacher explained that reconstructive transplantation is centered on restoring quality of life for patients rather than life-saving interventions.

"Reconstructive transplants are different from solid organ transplants, because the main goal of this field is not to necessarily save the patient's life, but to significantly improve the quality of life for patients with amputations or with devastating tissue defects that cannot be reconstructed with any conventional means of reconstructive surgery," Brandacher said.

Despite its potential, reconstructive transplantation presents a variety of challenges, particularly in its technical complexity and the demands of donor-recipient matching.

"There's a lot of points that make them challenging because they're so significantly different," Brandacher said. "Some of the vessels we are trying to reconnect can be very small, [thus requiring] microsurgical techniques."

Brandacher contrasted this with procedures such as kidney transplants, which involve relatively few connections.

"For kidney transplants, you have one artery, one vein, and a ureter and [these are] all the connections you need to make," Brandacher explained. "If you do an arm transplant, you need to reconnect the bones, vessels, multiple arteries, multiple veins… tendons, muscle groups and nerve components."

In addition to surgical complexity, reconstructive transplants require more detailed matching between the donor and recipient. Along with blood type and immunological compatibility, these procedures must also account for visible and functional characteristics.

"You need to take into consideration size, to some extent, age, eventually, gender, skin tone," Brandacher emphasizes. "All of these become matching criteria, which are not only important for cosmetics, but size, for example, needs to match, so that your remaining muscles are able to power that graft."

In addition to these challenges, perhaps the most significant limitation in transplantation is the narrow window of time that is available to preserve the grafts and organs.

"Time is of the essence in transplant," Brandacher said. "The moment you disconnect blood supply, oxygen and nutrients, there's a decline in tissue metabolism and injury that happens to the graft."

Brandacher explained that transplant teams only have a few hours to complete several critical steps, including organ allocation, transportation, and donor-recipient matching. The narrow time window can make even ideal matches unusable. For instance, transporting grafts or organs from the West Coast to the East Coast would take too long to be viable. The time constraint also limits opportunities to better prepare patients in advance, such as pre-treating or conditioning the immune system to prevent an unwanted organ rejection.

"So all of those treatments take time, which we don't have," Brandacher stated. "It's actually a fairly sobering thought that in solid organ transplant, we are actually discarding about a quarter of all perfectly good kidney transplants because we simply don't have enough time to allocate and match them."

To address this limitation, Brandacher's team is developing new strategies to extend preservation time. One approach focuses on maintaining the organs in a replicated physiological state outside the body by using perfusion machines.

"It's kind of like a bioreactor. You perfuse the organ or the graft with oxygenated donor blood, and you add nutrients. You can monitor it. There is pressure [and flow control. You can have a circulation outside of the body that you can oxygenate," Brandacher explains.

A second approach focuses on cooling the tissue enough to stop metabolism. However, traditional freezing methods can damage the organ or graft due to ice crystal formation. In order to overcome this barrier, Brandacher and his team have drawn inspiration from nature. Brandacher highlights that certain animals such as Arctic fish and ground squirrels are able to hibernate and survive in areas with freezing temperatures without the formation of ice in their bodies.

"The reason they are able to do so is because they have specific anti-freeze proteins in their system," Brandacher said. "We were able to reverse engineer these naturally occurring anti-freeze proteins and create a new organ perfusion solution."

Brandacher argues that addressing these time constraints could transform transplantation procedures.

"It will lead to a paradigm shift," he said. "Every aspect of transplant will be impacted by this, the most simple one is that logistics won't be a problem anymore. We could think about sharing organs across the entire country, or even beyond."

As advances in organ preservation, immune modulation and regenerative medicine continue to develop, Brandacher believes that reconstructive transplantation is on the cusp of becoming more accessible and effective for patients.

"I think it's the most exciting time to be in medicine, and it offers so many opportunities that it feels like time might be too short, actually, to get all the ideas that come to mind done in one's career," Brandacher said.

This past spring break, I was lucky enough to travel to Hawaii with my lovely roommates, two of my favorite people. At the bag check line on our way out of The Big Island, standing beneath massive wooden ceiling fans that did next to nothing against the humid evening, one of my friends said to me, "I get it. I get what you've been trying to get me to do this whole time." She said she'd brought her laptop to try and squeeze some work in, and every time she asked me when I'd do the same, I'd said some variation of wanting to forget it all and stay in the moment. Allegedly, I'd been trying to get her to be present - truth be told, I'd been giving my honest answer.

I'd spent much of the trip slowly trying to dip into the present, only really getting there toward the end. But this got me thinking about presence: whether it's a conscious act or a state of being, whether you train into it or enter the moment only when you let everything else go. "We're so present!" we'd joked, sweating into the tropical night, enjoying our last cool breezes before the hours of airplane air that awaited us. Then, as we inched forward toward the bag scanners, she said it was gone. She'd had a minute of presence before the upcoming flight and everything that waited beyond it crept back in.

Presence is such an elusive thing. It should be there under any circumstance, except we know that it isn't. There are always stretches of time where we can't recount what we did, much less what we were thinking. When you enter the hot sun, you feel it warm against your skin. The longer you stay there, or even the more times you enter, you notice this less. Give it an hour or a week or more and you're tanned or burnt before you know it. Habituation is helpful because it means we don't have to think about every little thing, but what happens with that freed mental space, I'd argue, falls back into habit. Rather than constantly taking in our surroundings, once we've absorbed enough to orient ourselves, we step back into our resting thoughts - these might be task-oriented or time-dependent, they might stretch into the past or future. What then becomes of the present?

My other roommate is taking a Jazz History class. Inspired by this, and as a result of us accompanying her to her mandatory live jazz nights out in Baltimore (oh, poor us!), I've started listening to jazz. I love Erroll Garner's "Misty." Coming off a streak of A$AP Rocky and Tyler the Creator, this slow, lilting piano felt wondrously sparse. I adored how some notes fell just barely into place, the way Garner let phrases hang suspended, as though in hesitation or in thought. Even though he must've run through this song dozens of times, each version keeps this feeling of path-finding. It dug into my brain like an ear worm. I noticed that whenever I listened to that space before a note fell, my mind would clear in anticipation. I'd feel my weight against a chair or my feet on the ground. I'd become suddenly embodied, experiencing the feeling of being a person within space.

I think, ironically, that I've been better at presence in the past. Growing up, I was acutely afraid of death and hyperfixated on playing an active role in molding myself into the person I wanted to become. In the interim, I think I've focused so hard on shaking this fear of dying that I forgot to also prepare myself for a life I wanted to live.

I'm past the ages that I thought I'd see and I've been wrestling my mind out of the idea that this is all some limbo of bought time. So I've been trying to sink into the present. I think I had it right as a child: the present moment is always as young as we're going to be, and so, it is the best time to build out the life that we would choose to live. Sinking into the present lets us rewire these habits that have built out our lives, which becomes more important with the more life we've lived. Rather than coasting along, finding this slippery moment-by-moment feeling of being alive and human cuts through the heuristics - back into sense, into feeling and into living, actively and not by default. It's ridiculous, but perhaps all the more worthwhile, that this is all so hard.

Some of my favorite moments from this past trip have been the times where I've felt the most embodied. Sitting on a picnic bench at the top of a scenic lookout point 2,000 feet above sea level, listening to the distant crash of waves and to cicadas waking, where there was nothing but breath and being. There, we were small, unlikely humans on top of a mountain, facing an increasingly blurred horizon of sky and ocean, and that was all we had to be. Down by fierce waves the next day, we studied crabs scuttling about volcanic rocks, listened for the thunderous rumble of particularly strong waves and watched them crash. And maybe that's all there is to it: listening for our own waves, watching as they crash.

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 your brother vanishes under mysterious circumstances on a Vancouver island, you make a film about it. This is the premise of the docudrama Hunting Matthew Nichols, with one wrench thrown into it: a new piece of evidence enters the investigation - one that suggests, after all this time, the brother may still be alive. Even just reading the summary of this film, I feel myself creeping closer to the edge of my seat.

No one knows better than our chronically online generation the phenomenon of people like Natalie Heller Mills: the "tradwife" influencer with a cowboy husband, six children and all the work being done for her off camera. The industrial kitchen and nannies never make it to Natalie's social media. When she finds herself transported back in time to the 19th century, however, how will she handle the same issues she convinced millions of people online that she was already handling every day? Will it be as rewarding when no one is watching and constantly gratifying her? These are the questions you will only answer by reading Yesteryear.

Ella Langley is an artist whose name I had only heard when I discovered she's releasing Dandelion soon. That being true, after hearing some of her chart-topping and most popular country songs, it's clear she's someone I should keep an eye on, so I'm here to tell you what I wish I knew sooner: watch out for Ella Langley, beginning with this release.

Jonathan Franzen is your dad's favorite author - or, at least, he's my dad's favorite author. A massively accomplished writer and intergenerational talent, Franzen is finding his way to Homewood this April to be a part of the President's Reading Series. When lightning this brilliant strikes campus, anyone would be a fool to not drop anything to witness it. As the saying goes, it can be guaranteed to not happen again.

To watch…

• Hunting Matthew Nichols, directed by Markian Tarasiuk - April 10
• Bunnylovr, directed by Katarina Zhu - April 10
• Hamlet, directed by Aneil Karia - April 10
• Newborn, directed by Nate Parker - April 10
• You, Me, & Tuscany, directed by Kat Coiro - April 10

To read…

• Yesteryear, written by Caro Claire Burke - April 7
• Hexes of the Deadwood Forest, written by Agnieszka Szpila, trans. Scotia Gilroy - April 7
• The Infinite Sadness of Small Appliances, written by Glenn Dixon - April 7
• This Land Is Your Land: A Road Trip Through U.S. History, written by Beverly Gage - April 7
• Transcription, written by Ben Lerner - April 7

To listen…

• Dandelion, by Ella Langley - April 10
• Cruel World, by Holly Humberstone - April 10
• Honeymoon Forever, by The Covasettes - April 10
• Nowhere, At Last, by Broadside - April 10
• Squish, by Gretel - April 10

Live events…

• President's Reading Series presents Jonathan Franzen - April 8, 6-8 p.m. in Room 26, Mudd Hall
  • This event is free.
• The Workers of Evergreen - April 9, 6-7 p.m. at Evergreen Museum & Library
  • Ticket prices vary. Registration is required.
• 6th Annual Donald Bentley Memorial Lecture | The Freedom Bell: Celebrating the Life of Frances Harper - April 9, 6-9 p.m.
  • This event is free with registration.
• Lunch with the Libraries & Museums | Early Marylandia: Historic Documents from the Founding of the Old Line State - April 10, 12-1 p.m. online
  • This event is free with registration.

Preface

Letters Without Limits, founded by students at Johns Hopkins and Brown University, connects volunteers with palliative care and hospice patients to co-create "Legacy Letters." These letters capture memories, values and lessons that patients wish to share, preserving stories that might otherwise be lost. By honoring these voices and preserving legacies, Letters Without Limits hopes to affirm the central role of humanism in medicine, reminding us that every patient is more than their illness and that their voices deserve to be heard. As you read these powerful Legacy Letters, we invite you to pause, reflect and recognize the beauty in every life.

Interviewer's Note

It was a pleasure speaking to Mrs. Henry. She has a unique message to tell, because she wanted to teach the world about some of the harder parts of the past, not just the good. When you think about it, we really have come a long way. Even when times seem hard now, her message gives me hope for a better future.

Times Have Changed, Thank the Lord

Today is a lot different from what it was when I was brought up. You had to come home from school and get a shovel and go down to the cellar and get coal, bring it upstairs. Take it in the dining room. That's where this little pot stove was, and that coal would keep the rest of the house warm.

When you washed the clothes, you did it with your hands. There was no machine. We had two big tubs. One for washing clothes, one for rinsing. After you washed them, you put them in the second tub that had bluing in it, and you rinsed the clothes with that. Then you'd take them out in the yard and hang them on the clothesline to dry.

If it was raining, you had a clothesline down in the cellar and you'd hang them up there, away from the coal bin. The next day, you'd take them off the line and use the iron, and you didn't have no plug-in iron. You used the coal bin iron on the clothes.

Moving with the Army

My husband was in the army, and that's where I was, wherever my husband was stationed. My son was born in Stuttgart, Germany. My children were born in different states. Things were different because the U.S. Army had their own facilities where you had to take the clothes to wash and dry, and it was not in your backyard.

We met at a dance. I went to a dance one Thursday night, and he chose me as his partner. We danced for the rest of the evening, and then I gave him my telephone number. I didn't give my address because my parents didn't approve at that time. So I gave him my aunt's address, which was five blocks away. And if he would come there, I'd be sitting on the steps waiting, 'cause I'd tell him just what time to come.

Work Life

When I graduated from senior high school and got a job, that's when I thought I was somebody, and I had a job, and I had money. I worked at Woolworth's, five- and ten-cents store, packing bags and working as a cashier.

But I had to bring my money home and give it to my grandmother. And then when I needed something, she would give me what I needed. Today, these kids can go ahead and get a job and start spending and keep the money in their pocket.

Later, I enjoyed being able to be in charge of young children. I taught the young children along with the teacher as a teacher's assistant. Whatever was needed, I was able to supply. So it was a good job, and the children would benefit because they learned to listen and follow directions.

I liked that the children had to listen to me. I was in charge. And if I said, "We're all lining up and we're all going outside for exercise for an hour," then I'd line the children up and we'd go out in the yard. It was a yard at the school. I would go out there and we'd play hopscotch and whatever game they wanted to play.

When I became of age and got married, I had young children that listened to me, and I'd tell them what had to be done, and they'd follow directions.

A Hard Time, But an Enjoyable Time

My grandmother told me: "Never, never think that you're above somebody. And if something has to be done, and they want you to do such and such, don't think you're above it. Help to make it easy on the person."

To my children: It was a hard time, but it was an enjoyable time. They didn't have all the benefits that they have today. They can go into their bedroom and pull a skirt or blouse and put it on and select what they want to wear. When I was growing up, it wasn't that way. You had a few clothes, and whatever you had, your mother said, "You wear a blue skirt today and a white blouse." It wasn't that you could choose.

Everything was done at home. You had to take the shoes to the shoemaker to get them shined, or you bought shoe polish and you'd take an old cloth and buff the shoe and get it nice and shiny. Today you can drop them off.

We had a dining room table, and we'd put the dishes all around. The salt, the vinegar and whatever else on the table, and mother would call, "Dinner's ready," and everybody came in and sat down together. Everybody enjoyed the meals together. After everybody finished eating, on certain days, you had to clean the table off and wash and dry and put the dishes up on the shelf where they belonged, and then sweep the floor.

But after dinner, we'd go in the living room and sit down and play Old Maid and all the different card games. Saturday was family day. We'd all get together. If we wanted to go somewhere, we'd all go together.

We had cookies and ginger ale or soda. My grandfather made the soda himself down in the cellar, and mama would bring some of the soda up Saturday afternoon so it'd be cold when we were ready to drink it.

Dancing

Wednesday nights, we'd go dancing at the school gymnasium. They had a record player, and I think it was like 25 cents for the record player. Everyone would dance and have a good time. No fighting, no arguing, nothing. Everybody got along with one another and enjoyed the evening.

And the boy would walk the girl to her front door. He wouldn't go in. He'd stop at the front door. And then she didn't have a key; she had to ring the bell. And her mother came to the door and saw that boy, and she said, "Good night," and that was the end of it.

Today, a girl meets a boy and introduces him to her mother and father. But they might go out Saturday afternoon, and the mother says, "Well, I'll think about it. Come back by Friday, and I'll tell you." It was slower then. Today, you don't have to think about nothing. If you want to go, you go.

My Message to You

I want to let my children and everyone who reads this know that it is much easier living today than it was years ago. You think you got it made, but you should have been living years ago and endured the activities that we went through when we were growing up. It's much better now.

Today, everything is right in your own house. You don't have to take clothes out anywhere. I can wash the clothes in the washing machine, then put the clothes in the dryer, and I put them in the closet. And when the clothes are dry, I bring them in.

You can go to the supermarket and buy what you want, come home and just put it in the microwave. I don't have to go through all that preparation, not today.

Be grateful that your parents have a little money and that you can take things to the laundry and the shoemaker and places where they have to go and pay to have someone else do the work, and you just pay them and come back and pick them up.

I want you to be grateful. Appreciate the nice things that you do have. Thank God that times have changed. I'm happy that they have changed. Today, you have freedom. Sometimes change is good.

Finally, thank the Lord that you're still alive and that you have it so much easier than we did. Times are different. Altogether different.

Letters Without Limits is a student-led initiative founded at Johns Hopkins and Brown University that partners with palliative care and hospice patients to create "Legacy Letters," autobiographical narratives capturing memories, values and lessons patients wish to share. Their primary goal is to spread these stories so that every patient's voice is heard. Follow them on Instagram @letterswithoutlimits and read more Legacy Letters on their website.

Insurance hassles

One of the biggest flaws in the current form of the World Baseball Classic is the role that injury insurance plays. Major League Baseball teams have made huge investments to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars in the contracts of their players and, therefore, require their players to receive insurance before competing in the WBC. However, this creates issues for older and injury-prone players. For example, in the 2026 WBC, the United States' former captain Mike Trout was unable to get insurance, along with the two best players on the Puerto Rican national team, infielders Carlos Correa and Francisco Lindor. This led to rosters lacking key pieces, which greatly diminished the perceived importance of the event.

Player buy-In

This was the biggest success of the tournament. The players played at full speed, and the competitive energy was through the roof. There was no doubt that every team played to the height of their abilities. The players were emotional, and for Venezuela, it was clear that their win was a huge point of pride for their country. Since they lost, it is easy to say that the United States did not have the same buy-in as the other countries, but it is worth noting that Mark DeRosa, the United States manager, specifically held back relievers to respect the wishes of their MLB teams, while Venezuela did everything they could to win. It is impossible to know what the result would have been if the United States had used its high-leverage relievers on short rest, but in order for the WBC to gain traction in the United States, there needs to be full buy-in from players and MLB teams alike.

Not before the season

Perhaps the biggest flaw in the tournament is that it happens at the same time as Spring Training. This means that the players -and, most importantly, the pitchers - are not built up enough to perform at the best of their abilities. The creators of the WBC know this and set pitch counts for each round of the tournament. This is a huge flaw as it fundamentally changes how the game is played. A huge part of baseball is the ability for a pitcher to dominate a team for the majority of, if not the entire game, leading his team to victory. With the imposed pitch count limits, which were as low as 65 in the opening rounds of the tournament, it is not possible for a singular pitcher to have a profound impact on the game. This leads to teams with more pitching depth having a large advantage. The obvious solution to this problem is to move the tournament to the all-star break. This would complicate things, as the All-Star Game is an MLB tradition that has existed for nearly a century. However, the World Baseball Classic final had 4 million more viewers than last year's All-Star Game, so there is at least an argument to be made that the WBC could draw more attention to the sport.

Karikó is a Hungarian-American biochemist and the 2023 winner of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with American immunologist Drew Weissman for their contributions to the mRNA vaccine against COVID-19. Karikó began her research career in the University of Szeged before being terminated in 1985, after which she was forced to continue her research at Temple University in Pennsylvania. As the video describes, Karikó arrived in the U.S. with only $1,200 in cash sewn into her daughter's teddy bear. Karikó later transferred to the University of Pennsylvania following a hostile experience with a lab supervisor. Amidst grant rejections, a breast cancer diagnosis and a position demotion, Karikó continued her research in mRNA therapy until the full development of a modern mRNA vaccine, which was licensed to BioNTech and utilized during the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic.

On Wednesday, April 8, the University formally announced the rationale behind selecting Karikó as the commencement speaker in a Hub article. President Ronald J. Daniels, for example, explains how Karikó's commitment to her mRNA research reflects institutional values.

"Katalin's decades-long pursuit of understanding mRNA and its promise-sustained in the face of countless obstacles and scientific consensus-is a stirring example of the power of basic research and its potential to improve and save the lives of millions of people. As we celebrate our 150th anniversary as America's first research university, Katalin's story is a powerful reminder of how perseverance, vision, and curiosity can change the world," Daniels wrote.

Karikó's selection has sparked mostly positive reactions among students. In an email to The News-Letter, senior Gabrielle Chavez reacted to Karikó's selection and her accomplishments.

"I'm very shocked that it was leaked. It's very exciting to be able to hear from someone who helped develop a solution to a problem that affected so many people worldwide," Chavez added.

In an email to The News-Letter, Alisa Fedotova, a graduating senior, also expressed her excitement at the selection, wondering the exact extent of her story that will be shared at commencement.

"I think [Karikó will be] a great speaker. I want to see if she talks about how they discredited her at the University of Pennsylvania," Fedotova explained.

Fedotova is referring to Karikó's status as a researcher at the University of Pennsylvania, where she struggled to obtain grant money for her research and was demoted, as per institutional policy, after five years in the position during the late 1990s. Even after the development of the technology behind the mRNA vaccine, the University of Pennsylvania overlooked Karikó's work.

Today, Karikó works as a professor at the University of Szeged and an adjunct professor at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania.

The 2026 University-wide commencement will take place on Thursday, May 21, where Karikó will receive the degree of Doctor of Humane Letters.

Buse Koldas and Grace Oh contributed to the reporting of this article.

This article was updated on April 8 to reflect the University's formal announcement.

In Foundations of Brain, Behavior and Cognition (FBBC), I learned about the idea of a place cell. There is this group of neurons in the hippocampus that represent location in the mind: perhaps some may fire -and therefore represent - a specific study space, while another group might fire and help us recognize the corner of the cafeteria we're sitting in. As with the rest of the brain, these place cells are intricately connected with other neurons that compute other things, such as sensory processing or word recognition.

I wonder what place cells fire when I think of "home."

During orientation, I remember how my heart sank when my First-Year Mentor talked about going "home" to her apartment. The mere utterance of the word evoked images of high school bonfires at Huntington Beach, family outings to LA's museums and far too many nights spent at Seaside Bakery (guess where I'm from). There were so many other freshmen that I knew who missed home, across the country and the world.

These feelings soon abated as the semester picked up. I swore that I became busy to the point that there was no time to indulge in nostalgia and recall home. And whenever I saw my roommates out in the wild, I said I looked forward to seeing them "back home." I knew my brain had rewired because of the image of home in my mind's eye: a cozy (dare I say cramped) triple with just enough room to study, live and sleep. This was all perfectly fine until I truly came back home for winter break. I remember telling my parents how excited I was to bring new clothes "home." To wear at Hopkins, I meant. Their smiles seemed less full.

As someone that has lived in the same place their entire life, it was shocking to see the images that "home" now evoked. I saw two conflicting images with every mention. I felt as if my neurons were fighting and changing with every thought. Would I find myself longing for the Maryland snow more often while laying on the beach? Are these feelings the result of missing my family and old friends in Garden Grove, or waiting for a chance to connect with new mentors and supportive classmates?

And I know I wasn't alone in this thinking: some of my friends traveled across the world over the past year. Perhaps they found Philadelphia more of a home than anywhere else during Intersession; perhaps they traveled across the world and found a country more aligned to their idea of home. As cheesy as it sounds, the one thing that unified these "homemaking" stories was the bond they formed with others. Coming to Hopkins challenges the idea that home is a fixed place; instead, it's something that we build through community and by creating a sense of belonging. There are many places and spaces that build upon our backgrounds (cultural clubs, hobby groups and the like) and therefore offer familiarity in this new environment. As someone not familiar with the East Coast, being at Hopkins has been a blessing to explore somewhere so homely yet so far from home.

And as my brain matures and these synaptic connections grow and change, I am excited to find new places where I fit in - to find new people and discover new places where I belong. I can only hope that everyone grounded for most of their lives can find that same peace: the courage to venture out and discover new concepts of home.

Andrew Huynh is a freshman from Garden Grove, Calif. majoring in Neuroscience. His column, "Ad Astra," captures his reflections on modern life and Hopkins as he navigates his transition into adulthood.

19 is such a "middle child." You're past that initial excitement you had at 18 of technically being an adult, but you're also still mentally a teen because your age doesn't start with a 2. Yes, I'm turning 20 in about three months, and it feels very strange, but let this piece be something I can look back on years into the future.

19 is an age full of expectations. Most of these expectations are, frankly, set by ourselves: Do I need a wardrobe upgrade? Do I need to work part-time? Do I need to make more friends than my close circle? Do I need to spend more time with my family, eat better, sleep earlier, be more productive? Do I need to put my grades as my top priority, or should I prioritize the kind of college memories everyone says I'll miss once it's over?

19 is an age full of exploration, not always the aesthetic kind people post about. I used to be someone who meticulously planned out a trip months in advance - down to each minute. Well, I still do the research part, but the timeline gets shortened drastically. Did I decide two days ago to go on a Toronto + China + South Korea spring break adventure? Yes, and that decision felt both impulsive and strangely healthy. I'm starting to realize that not everything needs to be perfectly outlined and executed, and not every getaway needs a reason. It's fun to live in spontaneous bursts of energy as long as they bring me happiness and positivity, which is very unlike my character to admit. Along the way, I've grown so much as a person, and that means so much to me and motivates me to accept new challenges.

19 is an age full of conflicting streams of consciousness. I find myself making decisions all the time - some feel life-defining for an unknown reason. I don't know whether they are good decisions, and I don't try to define them with those labels. Perhaps I'm not the type of person to be full of regret or remorse, or maybe I'm just tired of pretending I can predict the future.

Before college, I thought I was sure of my career direction: going to medical school and working in a big hospital. It started to wander once I learned more and knew more and met more people. College, especially sophomore year, brought so many possibilities for me, many of which I'd never heard of prior. I'm still constantly debating and churning and battling inside my head. I've thought about my values and beliefs and what my future workplace should have to fulfill my life and vice versa. These questions never come with a clear answer. So I've accepted the fact that careers can always change. I want to look at my future with an open mindset, go with the flow a little bit and slowly take control of the flow myself. It is very difficult to predict where I'll end up, who I'll be spending a lot of time with, what I'll be doing on a day-to-day basis, but that's okay! I don't need everything figured out right now.

19 has also made me more aware of my emotions and how I want them to steer my life. Not necessarily in a dramatic heartbreak way (though maybe a little), but in the sense that I'm learning what it feels like to outgrow things: people, expectations, comparisons. Some changes are exciting; some feel like a train wreck. A lot of them are both at the same time.

This might sound funny, but 19 feels like I'm simultaneously running out of time and also having too much time. I want to do everything all at once, trying to fulfill the dreams I had in high school when I thought this was what adulthood should look like. The idealized version of my future has not left my mind (and probably won't for a few years): an apartment in a high-rise in New York City with glass floor-to-ceiling windows. Lots and lots of natural light, a beautiful fluffy puppy, a book room. A coffee from Blank Street in the morning, a 9-5 corporate job, a pilates session and a cocktail at night. Photos and photos and a few close friends, day and night feeling completely different. But wait, that's under the assumption that I would no longer be in school. I can always go to more school, or I can step into society and get a real job. I can move somewhere unexpected, or I can stay closer to home. I want the "right" choice to be the one I make and commit to, rather than the one I perfectly calculate.

19 isn't a big milestone or a beginning. I spend a lot of it living in my thoughts and reflections. If I could tell my future self one thing, it would be that you didn't need to have it all figured out at 19. Just keep moving, keep noticing what makes you feel alive and keep prioritizing your happiness.

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've been wanting to write an article for my mom, but never know where to start. An anecdote would be reductionist. A compliment would feel flattening. Any rendering would be static - and maybe that's at the heart of it, that writing commits something to paper and necessarily asks us to draw pieces together into a neat picture. But people are not neat pictures, least of all those we know well.

Let's start small: my mom is a whole lot of fun. At the beach this past summer, she was the one who would turn to me every sunset without fail, when the sky was a migration of cawing bats, and ask, Happy hour? It wasn't really a question.

Who raises their child on Madonna and the Black Eyed Peas, Bruno Mars and Tears for Fears instead of "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star?" I ask this sometimes, and then remember the boxes of postcards of animal body art in the drawers of my grandfather's study (leftovers from a joint exhibition with a body painter from the Netherlands) and I think - ah, a child of that household would. At her high school, she dressed up as Boy George and did the Karma Chameleon dance on stage in front of the whole school - allegedly, a hit.

The other month, I called her and asked what she'd been up to. My mother was casually bar hopping with her friends in Hong Kong long past midnight. That same evening, I'd attended a 6 p.m. poetry reading at Gilman and was promptly in my pajamas with a cup of tea ready for a quick meditation before 8 p.m.

I came home after my first semester at college worried about how things would be to find that my mom had only become more fit and flexible with near daily yoga classes. She had also found Jungle and L'Imperatice, and was ecstatic to learn that I could indeed hook her French soul-funk up to my Bluetooth speaker. Her absolute anthem two summers ago was Chappell Roan's "Pink Pony Club," another classic to her long list of iconic summer faves, including Shaggy's quintessential "It Wasn't Me."

How lucky I've been that my mother cares more than nearly anyone I know about being a good mother. She was the person my entire K-12 knew on sight, and by banana bread recipe, because she showed up. She was there so often and formed such close bonds with my classmates that new teachers would think numerous of us were her children and not just me.

She read to me every night until I could hold a book on my own. I remember a version of Cinderella, where, drowsy toward the middle of it, her desperate, sleep-addled mind ad-libbed her way out of finishing the story with, "They got into the carriage… and then they all died!" She startled awake to the sound of my laughter and swore she didn't remember saying anything odd. Do I have this to blame for my morbid sense of humor?

When I was a baby, she said I'd cry when she put me down - and so she didn't. Not until I was fast asleep, and if I woke, she'd pick me right back up. She said this like it was simple and easy. Like there'd been only one option.

My mom has always been a friend. She's been the one to trust in my instincts, even and especially when I don't. I've wanted to be a writer since I can remember, but skirted around it for the stability of other careers - from research to law to journalism. I've bounced around with what I want to do with my gap year, and my life. After lengthy negotiations with myself, I arrived back at the realization that all I want to do is write. And I felt immediately guilty. What if it didn't work? What if I dragged us down a path I couldn't dig us out from? None of this, it seemed, mattered to my mom, whose response to my shame-ridden declaration that I wanted to spend my gap year writing a novel was: It's about time.

What I admire the most in my mother is the way she trusts people and holds hope. What a great ability. What immense strength it must take. Whenever I spend time with her, I'm reminded of how unserious life is, how little anything big really is and how much present feeling matters. Perhaps one of the biggest lessons I've learned from her is to walk away from anything that doesn't align with my joy. Another is how that better version of myself, however idealized or far-fetched she may seem, is always worth fighting for.

What I love is how I can hear "Everybody Wants to Rule the World" out in a mall a thousand miles away and feel suddenly at home. How I can spend hours lost in a museum and always find it worthwhile to stop for live music. How I can find myself up against a wall and know that I don't have to face it alone, how I can be whoever I want and know that I will be loved. Thank you, mom, for these many shades of joy. Mahal kita.

​​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.

The panel featured Dr. Terry Jodrie, emergency medicine physician and assistant professor of emergency medicine at George Washington University, and Dr. Yipeng Ge, primary care physician and public health practitioner based in Ottawa, Canada. Jodrie completed two deployments, the first from February to March 2024 and the second from April to May 2024, where he worked at a trauma stabilization point in Khan Yunis. During his visit in February 2024, Yipeng worked in multiple primary care clinics in central Rafah. Together, their firsthand medical testimony offered insight into the realities of conflict, civilian suffering and challenges of delivering care under extreme conditions.

Jodrie was the first to share his experience, and he began by presenting slides to showcase the Gaza Strip geographically. One of his first slides included a side-by-side comparison of the Gaza Strip in 2022 and 2024 to highlight the transformation of Khan Yunis into a tent community as a result of displaced Palestinians from the north seeking refuge in the south, particularly around Khan Yunis. Jodrie also acknowledged the absence of public resources to manage waste, hygiene and sanitation in the Khan Yunis region, and specifically noted the location of the trauma stabilization point on a soccer pitch.

"We had two critical care tents and one more," Jodrie said. "Our configuration was such that we had five resuscitation beds and four general care beds, and we were embedded with the Palestinian Red Crescent Society. Our team consisted of two physicians, a German and myself, two nurses, a Bosnian and a Brit, and two paramedics who were both Brits. The Palestine cohort was all Palestinian, typically two doctors and a smattering of nurses."

Jodrie also presented pictures that provided a glimpse of the life inside the trauma stabilizing unit. He explained that, although it appeared chaotic, there was no chaos; rather, it was organized trauma. From his experience stabilizing trauma patients in Afghanistan and Iraq, Jodrie revealed that there are certain cases that should be treated immediately, such as tension pneumothorax, a collapsing lung and cardiac tamponade, which is the accumulation of fluid around the heart. He used these examples to clarify the purpose of the trauma stabilizing point.

"It is not definitive care," Jodrie said. "We have found that within ten minutes from the point of injury, if you can be stabilized, then your chance of surviving when you get to more definitive care increases exponentially, and this is the way it works universally. Unfortunately, in Gaza, downstream resources were eliminated as they bombed hospitals. In our particular case, the closest hospital, closest tertiary hospital, was the Nasser hospital, [which was] again and again attacked. There were fortunately some field hospitals, these were hospitals that were built on tanks. These hospitals sort of took the place of the tertiary care hospital."

Due to the inaccessibility of hospital care, Jodrie emphasized that the main objective at the trauma stabilizing unit was to decompress the hospital, usually by performing lifesaving care. He added that the collapsing of the medical infrastructure does not affect trauma alone but detrimentally affects the management of other health conditions like diabetes.

Considering the most common injuries they observed, Jodrie mentioned that extremity injuries relative to the torso and head combined were incredibly common. He explained that this was the case because of a shooting technique called a double-tap.

"A double tap is a lethality measure," Jodrie said. "When you shoot, you shoot two in the chest and one in the hip. They see someone running down the street, looking suspicious, typically a young man [and then] double-tap. If they can't get him, he runs into a tent, and they fire indiscriminately into the tent, getting 15 to 20 patients at a time because of this maneuver."

Following Jodrie's presentation, Yipeng shared his clinical experience serving in Rafah, providing a more structural outlook at the crisis. Yipeng first addressed how he does not necessarily consider himself a humanitarian physician, as he came to learn about Palestine through his background in Indigenous rights and health work in the context of Turtle Island.

"I didn't have a choice of growing up in a settler colonial state like Canada," Yipeng said. "When I understand what happened and continues to happen to indigenous peoples on this land, I am bound to learn about what struggles against colonialism looks like in other parts of the world, including in Palestine."

Similarly to Jodrie's statement regarding the absence of resources, Yipeng also expressed the troublesome unavailability of supplies such as Tylenol and Advil, the basic forms of medicine to treat pain, as well as other antibiotics to treat common infections. Although they were personally able to bring some supplies, Yipeng stressed that it is not a viable solution.

"When I worked in these primary care clinics, we were able to use some of the supplies and medicines that we brought with us," Yipeng said. "[However], you know, the countless patients that kept coming in did not only need these medicines but they also needed nutritious food, clean water, decent shelter, and all of these things were systematically unavailable for the majority of patients."

One particular outcome of the lack of basic survival necessities he witnessed was malnutrition.

"I remember going to the WHO coordinating meetings, in the morning, where they would say we should screen for malnutrition with a measuring tape for an upper arm circumference," Yipeng said. "I didn't need an upper arm circumference measure to know that all these children that were coming through the clinic were severely malnourished, because they were skin and bones. I remember one patient who wasn't even walking anymore [and] had to be carried in by his mother or guardian that was with him."

Furthermore, Yipeng shared how he was diverted from the emergency department at the Nasser Medical Complex to primary care clinics in Central Rafah because the Israeli military had surrounded the Nasser site with tanks when he was in Rafah. He also attempted to return to Gaza in May 2024 but found that the clinics he had worked for no longer existed because the Israeli military had raided and destroyed them.

"Over that course of an invasion, they [the Israeli military] went into that hospital [at Nasser], killed patients, killed healthcare workers, detained healthcare workers and a couple hundred [healthcare workers] still remain in detention," he said. "We know of healthcare workers who've been killed in detention in these Israeli torture camps."

Yipeng stated that his reason for sharing these stories was to illustrate how systematic the destruction of not only the conditions necessary to sustain life were, but also the health care system itself. He shared another story where he explained the psychological impact of the crisis, especially on young Palestinian children.

"Young kids were just like running around playing [and then a] missile lands probably a few kilometers away," Yipeng said. "The building shakes, you hear the whistle of the missile strike [and] myself and the colleagues that I was with [felt like] 'okay, that's it.' Our hearts dropped, we went quiet and the kids didn't bat an eye. They kept playing it as if nothing had happened. This is what these kids have lived throughout all their lives. This does something to one's psyche."

Yipeng concluded his presentation by encouraging the audience to seek the voices of Palestinians directly, which an event coordinator mentioned as a limitation of this panel discussion.

"I am grateful that you're listening to me [and] doctors who've worked in Gaza, but there are voices you can listen to on a weekly basis that are [from] Palestinian healthcare workers based in Gaza," Yipeng said. "When I can I join a webinar hosted by Doctors against genocide. It happens every Sunday [and] we usually start the call by hearing healthcare updates from our health care worker colleagues in Gaza."

On the topic of Palestinian voices, the organizers of this event expressed the need for more events like this on the campus, especially ones that feature Palestinian voices directly. They hope to see that others across departments and schools will take it upon themselves to convene more discussions and ensure this dialogue continues.

While tragic, stories like this are unfortunately common. Maryland provides Medicaid beneficiaries access to care through managed care organizations (MCOs) or corporate middlemen who are supposed to "reduce Medicaid program costs and better manage utilization of health services." However, because they receive Medicaid funds upfront, they are incentivized to delay and deny care, using bureaucratic hurdles such as prior authorizations to generate profits. Recently, they have even begun using automated systems to deny cases en masse without ever opening these requests. Yet, when patients or clinicians appeal, and a human reviews the case, the denial is reversed over half the time, indicating that it was wrongly issued. This administrative red tape not only harms patients but also leads to clinicians leaving the Medicaid program, limiting beneficiaries' choice in doctors. Additionally, Medicaid MCOs, ironically marketed as "HealthChoice," already restrict beneficiaries' options with narrow provider networks.

And yet, for all its trouble, Medicaid managed care is not even delivering its promised cost savings. Instead, these profit-seeking MCOs keep roughly 13 cents of every taxpayer-funded Medicaid dollar they receive, while beneficiaries see their cost-sharing and bills go up. Medicaid does not need to be administered this way. Transitioning to a single, state-run program using a fee-for-service model (in which the state pays clinicians directly for their services) would actually reduce costs to an estimated maximum of 4 to 6 cents in administrative overhead on the dollar. And Maryland would not be the first state to make this shift.

After it eliminated MCOs from its Medicaid system in 2012, Connecticut's overhead costs have declined to 3.8%, with reports estimating overall savings of over $4 billion in the 13 years following implementation. Doing away with MCOs' administrative waste and profit was not the only source of these savings. Rather, the resulting improvements in primary care delivery and care coordination had profound impacts. Removing MCOs led to increased physician participation in Medicaid, providing Medicaid patients with better access to primary care and preventative services. Consequently, ER visits and hospitalizations, some of the most expensive health care services, declined, since patients were being seen and treated before their conditions became critical.

The future of Maryland's health and of our state budget can benefit greatly by following Connecticut's lead. With 1.5 million Marylanders covered by Medicaid, and 85% of those individuals enrolled in one of the state's nine MCOs, it is estimated that a shift to a unified Medicaid program could save Maryland taxpayers up to $521 million annually. All while preventing patients like ours from experiencing disastrous delays in care.

Maryland is facing a Medicaid crisis following the 2025 Budget Reconciliation Act which will reduce federal Medicaid funding by $1 trillion nationwide over the next 10 years. However, a bill currently advancing in the state House of Delegates, HB1112, requires the Maryland Health Insurance Coverage Protection Commission to formally investigate how removing MCOs and adopting a fee-for-service model for Medicaid can help the state respond to these impending funding cuts. Passing this bill can serve to protect Medicaid enrollees, reduce physician burnout, increase Medicaid utilization and improve the health and finances of our state. As a Marylander, make your voice heard by calling or emailing your state delegates to share your story and support for HB1112.

Hope Zamora, Rohan Jaiswal, and Amanda Andriessen are medical students at The Johns Hopkins School of Medicine.

What is What2Do?

At its core, What2Do is meant to ease boredom amongst the students. Through a centralized event feed and real-time updates, the group simplifies how students at Hopkins discover what's happening around them. Additionally, the platform encourages users to both attend and create events within their own community.

"So basically, What2Do is a platform that we're trying to make to give people live events happening around campus and, eventually, we're going to branch out in a way that's like TikTok style - like a feed of events just like the same way that you scroll through any other platform [that] you're used to," Tabrizi explained. "We're basically eliminating the question of 'What should I do today?' Instead of having to search or dig through different sources, [we can have] everything presented in one feed."

This approach prioritizes convenience and accessibility, mirroring the design of platforms that students are already familiar with. By adopting a familiar scrolling interface, the app lowers the barrier to entry for new users.

The team's goal is to streamline event discovery into one seamless experience. Ultimately, the app is designed to make social planning effortless. In doing so, What2Do aims to increase participation in campus life.

"What2Do is a real-time platform that helps people discover and create nearby events, solving the common issue of not knowing what to do, from pickup sports to book clubs and networking events," Raissi elaborated.

When asked why What2Do has decided to devote heavy efforts toward social media promotion, the team emphasized visibility as a key factor in early growth. The founders explained that consistent posting assists in building their credibility, highlighting how short-form content drives engagement.

"Social media is where people already spend their time - on Instagram, TikTok, even LinkedIn - so it's the best place to meet them where they already are," Khadilkar said. "The goal [isn't just] promotion, it's also to build more awareness and create a recognizable presence - and also a brand name that really sticks."

The team expects the application to begin like the current popular app "Sidechat" - a discussion platform where anonymous students can engage with others across their college campus - having it start off as only present on the University campus, where users would have to be verified using their school email.

The application will consist of three methods for event hosting: a setting for "Everyone," which will show up on the public feed for all account holders, "Friends," which will only appear to those who have a mutual connection and "Custom," which is an "Invitation Only" option.

The group emphasized that as Hopkins students, academics must come first and that discipline is needed to make their passion project a success.

"It definitely takes discipline," Tabrizi explained. "We try treating What2Do like a full-time job because we want to consistently keep posting and making sure that we stay relevant [and] on top of things. But, you know, academics still have to come first."

Who is behind What2Do?

The What2Do team is comprised of various developers, a social media team and the leadership unit. In addition to Raissi, Khadilkar and Tabrizi from Hopkins, students such as Cam O'Neil - who is an undergraduate from Cornell, What2Do's fellow cofounder and Chief Business Officer (CBO) - and coders Krishnam Jhalani and Souham Tekriwal also assist in building and refining the app's technical structure. Furthermore, students Tori Gordon and DeeDee Golla are prominent in the group's social media promotions, aiding in creating engaging promotional content.

In the interview with The News-Letter, Raissi emphasized the importance of creating a well-rounded team who are passionate about the development of the platform.

"We selected people who we know would be interested in this. We also asked many people and filtered throughout whether we felt they were a good fit for us or not," he elaborated. "For example, DeeDee is a good friend of mine. She's very social, she's very well connected on campus and she's not afraid to put her face out on social media, so it was a very good fit."

For those who have further questions regarding the application and would like to be involved in the platform, the team requests that they message the What2Do Instagram (@joinwhat2do) or email them at teamwhat2do@gmail.com.

Why should we care about What2Do?

"We noticed that people just often don't know what's happening around them. I remember - more than just on campus, [but] more off campus - the summer coming to Johns Hopkins, I remember I was so bored and I was like, 'Man, is there an app on the App Store literally called 'What To Do,' because I just had no idea," Tabrizi said.

Moments like these highlighted a clear gap in the market for social events; even though there may be many events to attend around campus, many students still struggle to find specific ones that they are interested in. Moreover, the founders established that maintaining a centralized hub for various functions can ease the process of socializing and allow users to connect to one another in real time.

"I think our generation is always experiencing social media," Khadilkar added. "I think having an app that really takes us off our phones and connects [us] in real time and [allows us] to meet different people [...] is super important, especially over the next few years.

The success behind the What2Do team is closely tied to user engagement and feedback. In order to measure it, the developers track user behavior and engagement patterns, analyzing retention rates and interaction frequencies.

Together, these metrics help define what success means to the team. This dual approach ensures that user satisfaction and growth are taken into account. By approaching feedback in this manner, the team is able to continuously refine the app based on user behavior and satisfaction.

"I mean, honestly, it really comes down to two things, right?" Tabrizi explained. "One is basically how our users and the people who [we] are trying to reach really interact with this application - if they really love the events they see. The other is the statistics of it, which is like how many times [people are] really coming back to this app to see what's going on around campus. If we see that in a week they come back to this app 4 or 5 times, that's amazing metrics for us."

Unlike Hopkins Groups (the University-wide platform for students to discover and register for organizational events around campus), What2Do aims to offer a more dynamic and user-friendly alternative. The application focuses on real-time updates and introduces a more engaging experience.

"The main thing is just the fact that [there is] a global feed," Tabrizi said. "We're trying to be spontaneous with more live events as well."

The app emphasizes real-time interaction, encouraging users to act on events as they appear. Informal gatherings are promoted in addition to formal events, and their privacy settings allow for tailored experiences.

Additionally, its design - which is built around user participation - makes browsing intuitive and keeps content fresh. Raissi explained how these features reflect the platform's upcoming potential.

"I'm in contact with all [of] the fraternities and sororities on campus. Our eventual hope is that [we can] provide many different services, and one of them is a ticketing thing for fraternities - so our hope is that eventually everyone uses What2Do instead of [Facebook invites]," Raissi detailed. "A big feature of What2Do that I think is unique is that every event that you go to gets tied to your profile, and every event you go to, there's a group chat made, and people can text in that chat, and all the photos that are sent to that chat also get tied to the event in your profile."

Another idea for the app that the team is intending on implementing is a "Month in Review" feature - which would be similar to the popular app BeReal. With this, users would be able to see everything that happened within a month on What2Do.

In the future, as the launch of the app draws closer, the What2Do team will be engaging in more promotional and television-style events, such as giving away free merchandise and Speed Dating. For anyone who wants to help the group, they encourage students to show up and tune in for more information.

Moreover, ambassador programs will also become available for those who would like to be even more engaged. Currently, the What2Do team has ambassadors at more than 25 universities across the United States. When the application launches at Hopkins within the next few weeks, these ambassadors will begin working to integrate the program into their own campuses.

Induced pluripotent stem cell research hits its 20-year anniversary

Shinya Yamanaka, winner of the 2012 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, recently published a reflection on the two decades that have passed since his discovery of induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs). The piece started with a brief personal account of the discovery of the Yamanaka factors (Oct4, Sox2, Klf4 and c-Myc), transcription factors that have the ability to reprogram differentiated somatic cells into pluripotent stem cells. iPSCs have been used to study early human development and have removed the need to harvest pluripotent stem cells from embryos, a process with many ethical and technical considerations. Yamanaka also noted the development of iPSC-based regenerative therapies, especially one using iPSC-derived corneal epithelial cells to treat blindness. More broadly, Yamanaka predicted a gradual unity of the fields of stem cell, computational, synthetic and translational biology in the next two decades, which would expand the applications of iPSCs to the industrial scale.

President Trump announces new science and technology advisors

President Trump recently announced the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST), a council that has been appointed by the president since Franklin D. Roosevelt first formed it in 1933. The newly formed council, containing 13 members, is mostly made up of high-profile technology figures like Mark Zuckerberg (CEO of Meta), Jensen Huang (CEO of Nvidia) and Lisa Su (CEO of AMD). The members of the council have a combined net worth exceeding $900 billion. The only academic scientist on the list is John Martinis, a professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara who won the 2025 Nobel Prize in Physics for finding that quantum tunneling can be observed on a macroscopic scale. The makeup of the council differs significantly from that of Trump's first term, which was made up of 7 academic scientists and 6 industry executives. This shift, with a notable absence of biologists, likely reflects the administration's focus on AI and quantum information science.

Social media companies sued for addictive content

A Los Angeles jury recently awarded $6 million to a woman who sued Meta and YouTube (Google) over her childhood social media addiction. Jurors declared that the tech companies intentionally acted maliciously in order to create addictive platforms that target children with features like infinite scroll and autoplay. The decision came a day after a New Mexico court requested Meta to pay $375 million for endangering children. Along with these two high-profile cases, there are also thousands of related lawsuits moving through courts in the United States, signaling growing public discontent towards social media companies.

This is how to make the best matcha latte. Swipe. Come study with me for four hours straight. Swipe. Follow along for a day in the life of a… Swipe.

From watching videos of homemade drink recipes to productive study vlogs to creators hopping on new trends, I have seen it all, with one swipe leading to another, and this motion can continue on for hours. Of course the logical decision would be to just close the app after being dissatisfied with the first choice of content the algorithm presented to me, but that never happens. I usually don't even find the first video I click on my feed interesting, but, nonetheless, I continue to swipe with the hope that I will eventually land on videos that appeal to my mood at that moment.

However, even after I come across a video that captures my attention, I will continue to scroll, telling myself I'll stop once I feel a sense of satisfaction, although the feeling never comes. Instead, I'll stop when my eyes have dried out and my brain has been overcome with fog. Sometimes, the "stop scrolling" themed videos can expedite the process, but I'll typically surf the temptation until multiple of them have appeared, and I finally take the advice and anchor my phone down for good.

With the gift of time spring break had allotted to me, scrolling on social media naturally found its place in my days. However, I came across a TikTok video that shockingly made me divert from going down the usual path of endless scrolling. The video was not one that used the phrase "stop scrolling" in a cautionary manner. It instead employed a soft and uplifting tone while incorporating the symbol of flowers as a reminder to stay present to nudge me back into reality.

In the wise words of the Floral Designer Kristen Griffith VanderYacht, "Flowers are not supposed to last. Their job is to help us to stay in the present. They grow, they blossom, they thrive and then they're gone."

I have never thought about this aspect of flowers before. Naturally, upon receiving or purchasing them on special occasions, I have an inner desire to make them last as long as possible. I'll trim the stems off, transport them to a clean vase full of fresh water and place them on the breakfast table, an area that will not expose them to too much direct sunlight. But even when I treat them with the best care and place them in the ideal conditions, I am aware that I will still be met with devastation at their perishing. But, that's the point. To not take the moments of their presence for granted because they only last for a moment after all.

Perhaps this also moved me because the weather has been getting warmer as spring has finally arrived. Although I do enjoy how the sun is out for longer and the weather has become fit for short sleeves and sundresses, I have actually never been too fond of the spring season. To me, it has always just served the role as an intermediate between the cold winters and hot summers, where getting summer to come about was the end goal.

There is no school in the summer, but there is still school during the months of spring. There are summer camps, summer vacation, summer heat, summer sunsets - a plethora of good times awaits us in the summer. Therefore, my mindset has long been to hope spring passes quickly, so I can engage in the fun summer has in store. But, I believe that it is time for a shift in mindset. I have not been giving the spring season enough credit for being a beautiful season of active growth. Flowers are currently blooming and I don't want to be oblivious of it. The final moments of my freshman year are also blooming, as they soon will pass and I will only be left with the memory of it.

Sooner or later I will no longer be living in AMR II, losing track of time while yapping in the hall with friends past midnight. Sooner or later I will no longer have the convenience of the Hopkins Cafe being right next door. Sooner or later I will no longer be looking forward to having class and solving challenging problem sets together with the same people. Sooner or later I will no longer be a freshman.

I don't know what the future has in store for me, and I don't need to know that now. All I need to know is that everyday, I am met with the opportunity to witness moments in full bloom, and I don't want to simply glance over them and let them evolve into a faint distant memory of the past.

Catherine Chan is a freshman studying Molecular and Cellular Biology Potomac, Md. 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.

Reporting on the cabinet meeting with President Ronald J. Daniels, Executive Vice President Omotara Tiamiyu shared a summary which included discussion regarding registered student organization (RSO) funding, student life engagement and the administration's response to community concerns about the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency. University administrators are searching for options to get students more involved in creating a socially engaged atmosphere on campus -they are promoting music and programming in student spaces to accomplish this. Administrators also recognize that students are concerned with conflicting midterm schedules and will meet with the Dean's office to address any issues with multiple exams being scheduled at the same time. As for immigration-related issues, they indicated that they would love to hear the student views on what the University could do to provide better support to the affected community.

Senator Shreeman Patel then discussed a "Community Solutions Network" which would allow students to develop a network between RSOs and local communities for addressing challenges identified by the community in Baltimore. This initiative would work with local nonprofits to develop a plan for identifying important problems through community surveys. Through a microgrant system, certain groups would have the chance to receive funding (approximately $5000 per year). In response to this proposal, senators expressed concerns around several different issues, including accountability, sustainability and the potential for short-term or extractive engagement; to address these issues, the proposal includes mechanisms to ensure continuity. Ultimately, the bill was moved forward for consideration.

SGA then passed The HopTHON Collaboration Funding Bill, which promotes their collaboration with HopTHON, a student-run fundraising group that supports the Johns Hopkins Children's Center. Executive Director of HopTHON Sofia Sileo provided an overview of the mission of the organization and provided an overview of the fundraising goal for this year for the organization. SGA then approved funding for "Sex Week." This programming was based on a Harvard University course titled "Cliteracy 101," which is designed to promote sexual health education and discussion around sexuality. They also passed the Spring Cleaning Funding Bill, which is intended to clarify and combine SGA resources to help make it easier for student groups to find resources. They also passed an "SGA Initiatives Update Bill," which will add a new agenda item to each meeting. Under the policy, three senators will provide brief updates on their initiatives each week to increase transparency and encourage accountability.

The meeting transitioned to a second reading of several bills. SGA members passed the "Action Report Act," which required the executive board to publish monthly summaries of SGA activities. These reports will contain updates on what SGA has accomplished, addressing various concerns that existing meeting minutes and articles may not fully detail the daily workings of the body. Finally, the Senate approved an omnibus update to SGA bylaws to maintain consistency with current practices and remove contradictions with the SGA constitution.