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Dear Freshman Dalila,
It is with a sense of gratitude — and a little bittersweet tug — that I say goodbye to the community and exciting work that made my four years leading multimedia efforts as Photo Editor of The News-Letter so special. Through taking thousands of photos, crafting dozens of photo essays and developing as a storyteller on the Homewood Campus, I am grateful to be closing this chapter with so many memories to look back on.
As the 2024–25 academic year comes to a close, we want to share our deepest gratitude to everyone who has helped the paper thrive. The past year has had unprecedented implications and impacts on higher education and students, and The News-Letter’s critical work would not be possible without the support of the Hopkins community.
I know that this is going to be a messy goodbye and I don’t quite know how to put my thoughts into words. I’ve felt it in the group chats we’ve made with other graduating editors as we’ve transitioned from Slack messages into text conversations. It’s in the deep sense of pride I feel as I watch the new editors step up to their roles. It’s in the hint of anxiety as I try to stop myself from stepping back into the role I’ve just vacated — stopping myself from becoming that person who’s still clinging onto something that isn’t theirs anymore. It’s in the relief I felt when I allowed myself to turn off my Slack notifications for the first time in years.
My best friends and I met at a birthday party in sophomore year for a girl named Tina. Did we know Tina? Absolutely not. But there we were, huddled in a stranger’s basement, eating cheap cupcakes.
How many of us have felt overwhelmed by undergraduate and graduate school today? I think we all have experienced the stress of being students. Universities have become a stressful atmosphere where students struggle to maintain their well-being while completing multiple tasks. The stress we experience today is part of a flawed system that sustains mental challenges for students by requiring too much from students.
As much as I hoped it would be, my first semester of college was nothing like the made-for-TV movie I’d envisioned. I left my dorm door open like my mom told me to, but nobody stopped by. Students sat six feet apart in the dining hall, and, if you wanted to converse with a stranger, your only feasible solution was to shout. Even the Student Involvement Fair, which I’d imagined being the epicenter of student life, was online. Gone were the sweaty limbs pushing past each other in the gym, the carefully painted posters, the obnoxious upperclassmen desperate for names on their sign-up sheet. Instead, it was just me in pajama pants under my twin-XL covers, staring at a screen of Zoom links.
As the semester progressed and the end of my tenure as Editor-in-Chief got closer, I expected to feel grief, dread and the desire to prolong my time at Hopkins. Instead, I’ve surprised myself by feeling the opposite and being at peace with the changes to come.
Four years ago, when I was gearing up for my freshman year of college, I thought I had everything under control. When I laid everything I needed for college out on my bed, I was not afraid. When my mom helped me pack two massive duffels with clothes, chargers, books, cosmetics, brushes, hairbands, hats, shoes and enough K-Cup Pods to pollute a small island, I was not afraid. When my dad carried everything out to the car — when he placed the duffels alongside pillows, plastic storage bins, my guitar — I was not afraid. I was not afraid when we got in the car, when we left Massachusetts, when we passed through Connecticut, then New York, then New Jersey, then Delaware. When we saw “Maryland Welcomes You,” I was not afraid, nor was I afraid when I saw, stamped in concrete across the front of the Beach, “Johns Hopkins University.”
Dear Freshman Samhi,
For all the theorems and postulates I’ve learned as a math major, my favorite hypothesis isn’t truly math-based. The branching-worlds theory posits that every decision we make splits our universe into separate parallel realities based on the potential outcomes. So sometimes, when it’s late at night and counting sheep just can’t force me to fall asleep, I think about the past — what would I do differently if I knew my future?
Dear Yana,
In the largest declaration of “bro-culture” in pro golf since John Daly, the 2017 spring break Snapchat stories of Rickie Fowler, Justin Thomas, Jordan Spieth and Smylie Kaufman tearing up the Baker’s Bay Club in the Bahamas took their rightful place in the (albeit sparse) rafters of moments golf that was cool. Seeing the best young players in the world (and Smylie Kaufman, too!) shirtless, with backwards hats, swim trunks on, barefoot and beverages in hand, careening across the course with music blasting became a seminal moment for their perception: harbingers of a new generation, one utterly unconcerned with the establishment’s decorum.
On Wednesday, April 23, the Hopkins Postdoctoral Researchers Organizing Committee (Hopkins-PRO) filed a petition to form a union with United Auto Workers (UAW), representing 1,600 postdoctoral researchers.
In early March, a quiet conquest of green and pink drinks, assortments of aesthetically pleasing toppings and a well-decorated coffee shop dominated my social media feed. I was thus obliged to visit Equitea, a quaint café nestled among rowhouses on the south side of campus. Inside, I noticed a man — who I later discovered was Quentin Vennie — churning out drinks one by one, handcrafting each beverage to perfection.
I had my fair share of misconceptions about college. As a first-generation college student, I thought college was going to be like high school. I didn’t have anyone in my family who went to college to tell me otherwise. I got A’s easily in high school; I barely needed to study, rarely reviewed my notes and coasted through Honors and Advanced Placement classes that claimed to “prepare” us for college rigor.
What makes a clichéd farewell letter?
In April 2025, the Mental Illness Needs Discussion club at the University of South Carolina’s ice bucket challenge saw a surge in popularity, providing critical activism for the mental health movement. However, it is critical to recognize the original purpose of the challenge at its inception in 2014: to raise money and awareness for amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), a terminal disorder characterized by the degeneration of nerve cells in the spinal cord and the brain.
As a two-year editor for the Arts and Entertainment section of The News-Letter, I’ve received some flack for my approach to art criticism, especially in my coverage of Hopkins events. Though rarely said to my face, I’ve heard that my articles haven’t always been received well by certain student artists. I suppose this shouldn’t come as a surprise — one shouldn’t dish out what they can’t take — but it’s hard not to be reflective when I hear about it. It’s hard not to ask: Why did I even decide to publicly critique Hopkins art in the first place?
On April 26 and 27, the Arellano Theater came alive with more than the wafting smells of vegan sesame chicken and taco meat from the neighboring Levering Kitchen. It was the site for the Witness Theater’s 2025 Spring Showcase: a performance of student-written, student-run plays rejuvenating a campus of otherwise finals-weary Blue Jays.