Published by the Students of Johns Hopkins since 1896
June 16, 2025 June 16, 2025 | Published by the Students of Johns Hopkins since 1896

Magazine

Cut the monkey business: University discovers essay-writing service run by secret society

By JOE and LEMA R. BANANJAMOVIC | April 1, 2021

The Homewood Academic Council persecuted a group of students running an essay-writing business last Friday. This group, formally known as “LET OUR MONKEYS WRITE LLC,” was found to have captured a bevy of monkeys to perform the manual labor of their operation and, as stated in its business plan, “bolster capital accumulation and facilitate rapid returns on investment.”

PUBLIC DOMAIN X. Hausted Girlfriend urges readers not to date News-Letter editors, citing emotional pain and boredom. Seriously, don’t do it.

Dating a News-Letter Editor: The Survival Guide

By X. HAUSTED GIRLFRIEND | April 1, 2021

In November of 2019, I started dating a fellow News-Letter writer. Things were terrific until that fateful day when he decided to run for an editor position. At first I was ecstatic that my boyfriend had so much power, but it didn’t take long before I realized that I was bearing witness to the creation of a monster.  

COURTESY OF YOU. YES, YOU. THANK YOU. Pfizer documents the terrifying experience that occurred when athletes were given free rein on campus.

Tales from an athlete-driven, COVID-filled apocalyptic hellscape

By JOHNSON PFIZER | April 1, 2021

I had no idea the situation would get this bad. This is a chronicling of my experience with the athlete apocalypse. I’m writing these journal entries to warn people about the dangers that the Hopkins athletes may pose to our campus, and I will also offer ways to help students adequately prepare for isolation. 

COURTESY OF RIA ARORA This semester Arora’s roommate has helped her to achieve a life-long dream of learning how to sing.

Pressing pause and prioritizing happiness

By RIA ARORA | November 17, 2020

For as long as I can remember, I have always loved to sing — when nobody’s around, that is. I frequently host late-night karaoke parties for one, wail in the shower like nobody hears me and hum in the kitchen when I’m alone. Music has always been my coping mechanism for dealing with stressful events.

VIDEO ESSAY: A walk through Stony Run

By BAYLEIGH MURRAY | November 17, 2020

The pandemic forced communities across the globe to shelter in place and it closed many of the businesses and venues we’re used to hanging out in. Even in spaces where we are allowed to be around our fellow quaranteens, we were (and still are) required to maintain a distance of six feet. 

VIDEO ESSAY: Ode to joy

By PAIGE MAULTSBY | November 17, 2020

The first ode to joy was a poem; then it was the chorus of a symphony. My own little ode to joy comes as a video that captures brief moments of joy and its various forms — contentment, wonder, glee, amusement, bliss — all of which I experienced on an ordinary autumn day.  

COURTESY OF AMELIA ISAACS DeLeon reflects on a number of songs from her nostalgic playlist.

Turning back time through music

By KATALINA DELEON | November 17, 2020

Music is powerful. It is the language of the soul, a collection of stories — stories of love, joy, heartbreak, failure, success — that anyone can tap into and relate to. Sometimes, if we let it, music has the greater ability of allowing us to feel things we never imagined, to feel emotions beyond our own scope of understanding. 

COURTESY OF DIVYA KUMAR Among other things, Malcom has found joy in frequent walks on the Stony Run Trail.

Learning how to manage my emotions

By RUDY MALCOM | November 17, 2020

Soon after quarantine began, I realized that I tended to run away from my negative emotions. I’d channel my anxiety into The News-Letter’s all-consuming, weekly production cycle. I’d hide my sadness by flitting about M-Level. Bury my emptiness at Power Plant Live!. Manifest my stress through low-grade hypochondria.

FILE PHOTO The editors of The News-Letter have found joy in numerous ways.

Rapid-fire joy: a quick survey of N-L editors’ joyful happenings

By SOPHIA LOLA | November 17, 2020

In big things and small. In our day-to-day routines and more special moments. In old memories and new experiences. In songs and books. In the things we do for ourselves, the things we do for others and the things others do for us. These are just a few of the ways in which we can find joy in our lives.  

COURTESY OF DAVID MERCIER AND KELLY DORFMAN Mercier and Dorfman have taught an intersession class called The Art and Science of Happiness every year since 2018.

The science of happiness and joy

By TRISHA PARAYIL | November 17, 2020

A student achieves a major academic success, a young couple buys their dream home, a retiree escapes to a tropical haven. Each person feels elated, incandescently happy. Then a phenomenon called hedonic adaptation takes hold, and the wonderful feeling subsides over time.

COURTESY OF LAURA WADSTEN Following advice from O, The Oprah Magazine, Wadsten created a list of all the things that make her happy, including delicious food.

Learning to manifest joy in a time of constant stress

By LAURA WADSTEN | November 17, 2020

I’m going to be honest, when I heard the fall magazine was going to center on the theme of joy, I didn’t think I’d have an article to write. Being a Hopkins student is stressful enough at the best of times, let alone during the chaos that has been 2020. 

COURTESY OF ELLE GRANT Over the course of the pandemic, Grant has noticed people revert to Austen-like hobbies such as baking, walking and gardening.

Musings on Austen-tacious hobbies

By ELLE GRANT | November 17, 2020

Three Jane Austen novels deep into quarantine, I found the pattern. I glanced out of my bedroom window, situated at the front of my house facing the street, then back to my copy of (the extremely underrated) Mansfield Park and back again. In quarantine, one of the first things I noticed upon returning home to my locked down state were the walkers. 

DREW DE F FAWKES/CC-BY-2.0 Cosmo Sheldrake’s album The Much Much How How and I reminds Ravi of the nonsense world of Lewis Carroll’s Jabberwocky.

On fairy tales, nature, nonsense and The Much Much How How and I

By MEGHANA RAVI | November 17, 2020

I’ve always loved nonsense. Nonsense words. Nonsense phrases and rhymes. Nonsensical conversations. So fittingly, my favorite poem as a child was Jabberwocky by Lewis Carroll. I always loved how the words meant nothing but I still knew what they were saying. In Jabberwocky, sound plays the starring role. 

ROSIE JANG/CARTOONS EDITOR Zimmerman first discovered the marsh on a walk with her mother.

Finding joy in the unfamiliar

By ELIZA ZIMMERMAN | November 17, 2020

My instinctual idea of joy mimics the physicality of the word itself: a short burst, a dynamic syllable emerging from the mundane sentence around it, full of energy and brief color like a small dancer lifting her head and jumping in the air for pure love of movement.

COURTESY OF DAVID BAIK Baik takes weekly walks at the Gwynedd Preserve near his house.

Two hundred seventy-nine acres of joy at the Gwynedd Preserve

By DAVID BAIK | November 17, 2020

The hardest part of doing school at home for me is not being able to differentiate when I should be doing schoolwork and when I should be using time for myself. What ends up happening most days is that I spend hours in my bedroom, alternating between lying on the floor or sitting hunched over my desk.

Trending
Weekly Rundown
News-Letter Magazine