Hopkins is a diverse university where an incredible mix of cultures, academic interests and personalities coexist and thrive. Here is the section where you can publish your unique thoughts, ideas and perspectives on life at Hopkins and beyond.
Try to be honest with yourself about what you really want and need. It’s okay to want it all, and it’s okay to want nothing at all.
In its simplicity, that suitcase allowed us to reach beyond ourselves into a world where something outlandish, even magical, could happen. To experience nature in its truest, realest sense.
We pretend that the daily war they have been drafted into was instead a “tragedy” that they practiced, auditioned, rehearsed for and perform for us to scrutinize, leaving us feeling better about ourselves after.
I learned to drive once. I didn't keep at it. I wonder now if that's a coincidence, or if I was always waiting for someone to take the wheel the way I watched someone take hers.
I tell everyone to live your life the best you can and to the best of your knowledge. Follow your steps. Don’t start something and then stop. If it’s something you like, you do it. If it’s not, pursue what you want to do with your life. Follow your dreams.
What I see as a volunteer is a snapshot. A freeze-framed moment in time of a person's life, and I feel both privileged to share that moment and duty bound to help them any way I can.
Although I ultimately have no definitive answer to my original query, maybe it is worth it to implement a return of medicine that is born from communities themselves, tailored to their customs and invested in their well-being for the long, long term.
It is through this exact sense of community, united by music alone, that makes the Hopkins a cappella scene so great. Each and every group sings their hearts out in places ranging from hospital waiting rooms to semesterly concerts. Is that not reason enough to listen?
For no matter where I may travel I find that nothing compares to an East Coast summer vacation spent with the people I love, crab and Old Bay seasoning.
And when you realize the scope of what you can’t influence, it highlights the things you can, allowing you to devote more time to them, rather than fruitlessly fretting over factors you can’t possibly impact.
In my freshman year, I named this column “White Noise” to symbolize the everyday blur that I found myself constantly parsing through for meaning, for something to hold onto. Now, rather than searching for something external from which I might derive meaning, I’m starting to find that it might be worthwhile to work in the reverse, too.
We don’t see it during the moment itself, but every circumstance has the potential to turn into a fond memory – all it takes is being fully present.
Art is what happens when hard work brings the artist and their audience together to glimpse something meaningful about human experience.
When we first moved to Vancouver, my parents held out only a few weeks before their homesickness set in, rising like a fever. They booked their first flight back to China three weeks later. Then the flights home stretched to become months apart, then every half-year, until it was just once a year.
My driving journey so far has been a vessel for my journey of self-discovery. When I started to drive, I didn’t trust myself with such a powerful machine. Every time I sat behind a car wheel, I stepped out of my comfort zone. But with each successful trip I took, I told myself, “It wasn’t too bad, right? You can do it next time, too!”
My grandma was an English minor at her state college in Missouri, and perhaps selfishly or reductively — sorry, Grandma — I want to consider this the feat of her studies, the capstone. Every night, she respun Goldilocks into new configurations and mischief for me. She dragged the girl into modern context like a sorry child to the principal’s office.
Two weeks ago, I decided to go to Hong Kong over spring break. It was impulsive. I had been there before — once as a child, and again in 2019. But somehow, I barely remembered any of it. This is the second time in a relatively short span that I have found myself writing about Asia, which probably says something about the kind of year this has been. More than ever before, I have been thinking more seriously about identity, what feels like home and how much of it is something I only recognize once I’ve been away from it.
What do my archives look like? What have I kept that I’d like to get rid of? What have I thrown away or deleted that I wish was still around?
I have never been the most skilled player, but if you ever happen to be at the Rec at eight on a Tuesday night, look at the basketball court. You’ll probably see a myriad of swishes, some lucky shots, a behind-the-back pass or two and a few people just running up and down the floor, enjoying themselves.
During long car rides as a child, I recall having one mission besides measuring our travels by counting the milemarkers outside: I had to find something beyond the window along our journey to “own.”
