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As the end of my college experience draws closer, I’m forced to think about what comes next. And what does come next? I, for one, have no idea. I’m doing all the right things (I think): applying to jobs, reaching out to alumni, leveraging my experiences, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. But it’s really scary to leave academia.
While I personally don’t recall the exact moment my parents told me I was going to have a younger brother, I laugh every time I watch the VHS tapes. I was so upset — almost in tears. At the time, I was deep in my Barbie era, and all I could think about was not having a sister to dress up and play with; though, to his dismay, my brother, Krish, did end up going through that phase with me anyway.
After the clock ticked past midnight and my friends force-fed me cake and it was officially autumn and the beginning of my 22nd year, one of my roommates asked me to share what I was thinking of, being the first to turn 22 and therefore older and wiser than the rest of my friends.
More often than not, I’m thinking about writing fiction. And, despite this column’s partial intention of being a way to document whatever’s been persistently floating around my mind, I realize that I’ve never written about writing. How odd.
There is nothing inherently dark or toxic about the girl who has signed up for too many student orgs, the boy who wins a new prestigious award every week, the person who consistently sets the curve in your most difficult class. What is dark and toxic — and scarier than any horror movie you may watch this month — is how we talk about these hectic schedules in the language of prideful struggle.
When I first began writing, I had an unfathomable obsession with imagery. For hours, I would park myself at my favorite table at Barnes and Noble with my latte in hand and write pages upon pages of descriptions. Taking in the senses around me, I’d let my mind wander to places that I could only dream of.
Used 2001 Buick LeSabre Limited 4dr Sedan For Sale $5,000 cars.com. I guess you would call that our meet cute. My family tried to keep us apart: “A smoker’s car, really? You can’t get the smell of smoke out, you know.” I never had a keen sense of smell.
I often try to imagine what my grandma’s teenage years were like. I myself will turn twenty soon, and in my final year of being a teenager, I have been given the grace to do what she never could when she was my age: worry about something as frivolous and fleeting as my appearance.
I’d mastered it: pretending that I was fine. Because the general expectation from us humans is quite straightforward: We cannot display sadness. We shall not reveal our vulnerabilities and weaknesses. No, we must present ourselves to others as optimistic, happy and motivated: always driven, always okay.
I did not learn to love the land that raised me until I had already left. In every introduction during my first week of college, that land haunted me. Like a scar, it was irrefutable proof of where I had been, and it clung to every artifact of my life: my area code, my driver’s license and (most regrettably) my introduction.
While I hadn’t planned to do so during my undergrad, I’m now beyond thrilled to be pursuing a Master’s at the Bloomberg School of Public Health, and I’m loving my current program and classes. It’s a testament to expect the unexpected and to make room for new and exciting opportunities, even if they aren’t what I had initially planned.
I desperately wanted friends, both back in kindergarten and as a freshman at college. I’ve always been the quiet kid — the kid who would rather get lost in books than go outside. At college, I was determined to reinvent myself, to be someone everyone wanted to hang out with, to be “fun.”
As I was eating my lunch near the lily pond in the Decker Garden while writing my research paper and watching the new students explore the campus, it suddenly hit me that now I am closer to finishing graduate school than the day I started it. When I first came to Hopkins in 2021, the thought of surviving and thriving in graduate school felt both exciting and terrifying.
There was something about the structure of rap (its rhythm and cadence) that allowed me to speak fluidly, even rapidly. It felt like I had found a loophole in my speech disorder. From then on, I dove into the world of rap. For me, it wasn’t just a hobby but a safe space where I could express myself freely without letting self-consciousness trip up my speech.
I go to school in Maryland and come from Florida, but on a recent flight, I sat next to someone who is in the opposite situation: Her family lives near Baltimore, and she just graduated from a college around 10 minutes from my childhood home. As soon as I realized we drove to the airport from the same neighborhood, I became curious about why she chose to live there.
Sunlight on leaves always reminds me of summer, and even though summer now fades, making room for fall, I still cling to its translucent, yellow-green warmth. So maybe this is my love letter to summer. Maybe this is my way of saying goodbye — and not just to the sunlight on trees or the lovely 80-degree weather, though I will certainly miss them both.
Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about time. More specifically, how the same volume of time can be compressed or expanded so that a morning can feel like twenty minutes or five seconds or a week, even when the clock is ticking by at the same pace. I’ve been thinking about whether we can control it — not time itself, but our perception of it.
I would have started with “Dear Physics,” but let’s not lie to ourselves here. You are not my dear, Physics. What would be a good antonym for “dear”? Unbeloved? I’ll use that.
My last goodbyes flow out of me like a disappointed sea, breaking and offshoring between the rows of my teeth, shaking my lips. As I see my parents’ faces, I am reminded once again of what must be done. Packing my life into three suitcases, I head off to college once again, with a quiet hope that this semester will be far better than the last.
I remember sitting in my English teacher’s room during the last week of senior year, on the verge of tears. I was having an absolutely horrible day; I was exhausted, my limbs hurt a little more than normal and I could feel a stress headache from the subtly creeping impending doom.
