Voices

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.

My adventure outside the Hopkins bubble

By RUDY MALCOM | February 8, 2018

Many students at Hopkins, myself most definitely included, regard a snowstorm as the perfect photo op. Flocks of snowflakes descend from the sky and blanket the architecture, trees and fields of the Homewood campus in an aesthetically pleasing manner, masking our lost hopes and dreams with a fluffy white veneer. They fashion the contents of our Hopkins bubble into an idyllic backdrop.

The treks and trials of making it to La Cuchara

By SUDGIE MA | February 5, 2018

Baltimore Restaurant Week really couldn’t have come at a better time for most Hopkins students, since it was smack in the middle of Intersession. Classes during this time only had pass/fail grades and generally involved either light workloads or none at all. Most importantly, they were actually fun to take.

How Runaways is changing LGBTQ representation

By CATHERINE PALMER | February 5, 2018

Marvel’s Runaways, a Hulu original series, centers on a group of teens with emotional issues, superpowers, serial killers for parents and a genetically engineered, telepathic pet dinosaur. It pretty adeptly checks the boxes for as many genres as possible, aside from musical theater (although the soundtrack is lit).

It’s time for female comics to take center stage

By MORGAN OME | February 5, 2018

If you are a woman, how do you navigate a male-dominated industry? That was the question on my mind when I decided to take the stand-up comedy class last year during Intersession. I was interested in seeing whether I could make people laugh, and testing that out in front of 800 people seemed like a good idea.

COURTESY OF MORGAN OME Ome enjoyed performing in the 2017 Intersession stand-up comedy show.
FILE PHOTO Grinsfelder argues that STEM majors’ schedules don’t allow for a well rounded education.

Engineers need to learn about the humanities

By WILLA GRINSFELDER | February 5, 2018

Hopkins is failing its mission statement and failing us as students. The University claims that cultivating “the capacity for life-long learning,” is the core of their mission and, in the words of Daniel Coit Gilman, that the goal of the school is making students “strong, bright, useful and true.” With the current required curricula in engineering majors, creating such students would be nearly impossible.

Keeping in touch with family across seas

By MEAGAN PEOPLES | December 2, 2017

When I first moved back to America to attend college, I would call my family every week. Between Skype, Facebook and Snapchat, it often didn’t feel like I was missing that much, despite the thousands of miles between us.

PUBLIC DOMAIN The Ocean by Frederick Judd Waugh
ALL PICTURES COURTESY OF GILLIAN LELCHUK My dog, Neo, riding in his car seat in various stages of his life.

Is Facebook secretly listening to you?

By GILLIAN LELCHUK | December 2, 2017

Over the summer, I was talking to my mother about the strap that secures my dog, Neo, to his car seat. The strap in question is a piece of fabric about one foot long that clips onto both the car seat and my dog’s collar. And Neo had chewed through yet another strap.

Hookups in the age of Snapchat

By JACQUI NEBER | December 2, 2017

I wanted to formally interview my peers for this piece, but people aren’t especially open to talking about their hookup experiences on this campus. I had to dig into what my friends thought by asking deep and nosy questions about their sex lives. I had to complicate things by asking about technology. It was eye-opening. Here’s what I learned:

CC BY-SA-4.0 Roses by Gert Tabak

Long distance: my ex-relationship through a screen

By KELSEY KO | December 2, 2017

You never expect you’ll be in a long-distance relationship until you’re in one. And then there you are, with all that it entails: laying in the dark with your face warmed by the light of a pixelated screen; or holding your phone up to the sky because a strong signal is your lifeline to that person halfway across the world.

COURTESY OF KELSEY KO
BLOGTREPRENEUR CC BY-SA 2.0

How social media influences culture and language

By KATIE TAM | December 2, 2017

The creation of AS.300.304, aka “Hopkins/Memes/Lost Hopes and Dreams,” seems to embody the influence that internet culture has had on our generation. As college students, we’re connected to the internet almost every second of every day, whether it be through social media sites like Snapchat and Facebook or through more academically-related pages like Blackboard. Accordingly, this has significantly shaped the ways in which we speak and act in everyday life.

COURTESY OF DIVA PAREKH This little pink alarm clock was the only way Parekh could tell time.

No Phone Day: 24 hours without my phone

By DIVA PAREKH | December 2, 2017

Signing up for an article for this magazine on our idea spreadsheet, one title jumped out at me. “No Phone Day.” I told my roommates about it, and they just didn’t believe I would go through with doing it. Honestly, I almost didn’t.