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.
There is a cemetery in Korea whose name I do not know, far away from Seoul and deep in the mountains, where my maternal ancestors are buried. Apart from my grandfather who passed when I was eight, I do not know their names or faces.
What does it mean to go home? What, and where, is home? To most, physical roots are important to our identities: where we were born, where we live and where we come from. Sometimes, I’ve seen people get offended when someone from just outside of New York City say that they are from New York. I understand the indignation; I also have the urge to call out people who claim they are from Seoul when they aren’t. But why do we have this urge? Why does it bother us when someone who is not “really” from your hometown claims to be from there?
Unlike Macklemore, when I was in the third grade, I didn’t think that I was gay. During my childhood, I was instead a mouthpiece of heteronormativity. While in kindergarten, a friend declared that she would one day marry a woman. I argued to her that this was impossible. Even earlier, when a boy in my preschool class showed me his navy-blue fingernails, I insisted that his hands resembled a girl’s.
It’s been over a year since I first arrived at Hopkins, full of hopes, fears and vague expectations for my college experience. That arrival entailed much fanfare from overenthusiastic FYMs and even more awkward introductions and icebreakers between me and my classmates. I expected that, and I’ll even admit I loved it in its cringyness.
“Well, you know, you look... different.” So said one of my friends during a casual dinner conversation one night. We noted that we were the only non-Asian people in the Japanese restaurant. The talk turned to race and how we ourselves identified. Both of us are Jewish, and both of us identified as white.
Since moving to Baltimore and being at Hopkins, I’ve realized more and more the ways in which my upbringing in essentially the middle of nowhere influenced me. I spent as much time as possible during my childhood years outside, running through the woods and jumping in the lake with my little brother. The gravel road we lived on had virtually no traffic and we knew our neighbors well, so we had free reign to explore the acres of forest surrounding our log home. This may sound incredibly primitive, but one of the favorite activities of my siblings and I was to patrol the woods for dead trees and knock them down. Yep, it was a blast.
“This old heart of mine been broke a thousand times” plays from the speaker on my desk as I finish up my homework for the night. I fall down a wormhole, and I’m back in the passenger seat of my dad’s Ford F150. The heat is blasting, and the “heater seat,” as we call it, is on level three. It’s the middle of winter in Valdosta, Georgia, so it’s about 45 degrees. We hot-blooded country folk can’t handle it.
Aug. 11, 2016 was the first day I stepped on the Homewood Campus as a student. Like many 18-year-olds, I thought I had a good grasp on who I was and who I wanted to be, and I was so excited for what this new journey would bring me. I was coming to a top university to play football and to study to become a doctor. College was going to be the best years of my life, right?
For most of my life, I thought I was dumb. Or at least, incompetent. It felt like nothing I did was good enough, and the bureaucracy of semi-decent public high schools didn’t help much. Additionally, as I was finishing up high school, I saw how expensive college was, and so I couldn’t take the idea of college seriously. I didn’t understand financial aid, and my non-English-speaking parents certainly did not either. It wasn’t like I felt like I was learning much in high school anyways – how could college be any better? I was always just so tired all the time. What was the point? Was I just doing it all for a piece of paper?
Sometimes the things I say sound like the babbling of a romantic idealist. My motivations for physics are too far removed from reality, my reasons for loving the subject too “soft,” and so I don’t know if I have ever really fit into the straight-back mold of an algorithmic physicist.
We live in an age of crisis. The ice caps are melting and the forests are burning. Above all else, if headlines are to be believed, we face the possibility of an uninhabitable Earth, societal collapse and human extinction. I’ve thought a lot about this over the past year or so. Unsurprisingly, this made me sad.
Here’s the news: I’m studying abroad this spring in Stockholm, Sweden. I have been dreaming of it since my senior year of high school and I am more than thrilled. However, I was surprised by my own hesitance to commit when I received the email that I had been accepted to the program.
I have to buy a new computer. Well, I don’t have to, technically speaking. But the screen is split open almost all the way around. Some keys have to be typed three times before they register. And I must always arrive to my classes that meet once a week rather early and make a beeline to an outlet, because the battery won’t last the two-and-a-half hour time slot.
So it’s been a stressful week (as every other week at Hopkins tends to be) and all you want to do is curl up on your couch with warm cider and watch a movie. But it’s a Monday night and you have an early morning class tomorrow that you just can’t skip and a quiz on Wednesday that you just have to spend the whole of the next afternoon in Brody studying for.
In case you haven’t seen Ratatouille, let me tell you how much the French love their food. Unlike in the States, where people juice their breakfast to drink on-the-go, in France, meal time is a serious part of the day. Most working adults take at least an hour to stop working, sit in a restaurant and eat a multi-course lunch.
Although Sasha looked upset, I grasped her hand in mine and pulled her up to stand. Herr Neumann gestured for our orchestra of odd instruments to take a bow. Lights flooded the church hall as families stood to congratulate their children. As an exchange student, I didn’t expect my own, but I still smiled and scanned the audience for familiar faces. I turned to congratulate Sasha on her solo in our adaptation of Schubert, only to be met with unfocused eyes to the floor, her lips downturned.
Lots of people talk about self-care — “time for a self-care night” or “you should spend time on self-care” — but people tend to not always know what it is or to not think it’s that important. So this is a) a bit of advice about how to do self-care well and b) a reminder to go take care of yourself.
It’s been about three years since I fell off a horse in a village in Peru. When I went to the hospital, they didn’t have a doctor in the building, so they just cleaned up the bleeding and sent me on my way.
This week I’ve decided to get back to my roots a bit and talk about why I do this godforsaken column in the first place. Since my time as Art & Entertainment Editor of The News-Letter came to an end last semester, I had an art-shaped hole in my heart that I needed to fill. I’d been wanting to start a column for a while, and suddenly I found myself with some extra time and a dream.
With my December graduation fast approaching (and my senioritis hitting hard), I’ve been sitting with nostalgia and reflection on the past 3.5 years at Hopkins. I never expected to devote as much time as I have in college to policy and politics, but I’m so thankful that my experiences at Hopkins guided me in this direction. Consider this week’s column both a “thank you, Hopkins community” and a “wow, I made it!” note.
