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.
Last week, I was morbidly ill (read: I had a cold) and all I wanted was some soup. As my sinuses revolted against the benevolent patron who regularly treats them to ginger tea and essential oil diffusers, I writhed about in bed pining for nothing more than a steaming bowl of broth into which I could plunge my face and dissolve my affliction.
First of all, let’s get two things straight: You only know as much about a person as they choose to share with you, and money can’t buy you everything.
Circumscribed by hundreds of books, Ronald Walters leans back in his chair and prepares to tell his story. From Stanford to Berkeley, where he received his PhD, Walters moved across the country to join the Hopkins staff in 1970, and he is currently a professor of history.
Why am I here at Hopkins? Well, I put in the effort throughout my schooling, which put me in the position to be able to get into Hopkins. But that isn’t enough.
Today I am disillusioned. Today I am heartbroken. Today I look back at history and I know why we allowed atrocious crimes of genocide and ethnic cleansing to take place.
Midterm season has officially started, and those who are used to the grind swing back into their routine, while those who are new to Hopkins find themselves most likely bewildered by the system.
In the first few weeks that I have been abroad, one of the most important things I’ve learned is that the freshman plague transcends collegiate boundaries.
“Do you feel more Chinese or American?” We were studying abroad in China, enjoying the best that Shanghai bar life has to offer, when one of my classmates asked me this. She asked the question to a fellow Chinese American student, who sat tall next to me. His answer? “American, through and through.”
This week I shall be roasting one of Netflix’s original movies The Kissing Booth. If you haven’t seen it, consider yourself a lucky one.
“If men could only know each other, they would neither idolize nor hate,” Elbert Hubbard once said.
I. I sat as the youngest between seven cousins and countless relatives, eating our own version of a belated Thanksgiving. Between mouthfuls of dumplings and rice cakes, I saw my aunt’s eyes crinkling into a smile.
So it’s junior year, and it sucks. I thought the transition would be easier because I’ve been doing this whole thing for two years now.
I cannot understand Urdu literature. I cannot read Urdu poems. And I feel like a part of me has been taken from me. Urdu is the language of love, the language of the sufis, the language of the poets and now the language that has been snatched from me because of my colonized history.
As I begin the second year of this column, I think it is fair to say that I really have no problem discussing my limited-income status. It has always been strange to me that people discuss finances in hushed tones. It is seen as rude to ask about anything related to income or economic standing. But why?
My grandma couldn’t cook. This may come as a shock to anyone who’s watched me prepare, order or eat a meal, since by most accounts I resemble a jaded nonna in those moments, but it’s true. Her kids and grandkids with especially generous palates may object (I can already hear the 30+ member family group chat clamoring in protest), but in my humble opinion, Patricia Guerriero was a decidedly lousy cook.
Here at Hopkins, you can always find people ready to talk about the journey they took to find the clubs that are important to them. They’ll tell you how they walked around the Student Involvement Fair (SIF); became completely overwhelmed by the sheer amount of clubs trying to recruit them; signed up for 50 different club mailing lists; followed up with five; and then finally found the two or three groups that were the most important to them.
With the beginning of classes comes the inevitable internal struggle between focusing on academics, being social and getting enough sleep. We all go through the same thing; classwork piles up, and somehow every single party is held on the same night every single lab is due, while every friend you’ve ever made crawls out of the woodwork and wants to catch up over coffee.
Baltimore, I have a confession: I snuck away and spent my summer in Washington D.C. Our nation’s capital may be a quick MARC train ride away, but the city and its culture lies in stark contrast to our home here in Charm City.
Everybody tells you when you’re a freshman that college is a time to explore, try new things and discover who you really are. Everybody tells you to talk to everyone you meet during O-Week, explore every major at Hopkins and sign up for the thousands of clubs that are at the Student Involvement Fair.
To borrow a phrase coined during a “simpler” time, that the personal is political, I dare to claim the opposite is true today: the political is personal. In an era of sad nihilism, when bigotry and discrimination are boiled into our everyday lexicon and we have become self-obsessed with our national concerns — of which there is no shortage — to me, the political has truly become just that. Personal.
