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.
People often say that love makes you do crazy things. During the winter break of my freshman year — still sad about the end of my first high school relationship — those crazy things included watching clips of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind on loop, crying in bed for hours and rereading old messages late at night. Needless to say, I was not the most fun person to be around.
Around this time last year, I wrote about how Supergirl had never given Kara Danvers (Melissa Benoist) a good romantic storyline. This season, she has fortunately not been forced into another cringey relationship, but that’s only because she’s been hung up on her most recent ex, Mon-El (Chris Wood), who never deserved her in the first place.
It hurts to exist in a constant state of holding my breath, precariously piling on commitments, hoping that everything doesn’t come crashing down. So I’ll revel in the quiet, attentive to what my body and mind try to tell me. Exhale.
Hey, Rollin and Sam here, just your friendly neighborhood Editors-in-Chief. As our time wraps up, we decided that it’s apt to reflect on and construct some notion of closure around the job that has consumed our lives for the past year.
Maybe for a long time I didn’t think too much about the trauma left by the Pulse shooting, but it came out when I tried to write poems.
It is about time that we stop making excuses for men’s misbehavior. No matter how small, sexual harassment is unacceptable, and I, for one, am done being sad about it. I am furious.
As a queer person, I feel like I have an obligation to be an activist, but I’ve struggled with what that means for me. Is this column activism? Is writing a short story with a queer protagonist activism? Is educating my cisgender heterosexual peers about LGBTQ issues activism?
I’ve always had a vague interest in comic books but could never get into the superhero genre at all — until I began watching the movies that is. But superhero movies have been around for a while, and they’ve never been as popular as they are now. What caused the change?
I’ve always loved both science and writing. During my senior year of high school, as I wrote my college essays, I tried to find a way to weave the two together into a feasible future for myself: to explain why I love poems that overflow with biological imagery; to try to articulate the parallels I saw in the processes of biology and creating literature. And then when I read the book The Lives of a Cell by Lewis Thomas, I felt like all my efforts were put to shame.
By the end of high school, everyone in my life, especially me, had accepted that I had a depressing personality. But a mood disorder is not a personality trait.
I’m grateful that junior year is coming to a close, thankful to be out of the mindset that every week is hell week and every day is a poor day. There is no sugarcoating reality: It’s grueling to be a college student, no matter how much you love your major or how much you enjoy studying.
In honor of the seemingly next-level crossover event, Avengers: Infinity War, coming out next week, I’ve decided to reflect back on the preceding installments of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU). Launched in 2008 with the release of the game-changing Iron Man, the MCU currently includes 17 other films, the most recent being the 10th highest-grossing film of all time, Black Panther.
Cheating has been on my mind a lot, lately. Classes have gotten harder; the material has gotten more theoretical; and the amount of time to do work hasn’t increased. In one class there was an email at the beginning of the year saying the instructor caught some students copying homework assignment answers from online, and since then I’ve seen my peers do the same. To some extent, I get it.
The delightfully terrible rom-com 27 Dresses begins with Katherine Heigl’s character Jane acting as a bridesmaid in two of her friends’ weddings simultaneously, rushing between the two, changing dresses, accessories etc. in a cab en route to each venue.
I feel fragile, but ready to go,” she said. As a rule of group therapy, all patients being discharged share how they feel and their plans for continued healing beyond the program. I looked at her, then at the other hopeful faces sitting at the table beside me.
Let me tell you a secret, good friends: I have, for most of my life, dealt with an unhealthy relationship to food. This isn’t something I ever discuss.
It’s 2 a.m. and my chest closes. Suddenly, I’m drowning in a sea. I can’t swim. I can’t breathe. I’m in physical pain that won’t stop. Pain that has no tangible symptoms but can only be described as a mental cage of thoughts that drive in over and over again with an unparalleled intensity.
Recently, I’d been feeling paralyzed. Anxiety and indecision clouded my thoughts in a way they never had before. Maybe it’s partly due to the fact that I’m only a couple of months away from entering a new decade, or maybe it’s that I’ve never been someone that thrives in times of uncertainty.
I read the majority of the book The Emperor of All Maladies on flights between Baltimore and SoCal during Thanksgiving and winter break, and I still haven’t actually finished the entire thing yet. But as far as I can tell, you would have difficulty finding a narrative that blends the journey of science and humanity as comprehensively and eloquently as this one does.
During much of the end of fall semester, I couldn’t wait until this time of year. Being inside constantly due to the cold, I was spending way more time on my phone than I wanted to, because anything on there — even just refreshing the same four apps over and over again — was better than walking outside.
