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.
In the weeks following spring break, I’ve been struck, yet again, by constant hankerings for the flavors of home. As I’ve already written in this column, these cravings include the meals my mother and the other phenomenal home cooks in my family dish out to my clamoring cousins and me. However, I also find myself longing for my favorite bites from mom-and-pop businesses all over North Jersey.
I’m not the type of person who opens up. I don’t have a lot of experience letting the people around me know how I’m feeling at any given moment. I often feel like I’m caught between who I am and who other people think I am. As a result it feels like I’m constantly walking on eggshells to be the person everyone expects me to be. That’s always been difficult for me, but I thought it was just normal. I thought walking on eggshells was human nature.
This morning I emerged from the shower, fully prepared to dress myself in the clothes I had picked out last night, and paused. “What am I getting dressed up for?” I flashed back to 16-year-old me picking out high-waisted black pants from my uniform and remembered hearing, “You’re going to school, it’s not a fashion show.” Slightly reluctantly, I zipped up my red knee-high boots, wrapped my sparkly black, white and red coat around me, and tossed my tote bag on my arm.
In this week’s issue of Art and Activism, I will be taking a break from my regularly-scheduled programming (i.e. socially-engaged film and fiction) to talk about socially-engaged theatre, specifically the Barnstormers spring musical production of Cabaret. First performed in 1966, Cabaret focuses on a cast of characters in a seedy nightclub in 1930s Berlin. The German political scene is rapidly changing as an American man named Clifford Bradshaw falls in love with one of the nightclub’s dancers, an English woman named Sally Bowles.
My grandmother grew up in an orphanage — not because she didn’t have a family but because she couldn’t find them. She was six-years-old, maybe seven, when she was separated from them during the Korean War. Raised by the Anglican nuns at the orphanage, she graduated first in her class and left at 18-years-old to pursue a college education during a time when few people, let alone women, had college degrees.
There haven’t been many moments that have shocked me much since August. Sure, moving to college and taking my first midterms — ever — were two eventful things but nothing unexpected.
Here’s a common situation: I’m sitting with my friend, Kelsey, and another person comes up to us and says, “Has anyone ever told you that you look alike?” We both tense, smile placidly and respond with something like, “No. We don’t really look alike.”
Pakistan was long warm nights. Pakistan was roadside cafes. Pakistan was pebbled streets and pavements merging into one another. Pakistan was friends and family and colored, dirty cloth on a table. Pakistan was chai made right. Pakistan was greasy nutella paratha and greasier fries. Pakistan was eating food that you knew would give you an upset stomach.
Some weeks, it feels like I spend every waking hour writing. Whether it’s for The News-Letter, a class paper, or even just for fun, it still blows my mind that some weeks at Hopkins I write more than I would have done in the entirety of my hardest high school semesters. I can’t blame anyone but myself for this. In my four semesters here, I’ve taken eight writing intensive classes. I don’t have to write nearly an article a week for The News-Letter, but I want to. Even on weekends, when I find a new album or movie I’m really into, I will write a review only to delete it. Even though nobody reads these pieces, through them I gain a greater understanding and appreciation for the art I’m consuming, which is what matters to me.
Before you read this article, I want to provide you with a content warning if you are someone who might be affected by reading about sexual assault. I wrote this article after I got to a point where I stopped blaming myself. Through it, however, I work through my own negative and destructive experience with graphic self-blame. So if you’re someone who can relate, I hope reading this can help you — but please make sure you’re at a place where you feel like it will help and not hurt you.
For the past few months, I’ve really enjoyed writing this column. Being able to engage in open conversations about the things and moments that have impacted me most these past four years has been a very fulfilling experience. But unfortunately, as we get closer to the end of the semester and I prepare to graduate and head off to get my MFA, I’ve decided to bring this column to a close.
After writing about hook-up culture on campus for Valentine’s Day, I didn’t think twice about it being published... at first. Then I had some people tell me they really enjoyed it, and then it dawned on me that people had actually read it. I started to think of my parents and of my hometown.
Let me tell you a few facts about myself. I am a junior studying Computer Science at Hopkins who sometimes writes for The News-Letter, and as of this writing I don’t have an internship.
Oftentimes when you are talking to a friend, it’s about how your day is going, what you’ve been up to recently and vice versa, all that surface level stuff. If we are being honest with one another, that’s just small talk. Once you tap into your feelings, then you really start to listen to what the person is saying and understand how they are feeling.
Female college graduates have outnumbered males for decades. In Fortune 500 companies, women make up 50 percent of the workforce; however, women only make up 25 percent of executive positions. Despite an increase in board gender diversity, there are still very few women in executive leadership positions. Only 4.8 percent of Fortune 500 CEOs are women. These numbers are not only shockingly low, but, in 2018, the number of female CEOs also fell by 25 percent. In corporate America, women are losing ground.
I first started experimenting with my mom’s Peloton break after she got one for Christmas my sophomore year. I was initially a skeptic – sure it looked cool, but was it actually going to be a good workout? More importantly, would it be enjoyable enough that I would find myself actually wanting to do it.
In late February, I deactivated my Instagram account for about a week. On Monday, I said goodbye to my lovely 1,449 followers and pulled the plug. I might reactivate it in a week either out of FOMO or a desire to showcase a cute picture but definitely more for the latter reason than the former. And in a month from now, I’ll be kissing my account goodbye for another week.
Since childhood, art museums were my safe space. They were hushed and contemplative, a place for solitary reflection as well as interesting (murmured) discussion. It started with encouragement from my parents. My dad is an artist and my mother an avid art lover, so they made it a priority to expose me to art as early as possible.
An acquaintance recently told me I was the personification of suburbia. She said that I was very clearly from Long Island, that I fit all the stereotypes.
