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.
It may be hard to believe, but April is actually the best month to be at Hopkins.
In my 19 years, I've learned a handful of lessons. I've found these to be the most important:
The comedian Billy Eichner has been one of my favorite people in Hollywood recently.
The first bite of crispy bacon. A cold shower in the middle of summer. An old song that you loved when you were younger suddenly playing on the radio. These feelings pretty much embody what spring break was for me.
Regardless of what you may have done for your spring break vacation, I’m sure any respite from the craziness that us Hopkins students call daily life was a welcome one.
An old mill property sits along the Jones Falls River and railroad tracks; a gravel parking lot surrounds the establishment. Down the street, Taharka Brothers scoops out ice cream and Union Craft Brewing unites water, barley, hops, and yeast. But inside this stone building, diners enjoy octopus carpaccio, artisan pizzas topped with house made cheeses and duck confit, and a beer list that speaks to the restaurant’s name, Birroteca.
Finding music on the Internet these days isn’t that hard. Besides iTunes, there are a plethora of online stores where one can purchase music. One of my favorite ones is Bandcamp, a website that allows musicians and labels to sell music, in both physical and digital formats, directly to their fans. Not only can you play entire songs instead of those 90-second samples, but you can also pick the type and quality of the digital file you want. That being said, there is still a huge amount of music available on the website, so finding something worthwhile is no easy task. Luckily, here are some LP’s/EP’s that you can find on the website are definitely worth the listen.
This is dedicated to all the people that told me that I shouldn’t be friends with seniors.
Okay, I get it. Rap really isn’t what it used to be.
As consumers continue to build resistance to traditional advertising in response to the excess advertising clutter that plagues public and private spaces, fashion brands have proceeded to devise innovative guerrilla marketing tactics aimed not only at capturing attention and creating positive word-of-mouth advertising, but at drawing this positive buzz into the realm of social media, where messages not only have the potential to reach an infinite number of target consumers, but can reach them in a matter of seconds.
I went to an Oscar party last Sunday that was truly a blast. All I could think of was how different it was than when I was a kid, when I would get so upset because my parents didn't let me stay up until the end of the show. Now, I'm old enough to pretend that I saw all of the movies and make seemingly well-informed commentary about how Leo has never won an Oscar. I learned that the best way to watch the Oscars is with a big group of some of your snarkiest friends. Round them all up and be merry: it's bound to be a good time.
Whether they’re athletes, cool European transfer students or that couple of kids who are actually from Maryland itself, we have such a diverse range of students here at Hopkins. We don’t always get the chance to live with or befriend people from the other side of the world, or even just from across the country, so it’s great that we can spend these four years here expanding our social circles and just meeting really cool people. What’s more amazing, though, is that even with all this variety present around us, there are always these certain few types of people that we are all bound to run into at least at one point of our college years.
There’s a certain time of the night when Puerta del Sol, located at the heart of Madrid, truly earns its name. On summer days in Sol you can see the last glimmer of the sun flicker through the red-roofed buildings, tracing people’s shadows as they make their way up Calle Montera to Gran Vía, Chueca, and Malasaña, or down Calle Correo to La Latina and Lavapíes. In the early winter, the plaza brims with mechanical light as people meet up under the golden metallic Christmas tree, exchanging the typical double kiss. Like the sun it’s named for, everything orbits around “Sol,” the soul and centerpiece of Madrid.
A hot tidbit of gossip that everyone has been forwarding on their office computers in the past couple of weeks is the discovery of a porn star who is currently a freshman enrolled at a university. Not just any university, though; the 18-year old porn star in question attends Duke University, one of the nation’s most prestigious schools. A university like Duke is, ostensibly, supposed to represent values such as virtue and integrity, whereas the porn industry is often seen as the antithesis of these qualities. I guess one thing that both have in common is hard work.
Despite York Road’s out-of-sync traffic lights and excruciating traffic, I decided to make my way to Belvedere Square last Saturday. I lamentingly admit that this was my first time visiting Belvedere Square, a coalition of retail shops, restaurants, specialty food stores, and a market that proved to be the center of activity. It was a lot to take in. But I had one objective and I would not stray, and that was to dine at Atwater’s.
Lack of sleep and stress may not be the only things making you feel depleted. Nutrition plays a huge role as well. I don’t think people realize just how impactful their diets can be.
I can't imagine a summer when my family's soundtrack will not exclusively consist of the Yanks' radio network. It is on all the time, heard in the background on my Dad's transistor radio. Whenever I went to my Grandma's house, we always had to yell at the front door when we walked in because she couldn't hear us over the afternoon game. My Grandma and Grandpa were some of the biggest Yankee fans I will ever know.
Every day, I make it a point to have one great or good thing happen. I feel that it is important to have a daily highlight because otherwise all of the days start meshing into one another, and then you can’t remember the last time you washed your hair. That is unacceptable.
Canada’s most talented export, Drake, was scheduled to grace the cover of Rolling Stone this week; however, due to the untimely death of the beloved Phillip Seymour Hoffman, the Toronto-born hip-hop star was unceremoniously bumped from the cover.
