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.
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.
As much as we absolutely dread the post-New York Fashion Week-stress-syndrome that consumes us when we’re left to bid adieu to American fashion for the remainder of the season, we must admit that being able to look back, extract our favorite trends, and incorporate them into our fashion vocabulary is our guilty pleasure.
We all patiently waited for our acceptance letters to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry when we were 11, only to get an acceptance letter to Johnny Hopkins University at the age of 17. While we have come to appreciate (and, for some of us, love) this Muggle-founded institution, let’s let our imaginations tame a Nimbus 2000 (or is this too old-fashioned of a broom model now?) and join the two acclaimed schools in a harmonious celebration of knowledge and chocolate frogs.
Last January, the Washington City Paper published an article entitled “Is Restaurant Week a Rip-Off? We Did the Math.” In 2011, the New York Post had an article called “Restaurant Week totally bites!” The same year, Boston Magazine posed the honest and eye-opening question, “Me and My Big Mouth: Does Restaurant Week Need To Die?”
Last Friday, the seventh of February, would have been J Dilla’s 40th birthday.
As New York Fashion Week Fall 2014 made its highly anticipated visit this past week, we were expectedly delighted by the sights of Jill Stuart’s funky interpretations of the little black dress, Ruffian’s tapestry-printed dresses and ruffled collars (inspired by Petrus Christus’ 15th century portraits), and Rebecca Taylor’s assemblage of minimalist menswear-inspired pieces. But although we adored Christian Siriano’s elegant modern collection inspired by 1950s glamour and Alexander Wang’s structured monochrome wool mini dresses, can we really say we were artistically stimulated, or even surprised by each designer’s choice of inspiration and consequent execution of his designs? Would it really have been that difficult to anticipate that Siriano would choose to design a collection inspired by classic femininity à la Dior circa 1957, while Wang would focus on rendering the austere minimalism that contributed so highly to his popularity last NYFW?
There are times when I ask myself, what is the point of everything I’m doing? What is the end goal? Do I even have an end goal?
The last few weeks have seen a whirlwind of activity in the entertainment sphere and most of it is related to news that indubitably makes the general public lose the little faith we had in the giants we call celebrities.
