As I enter my senior year at Brown, I’m watching everyone around me make decisions that, on the surface, seem life-defining. What will our futures hold, and what is the best way we can shape them? For some, this question starts early. Many students in my class already know where they will be working ...
Midway through my study abroad experience in Paris, I was sitting in my European-sized single when I got a text from my dad at midnight. “Don’t panic, but call your mom.” I called my mom, who was in pieces. After a fall, my 86-year-old maternal grandmother was unconscious in the hospital. My ...
When it comes to love, words often fail us. Some articulate love as warmth, others as “a madness of delight; an obsession.” My favorite description of love, from Iris Murdoch, is “the extremely difficult realization that something other than oneself is real.” Yet no words can quite capture ...
This year’s Commencement Magazine marks the end of our class’ collective journey through Brown, and more broadly, a world irrevocably transformed.
Finding the words to adequately reflect on the beauty, triumph and at times difficulty of navigating this university is an exercise that is daunting yet necessary. It is my hope that my own personal narrative and understanding of my Brown experience will guide you, uplift you and empower you. ...
This winter break was my last time home as a college student and my first time holding an American phone number in Spain. More than needing to be available to my classmates on College Hill, my 401 number signified a transition that would have seemed insurmountable to my first-year self.
For as long as I can remember, my attention has escaped me. It has always been in a million places at once, split a million different ways. But at some point in my educational journey, I figured out how to direct it toward the standard markers of student achievement — academic excellence, extracurricular ...
In October 2021, trend forecaster and TikTok influencer Mandy Lee predicted the return of the so-called “indie sleaze” aesthetic: a call back to the hipster heydays of the mid 2000s and early 2010s. And this predicted 2010s resurgence may be quickly becoming a reality. In recent months, I’ve ...
My love-hate relationship with reading has been tipping a little more into the hate category recently. For the first time ever, I’m in four reading-heavy classes. Add a language on top of that and it feels like all I do is decipher dense texts. And I’m burnt out.
Outer space has long been an object of scientific curiosity and yearning imaginations, but today, its importance in society is growing at escape velocity, quickly becoming more politically and economically critical. When space becomes practically accessible for all, it will change human civilization ...
Spring semesters feel pregnant, somehow. Seniors are on their steady march back toward the Van Wickle Gates, toward the finish line, toward the verge of what they have longed for. A lot is in motion during this time.
Last September, I wrote about how, even as a new student, I knew that this year at Brown was destined to be different. Seven months later, I feel confident that my prediction was correct, although it is impossible to pinpoint exactly what made this year unique. As a first-year student, there is no ...
After a year of online school, I was stunned when I walked into the first class of my sophomore year, an upper-level computer science lecture of 70 students. I couldn’t see a single other woman in the classroom. I scanned the room a few times, then felt relief as I found at least a couple of female ...
When I was growing up, I didn’t know that scheduling biannual dental appointments was commonplace. Due to the economic recessions of the 2000s, my family’s income was shaky for many years, and ...
If you have a TikTok account, you’re probably familiar with Duo — the bright green owl mascot of the language learning app Duolingo. On Duolingo, Duo encourages users to practice daily conjugations and vocabulary, but on the official Duolingo TikTok account, ...
It’s officially springtime: The birds are chirping, the trees are blooming on the Main Green and campus is abuzz with outrage about housing selection for the 2022-23 school year, which can be described as nothing less than a total mess. With few resources about housing options, confusing information ...
Last Sunday, April 3, the 64th Annual Grammy Awards ceremony took place in Las Vegas. Hosted by the Recording Academy, the Grammys are heralded as the most prestigious music awards event in the country. But, especially in recent years, viewership is declining and critics say the awards show is becoming ...
“So yes, I am furious at the unvaccinated, and I am not ashamed of disclosing that,” wrote Charles M. Blow in a December New York Times op-ed. “I am no longer trying to understand them or educate them.” While one columnist certainly can’t speak for the masses, you don’t have ...
In a famous column from a couple of years ago, Martin Scorsese explained his viral Empire magazine interview where he said that Marvel movies aren’t cinema. “Nothing is at risk,” he wrote about the franchise. “The pictures are made to satisfy a specific set of demands, and they are ...
The first time I really saw “social media activism” in action was during the wave of Black Lives Matter protests in May 2020. I was just getting used to the new virtual status quo brought on by the pandemic when, overnight, nearly every online platform I was active on was saturated with media ...
Solutions by The State News
