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Saanya Jain: Making choices, taking chances

I have spent this semester counting my lasts — granola bowls, John Street basement concerts, all-nighters in the Rock. At each occasion of arithmetical gymnastics, one question inevitably arose: Would I do it all again the same way? Each time, I would think back to a memory from my senior year of ...

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Benjamin Potee: Graduating into cataclysmic climate change

Part of graduating is accepting unpredictability. Our graduating class will be forced to reckon with an emerging source of uncertainty: our changing climate and subsequent impacts upon societies, populations and individuals. The existence of climate change has been known for decades, but specific effects ...

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Opinions

Rebecca Okin: On 'using everything'

Gertrude Stein has watched over me for the past four years. Or more specifically, her words, etched into the English department building at 70 Brown St., have: “And then there is using everything.” They’ve watched me run to Smith-Buonanno Hall on Tuesdays and Thursdays and Shabbat dinners on Fridays. ...

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Julianne Center: Dreams and diagnoses

I joined The Brown Daily Herald because I wanted to be Rory Gilmore. It was as simple as that. I was a small-town-girl from Southern California, and I knew no one who had navigated the brick-patterned halls of the Ivy League beside my dear friend Rory. I thought there would be an interview. My school ...

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Opinions

Aidan Calvelli: UNIV0100: How to Fall in Love

You’re supposed to learn all sorts of things in college: how to read more critically, solve for a p-value, live on your own, manage your time efficiently or maybe even shotgun a beer. Brown tries to prepare its students to “discharge the offices of life with usefulness and reputation.” Its liberal ...

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Suvy Qin: Home within me

A seatbelt soaked by tears; a bright yellow Penske truck packed full of things; two days of driving into the heart of the Midwest from the bayous of Louisiana. These are my memories of moving away from the first place I called home. Since then, I’ve gotten used to the motions of cramming everything ...

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Kasturi Pananjady: On gratitude and uncertainty

In 2015, New Jersey’s Star-Ledger published an obituary for Vishal Bokka Reddy ’12, “a software engineer, a neuroscientist, a linguist who spoke four languages, a flutist and a humanist.” Reddy’s life came to an end when he was "hit by a car while jogging," just three years after graduating ...

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Divya Santhanam: Idlies for the collegiate soul

I used to have a blue lunch box. I can’t remember the exact shade of blue, but I remember the coarseness of its fabric as I opened it on the first day of senior kindergarten. It had enough space for a Ziploc bag and a stainless steel, or as my mother would say, ever-silver thermos. Inside it was a ...

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Opinions

Maya Singh: Pondering the path ahead

When I first walked through the Van Wickle Gates three years ago, it was in the company of a much smaller, and perhaps more eclectic, group. As a transfer student, I crossed the threshold with folks who had called other universities their home, had served in the armed forces and had even worked as circus ...

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Opinions

Ruth Foster: Open curriculum 2.0

We’ve spent four years (or maybe a little more) wandering around in the open curriculum. For some of us, the course has been relatively straightforward. But I think for most of us, these precious years at Brown have brought about a great deal of questioning and a generous helping of difficult choices. ...

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Clare Steinman: Holding greatness close

On the sweltering evening of last year’s Campus Dance, as the Class of 2018 prepared to take the stage for their Senior Sing, I found myself in conversation with an alum visiting Brown for his 30th reunion. We talked about the many ways that this place had changed and stayed the same, and he shared ...

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Gold '19: Earth’s history shows we need a Green New Deal

When we think about climate change, we should think about the Younger Dryas. You probably haven’t heard of the Younger Dryas, a cold period that started 12,900 years ago — at the end of the last glacial period — with a 10˚C cooling over two centuries, and ended 1,200 years later with a 15˚C ...

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Opinions

Kramer '20: In response to “Brown should be harder”

Last week, I read a column in The Herald titled “Brown is hard. It should be harder,” which advocated for intensified grading practices on campus. The argument was premised on the belief that too many students skate by, taking classes that do not require much work; they are enabled to have it all, ...

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Schapiro '19: The greatest Brown graduation story ever

I’m in the late innings of the last start of my career, and the manager is coming out to get me. I’m done, he says, and I can hit the clubhouse and start preparing for graduation while some rookie takes over where I left off. It’s been four years for me at Brown and at The Brown Daily Herald, ...

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Klein '20: Why the Rockets can beat the Warriors

As the first round of the NBA playoffs continues, it is becoming clear that the Golden State Warriors will face the Houston Rockets in the Western Conference Semifinals. The Warriors can easily demolish the Clippers one more time, and the Rockets have severely outmatched the Jazz over the first three ...

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Calvelli '19: Brown is hard. It should be harder.

We all know the stereotype of the stressed out, overworked college student. Since you’re at Brown, it probably has applied to you — if not as a permanent character trait, then as the version of yourself that springs forth when you’ve got two midterms next week. It makes sense to feel overworked ...

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Schmidt '21: Uproot weed-out classes

Financial Accounting. Organic Chemistry. Introductory Calculus. No matter the concentration, there will always be that one class that grinds your gears. They are coined “weed-out” classes. Weed-out economics classes filter out the hopeful Goldman Sachs interns. Weed-out chemistry classes filter ...

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Opinions

Richardson '20: The problem with the Kaepernick process

Former 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick’s protest of police brutality against the black community became iconic when he knelt during the national anthem before kickoffs in 2016. He became a symbol of bravery for some and disrespect for others. Just two months ago, he and Carolina Panthers safety ...

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Aman '20: It’s time to rein in the Advancement Office

In a February letter to the Providence Journal, President Christina Paxson P’19 claimed that “Brown’s central administration was not aware that some staff in Advancement was providing logistical support” for the now infamous Granoff dinners. In March, when The Herald reported that the Advancement ...

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