I’m irresistibly drawn to personality tests — but not for the reasons you might think. While I enjoy taking these tests myself, my real interest comes from seeing my friends consider their answers. Through these experiences, I see how different people perceive the world and react to difficult ...
With Thayer Street a one-minute walk from my dorm, I’ve often found myself browsing Yelp for food options. I love the category search function in particular, which allows users to browse for food options by cuisine. One category I’ve noticed is “ethnic” restaurants. The word “ethnic” ...
When I was beginning to make my college application list just over four years ago, I had never considered the possibility of going to an Ivy League school. Though my academics and extracurriculars certainly qualified me to apply to highly selective colleges, I lacked the confidence to pursue admission ...
Brown pitches its campus as one set in “the heart of Rhode Island’s vibrant capital city,” boasting its ostensibly active membership ...
I am giving you $70. I am also presenting you with a charity request letter from Save the Children. You now have an opportunity to donate any of your just-earned $70 to Rokia, a starving ...
The videos are all the same: A thin, conventionally attractive person poses in front of a mirror before the screen cuts to a beautifully staged bowl of oatmeal. The next shot is lunch, a colorful salad, and then dinner, a mix of grains and greens. Bonus points if “macros”— the grams of carbohydrates, ...
As a nostalgic senior, I’ve often found myself reminiscing about my first year, and in particular, the inextricable link between my first-year experience and partying. Drinking is at the core of the American college experience. For first-years eager to immerse themselves in college life, partying ...
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 ...
Solutions by The State News
