I stand on the chair, trying to keep my balance. My right arm stretches upwards as I reach for the top shelf, and I carefully grab the heavy box. I place it on my desk and I open it, and there it is: “When I grow up I will fly.” Among all my old hand-written letters, I choose this one to keep reading. ...
For the past three years, my family has upheld the same end-of-summer tradition: On a Saturday in mid-August, we drive four hours north of San Francisco until we hit Eureka. On Sunday, we run the Humboldt Bay Marathon.
My father says meals you make yourself always taste the best. When I was younger, I would laugh at his statement as he served up tangy tomato egg stir fry or hearty beef noodle soup for dinner. Why would I want to cook a meal when I could enjoy the delicious flavors someone else made for me? But the ...
There is an altar in my mother’s family home.
Upon seeing the RISD Museum’s Asian Art special exhibition “The Road Less Traveled - Edo’s Nakasendō” in my Urban Studies seminar, I was inspired. Featuring a plethora of works from my favorite ukiyo-e (Japanese woodblock print) artists Utagawa Hiroshige and Katsushika Hokusai, the beautiful ...
I have always loved the way that cubes of chicken stock dissolve into hot broth. My grandmother first taught me how to make chicken noodle soup when I couldn’t even see over the top of the stove. She sat me down on the counter next to the pot, explaining each ingredient as my grandfather helped chop ...
I stepped onto a campus sidewalk, two days after the rush of move-in and still unsure how to find my way to V-Dub from my EmWool dorm, the Main Green a foreign field. I remember staring at your face, confused about why you were extending your arm forward to shake my hand, completely oblivious to the ...
I squeeze my eyes shut before the dive, even though they’re encased in my thick, blurry goggles. Perhaps my fear has to do with the near-drowning incident two summers ago, when the artificial blue waves of Sahara Sam’s Water Park held me down and I suddenly couldn't remember which way the sky was. ...
Happy Family Weekend! Whether you have family coming to visit you from home, a fun weekend planned with the friends and family you’ve found here on campus, or a study date with yourself at a library to lock in, this weekend has a bunch of fun events and activities in store! Trying to cram everything ...
I think best in transit.
The first time I went to an estate sale, I showed up with a tote bag and a pocket full of small bills. I’m not entirely sure what I expected, but I definitely did not anticipate feeling as though I was trespassing.
A gap in the calendar. A kind of pause that hovers as the months bleed into each other, when leaves flow in the wind and daylight thins into dusk. From a windowsill, the gap is like the pause between inside and outside, connecting what is still clinging to what has already stepped away.
Walking through the Van Wickle gates on Convocation Day held a similar sensation to competing in Miss USA. A crowd of people cheering, flags waving proudly, and the glimmer of hope that my life was about to change—though this time, I was walking into classrooms rather than across a stage in 6” heels ...
While some stay up late refreshing their internet browsers for just-released concert tickets, merch drops, or even current affairs, the only thing enticing enough to convince me to stay up past my 10 p.m. bedtime was, of all things…a Labubu.
Seemingly, Paris is quiet at 1 p.m. on a Monday—at least in the Marais. I am sitting outside of a café, hoping for a mysterious, protagonistic moment with my journal and my whole milk latte (something only acceptable in France). The wind sends shivers down my spine, ripples through the pages of my ...
Solutions by The State News
