Hacking a Lung
Marlboro Reds. The choice cigarette of cowboys and cattle ranchers, of healthy corn-fed Westerners with tanned skin and rugged faces who dexterously smoke with their thumb and forefinger. In the October of my senior year in high school, this was the first cigarette I ever tasted. Instead of putting hair on my chest like muscled […]
J-Biebz as Jay Gatz
Late one Friday night, buzzed and carrying packs of sour candy from the Wa, I wandered to a room in Whitman. As my host and I sat on her bed, alternating handfuls of Sour Patch and some other Technicolor monstrosity, her roommate decided to show me a video for “Beauty and a Beat,” performed and directed by everyone’s favorite cultural punching bag: Justin Bieber.
This Week in Sports: Baskets and Balls
My dad always joked that he encouraged me to play sports because I was supposed to be born a boy (I am the youngest of three girls—his final, failed attempt at contributing a Y chromosome to the world). After trying out a wide variety of athletic pursuits in the sixth grade (fencing, softball, and circus […]
Remembering Dre
Brian introduced me to rap music on bus #177 in what I think was fourth grade. I know it was 177 and not 181 or 161 because this memory is accompanied by a host of other unique sensory inputs: the distinct smoky smell of the beloved driver Larry that wafted throughout the bus; the smooth […]
A Wolf in Your Clothing
WHO IS THE PRINCETON COAT THIEF? If you’re like me, then you have received countless emails from your residential college listserv that sound something like this: Hey Guys! Sorry to spam, but I lost my coat at (insert eating club here). If you accidentally picked it up, let me know! If you’re not like me, […]
Honesty
[I] food [A] star_luvr : spicy fries at terrace fourth course are so obviously made by students they are so overspiced star_luvr : when i cook i put a shit ton of spices on it to test the limits of my palate star_luvr : a display of a youthful belief in vigor that more is always […]
The Tunnel
People start asking some time around kindergarten. It’s the fault of those LL Bean monogrammed backpacks, so ubiquitous to the elementary school experience. “What does the E stand for?” I asked a friend as she set down her Nacho Cheese Orange bag, emblazoned with CES. This launched a class-wide discussion of middle names. A scientist […]
Peer Review (Part 1)
Susannah Sharpless edits Andrew Sondern’s Common App essay.
Peer Review (Part 2)
Andrew Sondern edits Susannah Sharpless’s Common App essay.
Beyonce Ever After
From the opening scene of, Life is But a Dream, it’s clear why The Washington Post criticized the documentary for having “no linear narrative…like a hallucinatory advertisement for success.” The recurring interview with Beyoncé takes place in an unnaturally well-lit room, perhaps an artistic representation of the “dream” referred to in the film’s title. She […]
Life Is Not a Dream
It is difficult to call the new HBO film “Beyoncé: Life Is But a Dream”—which debuted February 15—a documentary. More than anything, it comes across as self-promotion instead of an objective or illuminating take on its subject’s life. Beyoncé is not only the star of the production; she also holds the roles of director, producer, […]
Primal Scene
Rorschach tests and free-association exercises seem to me too well known, too expected to be useful for psychoanalysis. But I have found a new test to capture the shallower motions of our subconscious: the words of students childishly bumbling and malapropping their way through a new language. Being forced to speak at a childlike level […]
Humble Beginnings
Language classes are humbling. Unless you faked your placement test, you are exercising a skill you do not possess for an hour every day. Ninety percent of the thoughts you have during class are impossible to convey. This was my great surprise when I came to GER 101 as a sophomore. I remembered excelling at […]
French 101
I’ll start this assessment of French 101/102 with a warning—one that applies to all first level language classes. If you ever find yourself longing to start a new language, know that you will have fifty minutes of class every day for both your fall and spring semesters. In other words, don’t take a semester of […]
ARA 101
As I stood outside the door to Frist 212 on the first day of my freshman year, waiting for my Arabic 101 class to start, a bright-eyed boy in a polo shirt bounced up to the door. I smiled at him, and he stood weirdly close to me, clutching his books. I was unnerved. Soon, […]