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I remember being 10 or 11 years old, sitting in front of my family’s desktop computer, staring at a picture of a girl. She was maybe 17, wearing a red varsity jacket with matching red Converse shoes and big gold hoops. Her hair was long, straight and blonde. She was sitting cross-legged on a baseball diamond, a bat casually resting on her shoulder.
Like many other residents of Baltimore, I woke up on Tuesday morning to the news of the Francis Scott Key Bridge falling overnight when it was hit by a massive ship that was exiting the Port of Baltimore. It goes without saying that this was a devastating incident for the city, and our thoughts and prayers are especially with those who lost loved ones.
There is a strange peace to the sight of a beach town emptied.
When I was seven years old, I started to learn the piano. I had a wonderful (albeit strict) teacher, who taught me a lot about how to place my hands on the keys, read bass clef and approach three-octave scales. I graduated from intro exercises to sonatinas after a couple of years and started performing annually at my teacher’s recitals.
While sitting at dinner during my class trip this past intersession to Brazil, I ordered a drink with a small yellow note attached to it. It said in Portuguese, “não espere ter tudo pra aproveitar a vida, se você já tem a vida pra aproveitar tudo.” Don’t wait to have everything to enjoy life, if you already have life to enjoy everything.
Over winter break, my family’s activity and conversation revolved around a TV series called Blossoms Shanghai. Set in the ‘90s in Shanghai, the show interweaves stories of young Shanghainese fighting for their future in their own ways as the city undergoes tremendous economic changes.
While running the risk of taking the name of this column too literally, it's time we talk about the sounds of Baltimore. While it may be famous for its crabs, Old Bay and Natty Bohs — its glistening harbor, picturesque parks and breath-taking sunsets — the voices of the city hold a special place in my heart.
Working with cells requires knowledge, dexterity, time management and an absurd amount of confidence.
When I was younger, I was a voracious reader — that’s the word my mum used to describe me. I read on the breakfast table, on the way to school, during break and lunch time, in between classes, during classes, at the dinner table and under the covers at night. I was always reading. I actually got prescribed glasses because I would wake up before the sun had risen and read in the dark.
As I scarf down my usual rushed lunch at Hopkins Cafe, it occurs to me that I no longer enjoy eating. I eye my plate: cauliflowers, carrots, green beans, chicken, macaroni and cheese and breadstick. An M&M cookie lies to its left, resting on the napkins I sloppily collected from the dispenser. My mug is filled with soy milk and I’m watching my Physics 2 pre-lectures on my computer.
Growing up, I didn’t spend much time with my dad. I’d see him early in the mornings, sitting with his cup of chai and a book, before he made his way to work and I made my way to school. He’d come home from work around 9 p.m., which was well past the time when my brother, mom and I would eat dinner, but we’d all sit with him at the dining table — he would eat dinner while the rest of us picked at a bowl of dates. At night, he’d be doing work in the study or living room, and I’d be watching my own shows on my laptop a few feet away. My dad is not a particularly talkative or open person, so our relationship developed at a distance and moved in silence.
I have never been one for school spirit.
At the end of 2023, I felt very burnt out with writing. I love writing, but I felt as though I had spent the fall semester writing excessively as I drafted, edited and often scrapped one short story after the next. To combat this, I decided it was time to seek out new inspiration. I often pull from my own life in my work (and I will continue to do so), but I wanted to work to make sure that I always had material, even if there was nothing in my personal life currently interesting to me as a writer.
It takes roughly 40 minutes to get from Homewood Campus to the medical campus. Those are 40 minutes spent crowded among strangers as you sit through rush hour traffic, but they’re also 40 minutes of freedom. 40 minutes where it would be incredibly inconvenient to pull a laptop out and start doing homework, so your only responsibility is to hang onto a railing and try not to fall.
Dear my freshman-year self,
There was a window nook in my bedroom growing up, a cold ledge about a meter wide. I filled it with pillows and a throw blanket. For months in high school, I’d wake up early just to sit there before school, reading by lamplight for a dim hour, then watching the sun leak into the sky with my forehead against the glass. I’d play music, quiet enough not to wake anybody. I’d listen to the building’s pipes and watch the street lamps blink off. Sometimes, I’d make myself a cup of tea.
Once you arrive at the 9 a.m. class you have to fight your inner demons to not skip again, you might look around the lecture hall and notice girls who look totally dolled up. They wear cute outfits, full faces of makeup and seem ready to kick start their day like the “girlbosses” seen on TikTok. You might think to yourself, “How do these people love life this much?” to the point where they sacrifice maybe an hour of extra sleep time just so they look good for a college lecture.
I found my New Year’s resolution not at 12 a.m. on New Year’s Eve, but rather at around 6 p.m. on New Year’s Day. I was back in New Jersey with my two closest friends at the time, in a final goodbye hangout before we all reconvened in the summer. Both were leaving for school the morning of Jan. 2, one to New York and the other to Montreal. It was spontaneous, so naturally, we had no idea where we were going or what we were doing. We decided to make the cold and windblown trek to the cast-iron tables near Lillipies Bakery in the Princeton Shopping Center, where we sat under the glow of one of the closed storefronts and started talking about the new year.
Growing up, the History Channel was my family’s absolute favorite thing to watch on TV. My grandparents’ version of an ideal Sunday night wasn't spent watching football: it was reruns of Decoding the Past. While I was always a bit disgruntled having to watch shows about cults and Armageddon, the History Channel gave me one of my favorite childhood fixation eras: Extreme Collectors.
A few months ago, I began drafting an Admissions blog post about the beginning of my freshman year. I wrote about leaving home and finding a new one with my roommates in AMR III. I wrote about joining clubs and trying new activities. I wrote about walks around campus and dinners at Nolan’s… and then I stopped writing. I realized I was discussing shared experiences. As freshmen, we have all faced unprecedented obstacles, explored Hopkins and relentlessly searched to find our place. The novelty and excitement have become commonplace — you don’t need me to remind you about the homesickness and elation of your first night here or the memories you’ve made exploring the Inner Harbor.