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These past few weeks have felt like an ensemble coming-of-age miniseries. For most of this semester, I have been practically living in some of my closest friends’ dorms and apartments.
One of the most obvious things that we notice in our everyday lives is that people are distinctly different. There are 7 billion people sharing the earth. But how many are considered normal? When are people considered abnormal?
Before the pandemic, I was a freshman still trying to figure out what I wanted to do with my time at Hopkins. I was preoccupied with my grades, my resume and being the best I could be. By the start of spring of 2020, I began to volunteer with the Baltimore chapter of the International Refugee Committee (IRC). I thought it was an excellent activity to get involved in, since I wanted to work with international organizations or the State Department in the future.
June 6 was the day my summer truly began. At 6:30 I woke up, put on my bathing suit and sweats and drove to my favorite place: work. My coworkers and I greeted each other in the parking lot, blinking away the mist of the early morning as we started our trek down the hill to the beach.
I have an on-again, off-again relationship with running. The cycle began when I joined the track and field team in seventh grade. I already played a fall sport and was looking for a way to stay active in the spring. That year I tried out sprinting, hurdles and triple jump; I found myself extremely motivated by the prospect of progress in these various events.
It’s Sunday, a day made for living slowly, for taking care of yourself and your space and for recharging all of the little aspects of yourself that are expended every other day of the week. It’s Sunday, and I choose to rest.
When I first landed at the airport in Sevilla this past August to study abroad, I felt an overwhelming weight on my shoulders. In addition to the sweltering heat and my exhaustion from travel, I felt immensely unfamiliar with my surroundings and didn’t know how I’d fit into the city.
The return to “normal” has been gradual for all, The News-Letter included. The pandemic forced us to move our print publication, a tradition on campus for over 120 years, to a fully online, daily production with our last print edition published on March 12, 2020.
Our first fully in-person year at college has not been without its ups and downs (or else, would we even be true to this column?). Anytime we enter a new experience, it’s most likely not done properly, thus leading to our current predicament: lecture halls.
This past summer, I watched a matinee with my mom every Monday at our local AMC Theater. We picked our movies almost arbitrarily. One week an indie film about a slow-burn romance set in foggy London. The next a major action blockbuster (think: Yakuza and locomotives) upon which my mother — who usually prefers drama over action — awarded the glowing review of not bad.
Looking back at 21-year-old Sudha, I always used to be in so much of a rush. With everything I did — whether it was academics, research or even hobbies — I wanted to be the best. But now that I’m in graduate school, with almost the exact same schedule every day, I have begun to feel like my progress is plateauing.
The struggle is real. I never thought I’d find myself in a situation where I would be “a returning student.” But here I am, proud of the leap of faith I took to come back but also feeling wildly out of place. No one would be able to tell what kind of student I am, and frankly no one should care, but my own intrusive thoughts tell me that I stick out like a sore thumb.
At the beginning of my summer, this is what I had attributed my opportunity to live and intern in California to — luck. My experiences over the past summer were never something that I had considered for my personal plan nor were they a possibility that I thought could be on my radar. But when I received the call from my recruiter during spring break, I knew it was something that I had to take.
Somehow, summer is yet again gone and a new school year has begun. By the end of every August, I am typically itching to return to school. Although I cherish the long summer nights and new daily adventures, I always end up missing the structured routine I have at school. But this summer was a little different.
My absolute favorite ‘first day of school' activity was drawing self-portraits. Nothing beats the freedom to scrub down crayons to the stub and draw your favorite outfits and accessories, all for the teacher to hang them up in the hallway.
Have you ever heard song lyrics so true you felt like the artist stole them from your soul? I feel this when I hear Taylor Swift’s “Nothing New.” The lyrics, “How can a person know everything at 18 / and nothing at 22?” an anthem for my college career.
Recently, I have been faced with a heavy onset of self-doubt. The excitement that typically precedes the beginning of a new semester has been replaced with worry. Although I have always been somewhat of a worry-wart — the easily stressed out, Type A kind of person — this time my anxiety seems rooted in someplace entirely new.
I picked up my first foster cat, Tippy Montana, from the Maryland Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (SPCA) nearly three weeks ago. I didn’t know much about Tippy when I agreed to foster him, just that he was thirteen years old, a tabby cat and that he was extremely depressed in the shelter.
Like many Hopkins students, I entered as a pre-med student, with visions of myself as a great and famous doctor captivating my eyes and echoes of accolades ringing in my ears. I thought for sure that medicine was the career path for me and that no obstacle or setback would stop me.
Three hours and 36 minutes. Three hours and 36 minutes, that is, with no traffic, no stops for gas and no wrong turns. That’s the amount of time it takes for me to drive from my home in New York to campus, or at least that’s what the GPS tells me.
