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There’s a poem I keep thinking about: “Replica of the Thinker.” In it, a copy of Rodin’s famous statue sits at a museum, hunched over that familiar pose of “deep thought.” But he isn’t thinking. “His head is filled with iron and bronze,” the poet writes, “not neurons and God.” He looks like a thinker, but is he actually thinking?
Yesterday I took the MBTI test again for the first time in eight months: ISTJ-T. I didn’t think much of the four letters themselves — I’ve seen them enough times by now. What caught my attention was the last letter, a subtle change from A (assertive) to T (turbulent).
While I am not one to lecture people on the dangers of obsessing over Reality TV or developing a black-and-white form of thinking, I had never quite seen how social media could be wielded as a destructive tool in real time.
Apart from a single location pin on the map, Google knows little else of my home village. Tucked away in a cluster of villages surrounded by farmland, Jinchuanyuan remains a secret only the locals can tell. On a map, it’s unclear where the village starts or ends.
For as long as I can remember, I’ve worn my heart on my face. Joy, love and contentment glimmer in my eyes even when I attempt to hide my smile. The lump in my throat when I’m hurt shows up in the set of my lips and the hoarseness of my voice.
Sitting across from Tim Kahoe has been an absolute privilege and a joy. The sarcasm in his wisdom is something special. Tim’s a special type of go-getter. He wasn’t born with a vision to conquer the world. He’s just a man who recognized opportunities when they came and seized them with both hands.
But at the end of the day, the core question is the same one we were given as children for icebreaker worksheets. “What do you want to be when you grow up?” My question in return, stated or not, was often “Can I pick more than one?”
There is a natural phenomenon where trees in dense areas avoid clashing with each other by tending their canopies at a respectful distance so that each woodland resident may have a fair bid at sunlight. From a utilitarian perspective, it seems strange.
It is 6 a.m. and my roommates and I have had a total of eight alarms go off from 6:00 to 6:40 a.m. for the Freshman Cohort’s Spring Semester Registration. (Can be read as: none of the alarms actually got anyone out of bed, but all of them successfully jump-started the kind of frenzy that feels like work even though it accomplishes absolutely nothing).
Nowhere on my list do I remember seeing writer. Perhaps I didn’t earn it, or maybe the quiz makers didn’t want to encourage that behavior — like those signs in parks, “please don’t feed the geese.”
Hey Alan, I hope sophomore year is treating you well. I know my sophomore year of high school was the eye of a hurricane. It felt a little bit like a calm, trial period of being a pseudo-adult before you get hit by junior year lock-in and college applications.
I bought a new mattress the other day, thinking maybe it would solve my issue. But even before I slept on it for the first time and woke up the next morning with the same soreness running beneath my skin, I already knew why I was in this constant state of pain: dance.
I plop onto my seat in Hodson 110, flipping the light gray foldable desk over and laying my favorite mechanical pencil and eraser on top, catching the pencil with my index finger as it threatened to roll off the edge of the table. There are 30 minutes until the first ProbStats midterm.
No, I didn’t decide to wake up at 5 a.m. to start my day with something therapeutic, I stayed up until 5 a.m. to do something therapeutic.
I recall standing outside a faded brick building with a flickering blue “KIDS FIRST” neon sign, my rubbery pink goggles and swim towel dangling from my fist. During these summers, the distinct humidity brought on by storm clouds clung to my cotton tank, piling a little near the seams, and muffled the thrum of my heartbeat.
But nothing beats the feeling of watching my little brother sprint down the stairs with his little socks on or my sister pretending to be nonchalant, even though I can see her face light up, as I hand them my personalized gift every time I go back.
The morning I lost my voice, I thought it would be a minor inconvenience — a sore throat, maybe a quiet day or two. Nothing I hadn’t survived before. I had forgotten that I was in college now, where when I’m sick, I can’t rely on the comforts and silence of my home.
A little after I learned how to walk, my parents began helping me search for a particular passion that I could occupy my time with, so, like many other young girls, they decided to first sign me up for ballet classes.
On bad days, I'd check notifications as if they were emergencies. On good days I told myself I didn’t need anyone at all. Between those two postures, constantly anxious or apathetic, was a yearning: I wanted to feel safe with people, and I wanted to feel safe with myself.
If you had five minutes to talk to an eight-year-old version of yourself, what would you say?
