Confession: I’ve never eaten ramen at college. Blasphemy, right? Ramen is practically made for midnight snacks and alternatives to dining hall food, but it’s always been a homey comfort food for me. When I was little, ramen was reserved for Saturday mornings. We’d wake up and eat our ramen (always adding peas, chicken, or egg so…
The 1948 picture book Blueberries for Sal never fails to take me back to my childhood. My parents used to read it to me at bedtime until I was old enough to read it to them instead. I loved hearing about Sal and her mother going blueberry picking to stock up for the winter. Sal starts…
Women face a variety of external struggles in the workplace–undermining comments from chauvinistic bosses, dress codes based on women’s modesty, sexual harassment, fighting for equal pay and maternity leave, the “mommy track,” underrepresentation in STEM fields–but bright women face an additional internal struggle that starts from a young age. Psychologist Carol Dweck conducted a study of…
I am from suburbia where the PTAs are a little too involved where people are dangerously unconcerned about crime where not playing soccer somehow made me inferior where kids have never even seen the inside of a city bus I am from eating Indian curry and Thai stir-fry instead of hamburgers and spaghetti and…
The first thing I did when I arrived in New York City for fall break was sleep. The second thing I did was go to Barnes & Noble and buy Gone Girl. I haven’t read a book–a “real book” (namely, not a textbook)–since August, and I’d been meaning to read Gone Girl for months before the movie…
He didn’t close his door. He sat in his desk chair. With those two simple things, I could relax. Together they screamed, “I realize I brought you to my bedroom on our first date, but I’m not trying to push any boundaries.” The night didn’t start off so promising. He had texted to say he’d…
Today is Election Day in the United States, and the first one where I’m actually eligible to vote. It’s a bit less exciting to turn 18 in a mid-term election year than in a presidential election year, but I’ve been waiting to exercise my right for a while now. I filled out my ballot the…
As a freshman, I never participated in the various traditions that most students here accomplish in their first few months. Returning for my second year, I knew it was time to start crossing off items on the unspoken Ithaca bucket list. My first trip to the gorges was a battle: walking a mile or so to…
How people handle joy and pride shows you a lot about them. How people handle pain and remorse shows you even more. I’m not the girl who sits on countertops and swings her legs slightly as she falls in love or makes a big decision. I’m the girl that makes pro/con lists and sees everything as a process.…
You’ve already read about the time my Tinder date pulled out a gun, but that night was relatively late in my Tinder “career.” Before I even considered meeting anyone I met on the app, I flicked through a ton of guys and had conversations with a good handful. A lot of those people were really…
Victim to Charm 