I’m pretty trusting of people on the Internet. I successfully traveled from Boston to Ithaca with Zimride. I’ve used Craigslist to get babysitting and petsitting jobs. I looked for VidCon roommates using Facebook. Last November I arranged to stay for four days with a YouTube friend I’d never met. So when my friend encouraged me to download Tinder, an app…
I remember weekly poker nights that lasted long into the night, fueled by sparkling cider and laughter. I remember how unashamedly I lay my head down and power napped in the library before starting the essay that seemed impossible. I remember choking on irony and tragedy as the vet told me she’d finally feel relief…
I remember looking under the dining room table and finding a pastel basket filled with ten dimes, a handful of jellybeans, and a package of Peeps. I remember taking a wrong turn and preparing to fend for myself on the freeway on-ramp. I remember being his manic pixie dream girl. I remember silent tears dripping…
Tomorrow I turn 18, so to celebrate and/or speed up my last hours of being 17 years old, here are 17 things I learned this year: 1. Fax machines ROCK when you live 3,000 miles away from your parents and can’t sign medical release forms because you’re a minor. 2. Make your friends your family. 3. In comparison…
“Don’t blink, you might miss it.” I have a lot of trouble with this phrase. The fear of missing out is a crippling one, and “don’t blink” only empowers the anxiety we naturally feel about not being able to do everything. While the phrase is supposed to encourage us to live in the moment and…
I’ve learned a lot in college so far. Some things I know I’ll use in the future, like the phases of stuttering or what progress to expect from a child’s speech and language development at various ages. Some things I most likely won’t, like the difference between a pirate and a maroon on 18th century…
This post brought to you by my inability to sleep on my red-eye flight to Atlanta, the first leg in my frustratingly long journey back to Ithaca to start my second semester of college. I’ve done a fair amount of traveling in the past 24 hours, so I’m already over it. I was impatient on…
Yesterday was my the 17th birthday of one of my best friends, Heidi. Our friendship fascinates me because it is in so many ways atypical: it started with utter dislike, was never anything but long-distance, and these days we talk so rarely that we should grow apart but we never do. Heidi and I met…
Victim to Charm 