I cringe every time I hear someone say Miami is a “fake” city. As someone who attends school here, it definitely pricks my pride to hear others say that this city’s culture is shallow. Yet I should be used to outsiders generalizing about my home based on impressions. I’m from Jersey, and people from the…
When I was younger, I considered Valentine’s Day a fun day in class when we decorated coffee cans and filled them with boxes of candy hearts and SpongeBob-themed cards from our peers. It was an excuse to wear red and pink together (even though everyone knows they clash), to eat endless sugar cookies and to…
We’ve all been there. Sitting across from Friend A at the table, we tell her about our fight with Friend B and how she was so insensitive, but that we’re thankful that Friend A is always there for us. We look up at Friend A, expecting the understanding and sympathetic look we’re so grateful for,…
Since I came to college, I have accepted the fact that I apparently don’t look like other Indian students. Some combination of my hair color, skin tone and facial features leave a lot of people surprised when I tell them that yes, both of my parents are Indian, and I don’t mean the Christopher Columbus…
Spending even 10 minutes on a college campus is enough time to hear at least one girl complain about the fact that “college guys suck.” It isn’t unusual to hear grievances about the supposed modern death of romance. While to some degree, slacking suitors are responsible for low standards of romance on college campuses, they…
Those of us with younger siblings know what it’s like to fall victim to our parents’ request to “talk to your sibling, you know she never listens to us.” In my case, my parents asked me to sprinkle in college advice throughout the summer to my sister, who started her freshman year this fall…
I will admit to being a germaphobe. When I hear any news of avian flu or malaria spreading anywhere in the world, my first instinct is to sprint to the bathroom and wash my hands. You can imagine my horror when I learned that patients with Ebola were brought to the United States. But this…
Wisdom can be found in “Mean Girls,” one of the most quotable movies of all time, when Tina Fey’s character tells her students: “You all have got to stop calling each other sl*ts and wh*res. It just makes it OK for guys to call you sl*ts and wh*res.” A few years ago, hearing the word…
I’ve been hard-pressed to find someone my age that doesn’t support same-sex marriage. I feel as though our generation has made great strides in seeing marriage rights as human rights, analogous to the right to pursue happiness, and I’ve always been extremely proud to be a part of such an inclusive and progressive group of young…
Although Cyber Monday has provided a convenient (and far less chaotic) alternative to Black Friday, I am always surprised by the number of people I know who still trek out to the mall at ridiculous hours after Thanksgiving to shop. In this country, we spend an entire day giving thanks for what we have and…
My friends always tell me to create an Instagram, Twitter and Snapchat. At least I didn’t have to make a LinkedIn account, too. I thought the correct order for using LinkedIn was 1) get a job and 2) make a LinkedIn profile listing that job under “current employment.” Recently, however, I have learned that a…
Sometimes I sit at the back of a lecture hall to look at what other students are doing on their computers as the professor explains the steps of cell respiration. Out of 200 screens, I’d estimate a breakdown of 20 percent each on Facebook, doing other homework, reading blogs and watching TV, another 10 percent shopping online,…