Category: Reflections

Snapchat to Reality

When I want to stay updated with breaking stories or the latest headlines, I like to browse through my Twitter or media apps. I never expected to learn the most about the news surrounding Ferguson, Missouri through my Snapchat.

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Pillars of Society

Think of your immediate associations with Greece: beyond a few thoughts about party islands the visual symbols that arise in your mind are the classical pillars, democracy, and philosophy that serve as the foundations of your worldview.

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luv u lmao

I had been single on the Princeton campus for about a month when my friends sat me down for a serious talk about “moving on.” I had been moping around for too long, they explained, and it was time to start dating, seeing other people, hooking up, or whatever I wanted to call it.

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Without Even Kissing

Thinking of you is like touching a dead bird: I know it can’t hurt me but I recoil for fear that somehow it might touch me back.

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Well, Hello Dalai

In Jadwin Gym, His Holiness spoke extensively about love, compassion, and empathy for other people. He urged the audience to focus on the “one-ness of humanity” and to achieve meaningful lives through compassion and dialogue with people different from ourselves.

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In the Waiting Room of His Holiness

Although we are excited beyond comprehension, we are silent. The wings of a fan turn with purpose; we breathe in this moment while attempting to wrap our heads around the magnitude of a man who commands a room without words, commands a nation without recognition, commands respect without force.

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Barry

Barry (whose name has been changed for this article) is a gangly kid who looks to be somewhere in that stretch of late adolescence characterized by patchy moustaches. In another world, Barry, gregarious and talkative, would be captain of his school’s debate team, or maybe a theater major. He is funny and he knows it.

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Pacifism and Palestine

Pacifism may sound nice, but it is a hard doctrine to maintain: I struggled for years to reconcile my peaceful intuitions with the idea that we live in a violent world, and sometimes aiding those who are suffering might involve lethal force against those inflicting suffering.

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40.36° South 105.3° East

You have walked through FitzRandolph Gate, and you will never graduate. You keep walking until you hit the shore.

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On Screens & Esteem

One day this summer, sitting in a blank white apartment that was not mine, I felt a strange weariness. This apartment was full of more books than I will probably ever read and I had fellowships to apply to and emails to write and the whole Internet in front of me and all of New York City clamoring outside.

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We Could Be Heroes

The legend in question began with a Lego figure of Anakin Skywalker. When your family doesn’t use electricity on the Jewish Sabbath, there is not much to do. You play Risk. You play monopoly. You play Magic: The Gathering. Most of the time, though, you play Lego.

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Pardon My Deutsch

There’s a particular brand of shame that comes with being a tourist, particularly as an American. Especially in Europe, American tourists are almost universally received with a mixture of annoyance and exasperation, the kind usually reserved for flies buzzing around the ear or children crying on airplanes.

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