I asked her out on a Friday night in junior year. It was 2 a.m. The words were painfully blinding even on my dimmed phone screen.
I had spent the past week writing and rewriting my message. The drafts...
You enter the kitchen and there it is, 17 cubic feet that promise to fulfill your biggest dreams. With one yank — which gives you a cramp from stretching your arm too far — happiness greets you.
When...
Mindless acts of terror do not surprise us anymore. The tragedy in London last Wednesday killed four people, among them an unarmed police officer, and injured 12 others: one German, one Pole, two Greeks,...
In the fourth grade, we learned how to line dance. The boys and girls faced each other at the center of the gym, reaching out to each other with sweaty hands, skipping and twirling down the line. It...
Three weeks ago, I received an email that would change the course of my semester. Initially, I was puzzled; I had not filled out any applications for the Georgetown University Student Association or had...
Georgetown was my dream school. I first stepped onto this campus six years and one week ago, amid a sudden thunderstorm. Our group of Los Angeles high school newspaper nerds, in town for a conference,...
I was speaking with a friend on Sunday when she asked how I was doing. It’s a question asked so often of us that we rarely give it a thought before offering up the standard answer. Great. Good. Fine....
I had just graduated from a prestigious high school at the top of my class. A few months later, I would be coming to Georgetown University, another competitive, selective and prestigious school. I thought...
This week (finally) marks the beginning of returning students migrating to campus. No matter how we spent our summers — at home, abroad, working or in D.C. — we all now come back to the place we share,...
In “Roughing It,” Mark Twain wrote: “Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry and narrow-mindedness.” I have been lucky this year to travel to places — both in the United States and abroad — that...
My story has always been one of contrasts. I’m obsessed with oxymorons, the concept where apparently contradictory terms appear in conjunction. My time in the Philippines has been an oxymoron in itself...
“The line is way too long. This is the absolute worst! It will take forever to get through this!” used to be my reaction. Before I got sick, bemoaning traffic or agonizing over a torn dress seam...
