Personality tests aren’t “scientific,” but self-understanding isn’t meant to be a scientific process.
Intellectual posturing is almost always an offense and is only legal and celebrated for existing intellectuals who are already famous.
This is the central paradox of the elite university: It is simultaneously America’s crown jewel and its black sheep, an embodiment of everything this country can achieve and everything it has failed to thus far.
The music crescendos and suddenly you’re there. You’re standing on a rain-soaked road and the daylight is dead, but you finally feel alive.
The oaks have survived the first hundred years of Duke’s turbulent history. Let’s make sure they’ll be around one hundred years from now.
Not only does hyper grade inflation diminish the value of true achievement, it also shields us from a reality that does not deliberately accommodate our success.
At the end of the day, it is not our future self that will be asked to work towards that goal, but our current self.
While most pre-professional societies do not have a residential section, Beta Upsilon Mu members creatively promote residential connections by commandeering a new common room to couch-surf in every week.
No matter what type of cuisine it models, adding a restaurant that is trying to serve real food is an unambiguous win in my book.
I’m miles away from identifying with the Republican party, but I can no longer impose false narratives onto their voter base.
If classes continue to fail to provide the value students hope to derive from college, it won’t matter if AI is banned or not. Students will always find a way to cheat.
Mandating service work as a graduation requirement would help diffuse the concentrated tensions around career building and professionalism to a useful cause, skillfully deploying Duke students’ talents in arenas where they can do good.
I am kind of thinking that bitcoins themselves are a cheap form of fiction, but considerably less interesting than a random short story by a mildly talented writer.
Perhaps it’s sad to be in your mid-20s and have a well-honed strategy for getting your money’s worth out of a chain restaurant, but I choose to think of it as one of my charming qualities.
In his famous “I Have a Dream” speech, Martin Luther King Jr. quoted the prophet Amos, saying, “Justice rolls down like waters, and righteousness like a mighty stream.”
I have long considered the capacity to fervently sob to the prelude of ‘Tannhäuser’ as an indicator of virtuous moral character.
Duke students have lived their whole lives being told they are smarter and more interesting than the average person. Opinion columnists dare to challenge this and say: “Untrue! Our opinions are just as boring as everyone else’s.”
Home was a place I had worked tirelessly and pleaded fervently to leave as soon as I was old enough to realize that the option existed.
Commitment takes dedication, and dedication isn’t efficient.
As a rule of thumb, this is exactly what gratefulness affords us: a better perspective. By pinpointing what is most important to us, daily battles feel relatively insignificant.
