As a senior thesis (with Dr. Bridgette Hard in Psychology & Neuroscience), I asked Duke students to define success in their own words.
Upon arriving at Duke as a freshman in August 2021, I had the eye-opening realization that Mizrahi Jews are far underrepresented on campus.
As a former campus police chief and now Sheriff, I have always advocated for responsible gun ownership throughout my career as a law enforcement leader.
We commodify pre-professional experiences because we think of them as tangible, resume-able activities that you can pick and choose as easily as filling out a form or two.
But with these EXPO markers being such an effective tool for understanding and communication, should we be worried about their excessive use in schools?
Mandatory attendance policies may be well-intentioned, but they rely on the natural distrust of the student, the ableism-coded “laziness” of the individual.
Through its novelty, poetry shatters the conventions of everyday language to goad at something much deeper.
What can creatures teach you about life?
Solutions for real change take sacrifice, reorganization of priorities and hierarchies, and rethinking of our current institutions. And the next global leaders need to have the skills to garner support for these kinds of reforms and set them in motion. We will need to be bold, but not in the way Duke imagines.
I’m ignorantly unaware that I just made someone else’s life a little harder.
Duke is a constant. But just like the students who grace its paths for a few short years before moving on, administrators also make a graceful—or occasionally ungraceful—exit when their time is done.
I have been warned to choose between being loud and assertive or being a woman.
I am a product of the framing of the gunsmoke by people in power.
Even though classical music, to some extent, seems to be dying publicly in the modern world, it still pulsates with life and remains capable of changing lives. We shouldn’t be embarrassed to embrace this belief.
So don’t strive for perfection, strive for mistakes, and strive to let that inner kid know how proud they are of you, because they know all the trauma and pain you’ve suffered, and how every mistake has brought you closer to what you could be.
It is not my responsibility to identify accessibility issues, the thinking goes, because unlike disabled students I am independent, capable, and ultimately complete— illusions that we so desperately cling to within the culture of thriving and overachieving.
Sophomore year is a strange, awkward and uncomfortable phase to be in, one in which the rhythm of college I settled into as a freshman has been plunged into utter chaos.
Please, research the court candidates. Vote for the people who want to safekeep all votes.
It shouldn’t feel played out to say things aren’t great for women in technology. The normalization of an issue itself doesn’t solve any problems.
There’s nothing worse than hearing “just vote!” after confronting how little progress Congress has made with issues like immigration and gun violence. But voting is, at the very least, a form of harm reduction.
