The Bryan Center is anti-human

If you happen to love the Bryan Center, then I can only applaud you for what amounts to building a house on the side of a steep mountain and making the best of poor circumstances. My aim here isn’t to make everyone hate the BC, just to expose some of the implicit ways its structural arrangement fails to foster the kind of integrated, collaborative, equitable environment that Duke’s current values align with. Your emotional reactions, attachments, or rejections of the building are your own to cherish or abhor, but in either case my aim is to provoke a closer, more critically engaged look at the built spaces that make up Duke.

Goodwill to all men

My relationship with men scared me. When I started dating a boyfriend, I felt lost—who was I without men to impress? What was my value if it was not getting men to want to kiss me? 

The calling to live your ‘why’

Don’t get satisfied with sailing your little boat far inside the harbor to box in your life due to fear or insecurity because by doing so you will box in your purpose. Listen for a voice that will lead you out into the deep.  

Our demands, our voice

For the first time, Latinx organizations at Duke have all united to further the interests of the Latinx community. These “demands” serve as accountability for the many times Latinx students tirelessly advocated for a more equitable campus. They are hardly demands, they are a plea for the respect and acknowledgement of marginalized students.  

Drama response

Please also do everything you can to protect survivors. When you go to say their name, say their abuser’s instead. Make sure you aren’t ripping them apart more than they already have been. 

The dilemma of the word count

 People can only ever get a snapshot of our lives.

Dear rejection, please kindly f*ck off.

Rejection is an opportunity to reconsider your current actions, but it should not discourage you from ever acting at all.

For Gregory

I don't know if your name is Gregory. And the truth is, I don't know if you even had a name.

Books vs. Dystopias

Part of me hopes that our generation has yet to (and will not) fulfill these authors’ prophecies.

Don’t blame soulless art on stupid audiences.

While they aren’t brilliant, Marvel movies and Drake songs are serviceable. For somebody who is busy, that’s a fine deal to make.

Uninspired? Take a shower

A quick Google search will inform you that great ideas arise in the shower due to the interplay of distraction, relaxation and sensory stimulation that produce a neurological dopamine high. It isn’t that the mindless, automatic nature of showering activates creative sweet spots in the brain. In fact, it’s quite the opposite. Our brain is released from high-order activities and instead engages its appropriately named “default mode network.” Showering liberates our minds from the outside noise and allows us to do something we rarely let ourselves do: be present.

This is (more than) enough

At some point, I got sick and tired of running on this prison of a hamster wheel, of endlessly chasing after this feeling called “happiness” that seemed increasingly nebulous and unattainable.

Tales from my “Inopportune Week of Wellness”

I’ve come to see that the moments where we feel most inclined to sacrifice our wellbeing, with finals week and assignment-heavy days coming to mind, are the moments where we need to stop and take the time to connect with ourselves.

I don’t know what I’m doing either

It will be the highlight of your day to see the girls you sat with at Marketplace on campus. Ask them to lunch. Actually follow through on it. 

Penny for your squats

What I’ve learned from boarding airplanes

A flight attendant might say no, but I’d never get the seat if I didn’t ask in the first place.

Lights, covid, action

It’s simply performative; the pandemic has become more about people and organizations maintaining their political façade of choice—whether that be of collective care, individual freedom or somewhere in between—than it has anything to do with the actual health of any person.

Weed v. United States

Pseudo-intellectual arguments have plagued anti-marijuana laws since the turn of the 19th century and our nation has long used these laws as a wedge to persecute minorities…we and legislatures must approach weed with a clean slate.

Vincent Price breaks silence, grovels for forgiveness at top donor dinner: “We should’ve taken more”

 But, if it can serve as any condolence, US News & World Report finally placed Duke in the top 10 list for “Schools that Steal from Poor People.”” 

Dr. King’s vision of a "world house"

On this day honoring Dr. King, I hope that your purpose goes beyond the little siloed “i” and is big enough to aspire toward living in a world house.