All those weeks ago, in the middle of Super Bowl LVIII, Beyoncé came along and “broke the internet” with the surprise release of twin country singles “TEXAS HOLD ‘EM” and “16 CARRIAGES,” a preview of her upcoming album. Almost immediately, a fiery debate ensued among the self-appointed ...
Graduation looms ahead and is all too tangible for my liking. Just over five weeks away—37 days until the end, to be exact. Over the past few weeks, I’ve lost all ability to conceptualize time; I have the date marked on all my calendars, I am receiving far too many emails about applying to graduate, ...
During my senior year of high school, I took an Honors English Seminar. Its thirteen spots were awarded to a cohort of rising seniors who satisfactorily completed a pre-requisite essay response to Roland Barthes’ From Work To Text. Each week we dove headfirst into different subgenres of literary theory, ...
Listening to an album start to finish can often feel strangely laborious to me. Maybe the high commitment (which is no more than an hour and a half) feels not worth it or, god forbid, I fear I won’t fully understand the narrative arc of the tracklist. Or maybe I’m scared that I’ll feel too much. ...
I am going to England this summer. It will be my first time outside of the United States—my mom and I will fly out of Georgia over the Atlantic Ocean together, both giddy and terrified. She will grip my hand hard if there is turbulence, and I will comfort her while secretly losing it. In preparation, ...
I wasn’t exactly sure what to expect going to the Avon to watch Yorgos Lanthimos’ latest revelation, Poor Things. For the uninitiated, Poor Things is an anachronistic, futuristic, Frankenstein-inspired tale of a physician, Godwin Baxter, who reanimates the body of a pregnant suicide victim with ...
Driving into Medellín feels like skating across a blanket of stars. The city is nestled between two mountains, each of which is scattered with lit-up homes that make them glisten like a galaxy. When my cousin and I arrive at the park where La Solar Festival is held, the mountains glimmer in the distance. ...
A microbial mat is a multilayered, thin sheet composed of aquatic microorganisms—most predominantly bacteria and archaea. Although nearly microscopic to the naked human eye, this small coating of microbes can proliferate within a conglomeration of chemical environments, independent of temperature ...
My dog likes to take me for walks around the areas familiar to us. He pulls me through night-covered forests and faintly-lit suburban sidewalks on paths of all kinds—spirals, ovals, rings—but never allows me to turn around. If I do, he stops, protesting and refusing until I face forward again. He ...
I have changed. Since the beginning of 2023, I have been stretched out, hammered down, tugged at, and put back together. My face now has small red spots from taking naps under the sun, and I know how to hold contempt in my hands. I like lentils, floss more regularly, learned how to be more emotionally ...
My friend and I were, of course, both delighted to see Pedro Pascal's face grace the screen when we settled in our seats to watch Ethan Coen’s recent film Drive-Away Dolls. We subsequently experienced the same reaction as we watched his character get brutally, almost cartoonishly, killed off in a ...
I walked with a friend into a wooded area behind Young Orchard, my heart beating too fast from hearing seven people talk about internships for an hour. I don’t smoke, but watching my friend smoke a cigarette had a vicariously calming effect on me. I kicked around a stick and took deep breaths as they ...
My Sunday school teacher used to tell me that God hears all our prayers. She said that sometimes God even responds to you, and in these instances, you can feel his presence in your body or hear his voice in your head. So every Sunday, when Father Fox gave us a few minutes to pray silently, I would do ...
After coming to Providence, my cosmic "I" turned atomic. It happened when I started to say goodbye to my grandmother and when my younger brother went on his first date. My life started to look like a page of words I couldn't read.
We’re all wrapped together under a blanket on an air mattress that’s too small for us. She’s in the middle and my head is on her shoulder. Your head is on her other one. The three of us all have dark brown curly hair and now our curls spill seamlessly onto the pillows. You’re talking about your ...
“It is women who love horror. Gloat over it. Feed over it. Are nourished by it. Shudder and cling and cry out and come back for more.” – Bela Lugosi
In September of 2023, I published my one (and only) Substack post: “To Care or Not To Care?” The plan was to embark on a journey to “redefine, reconfigure, and reshape how I perceive care” over the course of the semester—the motivation for this first post being both a heart-wrenching breakup ...
On paper, Celine Song’s Past Lives is a simple movie. A girl named Na-young has a crush on her classmate and close friend, Hae Sung, until her family decides to immigrate from Korea to Canada and she leaves. The two find each other on social media years later and briefly keep in touch before their ...
Last spring, I paced around CVS near closing time and then called a guy I barely knew to go on a walk. After walking through the sharp cold of the lingering winter, we ended up in a lecture hall in 85 Waterman, where we sat in the front row and got to know each other. Every time he asked me a question, ...
Solutions by The State News
