transience and permanence [lifestyle]
“Tell us about a place or community you call home. How has it shaped your perspective? (250 words)”
“Tell us about a place or community you call home. How has it shaped your perspective? (250 words)”
I remember the first time I walked around Brown’s campus with my family. Only a freshman in high school, I was in awe of the hustle and bustle surrounding me. We were following the typical Northeast road trip route for my older sister, who had recently started her college application process, and ...
When I was a kid, I used to marvel at families who said “I love you” as easily as they breathed. Wrapping it in a goodbye, casually saying it in passing—it shocked me that anyone could say such an emotionally charged sentence without a second thought.
What’s the longest word in the English language? Until a few moments ago when I looked up the answer (don’t do it yet), I would have said: “supercalifragilisticexpialidocious.” Because of the surge in its popularity in elementary school and my limited vocabulary at the time, I followed the sheep ...
There is nothing that causes me greater anguish than the thought of wasting time, if only for just a second. Every night before bed, my mind twists and unravels, looking for particular solutions to this dilemma: to maximize every conversation, every moment in-between class—even during mealtime, where ...
This week, while cleaning out the endless mess that is my Notes app, I came across a bucket list I made in April 2022. Buried under a miscellaneous assortment of song ideas, grocery lists, and other random thoughts, this note felt like a fossil of some kind. Even though only two years had passed, the ...
miami fall
There is not a single point in time that I can recall where I did not love apples, and many of my developmental anecdotes include them in one way or another. One of my core memories is of the day I told my mom I no longer wanted an “apple” haircut. My family gave this name to my small-Asian-girl-compulsory ...
A few months ago, I read The Anthropocene Reviewed by John Green. In the book, Green portrays the modern human experience through small anecdotes from his own life. Each chapter is centered around a seemingly mundane topic and conveys a specific message that connects unlikely subjects and themes. At ...
A few months ago, I read The Anthropocene Reviewed by John Green. In the book, Green portrays the modern human experience through small anecdotes from his own life. Each chapter is centered around a seemingly mundane topic and conveys a specific message that connects unlikely subjects and themes. At ...
On Saturday, October 19, I dreamt that my mother died. I woke up at 8:32 a.m., the grief my dream persona experienced ebbed into relief as I realized it wasn’t real. As my heartbeat slowed to a steady pace, I sniffed and felt tears rolling down my face.
When I left California for Rhode Island, I said a permanent goodbye to a world where the people I held dear were amassed in one place. My relationships to them began to take root more in memory than in the present. Meanwhile, my love found new footholds with a sparkling web of college friends, whom ...
On March 9, exactly seven months ago as I started writing this, I opened a Google Doc, titled it “post- lifestyle article (IK),” and began writing something which came to be called “Notes on the Possibility of Home.” The piece walked through ideas I’d collected on what it means to fit into ...