I didn’t come to college intending to buy a gecko, and yet there I was in the Providence Petco on my eighteenth birthday, looking at potential terrariums for the future third resident of my Keeney double.
As you sit tucked in the hidden nooks around campus, nestled on a bench with a hot chai latte in hand, you can’t help but look up from your work and take in all of the unfamiliar faces—the crowds of students walking to their morning class or racing to the Blue Room.
My feet swing under the chipped wooden table. I soak in the smell of sizzling tomato sauce. My grandmother’s hands—soft from Pond’s hand lotion but aged from years of hot oil splashes—are a blur. I watch her float from oven to stove, guiding raw ingredients into a meal. Unwashed vegetables, ...
When I’m nervous, my therapist tells me to try to find each color of the rainbow. To find them in my environment, and to find them in order. She says the rainbow will appear in the amount of time it takes to calm myself down. To breathe. To see all the colors again in full, in combination. In beauty ...
Dearest Mathematics,
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 ...
Oftentimes I find myself struggling with intentionality in my outfits, merely throwing the basic array of my favorites together into an acceptable pattern as I gather enough energy to get to breakfast. It’s a difficult pill for me to swallow. I have never been a capsule wardrobe person; my goal has ...
2/8/24Dear Readers,I felt a lot scurrying up the stairs to prod tonight: the singe of cigarettes in the air, the two-day-after (overmorrow) tinge of pain in my lower quads, the anticipated Trader Joe’s Chocolatey Coated Chocolate Chip Cookie Dunkers binge as we snack and work. I also felt scared; ...
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, ...
Budgets get tight at the beginning of the calendar year. Holiday shopping and celebrations leave wallets considerably thinner, and many college students make New Year’s resolutions to fix their finances. February in Providence is already bleak—don't make it worse with a boring campus job! If you ...
“I walk, all day, across the heaven-verging field.” - Mary Oliver, “Upstream”
Solutions by The State News
