My Indian heritage teaches me to honor books as I would God, but seeing my Western friends use piled-up encyclopedias as makeshift ladders causes me to question this cultural peculiarity. Growing up in the Middle East has somewhat conditioned me to accept the non-existence of free speech, but when my grandparents narrate stories of Gandhi’s civil disobedience in British India, I cannot help but be enticed towards subversion. After countless turbulent nights of introspection, I have concluded that the...

What sets you apart from the other students applying to the University of California? Devilishly, Captain Haddock unpacks two, sealed bottles of his favorite Loch Lomond whiskey from an ostensibly thick, intimidating ‘Guide to Astronomy’ book which is in reality hollow. He is all alone. Haddock gingerly pours himself a peg and downs it, his face lit with the look of a child secretly watching his first R-rated movie. Darkly, he jokes that the first chapter was quite heavy reading....