I held Abby’s hand as we counted our breaths together, both anxious, both uneasy, both unsure of how to handle our own situations. It was my first day volunteering at the Miracle Project, a theater program for autistic children, and I was assigned as Abby’s shadow. We counted to three, took a deep breath, counted to six, and I told Abby to exhale her anxiety as much as I was telling myself to do the same...
I feel most at home when I am bargaining with a stubborn vendor, skipping cracks in the cobble stone streets, and bathing under the Mediterranean sun. There is nothing like a slice of pita, a dab of hummus, and a serving of falafel to make me feel at ease.Something about swimming in the Dead Sea feels more relaxing than swimming in the Pacific Ocean and something about the Western Wall feels more spiritual than my temple ever could...
“Eva, Katarin. Vámonos.” I don’t understand how Lorena’s voice remains under control. Her words flow smoothly, but I still listen closely, expecting a waver in her instruction. My feet do not budge. I just stare, dumbfounded, at the red snake protruding from the fragile, balding six-year-old named Madelin...
Upon entry to my bedroom, the first thing you see is an unusual row of stuffed animals above my bed. They are placed individually in the curtain rod, yet packed together so it seems like one entity. While odd for a teenage boy, stuffed animals have become a sort of collection for me. Each one above my bedpost symbolizes an important phase or moment in my life...
{Find a link between Plato and Play-Doh:}
“Wu-Tang is for the children,” announced American rapper and folk hero Ol’ Dirty Bastard, as he stormed the stage of the 40th Grammy Awards in 1998, protesting an unforeseen and unconscionable loss to Puff Daddy in the category of Best Rap Album. Most viewers, I imagine, disagreed. Here was a perpetually drunken, likely mentally ill, convicted felon who voluntarily referred to himself as “Ol’ Dirty Bastard.”
Here also was a man who fought selflessly to save the life of a four-year-old car-crash victim...
I’ve identified myself as a feminist to a few friends, all of them men, and I’ve heard strikingly similar reactions each time. “What’s in it for you?” they ask, in one form or another.
It’s not a good question—being opposed to the exploitation of others should need no ulterior motive—but for those who ask, I have a good answer. “Well,” I tell them, between furtive glances, “I may just be bringing the system down from the inside.”..
René Descartes, the famous French philosopher, mathematician, and writer (and a true interdisciplinary thinker), wrote three words which embody the reason I am attracted to the University of Chicago: “Cogito ergo sum” (in English: I think, therefore I am). Descartes used this phrase to justify his theory that the only thing a person can be certain of is his or her own existence. However, when I first heard it in Latin class and then in Politics, I thought of something different...
My kindergarten class usually looked like this: fifteen happy kids doing crafts and then me, sitting among them, enthusiastically completing math worksheets. Although I am a lifelong math-lover, a recent experience demonstrated to me that numbers only scratch the surface of a complete understanding of the world...
{"...I [was] eager to escape backward again, to be off to invent a past for the present." -The Rose Rabbi by Daniel Stern
Present: pres-ent
1. Something that is offered, presented, or given as a gift
Let's stick with this definition. Unusual presents, accidental presents, metaphorical presents, re-gifted presents, etc. - pick any present you have ever received and invent a past for it.}She is a contradiction. Even her name, Shanti—meaning “peaceful” in Punjabi—is farcically ironic. Although it’s been nine years, I gaze into her maple-syrup-almond eyes and still see the sickly present I received on my eighth birthday. I recall my trip to the Puppy Palace—the condition of which almost laughably juxtaposes with its name. While all her peers rowdily begged for attention, she was curled up in the corner, quietly wallowing in her kennel cough. So, when my dad asked if I had a preference, I defiantly pointed my finger in Shanti’s direction...
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