“Russian weapons and insurgents increase in eastern Ukraine.” “Rebels shoot down Ukrainian plane, killing 49.” My highlighter runs along the headlines and drenches each word in chartreuse ink. I have highlighted hundreds of articles in my high school debate career, but these articles are different. Each headline feels like a punch to the stomach. As the highlighter glides to the next line, my thoughts are jerked to my sister in Ukraine...
The red velvet curtain smoothly lifted up, summoning a sea of eyeballs focused on me. It was time, but my lips refused to part – as if pressed under the weight of the silence in the hall. I rammed the gears of my brain in anxiety to remind myself of my purpose. “It’s you again!” I finally uttered. I had just delivered my first ever dialogue in a staged play. “Perfect beginning” I remember thinking to myself...
Hoping to make my undergraduate experience an intellectually stimulating period, I find the Research facilities at Rice in sync with my interests. Rice’s research facilities match all the top US universities but the refreshing eccentricity of Rice’s “Experiential learning” attracts me to this institution...
My desired campus of interest is NYU Abu Dhabi, due to its strategic location in the cultural hub of UAE; NYUAD seems to be the perfect place to continue my educational pursuits. The eccentric nature of the NYU experience is due to its global network. With NYU’s global academic centers spread in 14 different locations and with the study abroad program offered by NYU, the undergraduate experience has to be a pleasantly eccentric one...
The first thing I remember about childhood is vomit, little me retching Wonderbread and grape juice on Calvary Preschool’s shag carpet. Even now, walking the September streets of Seoul with my big sister, Miriam, I feel something swelling in me, pushing to get out—bitter and warm, like the stench of the ginkgo nuts oozing under my footsteps...
My three years writing album reviews have taught me to use the blogging powers bequeathed unto me for good rather than evil. My first experience writing regularly for a music publication, AbsolutePunk, started well. The connections I made with musicians, writers, and fans worldwide electrified me, but after witnessing the villainy and snobbery in the community, my heart sank: I felt complicit in a ring of negativity. How can anybody like this song? I read. You’re an idiot. I unplugged for a few days and realized I would have to make a change...
You learn some things as a school garbageman—mostly how quickly things pile up. We are a school of future CEOs, lawyers, politicians. Yet here I am, two containers of cans piled in my hands, a mixture of coffee, juice and milk staining the tips of my fingers. The stench is the worst, especially in the dead heat of August...
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