Your Reminder That This Is the Ocean

At places like Harvard, the value of today easily fades against the demands of tomorrow.

The Book — and the Poet — For the Anxious Generation

How Rainer Maria Rilke’s “Letters to a Young Poet” changed the way I conceived depression — and why it might speak to the struggle of a generation.

Again, Again, Again

This, I thought, was what I would do when I was grown up: wear collared shirts and polka-dot bikinis, drink cherry-topped diner milkshakes, and talk about big things.

Inside Out

My clothes had just recovered from being drenched in water from the heavens when the protagonists of Tony Award-winning musical “The Outsiders” ran into a burning cathedral and all the water in my body started leaking out of my eyes.

Of God and Country

I wish I believed in God.

I Love Kids. No, Not Like That!

It was inconceivable that, in the great universal divide between Adorable Child and Creepy Adult, I could be on Team Creepy Adult.

In Transit

I grew up waiting for the weekend, for the days I could take that highway up to St. Louis or to Chicago, constantly itching for the next time I would travel to someplace I deemed exciting and different. I was always disappointed at the end of every trip, when I returned to Peoria.

Free Range Kids, Grown Up

The children of Old Seminole Heights were frequently picked up from school together, often spending evenings and late nights together as a neighborhood family of sorts. We spent time eating buttered rice, black beans, or packages of oreos, but mostly playing Kick the Can.

Door Decor

The transition from accustomed conventions of home to unfamiliar college life was not as discernible as I had anticipated. It was only when cultural idiosyncrasies were missing that the pangs of homesickness rippled over me at last.

Down the Mountain

On skis, there’s no room for spiraling. You don’t get to overthink your next move when gravity is already making it for you. There’s only balance, pressure, focus, and breath.

To Make Myself Up

Like Ipsy’s subscription service, offering a different rotation of rouge every month, I’m reminded that my life has indeed been fickle, and will continue to present many surprises. Yet, I’ve been reminded that inviting variety and recalling my creativity allows me to connect with a younger, arguably more clear-headed version of myself, and channel her imagination.

Field Notes of an International Super Spy

Careful not to let my personal circumstances tamper with my operations, I resolved to fold these feelings away. I kept them in a suitcase, neat and small. I carried it to every home I investigated.

What Was I Made For?

I was and often still am terrible at being vulnerable.

My Life So Far in Rapunzel’s Tower

It’s like watching your life in the form of a weekly reality TV special: you’re invested, you’re kept up, but a sense of fiction clouds your vision.

To Metro, With Love

Maybe that’s why I felt such a connection with the Wilson Report. It was a reminder that perhaps my work wasn’t fleeting. My mind traced back to the dusty pages covered with stories of real issues that mattered to real people and their lives in Cambridge.

Across State Lines

A polarized nation bled into the fabric of my family — left and right wing politics separating us more than our physical distance.

The War on Science

For a school project, I once asked my dad why he came to the United States. “For the science,” he told me. And then, as an afterthought: “And for a better life, obviously.”

Train Graphic

Trains Across America

The cross-country train is, however, a profoundly American cultural space. Every person aboard the train has a reason to exist there, rather than on a more convenient form of transit that would probably already have them at their destination.

“It” Girl

To be an It Girl is the very antithesis of meritocracy; you either have it or you don’t.

The Next Thing I Remember

For my disease to be real to others, sometimes I feel I need evidence, a physical trace of what was happening inside before it was made visible by the surgery, to have a story.

The Next Thing I Remember Graphic

Pit Stop Before Sincerity Hits Too Hard

Back then, I never wondered who she was beyond my mother. Her life seemed fully formed, on track, speeding down a highway. I was the asshole who cut her off.

Road Trip Graphic

Fly Endpaper Graphic