Car Talk and Me

The first time I ever heard of Harvard was on “Car Talk.”

You Then, Me Now

I wanted to be thoughtful enough to earn the respect of those I admired. I wanted to be articulate enough that my words themselves held weight. I wanted this polished exterior, and yet, I wanted to be genuine and true.

Grey, White, and Blue

America was a Leviathan that encircled the borders of my thoughts, living as a separate entity above the flesh and blood of this country. I simply took her benevolence for granted, as a fixed variable in this equation.

See the World We Come From

I suffered as a child from an acute desire to escape my life.

I’m Still Crying, Wilmer Flores

Sports fandom is one of the few arenas where people are permitted to forget themselves. For this, they need only belief — and for players to maintain it.

The World Will Still Be There

I often joke to my friends that I am chronically online, though I can never seem to answer a text. Yet there’s a pit in my stomach, because I know that it’s not really a joke. Lying in bed, I wonder: How did I get here?

Celebrating the Mundane

I am a six-time visitor of the Umbrella Cover Museum. Mundanity does not exist.

Packing Light

My own life, it turned out, was light enough to carry in a suitcase.

Life in a Handful of Earrings

My 53 pairs of earrings chart a map of memories I’ve made and places I’ve been. More importantly, they reflect the people in my life.

"My Earrings Chart a Map"

Kinds of Earrings

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.

Your Reminder That This Is the Ocean

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

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 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.

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.

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.