Introspection
J-Term Journal: On the South, Social Innovation, and Slam Poetry
After finals ended, I was ready for a break from Harvard. I packed my bags and boarded a plane back to Georgia, the place that for eight years I had called home. I was ready to celebrate the holidays, spend quality time with family and friends, and catch up on sleep without worrying about looming deadlines for papers, psets, or tests.
Regarding My Future Unemployment
Dear extended relatives, family friends, former English teachers, gynecologists, and my brother’s roommates and their extended relatives, I am very tired of answering the same questions about my future, over and over. And I know, for the most part, you have only been asking to be polite, to make conversation, or so that you can compare me to your daughter (she wins, okay, she wins!). So to streamline the process I have compiled a list of the most commonly asked questions (and their answers) about my future and career goals.
FM Editor's Note
This is the way FM ends. Not with a bang, but with 15. It’s also not the real end, but just the end for this year. We still have our Superboard keys. Steven S. Lee, you’re not reading this—and if you are, it’s because you Googled your own name. Touché.
The Science of Memory
I used to think that the best kinds of memories are the ones we invent for ourselves.
I Read A Lot
In middle school I had a free period during my second hour, and so I applied to become a library assistant.
PLUR As Told By Heidegger
Chances are if you’re reading The Harvard Crimson, you’ve never heard of Peace Love Unity Respect. The acronym is a silly combination of sounds—a feline’s pleasure with an extra letter snuck in—and the cliché it stands for wouldn't last a minute in college classrooms. But since the ’90s, PLUR’s been a credo and a life philosophy for rave subculture. This summer it became my personal mantra. This fall I’ve decided it was Friedrich Nietzsche and Martin Heidegger’s as well.
Doubt It
There are only a few things, less than I imagined there would be, from my pre-college years that remain present in my thoughts. I have lost interest in the chaos of my city, Istanbul, in the “mosaic” of its culture, in the nebulous (substitute: sketchy) politics of my country. Only a few characters from my past follow me around Harvard Yard as I pace from the two opposite edges (and intellectual spheres) of the campus, from Northwest Labs to Emerson Hall.
Coordinates: Locked in Mount Auburn Cemetery
It’s mid-fall. The leaves are somewhere between dull brown and brutally orange on the last afternoon that it is not too crisp to walk by the river. We wile our way down past Darwin’s, the coffee shop we have yet to discover; across the crosswalk with the lights that never change to walk; and next to an unending row of fencing and hedges. The cemetery is still open for an hour this late in the day…is it six or seven?
Home in the Meadowlands
As she tries to wrap her lips around the hard consonants of the English language, my grandmother fumbles with my small Nike garments. Turning them over and over, she attempts to enunciate the lone word in her English lexicon without much success.
Coordinates: Walden Pond
Though I’m red-green color blind and will never understand the obsession with chromatic foliage, I hear Walden Pond is beautiful in the autumn. If you catch it on the later end of October, the drying air heightens the borders of faces or the edges of each watery ripple; everything has the sharp sense of coming into focus. Unfortunately, I went in July.
An Apology For My Hair
My most recent haircut was in New York City. I went in by myself and ducked into the basement of the huge Astor Place Hairstylist like I was trying to lose a tail.
In Defense of Full-Body Spandex
He opened the door to reveal a tiny room cluttered with ski waxing benches, oversized duffels, rainbow clusters of racing skis, and scattered posters of Olympic skiers peeling off the stark white walls. I could tell right away that this wasn’t the latest in ski technology: this was a home.
Procrastination, On Demand
I have a confession to make. It might, perchance, be conceivably possible that I have potentially developed a slight dependence upon the product known as Netflix. To be clear, I tell you this only because I fear for your safety and well-being. I divulge this story in the hopes that it will make you aware of the fate already befalling you; perhaps then you will be better equipped to handle the consequences.
The Shelter Rules
Residents of Tel Aviv have ninety seconds after the alarms sound to locate the nearest public shelter. It happens once a day, maybe twice, timed before the morning or evening news.
Notes From the Equator
I saw my first fireflies in the blue light of the equatorial dusk. But between the hikes and organic food and endemic species, we also were given an idea of the larger issues looming over this ecosystem.
Face Tattoos Are a Metaphor for Life
Two weeks ago, to the amusement of seven of us at the time and many more since, I paid for my roommate to get a face tattoo.
March Madness in Orange County
Dressed in a Harvard jersey and hat, I received some inquisitive stares as I flagged down one of the bartenders and asked if she could possibly put the Harvard game on. Figuring this might be a long and lonely two hours, I settled in to watch Harvard take an early lead.
Housing Day Shadow: Cabot
I awoke at 6 a.m. on March 13 to the hiss of my radiator and the loud, excited chatter of my blockmates in the hallway. It was Housing Day morning, my first as an upperclassman in Cabot House. I debated with myself whether to get up at all, anticipating the faces of freshmen—ranging from (hopefully) indifferent to (probably) teary-eyed—whose fates I would soon deliver.
Housing Day Shadow: Eliot
The ice crunches beneath my feet as I follow my roommates out into the middle of Eliot courtyard. It’s surprisingly bright out for 6:30 a.m., and some combination of adrenaline and the traditional Housing Day mimosa I consumed in one of the party suites robs the frigid wind of its sting. We stand with our backs to each other and shout at the surrounding walls. “Good morning Eliot! It’s Housing Day! It’s Housing Day! Get up, get up, get up!” We stand still for a moment, watching as lights start to pop on in the windows that line the courtyard. Eliot is waking up.
Something Like March Madness
The Bracket Boys emerged one March in my sophomore year of high school, wearing the same sweaty jerseys for days on end and trading wrinkled dollar bills under the lab tables in chemistry class. Or maybe they had always been there, furiously scribbling on those all-important flowcharts, and I had simply never noticed them before. After all, I had only just realized that March Madness was not, in fact, an insanity-inducing disease brought on by a seasonal resurgence in bacteria.
Reykjavik
Going to Iceland for spring break was not my idea, really. My friend, a senior who will soon be a working woman in a tall, mighty tower in New York City, wanted to have one last trip before she committed to a no vacation offer. The location remained undetermined for months. Darjeeling, as advertised by Wes Anderson, was a good candidate considering the mission of the trip, but Reykjavik, as advertised by Icelandair on the T, won the competition with cheaper fares.
A P.S. to Postcards
They don’t have postcards in Bangladesh, or at least in Chittagong where Devon lives. So Devon made her own postcard to send to me. She smoothed newspapers written in Bengali script into the folds of a patterned pink paper, backed it on cardstock, and penned a message on the inside that bled through the pulp.
Tarte Tatin
In a minute, she will whisk the skillet off the burner, move it over towards the pie pan sitting on counter, and coax the apples into the pan. She will do it all in one fluid motion. Afterwards, she will cover the apples with a round, yellow-tinted pie dough circle, slide the pan into the oven, and wait.
If This Were a Romantic Comedy
Here’s how it happens. We meet in the soft evening light at a national landmark, preferably he Empire State Building or the Eiffel Tower, but I guess the Chrysler Building or something could do in a hurry.
The Space Between
Harvard is represented in my head by a large Venn diagram. The two overlapping crimson circles are labeled “Before” and “After.” The first circle encompasses my freshman and sophomore years. The second contains my junior and senior years. They are separated by the year I was gone. Not many things fall in the overlap.