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It is 9 p.m. I have not slept in more than 24 hours. The sterile, yellow light of Huntsman Hall follows me as I walk to my dorm after a particularly brutal accounting exam that was nothing like the practice tests we were given. Each step I take is equal parts defeat and caffeine, my body still shaking from the too many cans of Peach Vibe Celsius I downed to get through the day.
Every time I visit the doctor, I freeze.
What comes to mind when you think of summer? Brat? Finance internship in NYC?
Dear Kings Court Room 146,
Penn’s campus is crawling with hunched–over college students, eyes glued to their screens or admiring their brand–new Adidas Sambas.
American money is boring—dull colors with even more dull people on the bills. Unlike the crumpled, musty green U.S. dollar bill shoved down your pocket, money from around the world is cherished because of its glossy finish, brightly colored designs, and display of interesting characters.
The first time I met Katie I was livid. Seventh grade, my mom decided that we needed a guard dog after our house was burglarized. I knew this was a terrible idea. But nonetheless, I came home one day to find a two–year–old rescue pitbull, tail wagging and tongue out in the closest thing to a canine grin.
I don’t really get homesick. Plenty of my friends count down the days until they get to take the next flight or train home. But as I sit on my dorm bed 2,704 miles away from “home,” I’m a little scared to admit to myself that I feel almost fine.
Senior year is canonical. You have the senior slide, the cataclysmic breakdown of some friend groups, and the forging of new bonds that feel like they could last forever. A deluge of camaraderie and legally purchased liquor can melt some (but not all) of the grudges powered by the treacherous climb of student leadership and, of course, the toxic gossip train. But for me, senior year mostly means one thing: I’m not the young talent anymore.
I was walking through pouring rain when Bean called to see if I wanted to work with him this summer. I had promised my mom that I would come home, a prospect I wasn’t entirely excited about—it would mean reinstated curfews and the self–imposed house arrest of the 110 degree Texas heat. Bean had been a mentor for me throughout high school, and when he first offered me the job, I was tentative. In many ways it felt like a step backwards: I’d be working with a local nonprofit to help coach a youth slam poetry team, a program I’d been a part of all throughout high school. When I went to college I wanted nothing more than to move forward, to leave behind everything I once was as a teenager in Sugar Land and re–emerge a metamorphosed girl. But here I was back again after my first year, in the same lifeless town, in the same small life.
Inching up the stairs towards a secluded bar, my friends and I are surrounded by colorful lights seeping in from the building’s tinted windows. Each floor turns into a different color: blue, red, green, and finally yellow, perfectly complementing the establishment it engulfs. Entering the lounge, the DJ greets us with music we had only heard murmurs of on the way up. Remnants of the bar’s evening operations are tucked into corners; the bar and kitchen barely in focus. Today, it is transformed into a boutique. In place of tables, rows and rows of vintage clothing crowd the well–lit lounge for this weekend’s Season Pass Community Flea.
It all began with picking my little sister up from a museum camp. Part of the privileges of being home for the summer is the duty of providing the rides necessary in my public transportation–less hometown of Houston. While waiting for my passenger, I meandered through the halls to find the museum's latest art exhibition: Artists on Site. After tugging on the locked door (and double checking that it wasn’t actually a “pull”), I began to walk away when a young woman in her twenties unlocked the door to let me in.
Growing up, summers consisted of going to the playground every evening, reading at my dining room table as my parents grilled barbecue chicken in the backyard, and playing with Legos in my living room while Good Luck Charlie played in the background. But summer has changed. College marks an end to our childhood, and our perceptions of summer shifted with it. Rather than being a season for leisure and family time, summer is now a period where productivity and building our resumes takes ultimate priority—internships, research opportunities, career preparation, academic obligations, financial responsibilities. Gone are the memories of relaxation and play, replaced with professional development and productivity.
My whole life, Taylor Swift has been an omnipresent refrain in my life. As each new album was released, everyone in my life—be it classmates, family members, or coworkers—would arrange listening parties and obsess for hours about the intricacies of each song, lyric, and supposed easter egg. All that time, I was left out, declining to participate as Swiftie culture conquered nearly everything around me.
BASEL, Switzerland—What are the telltale signs that someone’s made it? Is it inscribed in the way they dress, their choice of silk scarf, or seasonal handbag? Or if wealth truly whispers, it might be in the way a person carries herself—head high, shoulders low, unperturbed calm. It might be something else entirely, some mixture of pedigree and learned etiquette. But when I found myself shoulder to shoulder with the world’s most well–heeled art collectors, there was another question on my mind: Can you fake it?
Every morning, pretty much as soon as I wake up, I want to see what’s happened in the world during the (ideally eight, but likely closer to five) hours since I was last awake. Like so many other members of the screen–addicted Gen Z, I turn to my cell phone. But instead of tapping on the blue bird of Twitter, or the rainbow newsstand of an aggregator like Google News, I’ve found myself turning to the orange and white alien icon of Reddit.
It feels cliche to begin any letter about adulting with the phrase “growing up.” I’m going to do it anyway, but here’s hoping that I can get a pass for calling myself out. At the very least, you’ll have to acknowledge my self–awareness.
“What do you want to be when you grow up?”
In January, my best friend called me and told me she was pregnant. She was also getting married in less than 48 hours.
Ships that pass in the night, and speak each other in passing,
Solutions by The State News