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(09/12/14 8:58am)
Sometimes when I can’t sleep at night and the events of daily life are crowding my mind, I have a vivid memory of a little café in Oxford. Tucked away in the side streets of a city brimming with tourists, it was a place where the espresso was rich and the music eclectic. You could sit for hours and watch old professors, hippy students, shy teenagers on their first date and, once, a man with the longest hair I’ve ever seen. I loved that little café more than I would admit, casually mentioning it in conversations until my friends would roll their eyes and say, “Bella, not that coffee shop again.” What? They had pretty good blueberry muffins.
(08/29/14 12:08pm)
The first week of freshmen year is filled with beautiful and perhaps eye-opening moments of learning, wonder, revelation and awkward introductions. There are the new friends to meet, ones you will keep forever! The Gothic Wonderland to explore! The college-level classes that will determine your future career! The parties that you can talk to your grandchildren about! It’s all very exciting!
(04/16/14 8:49am)
Ever since April, being at Duke feels different, and I’ve been wondering why that is. It’s in the swarms of prospective freshman, the waving flags declaring the upcoming graduation and the gleeful Facebook statuses celebrating the end of thesis presentations. It’s the promises kept to get coffee and the hint of summer around the corner. It’s the taste of farewell.
(04/03/14 10:06am)
I am afraid of a lot of stupid things. Unidentifiable noises in the dark. That unknown mushy thing in the back of my freezer. Anything that looks like blood. The insistent sound of my email inbox pinging. And of course, when Pitchfork Provisions runs out of chocolate cake.
(03/20/14 7:43am)
Spring semester at Duke is an infamous one. What with the return of hoards of juniors tanned by the European sun, the onslaught of programming leading up to LDOC, the flurry of social activity as new members of various groups sport their new friendships and—in most years—the promise of an end to an eternal winter. Spring in the air equals good times ahead!
(03/06/14 9:40am)
Last night, during a particularly long Skype session with an Australian friend, I launched into a story that involved an undercover sex scandal, an incidence of cyber-bullying, a broiling political climate and the public confession of many people’s darkest insecurities. As excellent as my story-telling skills are, my friend was only listening half-heartedly, having been distracted by the sudden appearance of a large spider in her bedroom (yes, it is Australia). After the appropriate steps were taken (read: shrieking and spraying), she apologized and resumed the conversation with this line: “Sorry, you were talking about some TV show. Which one was it? Scandal?”
(02/20/14 10:46am)
If there’s one thing I hate doing, it’s making life decisions. I hate it almost as much as I hate cinnamon Pop-Tarts (a disgrace to America). Unfortunately, as a sophomore fast approaching the halfway point of my Duke experience, the potentially life-changing decisions have been piling up like snow days. Is it better to declare the heartfelt major or the practical one? Is Fall semester more worthwhile at Oktoberfest or in that art history class? Do I charitably volunteer in Uganda or coolly intern at that Silicon Valley start-up? And let’s not forget the two greatest decisions of all: What exactly do I do with my life? Should I “sell out” for the highly paid, management consulting job or soldier on with my secret dream of living in a poorly furnished apartment in the city? And is it actually acceptable to get Sitar for dinner for the fifth time?
(02/06/14 11:00am)
Recently, I had an absolutely fantastic day. A glorious day. A shining, I-see-the-light kind of a day. A snow day. If you were anything like me, you woke up blearily to silence the alarm for your first class and checked your phone out of habit to the most beautiful message you’d ever seen: Class was cancelled for the day. After a croak of celebration, you rolled over and promptly went back to sleep and woke at midday when someone threw a snowball at your window.
(01/23/14 12:28pm)
Last Friday evening, during twilight, a young girl walked past Rittenhouse Square in Philadelphia and stopped to take a photo of the lights among the trees. She uploaded it to Instagram. Sometime in the next hour, the University of Pennsylvania student made her way to the top of a parking garage and jumped, falling to her death.
(01/09/14 9:25am)
I have 1,971 Facebook friends. I know that sounds like a lot, but believe me, I’m fairly Facebook aggressive. And we all know it’s not official unless it’s Facebook official.
