So don’t strive for perfection, strive for mistakes, and strive to let that inner kid know how proud they are of you, because they know all the trauma and pain you’ve suffered, and how every mistake has brought you closer to what you could be.
It is not my responsibility to identify accessibility issues, the thinking goes, because unlike disabled students I am independent, capable, and ultimately complete— illusions that we so desperately cling to within the culture of thriving and overachieving.
Sophomore year is a strange, awkward and uncomfortable phase to be in, one in which the rhythm of college I settled into as a freshman has been plunged into utter chaos.
It shouldn’t feel played out to say things aren’t great for women in technology. The normalization of an issue itself doesn’t solve any problems.
There’s nothing worse than hearing “just vote!” after confronting how little progress Congress has made with issues like immigration and gun violence. But voting is, at the very least, a form of harm reduction.
I urge you to listen to these unknown bards because in hearing them, you are hearing the wisdom of the Holy.
The reality is, if we want to study mental illness, we have to make something mentally ill.
Competing against students that attended private schools, come from wealthy backgrounds, have had increased access to opportunities or just possess plain talent means that the average student with nothing but a passion to learn will never be enough.
If your values are at stake on November 8th, what will you do to stand up for them?
Such hypocrisy is indicative of the problematic nature of American exceptionalism—the belief that America, with its foundations rooted in democracy and freedom, occupies a unique mantle in modern history and thus assumes the responsibility to play a distinctive role on the world stage.
I would rather be unknowing than know failure.
As students attending a university with a privileged position in the local economy and politics, what responsibility falls on us to work towards reparations and dispelling the long-held trope of the ignorant, uncaring Duke student?
We can start by considering whether the term “borderline” has any sociocultural basis beyond a pejorative.
The courses at Duke that have stood the test of time have pushed me to synthesize the material to some further intellectual point, not just slog through the numerous superficial assignments for completion.
I’m scared that I am stuck on the same scratch of a record, that time keeps marching forward without me, tracing endless and expanding circles in my wake, that one day I’ll wake up and wonder when I was supposed to do all those things they say life is really about—the heartache and the love and the mistakes and the fun.
When we hear the phrase “passing on,” we may think of someone’s death...But there is another way of thinking of it. It has to do with life, learning, and legacy.
Why spend decades watching and rewatching these animals from a safe distance, highlighting every moment of madness or violence or tension like a quadrupedal reality show? To me, it all boils down to our own human, selfish need for individual discovery.
I was ashamed of not making full use of the plethora of resources available, and worried that my decision to sit out on many “core” experiences was diminishing the value and authenticity of my college experience—that it made me less of a Duke student.
"Well, you don't seem like you're from Mississippi."
It saddens me to see that, although new administrators have come to Duke with new sets of promises, they have reverted to the same words, defenses, and strategies against recurrent student grievances.
