In a place as diverse as Duke, each and every individual is a cultural onion like no other. I cannot wait to uncover the stories they have to tell as I peel the layers of their identities over the next four years.
The built environment generates stories, and the stories attach flesh to stage, script, choreography, actors, performances, and reviews. Three intentions and three actions, three forms and three interactions of content — all six a standard set to understand design at Duke.
Confronting the fact that I went to Duke for four years and tried very few off-campus restaurants made me feel a little like a fraud.
If you care and your goal is to make the most impact possible, you don’t need Peter Singer telling you what to do. The philosophy that being rich will allow you to help the most people absolutely isn’t true, especially if you hurt a lot of people in the process of accumulating that wealth.
We shouldn't only learn declarative knowledge and how to think about concepts, but also how to think for ourselves—something that, paradoxically, must be learned but cannot be taught.
Now that my tennis days are well behind me, “put the ball in the other person’s court” is not a literal command screeched by an upset tennis coach, but a metaphorical lesson I preach to my friends like a sophomore frat boy preaches the rules of Thursday night partying to first years.
Upon taking the first bite of the sandwich, my tongue was assaulted by an acrid tanginess that instantly overwhelmed any other flavor. Worse, the texture was that of wet rubber: chewy and fibrous, yet unnervingly moist and slippery. Another ingredient was present, and there was more of it than even the avocado that was crucial to the name of the sandwich. Once again, Duke Dining had tricked me into eating something with tomato.
Maybe someday I will enter, not as a student seeking help but as a volunteer.
To remember we are dust like the Dukes is healthy and holy. In fact, remembering dying should help us in our living.
The emergence of elite-driven feminism—the predominance of upper-middle-class feminists—has ruptured feminism's core rapport for women.
Goal-oriented intimacy harms both women and men.
Of all the people you know, how many truly know you? My answer: NONE.
The more I think about the phrase now, the more the threat fades, the more hopeful it sounds, and so I say it again, out loud this time. Anything could happen. Anything, if I just make it happen.
I, too, am seeing the city now. I see its wide streets, hear its wild voices, feel its wet heartbeat on a Saturday night. May I recognize the hidden and historical heartaches as well.
Something tells me that I could work every day of the year, and be happy about it, if we stopped treating productivity like a lifestyle which we adopt for the weekday.
What I so desperately wanted to add would have made people more uncomfortable, but it is the plain truth—non-white people’s aversion to tanning and getting darker is rooted in white supremacy.
I’m watching this scene unfold below me, muttering oh my, caretaking in action, and one of my first thoughts is—I wonder where I might see something like this at Duke.
While critics may insist that such people are attention-seekers and snowflakes (a harmful label connotated by fragility and entitlement), the reality is that people don't choose to change their identity for recognition or fame. In fact, people don't choose a new identification at all.
If I could go back in time, I would absolutely make the same decision to defer, even if it meant starting college later than everyone else— because I owed it to myself to ensure that I came into college in the pink of mental health.
Too often, we correlate the size of one’s social network with their social net worth.
