The independent news organization of Duke University
I am a product of the framing of the gunsmoke by people in power.
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.
I urge you to listen to these unknown bards because in hearing them, you are hearing the wisdom of the Holy.
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.
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.
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?
I would rather be unknowing than know failure.
We can start by considering whether the term “borderline” has any sociocultural basis beyond a pejorative.
This is not a rational article, and processing social rejection often lacks rhyme or reason.
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.
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.
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.
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.
"Well, you don't seem like you're from Mississippi."