Every few weeks, the Independent hears a quieter kind of silence: a writer backs out. “I started drafting something, but I’m not sure I want my name on it anymore.” I feel a pang of sadness with each of these withholdings. These hesitations do not always stem from controversial exposés or radical manifestos—often, they’re thoughtful […]
I wandered too long,a stranger in my own life,watching laughter through glass,close enough to see, too far to touch. I lived at the edge of things, where streets stretched into silence, where each step away felt like exile, where the night ended not in sleep, but in the long breath before loneliness. It was waiting—always […]
Ask any student rushing from their dorm to a morning lecture, clutching a cup of Blank Street coffee, about their day ahead, and you’ll hear a whirlwind of commitments: guest speakers, club meetings, and networking events. At Harvard, everything—friends, food, a library shelf with your name on it—feels just a few steps away. The proximity […]
My Harvard career began with failure. Feeling unmoored as I arrived on campus, I threw myself into trying out for the College’s varsity squash. In high school, squash wasn’t just a sport—it was a defining part of my identity, and within weeks of arriving on campus I was training relentlessly—running sub‐five‐minute miles, working out tirelessly, […]
Last March in “Family Matters,” Drake infamously said, “Kendrick just opened his mouth, someone go hand him a Grammy,” during their back-and-forth diss tracks. When the Grammys rolled around, Kendrick Lamar’s “Not Like Us” won five Grammys, including awards for both song and music video. While “Not Like Us” was widely praised, Drake’s comment raises […]
We have entered a loneliness epidemic. Humans are wired for connection, yet modern life has left many men more isolated than ever. Yet, while loneliness has increasingly been recognized as a public health emergency for all, men face unique challenges—they are less likely to seek emotional support and, as of 2022, are at a higher […]
As I sat on my flight back to school last weekend, I found myself immersed in a spectacle of violence and eroticism radiating from the screens around me. A man two rows ahead of me was engrossed in a brutal shootout, while another nearby watched two men fight to the death with their bare knuckles. […]