This summer in London, I visited the Tate to see Do Ho Suh’s installation. Entire apartments were remade in translucent fabric: doorframes, corridors, kitchens, even the seams and edges of walls rendered in color so thin it felt like memory given form. They are monuments to impermanence, preserving the memory of rooms that no longer […]
Before the semester started, I argued in these pages that Harvard shouldn’t ban AI but instead teach students to use it critically, the way calculators or word processors were once absorbed into learning. That argument felt urgent then; it feels even more now. When I returned to campus this fall, I found classrooms not only […]
There’s a moment every shopping week when the choice isn’t between two classes you love, but between an easy A and a harder B+. You look at the syllabi side by side: one packed with weekly papers, late nights, and the risk of failure; the other promising generous curves, lighter reading, and a safer GPA. […]
I still remember the first time I stayed silent in section—watching the moment slip by until someone else jumped in with a safer, more polished thought. That pause felt small then, but it lingers now, as LFDOC photos flood my Instagram feed and I step into the rhythm of “last firsts.” It makes me reflect […]
During the last week on campus in Sever Hall, I spotted a fresh sheet of printer paper taped beside the door of a freshman expository‑writing class. In bold Helvetica, it warned: “No ChatGPT, no Claude, no Copilot—ALL work must be entirely your own.” The sign wasn’t just a classroom rule; it was proof that Harvard’s […]
There’s a place I keep returning to—not physically, but in memory. My freshman dorm room. It had a small bed crammed under a wall of movie posters I don’t relate to anymore. A portable A/C unit the school kept emailing me to remove. The carpet was that dorm-issue kind—brown and blue, the color of nothing […]
The road curves out ahead of us, the trees pulling long shadows across the asphalt. I’m driving—my dad in the passenger seat, one arm out the window, tapping his fingers on the door in rhythm with the song on the radio. The Stones are playing low, something from “Sticky Fingers” I only ever seem to […]
Each day begins the same way: a diagonal cut across Plympton Street near the Harvard Book Store, my head quickly snapping sideways to check for oncoming cars. From there, I pass beneath the iron gate by Wigglesworth C—its outline etched into muscle memory—as I make my way through the Yard. These gestures aren’t calculated, but […]
I. You don’t remember arriving. The museum breathes with a low mechanical rasp—the kind of sound that, once heard, can’t be unheard. The overhead lights buzz, a grid of harsh rectangles sunk into the ceiling. They stutter, casting a cold, exhausted glow. The floor tiles, the color of old teeth, shift slightly underfoot—almost like the […]
Earth Day feels like a funeral now. Not one with black veils or organ music—but a well-staged, well-catered wake. A jazz trio hums near the Science Center. Someone hands out succulent cuttings. There are cookies shaped like the Earth, iced in HUDS-friendly greens and blues—flavorless, but photogenic. A booth gives away bamboo forks in rice-paper […]