August 2022: My mother is smiling to herself while old Bollywood music quietly plays off my Baba’s new computer. As my Nannos hum Hindi lyrics, I scratch away at a lottery ticket with a dulling quarter. “I won five dollars,” I say. My aunt calls from across the dining table, “Hey, I knew today would […]
As Housing Day approaches, anticipation, excitement, and fear of the Quad fills the air in Harvard Yard. Freshmen across campus grapple with the intricacies of blocking groups, house culture, 8-minute-long housing videos, and the annual River Run tradition, where Harvard freshmen visit each River House the night before Housing Day to avoid being placed in […]
To whom it may concern in the Harvard vicinitas, Greetings from the beautiful city of Paris, also known as my home for the rest of the spring semester. How’s Cambridge? Don’t answer that. In this new column, “Abreast on Abroad,” I want to write a love letter from across the pond, detailing my wild life […]
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 […]
I’ll never forget the day I got into Harvard. I was standing by my gate in the middle of Newark International Airport with my parents. It was around 7 p.m., and my flight to Orlando was taking off in 50 minutes. As the hum of flight announcements and the sound of rolling suitcases filled the […]
Trigger warning: mentions of suicide. We remember hospitals to be quieter than they truly are. Their hallways form “private rooms:” large spaces partitioned by sheets of blue instead of walls, so that while a patient might not see anything around them, they hear everything. Footsteps reverberate off the tiled floor while noise grows and fades […]
About 10 weeks into my first semester at Harvard, I sat down with a friend for a catch-up, and we both ended up breaking down over our Harvard journeys so far. Although it was difficult to express how burnt out we were feeling, I was unexpectedly reassured when I realized I wasn’t alone in experiencing […]
For Taiwanese Cultural Society members, Wednesday dinner means family. Even though the food is standard dining hall fare (with an occasional grass jelly dessert), the sense of community always leaves members wanting seconds. Such meals happen every week, when the small but close-knit TCS gathers in the Eliot private dining room to catch up on […]
It’s 8:30 p.m. on a Tuesday, and I’m dodging pedestrians and street signs on Rue de Bonne Nouvelle in Paris as I jog at a relaxed pace. Suddenly, the runners around me speed up, and I find myself sprinting down the road, passing neighbors at a speed I didn’t think was possible after running nearly […]
At the start of the semester, just a week after winter break, two friends sat in Bluestone Lane deep in conversation about studying abroad. One, a junior who had just voided her final opportunity to study abroad for the spring, admitted to feeling unsure about whether she would come to regret the missed opportunity. Her […]