landmarks
a walk through campus
The traffic lights at the intersection of Waterman and Brook change despite the empty streets on Saturday mornings, flashing red and green against the usually wet asphalt. Broken glass and crumpled beer cans catch in the gutters littered with fallen yellow leaves. In the quiet, a RIPTA bus announces that it is turning. A flock…
in memoriam
mourning ian and missed college tours
I am living this autumn in a hollow timeline of things that should be happening, watching tour guides huddled beside Soldier’s Arch peer excitedly at the SciLi and Ruth Simmons Quad and thinking that I should be there with them. Ian should be there with them. It is still warm despite the shift in seasons….
grit and bear it
knowing when to grit and when to quit
At the brink of midnight and a mid-semester breakdown, four lecture-captures into studying for my second physiology exam, a Facebook notification disturbs my academic focus. I minimize the Canvas tab and check my feed. Everyone at Brown apparently has had the same idea, and the page fills with posts and photos from peers venting about…
pumpkin spice
& other autumnal existential comforts
Solomon 001 holds a tense calm at 10:00 a.m., recently emptied in quiet preparation for the lecture to come. Although November has been full of sunny mornings and temperatures that barely qualify as sweater weather, the lecture hall is fixed in a cold, desolate winter. Off-yellow incandescent lights cast awkward shadows on the half-erased blackboard…
Providence is Not a Playground
Reflections on RIPTA
The bus driver jerks his arms right, guiding stubborn tires through the right turn from Memorial Boulevard on to Fulton Street. For a moment, everyone sways, fingers gently tightening against the metal rails. The half-hidden silhouettes of the Public Health Building and the Congdon Street Baptist Church slide behind us, quickly consumed by the towering…