“The neons and the cigarettes” When I arrived at Brown University three years ago, I didn’t have friends. I mean, I’d had friends —past tense—but here, immured in the red brick walls of a main green, under the skyline of an alien city, I felt completely and utterly alone. Sure, there were plenty of orientation […]

I ran across the street, splashing through the cold slush of melting snow to catch the RIPTA before it left me waiting 20 minutes for the next one. Safely on the line, I pulled out my Brown ID and readied to swipe—hoping that I was holding the card correctly to avoid fumbling and causing an […]

From a casual survey of basically everyone I know, I’ve found that dating at Brown University is tough. No one seems to be doing it right. Between Datamatch, Tinder (and the long list of other, increasingly popular dating apps), casual, serious, or in-between relationships, official dates, and weekend hookups, it’s hard to know what you’re […]

From the day I set foot in my first school, I knew what I was. I was not a woman. I was not a girl. I was a contortionist: bending my limbs and entangling my arms until I could fit into whatever box felt the snuggest around my hips. The box was like one made […]

The French novelist Marcel Proust often wrote that it is the individual’s duty to recover their own story—that in order to understand our true nature, we must understand how we see and have seen the world. Essentially, if you want to live a conscious—that is to say, “woke”—life, you must take some time alone to […]