Posted inEssay Featured Opinion

The unfortunate truth of exes and music

One thing I love about meeting new people is learning what music they listen to. From bonding over knowing the same artists/bands to being struck by how different a person can seem from the music they listen to, I get new music from every new relationship I make. Music and people become associated with one another, a blessing and a curse. For some, hearing Sabrina Carpenter on the speakers in a Target is enough to start the waterworks. Music taste is such a personal thing that it’d be nearly impossible to find a single relationship in which there wasn’t at least one playlist made for or about the other person. So when relationships end, oftentimes a person’s fondness of their ex-partner’s music taste ends along with it.
A Wikipedia editor’s unintentional autobiography
Posted inEssay Featured

A Wikipedia editor’s unintentional autobiography

Wikipedia pages are my tarot cards. I don't edit them; I read them at 1 AM when I'm trying to understand something I can't quite yet name. An article on Speech Act theory leads to one on memory consolidation, which leads to symbolic interactionism, which leads to one on a philosopher I've never heard of. By 3 AM, I have seventeen tabs open, and if you mapped them, you'd have a perfect diagram of whatever I'm avoiding thinking about directly.
CONCERT REVIEW: Big Thief @ The Anthem, 10/24
Posted inConcert Reviews Featured Music

CONCERT REVIEW: Big Thief @ The Anthem, 10/24

Standing on stage and gazing at the packed venue halfway through the set, Adrienne Lenker told us that she was sending us “all the love in her heart,” and that she “could feel all the love in the room.” I honestly believe her. Not one person in the crowd around me wasn’t grinning and staring at the stage with complete adoration in their eyes, myself included.
Top 5 places to break up on campus
Posted inFeatured Local Student Life

Top 5 places to break up on campus

Love may blossom in DC, but it also likes to die loudly in public. After seeing more breakups than we ever asked for, we’ve noticed some spots on campus are just objectively the wrong setting for heartbreak. So, if your situationship is getting stale, or you just found out your partner’s been “studying” with someone else, follow this guide to the top five worst places to end it all—romantically, of course. 
The Archive of Absence: A relationship with no transcript
Posted inEssay Featured Student Life

The Archive of Absence: A relationship with no transcript

1,019 messages were discarded when I pressed delete. 1,019 messages were what iMessage was referring to when it prompted "This conversation will be deleted from all your devices." 1,019 messages were sent back and forth over a period of four months. A relationship's strength can't and shouldn't be measured by characters on a little screen, but when you question if what you cared for was even real, you gather up every little artifact, hoping those little slivers of paper don't get lost on the way to your confetti jar. The delete button is easy. It's the aftermath that's harder, when I wonder if erasing the evidence erases the experience itself. Not that there was much evidence of a relationship to begin with; in a courtroom there would be reasonable doubt.