The Grinch
Andrea Long Chu
Martin Luther
Cain about to kill his brother
Twenty-three of Caesar’s closest friends
Kendrick Lamar
8. Man about to get visited by three weird ghosts
9. Mr. Darcy 10. Count Olaf at those kids
“You’d fit right in with the
Dear Readers,
I am in the eye of the storm. I can see it swirling around me: final papers, final projects, packing my dorm into a storage unit, packing my closet into a suitcase, packing myself into a plane, the uncountable amount of tiny, minuscule tasks that must be completed before summer can begin. But right now, I’m untouched. I can’t say I’m basking in the sunlight, as the weather has taken a turn for the cloudy and chill again, but I am doing my best to breathe and embrace my remaining days of calm.
And there’s lots to embrace: TV nights with my roommates, cozy books in a cozier bed, making slow progress on the sweater I started knitting all the way back in January. Regardless of the line-up discourse, I am looking forward to gathering on the Green with you all
for Spring Weekend. And, of course, I’m embracing this issue of post-.
Our writers this week are also looking out from the eye of the storm. In Feature, Kayla dives into the whirlwind that is the portrayal of sex work on social media and Michelle wonders about midpoints and in-betweens. For Narrative, Vanessa watches friends fall in love, and for A&C, Sofie watches The Real Housewives of Rhode Island. Also in A&C, Ozzy looks back on the songs that defined his college experience. Indigo asks us to pause and reflect on which post- section we are for Lifestyle, and Ina sucks us into a lovely spring day for post-pourri. Finally, take a break and tackle a FULL-SIZE crossword from Lily, Ishan, and Tseyang!
This semester, post- has always been the eye of the storm. I can tuck myself away at prod night and hide away from the chaos that I will have to return to Thursday morning. I hope this issue can be that for you.
Dancing in puddles,
Elaina Bayard Editor-In-Chief
Fellow doom-scrollers on TikTok would know about a new language of liberal feminism circulating on the platform. Over the past few years, it’s arrived in fragments: “I’m just a girl,” “girl dinner,” “girl math,” Palestine and Israel explained as your girl friends fighting, tutorials on soft-life living, and the occasional OnlyFans creator explaining how she paid off her student loans. These trends translate everyday habits and even global politics into hyper-feminized and simplified narratives. While there is nothing inherently wrong with making universal experiences feel playful or rendering complex issues more digestible, the framing of these experiences as distinctly “girlcoded” is where the problem emerges.
Social media’s modern feminist trends have sparked online debate about whether they are actually feminist at their core, or at best, a diluted impersonation of feminism, and
at worst, rebranded patriarchal complacency. Even if the intention behind these trends was to create space for women and promote female empowerment, the idea of empowerment itself becomes aestheticized when these narratives circulate through algorithm-driven platforms like TikTok. Nowhere is this tension more visible than in how sex work is framed online, where empowerment becomes something consumable, obscuring the structural realities and risks that shape the industry.
Right now, the topic of porn sits in a precarious seat for Gen Z. Gen Z has grown up online and amid porn, as per internet Rule 34. Most of our generation had been exposed to it by the time they were just thirteen. “NoFap” trends, incel communities, and red-pill followers align with a conservative lean from youth (as depicted by the Netflix show Adolescence and Gen Z voting trends). At the same time, Gen Z has also
proven to be the most open-minded to different sexual kinks and greatly contributed to the movement towards “ethical porn,” or creatorowned content produced outside of traditional studios where performers historically have little control over their working conditions and content production. Gen Z has shown their ability to think critically about the sex industry and identify the inherent gender and power constraints embedded within the industry. This critical awareness has not emerged in a vacuum; it is being shaped by how sex work is increasingly portrayed across film, television, and social media. Media audiences often appear comfortable consuming narratives about sex work—stories about autonomy, financial success, or rebellion against conventional careers. Sex workers lauded Anora for its more accurate portrayal of everyday stripper work, and cam-girl Kat’s season one storyline
’ sglamorization of the sex workindustry
byKaylaMorrisonIllustratedbyLesa Jae
in Euphoria was deemed empowering as she controlled the terms of her work. This is paired with other cinematic portrayals of sex work, including Hustlers and The Player’s Club, which focused on the lives of predominantly Black and brown strippers.
The empowerment narrative tends to follow white women in these portrayals, while women of color are often depicted through the lens of necessity and circumstance, reflecting broader cultural patterns in how agency and victimhood are racialized within the sex work industry. This same tension carries into how sex work is framed on TikTok, where the loudest and most celebrated voices are often those of white women who can present their work as a choice.
The TikTok ecosystem, in particular, has greatly influenced younger generations’ views on sex work. Popular TikToker and OnlyFans creator Stella Barey gained a large and dedicated female following—a younger generation of women whose affinity for her was rooted in her early 2020 storytelling format videos about her candid, provocative sexual experiences. The mass positive reception led to the creation of her explicit content online. Many of her supporters aren’t even subscribed to her OnlyFans, but instead engage with her TikTok, where she speaks openly about her decision to leave medical school and pursue sex work. She is now crowned TikTok’s horny professor, quoting Sigmund Freud and various sexual philosophers, building a cult following of sex-positive women. Barey presents her work as liberating and financially rewarding, though she also acknowledges that it is not a universally enjoyable or sustainable career.
Recently, Barey founded Hidden, a new app designed to alleviate creator burnout and give adult creators more control over their content. The platform is built specifically to address the failures of other mediums sex workers use— namely, the pressure to self-promote through strict mainstream platforms, the lack of content discovery tools, and the unsustainable demand for constant engagement with fans. Unlike TikTok, for instance, Hidden features an algorithm that promotes older content alongside new posts, reducing the burden to constantly produce in order to be seen. It also takes a smaller cut of creator earnings than OnlyFans and is designed to give performers more ownership over how their content circulates and who profits from it. Hidden is one of the only sex-worker-founded adult platforms in existence, which in and of itself reflects how rarely creators have had a seat at the table in
building the infrastructure on which their work depends.
Barey is not alone in reshaping how the sex work industry is discussed online. Other TikTok creators offer different, but related, narratives. Ari Kytsya has been praised for discussing the emotional and structural downsides of sex work, while the creator known as HotBlockChain— now a law student—has framed her experience in the industry primarily as a means of funding long-term professional goals. Ari Kytsya was invited to speak at a psychology class at the University of Washington about the sex work industry. HotBlockChain (Emily Cocea) wrote her personal statement for law school on her OnlyFans and Playboy Bunny gig, and ended up getting accepted into the University of Michigan, a top ten law school. These creators have all been met with general support, initially using social media as a means to advertise their sexual content, yet now leveraging their candid experience in the industry as a form of professional and cultural capital.
However, there are other creators whose sexual context has been largely labeled as “rage bait.” OnlyFans creators Bonnie Blue and Lily Phillips have gained viral attention for their extreme stunts, such as sleeping with dozens or even hundreds of men in a short period of time, designed to attract algorithmic visibility and media coverage. These performances, often framed as shocking and excessive, have contributed to a more sensationalized and distorted perception of sex work, reinforcing negative stereotypes that critics, especially red-pill theorists, use to demean women in this profession (despite usually being the ones lined up to participate in these women’s videos).
An emphasis on autonomy has always been core to liberal feminism’s message, and many of these creators have embraced and expanded this framework in their own ways. These creators have openly discussed their experiences, effectively taking huge steps toward demystifying and destigmatizing the industry, and in some cases, sought to reshape it, whether through speaking out against exploitation or by building alternative spaces like Hidden.
Yet, as these narratives circulate through a media environment driven by visibility and engagement, they also shape how young audiences—especially those growing up on TikTok—come to understand the industry. While these portrayals can be empowering, they often emphasize flexibility, financial success, and personal choice, obscuring the structural risks and constraints that continue
to define sex work.
Enjoying these narratives does not necessarily translate into support for the real people performing the labor itself. The same audiences who celebrate these camgirl storylines on television or watch TikTok creators discuss their OnlyFans million-dollar income may still hold deeply ambivalent views about sex workers as workers. As a result, young audiences are left to both consume and stigmatize the labor simultaneously. In this sense, sex work increasingly functions as a cultural aesthetic: something that can be admired, consumed, and debated without requiring genuine political or social support for those within the industry.
Many people enter sex work under economic pressure, and the industry itself remains unevenly regulated and highly stigmatized. In the United States, sex work exists in a legal patchwork—while prostitution is criminalized in most states, platforms like OnlyFans operate in a gray area, leaving creators with little formal recourse when content is stolen, issues with income arise, or platforms arbitrarily remove them. The burden of this legal ambiguity falls hardest on women of color and trans women. By contrast, several European countries have moved toward decriminalization or full recognition of sex work as labor, extending workers' access to healthcare and legal protections. But as the industry stands right now, it still lacks infrastructure, making it ripe for abuse of many of these (often young) women.
Yet these conditions rarely translate into these viral narratives online. Even when creators acknowledge emotional or personal downsides, these accounts can function as a kind of surface-level critique, stopping short of fully addressing the material and structural conditions that shape the industry.
It can be true at the same time that sex work should not be criminalized or shamed, that women should be able to exercise agency over their bodies, and that the sex work industry as it is perpetuates patriarchal oppression. Both stigmatizing and romanticizing sex work are, in their own way, avoiding the harder work of protecting the people doing it. The challenge for younger audiences watching this unfold on their feeds is learning to see beyond the curated narratives and to reckon their own role in it—whether they are the ones buying the subscription or the ones considering a career behind the camera.
Lately I’ve been in Steinert, trying to figure things out. My fingertips hover over the piano like anxious crows waiting to land. I drop them, slide my hands up and down the keys, trace a path from black to white to black again. Still the notes don’t sound right. Still, I am hunting for the rhythm.
There’s a concept in music theory called rubato: “robbed time.” To alter the tempo and then reel it back in, to speed up or slow down, and return. In high school I’d douse my music in rubato—pause one measure, race forward the next—and I’d do it without hesitation, without overthinking it.
But recently I’ve been fighting with the finer details. I’m trying to play Franz Liszt’s Concert Étude No. 3, better known as “Un Sospiro”: a breath, and it sounds wrong, too emotional, without conviction. I’m trying to measure out the ritardandos and the accelerandos. To space my tempo changes just so. But the pulse judders and spikes and flatlines. The étude pulls me from measure to measure; I lose my footing on the keys; I go home dissatisfied.
Our difference became a permeable membrane between each person and the whole.
Even though my mind focused within bounds, it's indivisible from sky I see, because seeing is as a field.
Looking is an innate impulse toward wholeness.
— Mei-mei Berssenbrugge (from "Consciousness Self-Learns")
I am a person who likes certainty: the interlocking rainbow blocks in my Google Calendar, the different sectors of my life partitioned and color-coded just so. I know that during the nonstop six-hour sprints between my classes and the Herald office and back, I have to kick my tempo up to allegro. I know that within the yellow boxes I’ve categorized for dinners and movie nights with my loved ones, I can slow down to adagio
But I’ve always been a little bit lost in the midpoints of things. In the spaces that gape in between. In my spare half-hours I often find myself hovering at the intersection of the Main Green and Simmons Quad, wondering if I should return home and call my parents, or pick up a latte from the Blue Room, or swing by Rhode Island Hall to greet friends. I can agonize over future plans and pore over the past; when I live in the present, the present is a limbo.
It’s spring now, maybe the midpoint of all midpoints. The trees are halfway in bloom, their flowers all in the messy process of unfurling. The weather seems to be swinging steadily in between 60 and 80 degrees. In the mornings I awake to the sounds of birds, quiet but insistent. I imitate their song in my own whistles but it doesn’t land quite right.
And as a second-semester sophomore, I’m about to mark halfway through my time at Brown. How to even begin to fathom my experience here, so expansive and warm and overwhelming, flashing by at breakneck speed? Main Green afternoons, late nights to early mornings in the SciLi, Blue Room coffees and Jo’s dinners, Caswell fire escapes—already, halfway gone.
More so—how to inhabit this experience, this moment, hesitating in the breath after adolescence and before adulthood?
by Michelle Illustrated by
On the quiet walk home from Steinert, across the green and between the lamps, I listen to “Réminiscences de Norma”—also by Liszt, also the only song that I’ve yearned to play for years and yet have never had the courage to attempt. The song cascades and ripples in a long series of arpeggios. At 13:30, Marc-André Hamelin drapes his notes in rubato, producing a positive waterfall of sound. I listen to the notes tumble over each other. It never fails to make my own heartbeat quicken.
Is it a crime to be unsure? In time we’ll find If it’s sustainable You’re pure, you’re kind Mature, divine
— Daniel Caesar (“Who Knows”)
There was a boy who lived across the hall from me in my freshman dorm. We didn’t share a bathroom but we ran into each other again and again, until his face changed from a stranger’s to a friend’s. We’d come home hazily from different parties and stand in the no-man’s-land between our rooms, talking, whispering laughter so as not to wake up our other hallmates. One time, a friend and I heard snatches of violin music floating through the corridors and followed it to the very end of the building, where we knocked on his door, and to our delight he opened it, bow still in hand.
We fell out of touch after we moved into different buildings our sophomore year, but I still have a Polaroid photo of him from when my
roommate and I attempted to start a “visitor wall” for our dorm. I’d invited him in and we sat on the edge of my twin XL, our feet dangling in the air, and we talked about our hopes, our homes. When I held up the camera, he posed for the picture and squinted and smiled.
Recently I found out that he’d passed away. Now I find myself clutching desperately at those memories. My first home away from home will always be that corner of EmWool: carpeted, green, and dingy, with his violin singing through the air, his shoes at the door when I came back at night. Our halfway point rendezvous. Hanging in between one doorway and the next. A mutual understanding, an insistence, of just one more minute of conversation, one more laugh before sleep. The seizing of time.
I spent most of my teenage years trying
to understand sadness. I cried over my AP Calculus test grades, believing they put all my university dreams out of reach. I studied my body in the mirror, disdaining its curves, its stretch marks. I despaired over a boy when my first real relationship ended during my freshman year of college.
But now I’m just a month away from turning twenty, and I wish I understood grief. Because despite all of my attempts to sift it through, to weigh it in my fingertips, I still don’t. Not the individual kind that gnaws at the edges of my stomach, pining always for some past era of childhood or adolescence, when I believed that time was ever-giving and infinite.
And what’s far more elusive, the community kind of grief we have all wrestled with—in our
own ways—this semester. How to encompass the Brunonians we’ve lost in a few simple phrases, or a handful of pictures? How to wake morning after morning, knowing that the world is irrevocably dimmer? Words fail. There is no other way to say it. Words fail.
But there are freeways between me and the person I love, God. And I don’t have enough time to travel all of them. I worry that I can’t bend them all into a giant circle from where I begin to where she begins. God, I don’t know what I believe in except the shrinking of distance. God, do you worry about the things you can control? I am enough in love to worry about everything that might cast a shadow over it.
— Hanif Abdurraqib (“On Seatbelts and Sunsets”)
-
And it’s a mess, all of it, really. I try to sort through it, but it’s beyond my reach. The heartbreaks: the tears in a place we once called perfection, unquestionable, safe. The immense losses that we’ve felt and continue to feel. The way the world keeps turning, turning anyway.
At the very same time: the joys. The pile of my friends’ forgone sweaters as we sprawl out on the grass. The glow of faraway lightning from my warm bed. The delightful soreness, walking home from the gym, that radiates through my shoulders and chest. The barely-there freckles on her cheekbones and the burst of her laugh.
The things that terrify me and the things that I love exist in disharmonious tandem. I’m trying to live in between them—to pluck the moments from life’s infinite and spiraling web, to make sense of everything. We grow, slowly, around our grief. Our hearts keep beating anyway, through it all.
I am ready, run from fear
I'm from somewhere far from here
So tell me when the coast is clear
Wanna kiss you ear from ear
Can I take another year?
Must I be so damn severe?
From the valley to the pier
I'm beset with what we could become — Bon Iver (“From”)
I’ve been chasing perfection in “Un Sospiro” since I was seventeen. I’ve tried metronomic practice, and separating my hands, and going phrase by phrase. I’ve tried practicing for hours on end, and taking a break for weeks, and pure robotic staccato touch with no dynamics at all.
I’m nineteen now, and I don’t have any tricks left to employ. Instead, I just begin. First at a painstaking lento, tiptoeing my hands across the keys. Gradually I gather conviction, dipping and weaving, inhaling and exhaling, and I let the song follow suit in a wild cascade. I know these notes well enough to lose control over my hands, the sound; the music bleeds blue and red; I give it room to breathe.
I think there’s an inherent sadness to rubato—a pining for the past, a clutch at what used to be. But it too exists alongside a quickening: to leap to the next phrase, to reach. The next beat will come, and the beat after, and the beat after that.
Now I remember violin music; I burn it into my mind. I let the fasts and the slows play out. I sink my hands into the in-between.
by vanessa tao
Illustrated by selena zhu
By coincidence, every time I sit down to write a post- article, I happen to be next to my seventh-grade best friend who is the only one from home who went as far from home as me—selfishly, I dragged him to NYU when I knew I wanted to go to Brown—and we always happen to be in a coffee shop, him studying for a midterm while I figure out what I could possibly write about next.
He always picks me up, no matter what train or bus I get off of, and we link arms and walk through the soaked New York streets while he puts up with my torrent of stories, terrible jokes, and repeated requests for Heytea. It’s rituals like this, no matter how infrequent, that have kept our friendship as comfortable as the day I met him eight years ago. I often think about the unlikelihood of it; how many millions of choices must we have made to end up on the same street, semester after semester, regardless of the states and countries and time zones we have to cross?
That morning, a few hours before I would board my bus to New York, I woke up in a bed that wasn’t mine to get coffee with a girl— our mutual friend—and her boyfriend from Williams College. We sat and listened to her boyfriend talk, at 7 a.m, about his Nepalese co-founder, while I bonded with him over our summer birthdays. Call it a double date, call it worlds colliding—either way, it was surreal, and writing it down isn’t making it any less strange.
For the past few weeks, all of my
stories have sounded like this: implausible, funny because “Vanessa, of course this is happening to you,” built on timing and usually set in the early hours of the night. Almost every night, I find myself excited to meet up with the same clamorous laughs, childish jokes, and “I love you”s said through insults, so we can tell each other about our days and nothing more.
Often, the rhythm of my days reminds me of the theatre shows and films I’ve worked on this year, unfolding line by line, character by character, until the entire film ends somewhere so far from where it began that I have to watch it over again to figure out what happened.
I wonder, as I’m walking or ambling or sprinting down my path, what hidden variables are placing my steps on cracked pavement or rolling pebbles into my shoes. What hidden variables have already dictated the inconceivable, inevitable events I will later experience, ones that will make no sense to me, but that were long ago written into the cosmic show. Ants feel rain and mistake it for magic.
That girl, the one whose bed I woke up in, is my most recent example of magic. For the longest time, she was just another familiar face on campus. We’d bump into each other everywhere, caught in our own worlds. Over time, like a loose thread, we kept pulling and pulling, slowly, until we
unraveled into morning walks and late dinners, kisses on fire escapes and the memory of my perfume in her room.
Now, she walks me thirty minutes across College Hill to my bus stop where, while looking out of the window of my Greyhound, I find a lot of solace in knowing that no matter what country or what life I might find myself in, somewhere in New York is a boy who knows to greet me with an umbrella and a McDonald’s bag in hand.
“I keep picturing all these little kids playing some game in this big field of rye and all. Thousands of little kids, and nobody’s around—”
(The Catcher in the Rye, J.D. Salinger)
In three short weeks, the class of 2028 will advance into upperclassman status, no longer the starry-eyed first-years or second-years we are now. My friends and I are slowly entering our twenties, some even older, and we’re all making different choices as our priorities shift, just as the cherry blossoms grow back and the sun visits campus more often.
When sophomore year first started, I remember entering it primarily with apprehension. I started the year off strong with Bruno Leader parties and days in the sun, until suddenly October snuck up on me and it was impossible to see my friends, and everyone was stressed about
friend-group fallouts, or careers, or classes, or the storms that swept through our class and our school. We kept losing each other, over and over and over, in a vicious cycle that seemed like it would never let up. During the snow days, when my friends and I sledded down hills and made ice cream in the cold, I wondered to myself if we were just pretending, grasping at what it felt like to be kids again.
I spent a lot of this year learning how to forget, how to move forward, how to wake up into another gloomy day and still believe, endlessly, that the next one wouldn’t be. I can’t speak for the entire class of ’28. If I could, though, I would say we are doused in hope.
The first time I read Catcher in the Rye, I hated it until the carousel scene at the very end, when Holden watches over his sister and comes to terms with the fact that he can’t shield her from the cliff of time forever. I read it in high school, back when I could still blast Ribs by Lorde while racing my high school friends down highways, back when I could sit on top of cars in parking lots, and we would talk like we would all be seventeen forever.
I’ve always dreaded times of transition. Times like the blue hour or dusk, or even the entire season of fall—it makes me sick to think of the bright
hours basking in sunlight coming to an end, of packing up picnic blankets and trading them for sweaters. It scares me to think that one day, my days in New York with my friend will come to an end, that one day I might get my last bagel with him here, and I won’t even know it.
“To live, then, is a matter of time, of timing.”
(On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous, Ocean Vuong)
Nowadays, I’ve traded my car for trains and flights, swapped out sunburnt lake days for corporate internships, slumber parties for trips abroad. And yet, for the first time, the thought of the cliff doesn’t scare me. Everyone I care about is running through the field with me, all of us dancing to and from the edge, time as a corrosive material forever building and eroding, shifting the dirt beneath our feet as the landscape slowly shifts in and out of focus. When it gets cold, someone will wrap a blanket around me while I find snacks for us all to watch the ending of the blue hour together. And when it finally does settle into night, we will hear the crickets serenading, celebrating—the same crickets I heard when I was four, and fourteen, and probably twenty-four.
In the meantime though, I’m going to get my second drink from this coffee shop, my friend interrupts me to giggle about how a specific genus of mouse has two copies of the
gene, my other friend texts to tell me about a set of pens she’s excited about—how lucky I am to have people to miss—and in the back of my head I know that we are all falling, catching each other, falling again, and catching each other again, over and over through every winter and summer and dusk and dawn, morning after morning until one day the rye fields are trampled over, wind whistling through the stalks, dirt stamped stiff with the footprints and head-shapes of everyone who I love, loved, and will love.
“But it's beautiful here, even the ghosts agree.”
(The Emperor of Gladness, Ocean Vuong)
We’re three weeks away from a new abyss. Today,
Sometimes I think about how the songs I listen to affect my mood. For instance, what kind of songs should I listen to when I’m sad? Do I listen to this sad song to wallow in my low feelings? Do I listen to more happy music to cheer me up? I’ve never been able to find the right answer to that question. However, I always associate the song I listen to most any given week with my mood. When I think about it a little further, I wonder how the top song every month reflected my overall mood during that time frame. I’m pretty bad at keeping track of stuff like this, and I should get better. For one thing, no matter how hard I try, Spotify won’t tell me my top songs every month.
I started feeling a little more pressure lately to document my music listening when I started thinking about the fact that I’ll be graduating in a couple of months. Since I’ve come to Brown, I have been very fortunate to get to know really smart people and discover really cool songs. And with every new semester at Brown, something new has always come up, and there has always been another song for me to obsess over.
I would like to take a look back at my most-listened-to song for every semester I’ve been at Brown. Think of it as a trip down memory lane, and hey, you might get to know me a little bit better. I truly recommend these songs, and hopefully they’re fun to listen to in the background while you’re reading this!
Freshman Fall, 2022: “What a Pleasure” by Beach Fossils
When I was eighteen years old, after Mom tearfully hugged me goodbye, I felt a little unsure of myself. Hell, what was I even going to study at school? Suppressing all that anxiety, I started my musical journey in college by obsessively listening to music everywhere I went. At the time, I was interested in hip-hop, specifically the more alternative kind. I remember hanging up posters of albums like Circles by Mac Miller and We Got It from Here…Thank You 4 Your Service by A Tribe Called Quest. I was also pretty bummed when Brockhampton broke
up. It didn’t feel any better that their last album wasn’t a good one.
If there’s one thing that TikTok was good at—other than ruining my attention span—it was putting me on with some cool songs. One of those songs was “What a Pleasure” by Beach Fossils. It opens with a cheerful pop guitar riff, and it’s hella nostalgic vibes. I think its lyrics— describing a narrator far away from their love and free to be somewhere new—were a little bit too true to me as well. However, even with all this new happiness, sometimes, “I’d take it all away.” I’d listen to the catchy guitar and groovy bass while navigating campus with Google Maps and exploring the Providence area. I also started buying vinyl for the first time!
At the start of my freshman year, I constantly wondered if I even deserved to come to Brown. I thought everyone else was miles ahead of me. Hell, I still think like that a lot of the time, nearly four years later. I remember taking a wide variety of classes that year, none of which were even in the concentration I wound up choosing. But by December, I realized that it was okay to feel this way. I was only just getting started, right? How fast could the time fly by?
Freshman Spring, 2023: “Little Dreamer” by Van Halen
Something I remember doing often during my freshman year was playing music on my speaker while I showered. If you lived with me on the fourth floor of James-Mead, I hope I wasn’t too loud. I always tried to time the showers so that I stepped out right when the cool part of a song happened. One of the songs that I most frequently listened to was “Little Dreamer.”
As part of buying vinyl and rediscovering my love for classic rock, I started to listen to albums in full. I eventually stumbled upon the Van Halen debut, their self-titled album. I thought, how cheesy are these guys? Turns out, very. It was guitar solo after guitar solo, backed by lyrics that are loud and proud. But it rocked, and I was obsessed. With all Van Halen’s common themes of women, love, and running from devils, I found that “Little Dreamer” diverged from those ideas. The goal of the song isn’t to compel you to dance, but rather to sway back and forth with the distant melancholia of how far you’ve come. I found hope with David Lee Roth singing, “You are the little dreamer.”
This is a semester I look back on a lot. I started getting more involved with writing, I took my first English course, and I branched out and made more friends. I think nothing
thetunesthatdefinedmy collegeexperience
by Ozzy Wagenseil
Illustrated by Ellie Kang
ever beats your first spring at Brown when the weather starts to warm up, and people begin parading around the Main Green. I always thought those Instagram reels were cute— students skateboarding, playing spikeball, or doing other outdoorsy stuff. Usually, the background of the reels plays some sappy love song. In my opinion, Van Halen is the way to go.
Sophomore Fall, 2023: “I Know It’s Over” by
Jeff Buckley
Holy shit, this semester was awful. Transitioning from the highlights of freshman spring to the unfortunate lowlights of this semester was just devastating. Let’s see. I tried venturing into a STEM concentration, and I signed up for a math class. I had to drop it because I couldn’t keep up, so I took three classes that semester. That imposter syndrome was more prevalent then. Around Thanksgiving, I caught a stomach bug that kept me on my floor for about eight hours, and I could barely fall asleep. At one point, I was seeing somebody for a while, and it was going well until she broke up with me for someone else. So yeah, general sadness all around. It was hard to choose a song. I had a lot of good, sad ones to choose from. However, in my opinion, there was one singer I knew who made those long walks down George Street make me feel less alone. When it gets cold and bitter, Buckley is the way to go. His rendition of The Smiths’ tune is emotional and barren, with only one voice and one guitar. The pleading shouts towards the end of the song really twist the knife that much more. Felt.
Getting back up after this semester took a lot, not going to lie. But I’m glad I did.
New semester, new me. It was this semester that I took Creative Nonfiction, arguably my favorite class I’ve ever taken at Brown. A little goes a long way, and one article that I read for that class inadvertently led me to my thesis topic about rock criticism. All of a sudden, I started to have more responsibilities with all the clubs I was involved in, and my schedule stretched beyond what I ever thought. Not to mention, I was back to taking four classes. And I was really glad.
I found myself listening to a lot of The Who as I was spiraling down the well of ’60s and ’70s classic rock once more. I started listening to a record that brought me back to enjoying the
campus, and I was moving on from the tragedies of the previous semester. My dad gave me a record that was one of his personal favorites when he was my age, Exile on Main St. by The Rolling Stones. It ain’t the best song, it ain’t the most popular, but damn does it make me happy. I was itching to dance to the catchy guitar and Keith Richards’s ecstatic singing. The spring weather always shines a little brighter with the right song, and I was in bliss.
Around this time, I was grappling with the idea of studying abroad. I was thinking about St Andrews, as I had recently declared English as my concentration. I was excited to think about living in Scotland while studying more literature, but I ultimately decided not to go. There were many reasons why: I had joined a band on campus. My fraternity needed me more than ever. I was having too much fun on my Frisbee team. I asked myself one question that made me decide to stay: “What would I miss if I left Brown?” Staying was the best decision in my college career.
Junior Fall, 2024: “Roadhouse Blues” by The Doors
I was attending the first session of a songwriting class this semester, and as an icebreaker, we were asked what our favorite lyrics were. Everyone else spouted some heartbreaking lyric or a beautiful line of poetry within a song. The first thought that came to me was the lyrics from “Roadhouse Blues.” In particular, “I woke up this morning and got myself a beer / The future is uncertain, and the end is always near.” Honestly, that was the vibe this semester.
I’m fairly sure it’s that guitar riff that did it for me. It’s so simple, but so, so, so fun. The complete lunacy with which Jim Morrison sings is wild, and that guitar solo is untamed and off the wall. However, even with all the fun the song is, there are some dark elements that showcase that it’s focused and aimed towards something mysterious. That’s the wild intrigue that I get from The Doors in general.
It was a little wild for me, class-wise. I had an 8:30 a.m. class, along with two seminars and one Tuesday/Thursday class that started at 2:30 p.m. I had the worst sleep schedule this semester by far, and I felt a bit more erratic than usual. Because of my single concentration, I had the ability to start taking classes that I wanted to take for fun, so I took the songwriting class and a beginner music production course. While this sounds fun and all, I also learned this semester that I needed to prioritize my well-being. I realized that I was drifting from some of my first friends, but that I had more people to rely on than I realized. With the music and English classes, I started getting to know more people.
Junior Spring, 2025: “Sinking Down” by
my girlfriend, and now it’s like I carry music for two.
There was one moment where I was sitting in the Rock and listening to this band called Boyscott. My band had booked a gig with them at AS220, and I was also going to try to interview them. I was giving their first album a listen, and I came upon this song. Have you ever listened to a song once and known that it was going to be a keeper? Just like that, I fell into a trance of daydreaming bliss, as I stared out the window and took in the sunshine hitting my desk, while this instrumental track fueled my helpless mind with good energy.
I remember ending this semester on a high, where I put in all the tough work and several leadership commitments to come out on top. I experimented more with music production, took a difficult English class, and took my first MCM class. However, I was most accomplished in the independent study that I did with one of my professors. This independent study, which stemmed from that article in my sophomore spring semester, allowed me to apply and get permission to start my thesis!
All the while, I felt the deep sensation that I had to say goodbye to the seniors at the time. I kept thinking, “That’s going to be me next year.”
Senior Fall, 2025: “Midnight on the Bay” by The Stills-Young Band
Senior season! You know how, when you were younger, you thought all the seniors you knew had their shit together? I’ll be honest, that is not true at all. I was still scrambling to make sure everything was going tidy. This was my first time off-campus, and living in an apartment on my own with two roommates came with its own set of challenges. Starting a thesis was also a huge pain in the ass, on top of the fact that this was going to be my last year at college. Seems like everything’s just a mess.
And yet, I was surrounded by lovely people. And with the right people, yes, even the roommates, I was able to keep it all together. And the music I listened to made sure that everything was calm at the end of it all. I stumbled upon this song, and it couldn’t have fit
better. The soothing voice of Neil Young and the subtle production are hopeful. Oddly enough, it feels like I’m down by India Point Park, watching the sun set and the ships pulling into the bay, as well as biking down the whole East Bay Bike Path.
I wish this semester had ended on a positive note, where everyone could have watched the snow together in warmth, while songs like these were playing all night long.
Senior Spring, 2026: “How Do You Keep the Music Playing?” by James Ingram and Patti Austin
So, last semester, huh? And then I’m out into the real world. I’m so used to the comfort of this campus, these people. And moving on from it all is a really scary thought. The thesis that I’ve been working on for the past year is going to be due before I know it, and all the classrooms are going to be a memory I once experienced.
“How do you keep the song from fading too fast? / How do you lose yourself to someone / And never lose your way?”
I’m extremely grateful that I get to be part of an institution like this one. I will miss the sweltering heat, the extreme snow, the heartbreaks, the parties, the friends, the highs, the lows; I will never forget how this place could make me feel. And yet, I feel like I’m running out of music to put it all into one feeling.
It ain’t the end of the world. This is just the beginning of adult life after all. Who knows what kind of music will carry me forward.
Man, this was a really tough semester for me to decide on a song. There are just so many good ones. To be fair, it’s not entirely my fault that I have so many options. I started seeing
Funnily enough, this will be my second postarticle about The Real Housewives franchise in two years. Consider me an expert on all things Bravo and Andy Cohen. My credentials include hundreds of hours of the Bravo channel humming in the background of my singlemother household, as well as countless minutes of my own undivided attention given to the scandals of Beverly Hills, Salt Lake City, New York City, Dubai, and Potomac, to name only a few of the spin-offs my mother and I have been patrons of over the years. The Real Housewives has been so integral to my being that—as people are often shocked to learn—I wrote my main college essay about watching the franchise with my mother and grandma over the years (presumably, Brown approved). So hear ye, hear ye, I implore the masses to accept that my review of the series’ newest installment, The Real Housewives of (our very own!) Rhode Island, is the opinion of an Ivy League-endorsed Real Housewives expert.
A few weeks ago, a close friend and I set about planning a The Real Housewives of Rhode Island premiere watch party, themed after all of Rhode Island’s native delights. For my friend, an Italian-American Cranston local, the show hit closer to home than ever. When the cast was announced, she even discovered a loose blood relation to one of the stars. We spent the day of the premiere gathering all of Rhode Island’s specialties, driving out to The Original Italian Bakery first to stock up on cannolis and “pizza chips” (heavily featured in episode four). To drink, we offered coffee milk and Del’s lemonade.
A Real Housewives franchise can be hit or miss. It is entirely dependent on the “iconicness” of the independent cast members, the cast as a whole’s chemistry, and the presence of drama juicy enough to constitute a season “storyline.” To be a good individual housewife is to be good at the Housewives game. A cast member of a Real Housewives series must strike a careful dramatic balance and avoid being too toxic or too boring. Creating drama and fighting is good. However, create too much drama or fight too often, and you become hated by the audience to the point of being fired from the show. On the flip side, create too little drama and apologize too quickly—in other words, become boring and irrelevant—and you are out as well. Equally important is that the cast as a whole can get along well enough, despite their mandate to create drama, so that they can still stand to be in the same room with each other in every subsequent season. Indeed, it was evident to Real Housewives fans that the Rhode Island franchise was meant to fill the niche left by The Real Housewives of New Jersey, which was temporarily paused due to irreconcilable differences among cast members who began refusing to film with one another.
As the first episode premiered, I waited with bated breath to see which of these camps
the show would fall into, and by the end of it—as well as writing now, four episodes into the series—I could confidently say that Rhode Island appears to be a hit in the making, maybe even on par with the ever legendary likes of Salt Lake City. Each of the cast members’ lives and back stories, to put it frankly, is delightfully bonkers—the makings of fantastic reality television. Take Liz, the owner of one of Providence’s successful cannabis dispensaries, who learned upon marrying her husband that they were distantly related and lives in a cartoonishly decked out castle-mansion somewhere in Cranston, all the while facing allegations of cheating that she vehemently
a self-proclaimed
by Sofie Illustrated
denies while simultaneously alluding to an “inappropriate” relationship with her husband’s best friend. Her castmate Kelsey, on the other hand, is out and proud as somewhat unwillingly engaged in a polyamorous relationship with a filthy rich boyfriend who has another woman in another state, whom she matches with her own second boyfriend when he is away.
The remainder of the cast makes up for their far more traditional lives with big personalities and hilarious jokes. Jo-Ellen and Alicia are particularly sympathetic and funny, while their entrenched
Rhode Island cultural capital adds authenticity to the cast. Rulla is formidable and instantly iconic, although her denial of her husband’s affair leaves her interactions with others feeling frustrating, even as viewers may concurrently sympathize with her plight. Rosie has thus far been my personal least favorite; while she has started some initial drama, her engagements with and reactions to others feel forced and over-the-top. Perhaps the only cast member who initially feels misplaced on a Real Housewives franchise due to her kind and subdued demeanor is former Bachelor in Paradise star Ashley, although her positionality as a Rhode Island transplant rather than a local like the other women could prove compelling as the show goes on.
The Real Housewives franchise wants you to believe that the women it features are actually in a friend group, and admittedly, sometimes other casts have felt forced or inauthentic. Rhode Island does not suffer from this defect—in fact, far from it. Given the tiny nature of the state and community of Rhode Island, the women are related to each other in myriad ways, from being childhood classmates to having been involved with the same man at one point. Their friendships feel real and like they were in place long before the show’s producers lumped them together at a dinner party. The women are funny, clearly have inside jokes with each other, and enter the series with established opinions and grudges. It’s a refreshing tone for a Real Housewives series, especially as the franchise has at times been criticized for being formulaic and staged.
Watching the show with a group of friends in my Providence apartment every Monday night, we laugh and point with glee at the B-roll footage featuring the Providence skyline, the familiar bridges we drive over every day, and even the gates enclosing Brown. I jumped when Alicia had acai bowls prepared for the ladies from In The Pink—a favorite spot of mine on Thayer Street—for breakfast. On a nice spring day, sitting and doing work on the Quiet Green, I talked to a mother of an admitted student about Brown who approached me, before quickly delving into our thoughts and opinions on the show’s latest episode upon realizing we were both watching it. Maybe the show does not represent Rhode Islanders accurately, a criticism I have seen expressed online, and while I am sympathetic to that sentiment, accurate representation has never been the franchise’s goal. The Real Housewives aims to craft compelling, escapist reality television—to create a world of luxury into which viewers can escape the troubles of their own lives and immerse themselves in someone else’s mess. The Real Housewives of Rhode Island, by whatever reason for which it has found itself in our own backyard, accomplishes just that, and I encourage fellow fans of the genre to tune in.
a love letter to our writers
by Indigo Mudbhary
Illustrated by Yoonseo Lee
I’ve been a part of post- for as long as I’ve been a Brown student. Over the years, I’ve often thought about what my last post- article would be. Would I pass on sage advice to the younger generations? Would I reflect on the highs and lows of my four years here? Would I recount funny memories from freshman year and detail how I’ve grown since then?
As I agonized over what note to go out on, I realized that I wanted to celebrate this fantastic publication that has been such a critical part of my life here at Brown. There is truly no other publication like post- at Brown. Each week, it publishes such diverse pieces, as the only requirement is that they be creative nonfiction and fit into a section: Feature, Narrative, Arts & Culture, Lifestyle, Crossword, or post-pourri. It is this tremendous variety in the pieces that fill the pages of this magazine that makes postwhat it is. This quiz is a love letter to post- and to the authors who write for these sections.
1. What are your Friday night plans? I’m just asking for a friend…
A) Hosting a dinner party with my favorite people.
B) Introspective journaling about my life.
C) Going to see my friend’s punk band in someone’s garage.
D) Deep cleaning my room! It’s long overdue.
E) Playing board games with friends.
F) Submitting an essay that’s due by 11:59 p.m.
2. Look, you’re a busy person. Why are you even taking this quiz?
A) I genuinely want to know which section of post- I am.
B) I always appreciate the opportunity to learn more about myself.
C) I love consuming media, including postmagazine quizzes.
D) Why not? It’s just five minutes of my life.
E) It’s fun, kinda like a game.
F) Idk, I’m just random like that.
3. Well, we’re glad you’re here. So, uh, what do you do in your free time?
A) I’ve had the same hobby since I was five, and I’m goated at it.
B) *Exhales wistfully* I have a complicated relationship with work/life balance.
C) I listen to music, watch movies, and binge TV series.
D) I make intricate homemade dinners using ingredients purchased from Trader Joe’s.
E) I play video games.
F) I make zines.
4. Right, right. What are you concentrating in?
A) The major I applied to Brown as.
B) I have no idea.
C) Literary Arts, Music, or Visual Arts.
D) I’m a double-concentrator!
E) Idk, but if I could concentrate in games I would.
F) Something incredibly niche that people don’t realize is a concentration.
5. Okay, cut the bullshit. Are you enjoying this quiz? Be honest.
A) It seems a bit random. I probably would have organized it better.
B) I have bigger things on my mind.
C) Not really, but I’m listening to a good song right now so I don’t care.
D) Yeah! It’s super fun and quirky.
E) I’d rather be doing sudoku, but this is fine.
F) Yeah, I love how all over the place it is.
6. I promise it’s worth your time! If you weren’t taking this quiz right now, what would you be doing?
A) Knocking out some time-consuming homework.
B) Staring wistfully out the window.
C) Watching the new A24 movie that I’ve been meaning to get to.
D) Cooking dinner or hanging out with my friends.
E) Absolutely demolishing the Wordle and Connections.
F) Making a comic strip as a birthday gift for my friend.
7. Okay, don’t lie: How often do you read postmagazine?
A) I read it cover to cover every week.
B) I only read the pieces whose titles speak to me.
C) I’m faithful to a specific section.
D) I read a piece here and there but definitely not every week.
E) I play the crossword. No comment on the rest.
F) Depends on the week. Sometimes I will, sometimes I won’t. I’m wild like that.
8. LOCK IN!!! If you had to write a post- piece right now in only one hour, what would you write about?
A) A topic I’ve been thinking about and researching for ages.
B) A complex personal drama that explores what we owe each other as human beings.
C) A review of a movie I saw last week that got me thinking about womanhood and its horrors.
D) An ode to my Fox Point apartment and the joys of Trader Joe’s.
E) Could I design a Wordle game for postinstead? None of these options sound appealing.
F) Wait, how about a comic strip?
9. Okay, let’s start hating. What’s your least favorite part of the Brown experience?
A) How disorganized classmates can be during group projects.
B) The complex interpersonal relationships that emerge in a school as small as ours.
C) How shitty people’s taste in music is here.
D) The workload. Sometimes I’m too busy to see my friends as much as I’d like.
E) The lack of school spirit. Why is HarvardBrown the only time we support our sports teams?
F) The lack of spontaneity among students. Why do I have to send you a GCal invite to smoke weed?
10. Fine, fine, we can be positive too. What’s your favorite thing about Brown?
A) The classes! I’ve gotten so much out of my coursework here. I love producing quality work that I am proud of and can share with my loved ones.
B) The experiences I’ve had outside the classroom. I feel like I’ve done so much personal growth here.
C) The arts scene! I love campus publications, student bands, and the RISD museum. There’s so much to engage with if you know where to look.
D) My friends. I love the people I’ve met here.
E) The clubs I am a part of. I love that there’s a community for every niche hobby and that I found places to share my interests with others.
F) How random this school is. Where else could I see Paul McCartney on 4/20?
11. How would your friends describe you?
A) Put-together.
B) Introspective.
C) Artsy.
D) Social.
E) Fun.
F) Innovative.
12. Damn, now I want to be your friend. Which dining hall are we going to as new friends?
A) Andrews, because the food is consistently pretty good.
B) Ratty, because there are quiet spaces to talk in the alcoves.
C) Andrews, because the aux is always fire.
D) V-Dub, because I want to make waffles together!
E) Blue Room, because I want to people-watch with you.
F) Ivy Room, because there’s so many different options.
13. After a great meal together as new friends, where are you taking me on campus?
A) The SciLi to get some work done. Then we can reward ourselves with Pokeworks!
B) The Quiet Green, where we can continue our deep conversation from lunch.
C) The Avon. It’s almost reading period, and we don’t have that much work—why not catch a movie?
D) The Main Green, where we can open our laptops and pretend to do work but really just gossip.
E) Patriot’s Court, where we can play some spike ball.
F) I have no idea. You are asking me too many questions. Where do you want to go?
14. I’m kind of bored with campus because I’m a senior. Should we go somewhere else?
A) Yes! Let’s go to the new café that opened and get some work done.
B) Totally. Let’s go on a long sunset walk by the Providence River Pedestrian Bridge.
C) 100%. Let’s catch a show at AS220.
D) I agree. Trader Joe’s run? There are some new snacks I’ve been meaning to try.
E) Sounds like a plan—have you been to Level 99 at the mall?
F) Yeah that’s fine, but can we make a stop at Blick first for some art supplies?
15. Wait, but first I have to pick up something from the mail room. Do you want to come with me?
A) Yes, I just ordered a new duvet cover.
B) Sounds good, I’m waiting on a postcard from an old friend. We’ve just started to reconnect after growing apart.
C) Sure, I think I have a poster from Redbubble of my favorite movie waiting for me. It was an impulse purchase in a moment of weakness, but I stand by it.
D) Totally, I ordered a boba-making kit and have been meaning to pick it up.
E) Yes, I bought a spike ball net because the sun’s out again and I want to make my friend group into a spike ball friend group.
F) Sure, I haven’t been in ages. I have no idea if I have packages or not.
16. Even if you’re not a senior like me, how do you feel about graduating?
A) I’ll definitely miss Brown, but I know I will be ready to take on the world.
B) *Sigh* It’s complicated.
C) Let’s just say I have made a playlist to cry to.
D) I know I can do it, but I’m going to miss my friends so much!
E) I’m not looking forward to it, but it’s just something I have to do.
F) Everything is too busy to even think about graduation LMAO.
17. We’re almost at the end of the quiz. How do you feel?
A) It was great! I don’t think nineteen questions is too long at all.
B) It was fun, but I have a lot on my mind.
C) I have my earbuds in, I’m jamming, I’m vibing.
D) It was a bit long, honestly.
E) It kind of cut into my Wordle time TBH, but I forgive you.
F) I liked how different all the questions were.
18. As a gift for completing the quiz, I am gifting you a puppy. What will you name it?
A) Peanut, Cinnamon, or Scout—a very classy, typical name for a dog.
B) Penny, after my dog who died when I was young.
C) George, after my favorite Beatle, George Harrison.
D) Frisbee, after my favorite sport.
E) Connections, after my favorite New York Times game.
F) Tintin, after my favorite comic book series.
19. Finally, it’s too late to change your responses, but which section do you secretly hope you’re going to get? Maybe this last question will push you over the edge and help you get the one you want…
A) Feature! I love how much care and time are put into these longer pieces.
B) Narrative—I have so much respect for how much vulnerability is required to write
about one’s life in a major campus publication.
C) Arts & Culture: I love movies, TV shows, and music, so I obviously love reading about these things.
D) Lifestyle: It’s short, sweet, and always profound.
E) I’m more of a crossword person TBH. F) post-pourri! It’s always so creative and unique.
If you got mostly As, you are most like Feature! This section always has the longest piece every week, which often means they take an especially large amount of time, care, and organization to execute. Just like the authors who write for Feature, you are diligent, thoughtful, and considerate. Your diligence makes you a pleasure to have in class and a dependable, kind friend.
If you got mostly Bs, you are most like Narrative! This section often features introspective, highly personal pieces. Just like the wonderful works that populate the Narrative section, you are sensitive, caring, and emotional. Your ability to be vulnerable and empathize with the hardships of others makes you a wonderful friend.
If you got mostly Cs, you are most like Arts & Culture! This section is diverse, but always has to do with some form of media. Just like how our authors carefully select films, TV series, books, and other media to write about, you are a master of taste, and your friends always go to you first when they need recommendations. Your creativity is an inspiration to everyone in your life.
If you got mostly Ds, you are most like Lifestyle! I (Indigo) always make fun of this section for often being about the joys of being a student at Brown, but it has always been my favorite section at poston account of how consistently earnest, tender, and genuinely delightful Lifestyle pieces are. If you’re like Lifestyle, you are sweet, compassionate, and totally charming. Your love is a gift to receive, and never stop being tender in an uncaring world.
If you got mostly Es, you are most like the Crossword! I (Indigo) have never finished a post- crossword puzzle on my own because I am bad at them, so hats off to you for your quick thinking. You are a ton of fun, not just to play games with but also just in general. You are also really smart in an understated way, and your intelligence really shines through for those who know you.
If you got mostly Fs, you are most like postpourri! This section is the most diverse section of post-, as it includes everything from quizzes to comics to short articles. Though friends might describe you as chaotic, you are incredibly good at what you do and a pleasure to be around. Your friends would call you their most interesting friend, and you know how to crack people up with a welltold anecdote from your chaotic, beautiful, lovely life.
by ina ma | Illustrated by Anna Nichamoff @mossmilkshake
I love early university mornings.
On the best days, I wake up a little before sunrise. I shuffle around in my dorm room, bumping into my table’s corner and dresser as I fumble for toothbrush, water bottle, glasses, telephone. I try my best to muffle each soft step on the creaky floorboards so as not to rouse my roommates.
The first step out of the building is the most invigorating: Inhale fresh, on the cusp of pleasantly cool air; exhale stale, stuffy dorm air. What a gift it is to move, to feel, to be alive. The colors of dawn are the most beautiful—soft shades of petal pink to dusty lapis blue—as the world wakes up with you. I can say a lot of the “mosts” most mornings—most tiring, most dark, most calm, most peaceful. Lately, I’ve been most grateful.
In the morning, campus is quiet like it is on a hungover Sunday, but without the hangover. There’s still a chill in the air, and chirping birdsong in the trees behind Andrews rouses me, quiet sounds that you don’t notice until you’re alone, truly alone. My heart is the stillest in these moments, never more confident in its slow, steady thrumming as I imagine myself in an abandoned world. Thayer is empty, save for the beeping of reversing trucks behind V-Dub. It’s so lovely to have mornings where you look forward to waking up in itself.
I like to grab breakfast, something warm that sits fillingly and pleasantly in my stomach, and head to class. Campus slowly wakes up around midday. A few loitering fellows start to stretch and claim plastic seats on the Main Green, setting up workstations and picnic blankets. But the grass is likely still wet from the evening prior, so these bodies are as temporary as a spring shower, waiting to take root once their friends can join them on the Green. For now, I watch as I stride to class, tucked away in my light jacket, leaving the calm solitude of morning meditation.
Everything is still slow and chilly enough that there’s no regret after sitting down in a dusty lecture hall or classroom for fifty minutes, an hour and twenty minutes, or two hours and thirty minutes. But when I step outside, and the sun starts beaming, the ball starts rolling.
My light jacket has made its way to my arm, the cloudless sky making it a smidge too warm to wear. When jazz on the Main Green hits at mid-afternoon, I know the quiet is over, and it’s time for the cheery, bubbling, joy-filled Main Green laughter
and chatter I signed up for in my “quintessential college experience.” The Main Green is most vibrantly alive in midafternoon. Once out of a contemplative morning class, it’s time to grab a meal before the next one.
It’s such a delight to grab an Andrew’s bowl to-go, then sit and sun yourself on the Main Green! My favorite spot is the semicircular stone ledge around the “Bronze Bruno” statue. The little rocks stuck in the concrete are rough and cool against the underside of my thighs, a pleasant contrast to the radiant sun cooking the top half. I like to sit on the segment where I have to swing my legs over from the “Bronze Bruno” side, where my legs are too short to touch the ground, so I can swing them back and forth as I munch on a dry noodle bowl. I listen to music and singing, clubs hawking show tickets or seeking survey responses, and flowing chit-chat as I slowly become sun-drunk.
At this point, it’s a shame to have to leave the Green and attend to any other duties of the day. I love the smell of sunshine in my clothes mixed with sweet mineral sunscreen. I grab a spot on the Green with friends and splay myself out on a picnic blanket or two, happy to enjoy warmth and good company. It’s not a very productive type of splay, but there’s something to be said about producing joy.
The students retire with the sun. I think the best time to take a shower in warm weather, washing off the day’s sunscreen and oil and grass-stain buildup, is at the cusp of dusk. It’s still just warm enough that the shower water evaporates itself from my hair afterward, moving from wet to damp to dry. As my hair dries, I’ll sit at my wooden dorm desk and type out some work, watching the hues of the sky change with the sunset. My whole body is filled with a sunned-out tiredness, like whatever sour energies inside me have precipitated themselves out. The day’s just been too delightful to complain about. I came, I ate, I learned, I loved. It’s time for bed.
1. Hit movie-turned-Broadway musical about choir-singing nuns
10. Momentary mistake or break
15. Goes up
16. Organization for workers’ rights
17. Partner to Average Joe
18. “__ ___ enter”
19. Bareilles and Teasdale, for two
20. Attach digitally
21. The “L” of LSD
26. Common encryption algorithm with three initials
29. Semi-soft cheese, potentially including jalapeños
34. “And so on,” abbreviated
35. “As You Like It” heroine
36. Friend __ ___? Pick a side.
37. Cozy nap spot for a feline
39. Leafy sound
40. First sign of the zodiac
41. Spanish cats
44. Weasley of “Harry Potter”
45. Luxurious way to take a personal journey abroad
47. Suffix with oct- or prop-
48. Pointless pursuits
51. Bestow
55. Prayer endings
59. Money, slangily
60. Bedtime clothes, possibly in jersey material…or when abbreviated, a clue to 17, 29, and 45 Across
64. “Ratatouille” food critic Ego
65. Traveled across
66. Rescues
67. Undergraduates often experience eight of them
10. Absolutely absurd
11. Soon, for Shakespeare
12. Pantheress descriptor
13. Fireplace residue
14. Prefix meaning within
20. What you should let sleeping dogs do
22. Put the pedal to the metal
23. Slithery swimmer
24. Technical sch. in Troy, NY
25. Transcript no.
26. Summarize, as a TV show
27. Ringo of Paul McCartney’s band
28. It often comes after intermission
30. PSAT takers
31. Media workers union that merged with SAG in 2012
32. :
33. Author(s) of “Nancy Drew”
35. Delivery methods?
38. A short drink?
39. College-hosted training program for military hopefuls
41. Understand
42. Pop trio of brothers with songs “Way Less Sad” and “Bang!”
43. Piping hot goss
46. Black gunk
49. Luxury lounge chair
50. Brainy
51. Healthcare workers who support MDs and RNs
52. Charlie Chaplin’s wife
53. Punishment for not doing one’s homework
54. Sheet of ice
56. To be, in Latin
57. ____-do-well
58. Syphilis, gonorrhea, etc.
60. They may teach you mobility exercises after injury
61. “___ we there yet?”
62. A tricky spot
1. Drinks slowly
2. At the Hollywood sign, say
3. “Lion King” antagonist
4. Error’s partner
5. Wee
6. Koothrappali of “The Big Bang Theory”
7. Busy __ _ bee
8. One hundred yrs.
9. Mao ___-Tung
63. ___ Maria
“Too long without distinguishing my roommates’ laughs among their cacophonous howling, and I start to feel suffocated by the hush of my hometown. It’s a tricky balance that I never really figured out over these past four years.”
— Samiha
Kazi, “how to be someone”
“I won’t parrot the age-old advice of how important it is to eat for survival, but it’s a nice feeling when you can enjoy a fulfilling meal—even just a quick one, even if it’s the only peace you’ll have that day. And when you eat with friends? You’re just making memories, and you can never have enough of those.”
— Angel Benjamin, “minimal effort spaghetti sauce”
EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
Elaina Bayard
FEATURE
Section
Gabriella Miranda
ARTS & CULTURE
Managing
Section
Section
LIFESTYLE
Section
POST-POURRI
Managing
Section
HEAD ILLUSTRATORS
Junyue
COPY
Copy
LAYOUT CHIEFS Alexa
Layout
SOCIAL