If you had all your basic needs met, what would your life look life? What would you pursue? If the beginning of the pandemic forced you to be more online than usual, you may have noticed a growing trend of college-educated, 20-somethings discussing why they no longer buy into the…

The top 3 lessons I learned about writing personal narratives from Vivian Gornick’s The Situation and the Story. At the beginning of this year, I created a sort of creative nonfiction writing syllabus for myself. I wanted to get better at writing personal narratives. So, I treated the entire endeavor…

What makes a book life changing? My friend and I started a book club recently as a way to get out of the house and hang out more. The first book we read for March was The Lost Manuscript by Cathy Bonidan. A woman reads a manuscript she found in…

Can what’s said in the group chat ever truly stay in the group chat? Before the pandemic reduced our ways of being together, gossip was a practice best done in confessional spaces such as a dining hall, someone’s bedroom, the hair salon, or in the backseat of an UberPool. Phone…

Set in the online world, TikTok has added a new character to their modern, coming-of-age narrative. That Girl has her life together. Her mornings resemble that Forbes article on the habits of highly successful people. She wakes up at 5 a.m., makes her bed every day, and creates color-coded schedules…

Nostalgia thrives on a single perspective, a single story. After moving into our new house, my parents and I spent those first few months unpacking and rearranging. I had a new bedroom with new furniture and new clothes to put in my new closet. Though I still lived in the…

The makeovers in films like The Princess Diaries, Clueless, and She’s All That are some of the most memorable scenes. The trope was a popular plot device in teen movies of the 1990s and 2000s. It catered to a demographic of consumers interested in beauty and fashion. …

If we were meandering through the mall to pass time before the movie started or if we were in the car with the windows rolled down waiting for mama to finish grocery shopping, I can’t remember. Pouring from the speakers, the staccato tap-tap-tap of the song made my heart swell…

Weeks before the start of my freshman year of college, my days were spent balancing my summer job and packing everything I would need for the next ten months. I would be moving five hours away from my hometown without my parents. My choice in college was surprising for everyone…