"It’s easy to feel hopeful on a beautiful day like today, but there will be dark days ahead of us too, there’ll be days where you feel all alone, and that’s when hope is needed most. No matter how buried it gets, or how lost you feel, you must promise me, that you will hold on to hope” - Character Gwen Stacy (The Amazing Spider-man 2) No matter who we are, we all face the same challenges in college at one point in our lives. College is never easy, the work is hard and there

College is a new experience. A new community that includes diversity in people, interests, and hobbies. A community that goes beyond our reach in understanding. A place where so many stick figures walk back and forth to different doors, going to different classes, working different jobs, and living completely different lives, where no one understands how many steps it took the other person to get to that class. We see people walking through the hallways, sitting in classrooms

This past summer, I took an introductory certification course focused on freediving in Monterey, California. Freediving is the act of diving underneath the surface and only returning once you run out of breath. It's like scuba diving without all the clunky gear, on only a single breath. Your success in this sport is heavily dependent on your ability to calm down and clear your mind, since your heart rate needs to be as low as possible in order to conserve oxygen. This is thec

Philip and I rested on the edge of his grandfather’s pool. A few leaves from the fruitless mulberry trees overhead fell prematurely, and I extended my scarred pool noodle into the water and lifted them out. It was fun peeling the leaves off the pool noodle and slapping them on Philip’s leg. He didn’t like it, so he peeled them off and put them on my arm. I left them. We spent our entire summer, from sunrise to sunset, in that back yard getting a tan. We’d been neighbors

On July 31, 2026, the highly anticipated fourth installment of Tom Holland’s Spider-Man films finally released after nearly five years since the series’ last film. Audiences were eager to see what Marvel’s web-slinger had in store for them this past summer blockbuster season, especially after such a long waiting period and a recent phenomenon of what some have come to define as “superhero fatigue.” In recent years, audiences have seemed to take less interest in superhero rela

As we navigate our adult lives, we learn how to manage relationships and goals. Both of those things can be complicated, and it gets even more complicated if you are not secure in your own identity. When you don't know who you are, it can be easy to define yourself based on your relationships and aspirations rather than those things being part of your identity. I myself had to learn this the hard way when I crumbled under the expectations placed on me by myself and others. I