Northwestern University and Evanston's Only Daily News Source Since 1881

The Daily Northwestern

33° Evanston, IL
Northwestern University and Evanston's Only Daily News Source Since 1881

The Daily Northwestern

Northwestern University and Evanston's Only Daily News Source Since 1881

The Daily Northwestern

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Meet our new online writers

Wyatt Brothers

I’m just going to come right out and say it. This is my first blog, and I have no clue what I’m doing. I’ve never even read a blog, let alone fathomed penning my own.

I’ve been writing most of my life, but it was usually on my parent’s walls as a naughty youngster, in the school newspaper as a high schooler or on old napkins at greasy spoons, acting as today’s brooding misanthrope. Blogging, on the other hand, is still sort of a foreign concept to me, like meatloaf or John Madden’s eyebrows.

You see, I’m pretty behind the times. Friends often tell me I have the mind-set and demeanor of a 60-year-old man. For example, I can say without irony I think cardigan sweaters are cool. I would much rather read Hemingway in front of a blazing fireplace on a Friday night than play beer pong until I forget my name. I easily see the redeeming value of suspenders. I think three out of the four Golden Girls are hot. Basically, all I need is a silvery mustache and an ivory-handled cane, and I could pass for an exceedingly dapper old man.

Call me old-fashioned, but I’m completely unused to a modern creation such as blogging. It feels unnatural, almost blasphemous to my very nature. Now that I’m stuck in this unfamiliar situation, I feel like Chuck Norris if he were suddenly making flower arrangements or if the Olsen twins found themselves modeling for a Lane Bryant catalogue.

The good news is, when it comes to blogging, I’m the Northwestern version of Susan Boyle. We’re both previously undiscovered diamonds in the rough. Neither of us has ever been kissed. We’re both from the podunk backwaters of the world. We both have a thing for musical theater. Come to think of it, we’re basically the same person-except I have fewer cats and she has a slightly better body.

Laura Rosenfeld

After spending so much time away from home, we sometimes miss its essential places or people. Many of us visit them during our breaks from school in an attempt to revisit the past or even recreate it, reminding us of the feelings or emotions we once had. But can you ever truly repeat the past?

I attempted to accomplish this impossible feat during Winter Break by attending my high school’s winter concert. I wanted to see the symphony orchestra perform, because I had once been a violinist in that same group.

But as soon as I walked into my old high school, I was confronted with a wide array of emotions I was not expecting. These feelings weren’t really of sentimentality or nostalgia. They were more like strange feelings of discomfort.

I felt like I no longer belonged in a building where I had just spent four important years of my life. I looked around at a sea of strangers. The lobby was filled with a new generation of students and their parents. This was their school now, not mine.

Stephanie Lu

For me this question is not simple to answer: “Where are you from?”

I was born in Evanston, but I grew up in Singapore and went to high school in Vancouver, Canada.

The most difficult question I ever got was, “Which place do you like best?” It reminds me of an awkward moment when one of my closest friends appeared incredulous at my statement that a person can love more than one country at a time. But no matter how hard it is to believe, it’s true. I’ve spent enough time in each place for that place to become part of my identity and my past. Forcing me to choose is equivalent to taking several years’ worth of memories from my past and saying, “They don’t matter anymore.”

The deeper, darker side to these innocent questions is that cultures clash. Countries disagree at international negotiations, and countries go to war. At times like these, people are suspicious of anyone who isn’t loyal to just one country.

Jazmyn Tuberville

This is nothing? Wait until February? I couldn’t believe anything could be worse than the bone-numbing arctic freeze I was experiencing right now. Granted I did have a murky idea of what I was getting myself into when I applied.

I visited NU in February. And I still came.

When I visited, I was so engrossed with the fairy tale-like campus, the fact that I was seeing real snow for the very first time in my life and mostly that I was sitting in on COLLEGE classes and listening in on COLLEGE-kid lingo. Everything else seemed supplemental. The relentless high winds, the torrent of pouring rain and the smog-filled cloudy sky were the least of my concerns.

It probably could have been raining Nick Jonases outside and nothing would have ripped my eyes away from the tall willow trees, abstract sculptures and greener-than-green grass spanning the entire campus. I had so romanticized the school in my head that not even a tornado rolling through the town could deter me from attending.

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Northwestern University and Evanston's Only Daily News Source Since 1881
Meet our new online writers