In our everyday lives, we underestimate how good it feels to recount our day to a friend, or even call our parents and laugh about something that happened at home.

In the United States alone the natural disasters associated with climate change, including hurricanes and wildfires, cost a record $306 billion in damages – making 2017 the costliest year ever.

There is a performative component to stress culture which only compounds the problem. 

Throughout my high school and college years, I’ve listened helplessly as friends and acquaintances have described encounters with their own Azizs, and I’ve cried to them when I had my own.

Too many of us made high achievement an identifying factor of who we are as people. After that part of us dissipated, we also lost some of our goals and were lured in by money and prestige.

Du Bois welcomes all cultures and all types of people to live in its building. It isn’t simply limited to those who are black, Hispanic, or Asian.

Perhaps it is a way to connect with like-heritage students in a school teeming with people from every corner of the globe. Maybe, it is just a way to look cool.

While I empathize with students who are just trying to get the highest grades possible, they should not do so at the expense of students who did not have access to these higher-level high school courses.

As for Penn, it’s a safe bet that none of us students knew exactly what we were signing up for. Still, as with any new path, we signed up for possibility. 

 The smartphone has gone from being used as a communication device to more of a crutch. We use our phones to avoid making eye contact with people on Locust Walk, in line at the grocery store, and in the elevator.

Like editing an essay, reinventing doesn’t mean that we’re erasing everything we had before. We are tweaking it, refining it, uncovering the original spark hidden in the chaotic mind. 

It is a challenge to think about jumping into the swamp that so many are shouting about draining. But, members of the Penn community are precisely the sorts of individuals that America needs now.

GPAs in college do not reflect how smart we are. They’re designed to reflect how much we are willing to work for each class.

An online world of people seeking sex with no strings attached, waiting to pass judgement on our appearances, can be toxic.

If we insist on viewing time as ours, then we have to acknowledge that we’ve never misplaced a single second; only put it somewhere it’s a little more difficult to show off on a plaque.

Letting what others do bother you, and critiquing them for it, is less productive than observing and understanding.

Students should have adequate breaks that enable them to de-stress and process everything that has happened since the beginning of the year.