34th Street Magazine's "Toast" is a semi-weekly newsletter with the latest on Penn's campus culture and arts scene. Delivered Monday-Wednesday-Friday.
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But then I realized that by not speaking up about race to people who could have no clue what it feels like to walk in my shoes, I was only holding everyone back, myself included.
I think boredom is important. I don’t know how much I like actually being on roller coasters, but I know that as soon as I get off, I want to get back on again.
But whoever probes the human condition discovers that we need purpose, some sort of engagement with the world to keep us going. It's in our nature to strive for progress and press forward into the uncertain void.
This summer I am perfecting the art of the loaf.The verb, that is: to loaf. I have been loafing on the sofa, I loaf in the park, I will loaf at the beach, et cetera.I am waitressing, I am making friends with my nephews and nieces, I am doing my tax return, I am reading books ? I am busy enough, but I am not really achieving anything.
Because of human interest in lineage, it follows that European Americans would gravitate towards Eurocentric societies. I agree with the sentiment that understanding one’s predecessors influences individual identity.
As a teenager living at a boarding school where many of those choices were made for me by higher authorities, my vegetarianism felt like something I could control. Something I could do, myself, to fight for a cause I cared about.
The point is that I’m quick to judge. I think that my upbringing has a lot to do with this because in order to make up for my differences, I felt as though I had to comment on other women’s bodies. Judging became my defense mechanism.
Art is powerful for its ability to conjure meaningful experiences and offer new perspectives. It’s not a quantifiable substance, but a potential for interpretation.
I had never dreaded going “home” for summer as much as I dreaded it this time around. In the past, immediately after packing up my luggage and selling my used textbooks, I would hop onto the earliest Megabus and look forward to a few weeks well
I think at this point everyone, the United States and United Nations included, needs to wait and see what direction this coup takes. If Chan-ocha keeps to his word, we could see an even stronger Thailand emerge.
I think the real punch line is our failure to grasp the simple truth that doing the same thing over and over will never produce a different result. Until we make a real move toward restricting firearm access, we’ll keep reading about these shootings in the morning news.
Ultimately, though, organizations don’t make people. People make organizations. To attribute reckless behavior and sexual assault to an organization takes the agency away from the individual.
I visited all the top destinations listed on About.com during my trip to China last summer, but the most enlightening parts of my trip did not occur while climbing the Great Wall in Beijing or cruising through the bunds in Shanghai. They took place during those long seven-hour train rides sitting next to strangers with whom the only commonality I shared was where we were sitting.
I fully believe that as a nation, we already have plenty of holidays we use to do the same activities that are currently partaken in during Memorial Day weekend. Yet we have only one day that we have set aside to remember the sacrifices made by those in defense of what they loved.
Never before have I been so blatantly told by friends and peers — those same people who are victims of white dominance — that white is the standard of beauty and the image of power. This is depressing because the more it is said, the more it is believed. Before seeking out events that focus on this very issue, I never would have been so aware that the way I look holds such importance and dictates social opportunities.