Articles by Rachel del Valle
05/14/14 6:11pm
Going places
I always used to say that it didn’t matter that I was better suited to a go-kart than a real car because I’d live in a city. 12/09/13 4:23pm
Rachel del Valle | All I want for Christmas
One of my idealized markers of maturity is the ability to give meaningful, interesting presents to people I love. Right now, I’m not really there. 11/24/13 6:46pm
Rachel del Valle | Know thy selfie
As you may or may not have already heard, the Oxford Dictionaries Word of the Year is “selfie.” 11/10/13 6:38pm
Rachel del Valle | What's all the buzz about?
It seems that, especially on a college campus, reading for pleasure has become a rare activity. 11/03/13 6:13pm
Rachel del Valle | The most wonderful time of the year?
I used to dislike the commercialization, the overeagerness surrounding the “Most Wonderful Time of the Year.” But now I see that maybe it’s not such a bad thing. 10/27/13 4:39pm
Rachel del Valle | Life is good?
There’s more of a symbiotic relationship between the highs and lows of temperament than most people recognize. It’s not so much a dichotomy as a continuum. 10/20/13 7:33pm
Rachel del Valle | Turning a page
I’m smart, but I still like to read mindless things every once in a while. 10/14/13 7:28pm
Rachel del Valle | Pull the plug
Lately, I’ve come to think that one of the most valuable things you can give someone is your undivided attention. 09/29/13 6:22pm
Rachel del Valle | The Rory Gilmore complex
We spend a lot of time with the figments of writers’ imaginations, sometimes forgetting that that’s what they are. 09/22/13 9:07pm
Rachel del Valle | Call me crazy
One of the rules I used to have for myself was that I’d never see a therapist. I thought that therapy was self-indulgent, excessive, the stuff of Woody Allen movies and not something you do in real life. But that changed two weeks ago. 09/16/13 2:07am
Rachel del Valle | Freshman friends are not forever
I have a theory that the student body of Penn is composed of maybe 30 percent introverts, and of that 30 percent, about half of those spend their first few years trying to pretend they’re extroverts like everyone else. 09/08/13 11:56pm
Rachel del Valle | Get Real
Acting like a real person means, essentially, acting like a grown-up, an adult. But it doesn’t have the same, sad, unexciting connotation as those other terms. 09/02/13 5:30pm
Rachel del Valle | Hands off
In most situations, hugs are an inordinately intimate greeting. Sometimes I find myself in the grasp of a hug with someone who I’d never even had a one-on-one conversation with. 08/20/13 7:30pm
The city where I'll never sleep
I always wanted to move to New York City. Ironically, now that I’m at the age where moving to New York on my own is a possibility, I’m coming up with more cons than pros. 04/22/13 11:20pm
Rachel del Valle | In defense of Facebook culture
I do keep a journal, sort of. I can look back on it with minimal discomfort, and I don’t have to search through memorabilia boxes to find it. It’s my Facebook profile. 04/15/13 11:26pm
Rachel del Valle | Girls just wanna have fun
I don’t understand why it’s laughable that girls want to hang out with a bunch of other girls and drink and not get dressed up and just chill. That sounds a lot like bro culture to me, but no one writes articles blaming bros for declining marriage rates. 04/09/13 11:19pm
Rachel del Valle | Oh, pretty woman
To huff and puff every time a woman is noted for both her beauty as well as her brains only reinforces the double standard females face in reaching positions of power. So what if someone says she’s pretty? Get over it. 04/01/13 11:02pm
Rachel del Valle | Pick a job, any job
There’s an unavoidable, nettling sense of superficiality that comes with mentally aligning yourself with a certain life — or in my case, lives. 03/26/13 12:28am
Rachel del Valle | Now or later
Because sometimes you don’t actually have that much to do. At the end of every horrible week, there’s a calm, and you can either choose to embrace it or unnecessarily stress yourself out about the next thing. 03/19/13 1:01am