04/19/15 11:08pm
Travel doesn’t necessarily broaden the mind. It’s possible to live in another country for a few months without learning much of anything. A group of American friends and a Eurotrip mentality is all it takes to extend the “Penn bubble” to a different continent.
04/05/15 9:52pm
Despite all of its physical and mental advantages, a lot of girls shy away from weight training for fear of a Schwarzenegger-like transformation. I can assure you that this is virtually impossible.
03/01/15 11:05pm
People who believe that it constitutes a real harm to be exposed to an opinion they find bigoted will never feel safe in the sort of conversation that needs to be had the most: one that actually engages with the opposition.
02/16/15 1:38am
Somewhere along the line, a lot of people have come to see science as an ideology we can opt in or out of rather than a process of logical enquiry.
02/01/15 11:33pm
Firstly, asking ourselves questions about free speech and its limitations as a response to the attacks lets in the idea that there could be a legitimate justification for retaliating against someone’s expression with brutality. I don’t think I’m alone in believing that this idea is ridiculous.
12/01/14 8:26pm
This Thanksgiving, my sister was back from her first semester of college, already a little bit overwhelmed.
11/24/14 11:16pm
The problem ... stems from the fact that people conflate freedom of speech with being given a microphone and a pat on the back.
11/10/14 9:44pm
Luckily enough, after three years of immersion in “Penn culture,” I have good news to share with any worried underclassmen or compassionate, concerned outsiders who’d like to hear it. I am, in fact, capable of occupying myself with activities that will never make it onto my resume, I have never justified the time I’ve spent eating a meal with a friend by calling it networking and Fear Of Missing Sleep consistently trumps Fear Of Missing Out on my list of concerns.
11/03/14 10:48pm
Although I subscribe to the belief that, in our advanced society, it’s wrong to kill animals for food, I understand that we live in a world where there are enough starving people that moral outrage on behalf of the exploited honey bee seems a little misplaced, and where the objectification of women causes enough damage that PETA’s “I’d rather go naked than wear fur” campaign makes me worry more about the state of women in our society than the state of cattle.
10/27/14 10:53pm
In imaginary America, affirmative action is unfair because it treats two equally privileged candidates unequally. It is unnecessary because Martin Luther King, Jr.’s dream has been realized and we all see character, not skin. It is nonsensical because minorities aren’t disproportionately poor, uneducated and incarcerated. We can hope for this America but we cannot pretend it exists or has ever existed.
10/20/14 10:37pm
There’s a persistent mindset that non-career-related personal goals and relationships are something we’ll get a chance to do over, but that possibilities for career advancement are the real once-in-a-lifetime opportunities. The biological clock doesn’t tick as loudly as the countdown to final exams or a quarterly review.
10/13/14 10:13pm
“You’re more than just a number” is the motto for Goucher College’s new video application option, for which students submit a two-minute video talking about themselves in lieu of test scores or transcripts. All they need in addition is two works from high school, one of which must be graded.
09/29/14 11:16pm
Let’s start with the fact that universalizing beauty is a lie, and it’s not a lie that’s fooling anyone. Not everyone is beautiful. Beauty is a relative term. As such, for some to gain the label “beautiful,” others must lose it. Beauty, like cleverness and athleticism, is a spectrum, and there’s nothing wrong with appreciating particular beauty in others. If everyone is beautiful, the term is meaningless.
09/22/14 11:04pm
Everything you’ve ever put your name on has been tinged with your race and gender, be it a paper, an exam, a lab report or a resume. No matter how well you know your professors, and how earnestly they condemn prejudice in any form, a bulk of scientific literature suggests that who you are influences how they see the work you produce.
09/15/14 11:00pm
Our fixation on leadership worries me because it implies that the be all end all of a successful life is to have the greatest possible influence over the greatest number of people. “Leadership” has become one of those words that our brains automatically categorize as a Good Thing, and our conflation of the terms “leadership” and “good leadership” makes us believe that influence itself is the goal, rather than just a good first step to effecting positive change in the world.
09/08/14 11:59pm
Texts and emails that replace mundane small talk and logistical planning aren’t depriving us of deep conversation. Who among us hasn’t complained about the shallowness of brief introductions and perfunctory pleasantries?
09/01/14 5:47pm
In general, [college students] are much more likely to be rich people temporarily occupying the slightly-less-comfortable space between being the total financial responsibility of our parents and being recipients of our own personal salaries.
