Talk of the Quad
Soft ground
Early in the fall it is not rainy, but I decide to wear rain pants to lab anyway. We study mosses flagged by yellow tape for a few hours. The medium is found ballpoint pen on waterproof paper: my favorite …
Talk of the Quad
Talk of the Quad
Spoiler alert: Bowdoin is nothing like the Jersey Shore
It had been three months since the lockdown was announced in Metro Manila, and suffice it to say we were all going stir-crazy. Our hands were exhausted from the trend of whipping coffee, our eyes were red from Zoom school …
Talk of the Quad
How can you not be romantic about sports?
January 11, 2024—I am an absolute mess. Tears slide down my face as I slowly chip away at my now-salty chicken parm sandwich. I quickly dry my eyes in my sleeve just as my mom walks into the kitchen to …
Talk of the Quad
Becoming southern (in the Northeast)
It took living in the Northeast to come to know that I’m a southerner—that is, from the American South. I grew up emphasizing my Chicagoan origins rather than my hometown in Tennessee in forgettable introductions to familiar strangers, having learned …
Talk of the Quad
Hello from high school: a conversation five years in the waiting
Over spring break, my mom handed me a letter. Sent by Ms. Clapp, my beloved high school anatomy & physiology teacher, it had languished under a mounting mountain of mail for untold weeks, maybe months. The sender’s handwriting surprised me: …
Talk of the Quad
Reading “Bleak House” in Brunswick
For much of the month of February, on every Monday and Wednesday from 2:50 to 4:15 p.m., I left behind the crisp air of the Maine winter for the thick, implacable fog of Charles Dickens’s “Bleak House.” The novel, which …
Talk of the Quad
Rainbow’s end
Not every 18-year-old can say they’ve been a guardian for a child, much less for three different children. But this past summer, on August 10th, I had one single day where I was.
I went to Camp Aloha Hive, a …
Talk of the Quad
Heart for history
I’ll admit it: Maine’s lighthouses entered my imagination long before Bowdoin or the rest of the state did.
First seeing lighthouses in a cartoon at five years old and following it up with a healthy dose of lighthouse books, magazines, …
Talk of the Quad
Mirror, mirror
There’s a small coffee shop right down the street from my high school in Pittsburgh, Pa. It’s one of those newer, trendier local spots—the walls and tables are covered in plants, and Bon Iver and Hozier play quietly from the …
Talk of the Quad
“We the people” and the New Hampshire presidential primary
I grew up in New Hampshire, a state that, despite being right next to Maine, many Bowdoin students know shockingly little about. This is what is known about New Hampshire: Our state motto is “Live Free or Die.” We are …