For this week’s Blinks, we asked our staffers to dig out the tiny traditions that have taken shape in their own day to day lives. The little pieces of repetition or habit that hold greater meaning. From paper submissions to salads, and late emails to libraries, here are the results:

Two Wednesdays ago, the sun came out at last. It radiated across campus, drying a perpetually-damp College Walk from the residue of a month’s worth of cold rain. The campus came alive again, and for a day, the toils of college life became inconsequential in the face of a glistening Columbia. Students flocked to Low, dressing the marble steps with a rainbow of clothing, winter jackets long forgotten. On that very same morning, we received a winter weather advisory. All good things must come to an end, and a fleeting winter sun is no exception.

“This is my America just as much as it’s anyone else’s,” she remarks. My clogged phone speaker turns her mellow voice coarse, mechanical. The Barnard senior speaks to me over the phone—and anonymously—because in her America, she does not feel safe enough otherwise.