Personal-Branding
2014-11-13T11:55:57Z
Like sisters, the Girl Scouts in my troop only allowed their hearts to purr with affection for one another on occasion—most of the time, it was catfights and hissy fits. This made overnights a dramatic affair. Probably the most memorable was a 24-hour trip to a leadership camp in upstate Wisconsin, where we were expected to overcome our fears by going through obstacle courses and discussing deep personal issues around the campfire at night. What ensued was a mildly competitive battle for domination like a scene from Lord of the Flies, but with more tears and menstrual blood.
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2014-10-23T21:20:42Z
In my high school French class, we watched Le Dîner de Cons. The film is a lighthearted comedy set in Paris, in which a man is invited to a dinner party where everyone must bring an "idiot" who will presumably entertain the other guests. One cannot bring just any uneducated hooligan, though; these idiots must possess special talents and peculiarities, they must be uniquely and bizarrely entertaining.
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2014-10-02T12:17:45Z
Summertime is long gone, but the memories with which it left me are still swimming around in my head. It was my first summer spent in New York City, and it reads like the wacky-privileged-white-girl mishaps of a Girls episode. The good stuff was so good it almost makes me angry now: cooking dinner with my roommates, reading for pleasure, nighttime drives, boys. But the bad stuff has stuck around like scars from sandal-induced blisters: the long days and nights with no A/C, my 45-minute subway commute, trying to get back uptown long after midnight. But that stuff wasn't the worst stuff. And it's important to remember worsts, if only to process, to face past humiliation. So here it is, my summer story that makes me cringe.
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2014-09-25T10:34:12Z
The rain pauses for a fugitive moment, my body suspended between raindrops like a helium balloon, bursting with trapped energy. "I know where we're going," Casey hollers. We glide into the parking lot just as the word "FULL" blinks yellow on the sign outside.
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2014-09-18T23:08:49Z
Certain words are embarrassing to say, and I was having to say a lot of them when people asked me where I was at the beginning of July. "Couture." "Fashion Week." "Paris." They sound absurd. They make you sound like the owner of a Pinterest board titled "La vie est belle" or "Chanel Fashion Love - Follow for Follow ?." I still haven't learned how not to wince a little when saying them, which is a problem because I write about them for a living and am, pretty genuinely, interested in them. Like listening to Radiohead or having that one sort of famous friend, going to Fashion Week is one of those things that, for various, very firmly established reasons, are only cool to do if you don't talk about doing them. I found it a lot easier to say I was in France for work and just hope no one pried. (They usually did.)
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2014-09-15T18:47:04Z
My summer started in tears on the corner of 120th Street and Amsterdam Avenue. I waited on the curb with not only all of my own belongings, but my roommate's as well. Tuck-It-Away, whose college student summer deal had sounded too good to be true, was now three hours late. It began to rain as I haphazardly moved my things from the Plimpton stairs to the Apple Tree Deli overhang, raindrops soaking cardboard boxes and my grey Vans in the process.
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2014-05-03T19:29:30Z
Personal essays about New York City are in no way rare. Perhaps it's because there is so much to say about our fair city, or because there are so many ways to say it. As Columbians, we have our own unique take on NYC.
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