second-half-struggle

Eating responsibly is a challenge when you’re a busy college student. As we trudge through this semester, breakfast might be taking second priority to your psychology group project or economics problem sets. With COVID-19 restrictions limiting dining hall access, food deliveries make for a convenient alternative, but the cost can add up. If you’re finding yourself skimping on meals or looking for ways to feed yourself on a budget, check out these tips to better plan for your week ahead.

Behind the powerful protest pictures, moving speeches, and glamorous social media posts, social justice work is actually hard. Without the right balance, social justice work can get downright ugly and result in sleepless nights, tension among organizers, anxiety from traumatic issues, and burn out. It is a give and take relationship, in which the work can easily take more than it gives.

In a way, the mass shooting that occurred at my high school this February wasn’t so much personal as it was public. The whole country huddled around their TV screens to watch my classmates cower in closets, grieve their fallen loved ones, and march on Washington. But six months later, as the media attention, which had always bordered on the invasive, finally dies down, it often feels as if everyone outside of the city limits of Parkland, Florida, has elected to forget it.

Perseverance means "remaining steadfast in doing something despite difficulty or delay in achieving success." As a formerly incarcerated person, I have experienced my share of difficulties and delays. I am only one of the over 636,000 Americans released from prison every year, a number that has grown exponentially in the past two decades.

As a graduate of Barnard College, I was educated in the tradition of "leaning in", which operates on the premise that everyone deserves a spot at the table and that all voices matter. And so, after reading Sarah Zarba's recent Spectator op-ed, "Second chances at Columbia," in which she advocates for Columbia to end the practice of asking prospective students about their conviction history, I felt inclined to take a stand for second chances, too.

When I read last week that the Chicago district of the National Labor Relations Board ruled in favor of allowing Northwestern's football players to unionize, I was happy. It's about time players are able to acquire some leverage against the almighty NCAA by creating the College Athletes Players Association.

Last week, one of my suitemates and I were sitting in the kitchen on our laptops working, as usual. At one point, he saw a story pop up on his Twitter feed and said, "Hey, looks like a college basketball player came out."

Not only is it a new semester, but also a new year; time to get working on those lofty resolutions.