“Why did you bother going to Duke if you’re going to get an English degree?” One of the first people I met at Duke, a fellow freshman, asked me this. I told them that English had been my favorite subject in high school, so I wanted to pursue a degree…

Dreaming out loud — “One day” sounds like a dream unfulfilled. “One day” is what helps me power through each day, but it’s ever so elusive. And the thing about it is whatever I dream about changes over time as well. One day I’ll marry the love of my life. One day I’ll become…

Frustrations with the self-help and personal growth genre — A lot of the self-help genre offers a simplified view of life. They seem to offer the tantalizing promise of solving many of life’s problems in a single step, or a single mindset shift. It’s more than that, though. …

A reflection on Buddhism’s Middle Way — I’ve been thinking about Buddhism lately. I was raised Buddhist, and I used to attend temple every Sunday. I would usually get bored or fall asleep during the chants we had, but I remember Sunday school every now and then as being very fun. …

When enough is enough — I’m worried that in the past, I’ve adopted a scarcity mindset rather than a growth mindset. I’ve always thought: I’m not good, smart, rich, valued enough. Nothing seemed to satisfy me. I could go on about all the ways I didn’t measure up. But learning from rejection and failure is…

I’ve been trying to think about failure recently. I wonder if success is only what happens after a series of failures. And of course, the world is not quite so black and white, but hear me out. I failed to work well as an after-school counselor. …

The topic of banned books has been heavily politicized, and book ban requests have risen through the years. Certain organizations (which I shall not name :x) have mobilized to take books off the shelves. With banned books, however, things appear to be nearing 1984-like extremism. Thought crimes and “dangerous ideas”…

What I’ve learned from my Medium earnings — (I was initially going to include an image of money in the form of dollar bills, but honestly, my monthly earnings lately have been hardly more than cents) I looked over my Medium earnings for this month as opposed to the past few months, and I found something out. The…

A lyric from Lily Meola’s song “Daydream” — Sometimes I worry I have my head in the clouds too much. Being idealistic to a fault can make reality a bitter pill to swallow. I dream of living my self-actualized life. Doing the things that scare the hell out of me but mastering new skills all the while. Taking…