The weather is getting warmer, the caterpillars are beginning their annual reign of terror, ProFros are wandering campus. Meanwhile, my roommate has been fighting tooth and nail with an unspeakably dreaded enemy: her thesis.

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It’s my first day at Stanford: a whirlwind of unpacked suitcases, reshuffled notebooks and crumpled bedding. My roommate and I meet each other for the first time and choose our beds. Our parents all shake hands. Then, in the blink of an eye, we’re alone for the first time. I take a deep breath and ask my roommate the question I’ve been waiting to ask: Are you comfortable if I pray?

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What do Donatello, Michelangelo, Raphael and Leonardo da Vinci have in common? Before you say ‘the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles,’ I’ll point out another similarity that I’ve been thinking about recently — they all had patrons who funded and supported their art. Which means that, in a nutshell, they weren’t writing applications and scouring the…

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I like poetry. Maybe it’s because of the abundance of Dr. Seuss books that were placed on my shelf as a kid, or maybe because of the painfully awkward and yet somehow still magical reading of Romeo and Juliet put on by my seventh grade class. Maybe it’s because poetry is a concentrated and powerful way of using words to capture the fleeting moments of life (not to wax too poetic, of course).

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Let’s set the scene. You are a Stanford freshman in the class of 2024, taking your first load of courses for the fall quarter. You’re undeclared, so you decide to try lots of different things: you’ll take CS 106A, of course, but you also like writing, so perhaps you’re in English 10A, a historical class in the English core.

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When I read the news on Saturday morning, I was surprised to learn that there was a swirl of controversy around the nationwide Women’s March. I was even more surprised to find that it was not the usual backlash against the very existence or premise of a Women’s March. Rather, it was an internal controversy…

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Many people know me as an optimist. While it’s true that I do my best to focus on the good in life, and can often make the best of a bad situation, my internal feelings can be more complicated. Paradoxically, I find that I tend to exhibit a sunny outlook while simultaneously possessing a deeper…

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In December almost exactly ten years ago, I was in the fourth grade, and excitement was in the air: we were about to start a unit on Greek myths. Well, maybe the excitement was just because it was almost winter break. But for me, as Mrs. Johnson opened her large yellow storybook with the crinkling…

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One of my secret joys of visiting family on the East Coast is the journey to get there: six hours, distraction-free, with no choice but to be entertained by a thick paperback. This Thanksgiving, that paperback was “The Cuckoo’s Calling,” Robert Galbraith’s debut mystery. Only this was no debut novel. Robert Galbraith is actually a…

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As I’m writing this article, there are two days left until the midterm elections, and political issues are heating up as voters head to the polls. Or so I’ve heard. Meanwhile, the politics on my mind are those of Ivan IV Vasilyevich, also known as Ivan the Terrible. Allow me to explain. While I made…

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I didn’t realize how much distances were affecting my decision-making until I noticed my meal plan balance last week: $40. Of the $155 redeemable dollars I had for Autumn Quarter, I had spent $115…in just four weeks. The culprit? Olives, that wonderful bearer of the quick bite to eat, nestled in the basement of Building…

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I’m an English major at Stanford, and I still haven’t read Pride and Prejudice. I tried to start it multiple times while I was in high school, and every time, my eyes would glaze over. I would read the same passage over and over again. I would get halfway through one of Jane Austen’s paragraph-length…

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