The victories of the Obama administration and the Affordable Care Act are much more lasting and far reaching than the mere contents of its legislation. Although the current healthcare debate is ostensibly steeped in the same tired arguments of the past, there has been a fundamental change in what we…

I am at an age where my life’s trajectory seems so uncertain and I often think about my mother’s life at this age. The feeling of uncertainty can be a paralyzing feeling for many of my friends. Our 20s is billed as a pivotal time in our life where we…

When you enter an airport, you immediately enter an alternate universe. There is a new class structure, dictated by markers useless in the outside world such as mileage points and guarded by the rulers of the airport universe, private airlines. The airlines construct a new class system separate from the…

The south side of Chicago was undoubtedly my greatest teacher and inspiration during my time at the University of Chicago. College under any circumstances is a transformative time, but college on the south side of Chicago was uniquely transformative for me. …

Every time I travel abroad, I am reminded of the immense power of my American status, culture, politics, and influence. American culture is inescapable. — It is easy to forget our world power in our sometimes isolated lives, but we do not operate independently. Our decisions are important not only to American progress but to world progress. American culture is not only for us who actively participate in it. …

I bleed every month as do most of the women I’m surrounded with. Everyone has different experiences and relationships to their periods and I have been confronting it monthly for the past 17 years. My period rarely stops me but it is certainly an “inconvenience.” I was taught to hide…

“Go back home” is something I’ve heard before. There is something so jarring about those words. I was born here, grew up here, and know no other home. Where do you want me to go? I have been shaped by America and know nothing else. America created me. My mother…

My immigrant upbringing was marked with an aspiration to assimilate into an American culture, but what culture was that? The epitome of the American culture that we are taught to strive for isn’t as generic as I had once thought. There was a desire to be white and a desire…