Predictably, we find ourselves back in Alabama, taking in the familiar sight of girls flocking to class in oversized pastel T-shirts and packs of boys striding the lawns of campus in crisp Polos, khakis...

You are a number, sitting amid other numbers, some higher, some lower. In a fleeting moment of barbaric clarity, you remind yourself that humans are animals, and as an animal, you will face competition....

There was something seductive about his philosophy. He told me he didn’t care much for a formal education, that his time could be better spent elsewhere, that he was here to get in and get out. This...

I wonder how many trees died to circulate thousands of copies of this newspaper today. I imagine some tropical rainforest was bulldozed on the perimeter of the Amazon, as endangered rodents fled from...

“I hate it here,” he said to me candidly across the table. I asked him why. “I used to spend hours at home alone. I grew up on a farm. College is tiring.” The conversation was a depressing one....

Last weekend, a family friend invited us to her home. I entered the house as I would any other invitation of this sort. I took my shoes off and placed them near her door. She greeted me in Bengali, my...

“Ten thousand hours is the magic number of greatness,” said Malcom Gladwell in his 2008 book “Outliers.” I read the book sometime in high school, when my interests varied and my passions had not...

Our yard is decaying again. The leaves have fallen – stripped from the skeletal trees that loom solemnly over our lawn. I sit on the front steps of the place I call home and survey our suburban neighborhood...

I don’t sleep at night. It’s a common annoyance – possibly chronic, sometimes tragic. I want to shut down but can’t. My thoughts will not be still. How do you stop thinking? It’s unclear what...

You reflect on the time you’ve spent in college with cynicism. When the first cold night of fall settled on campus, you walked the streets in a hoodie, unseen in the dark, fading away. You thought about...

The struggle for health care in America is a peculiar thing. The United States is one of the few educated, industrial nations that does not offer its citizens equal access to health care. Though Obama’s...

I knew Grace from high school. Back then, she trickled in and out of my life — mostly in school and sometimes out of school. Though we weren’t remarkable friends, we had mutual ones — but still,...

On Sunday morning, I felt the pressure. Fall break had come to an end, and I found myself in that familiar state of mind. There were papers to write and tests to study for. My to-do list hung over my conscious...

Several weeks ago, I pointed out the merits of the Affordable Care Act and suggested health care is a natural right. I argued our nation should level the playing field for those who cannot afford health...

I don’t know if I chose to be like this or if college made me like this. I come home to a single room every evening and pull out a planner that neatly lays out the week to come. It doesn’t feel right,...

Her bones hurt. At 16, she checked into the local oncology clinic after school, awaiting the diagnosis. In the cruel aftermath, her family would receive several bills in the mail each month requesting...

My visits to doctors’ offices date back to childhood. Life and illness progressed parallel to one another. In my adolescent years, as the entrapped patient, I looked upon the world of medicine with cynicism,...

I was raised in a Muslim family in Auburn. On Sunday mornings, my mother would wake my brother and me to Sunday school at the local Mosque right across from Auburn University. In every way, the religion...

“My entire family of four doesn’t spend that much on food a year,” she told me. My friend had just graduated high school – she was talking about the Dining Plan the University will charge her come...

Take a peek at the girl sitting next to you in class. Is she taking comprehensive notes with purpose? Does she set her pencil down every few minutes and watch the professor work a problem, or does she...

At 17, I stood at a crossroads. After years of being “well-rounded,” the idea of majoring in one subject was new to me. I chose my major practically, settling on computer science, perhaps one of the...

We all know the story. Yes, the one that has been happening since grade school, when school lets out, and suddenly, we turn into animals set free for summer vacation. Released from captivity, we survey...

He sat at his desk wondering what he’d done to warrant this. His family had little money with which to send him to college. At night, he washed dishes at a burger joint, arriving home near midnight,...

I’m not sure when I realized I was neither white nor black, but it may have been in kindergarten when my friend Max asked me, “What are you?” Six years old, I told him I was “kind of Indian,”...

Every summer, when life comes to a standstill, and classes finish, we should all take some time to sit down, calm down and read a good book. I’m talking about the kind of book whose words settle in our...

My freshman year, I wish someone told me that I am, in fact, not awesome, and contrary to what I may believe, I cannot do everything. Let me explain. In high school, I was taught to be “well-rounded.”...

Some claim that Occupy Wall Street has been thus far a senseless spectacle of the jobless who break windows, push old ladies and leave cities in “shambles.” These stereotyped perceptions of Occupy...