There are some friends you click with the moment you meet, because you’ve had friends like them before. It’s something recognizable, driven by circumstance - a common hometown, or a college roommate perhaps. There’s also friends who hide in plain sight, near you quietly for years until you both grow into people who are ready [...]
I met my best friend Sarah the day I put my whole life into her hands. In Fall 2014, I loaded up everything I deemed worth bringing - the pictures and the twinkle lights and the high school keepsakes - into my parents’ Honda Odyssey and drove south. The front steps of my dorm were [...]
In the space between 18 and 22, we’re often asked, quite broadly, what we’d like to do with our lives. It’s a question usually posed from a well-meaning adult, who’s just trying to engage with us and doesn’t know how else to relate. I've heard it over and over again: “What’s your major?” followed swiftly [...]
"We don’t have a word for the opposite of loneliness, but if we did, I could say that’s what I want in life. What I’m grateful and thankful to have found at Yale, and what I’m scared of losing when we wake up tomorrow and leave this place. It’s not quite love and it’s not [...]
Four summers ago, I stepped onto the Oval in the hazy evening heat for a campus tour at orientation. There were so many stories to tell of the buildings that make up this vast campus. I saw tradition everywhere. It seemed like each tree was planted with a story, each building had something to say, [...]
It's a scene you probably have heard of before. The professor strides in on the first day, blank chalkboard stretched out behind them, and gives some sort of menacing speech to the effect of, "Look to your right, then look to your left. These are your competitors for the next [insert amount of years]." I've [...]
At thirteen, I sat on the front steps of the only place I'd ever called home and closed my eyes. I curled my fingers around the sides of the stone steps, inhaled the scent of the blooming rhododendrons in the yard and hoped more than anything that I could stay. I turned to face the house - [...]
I am a sponge. As I make my way through life, ideas, feelings, opinions and emotions surround me on all sides, swirling about, and I soak them up. They are big and loud and bright and demand to be let in. And so I absorb them all. I am a sponge. As we talk, your energy, your [...]
What’s bothering you right now? If you’re like me, there’s probably a few recurring complaints that make their way through your mind all the time. Life's inconveniences seem to come back again and again, stopping you from living out your days the way you want to. Traffic. Co-workers who are always late. A broken dishwasher. [...]
It's really common as a young person today to be aloof in the pursuit of relationships and friendships. To show just the right amount of interest, send the perfectly timed text, the subtle Snapchat. Ask your favorite teenager or college student; they'll tell you all about the terms we have somehow agreed upon. It's extremely common. It's [...]
Bridget Cook 