Author Archives: Peter Lu

“Yo dawg, how’s it going?” These days, that’s how it always begins. After a few seconds of “John is typing …” he’ll respond, “nm homie, not much.” Often, we’ll skip the platitudes. “dude those Asian guys playing piano and guitar is [sic] so good. [insert YouTube link]” “wow manila sounds crazy.” “yo look at facebook. »

During sleety winters at Yale, I liked to imagine that back in California, the skies were perpetually blue. The day the towers fell, the skies were almost black. I was in seventh grade. When I arrived at school on Sept. 11, I was herded inside Kennedy Middle School’s gymnasium and told to sit down on »

There was a time when I hated writing. Every Saturday when I was 10, my father would open National Geographic, flip to the cover story and make me read the first sentence. “Give me the subject, verb, and object,” he would bark. If I passed this test, the next step was identifying the dependent clause »

My senior year of high school, a psychologist contacted my family. She was studying relationships between Asian-American children and their parents, and asked if we wanted to be one of the case studies. I was wary. Back then, all I knew about psychology came from Dale Carnegie’s “How to Win Friends and Influence People.” (My »

As recent graduates and current students at Yale, we urge the University to seize the impending Title IX investigation as an opportunity to re-evaluate how it addresses all forms of prejudice on campus. Although the University has regulations on the books that theoretically address sexual harassment on campus, we must question how well these regulations »

I had a great opinion article all lined up for Bulldog Days, I swear. It was about my experience as a prefrosh, clutching a big yellow legal notepad, jotting down what would end up being 22 pages of notes — pros and cons, between Harvard and Yale. I wrote about the schools and how hard »

A little over three and a half years ago, I gave up soda. I was in front of the drink dispensers in Berkeley and, when I grabbed a hexagonal cup from the neatly stacked, still-damp tray of upside-down glassware, I saw the taps for iced tea, Coke, Powerade, Minute Maid lemonade and Sprite and felt »

At 7:59 p.m. on a Monday night in September, a nondescript girl with black leggings and a striped gray top walks into Durfee’s Sweet Shoppe. She starts left, turns right and drifts across the dusty black tiles to the refrigerated foods. Her hand reaches for a bottle of Brain Toniq — the bottle’s “q” highlighted »

During Mardi Gras, the streets of the French Quarter froth with a Four Loko-, daiquiri- and Hurricane-fueled revelry. Purple, green and silver beads fly upwards towards balconies and fall earthbound into throngs of outstretched arms (and chests). Navigating to the nearest bar means confronting Madame Butterfly headdresses, stinky red mushroom caps, Baccagator superman outfits and »

Watch the chalk draw. It teases out parallel ovals, the powder swoons. It is a blunt dagger. * In his mind he sees an abandoned amusement park, eaves cleaving and boardwalk steaming. They pluck four-leaf clovers from hopscotch cracks and climb roller coasters, rust flaking. He came home late, especially when they were in his »

It’s 7:30 p.m. Monday, and I’m jogging to Payne Whitney, wrestling with a nervous breakdown because our C-hoops squad is playing Trumbull. They’re 8–0 and we’re 7–1; we’re last season’s champs, though, so the game’s a toss-up. But we can’t lose; I won’t let us lose. At Lanman, I strip off my coat, try to »

Valentine’s Day has never been good to me. Senior year of high school, I was completely, head-over-heels infatuated with this girl from the next town over. She had a buoyant personality and a smile that would have melted the snow stacked at the corner of Elm and High Street. And she liked me enough to »