And so it arrives. The last column. Plenty of my fellow senior columnists have given eloquent and moving goodbyes, salutes to Yale, and remembrances of years gone, so it seems fitting that I should do the same — after all, my column is called “The Good of this Place.” But I tend to write about »
On April 12, 1961, Yuri Alekseyevich Gagarin lifted off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan in a rocket the size of a Soviet high-rise. The ship entered outer space; Gagarin orbited the Earth once in 108 minutes before parachuting to safety in the Vostok 1 capsule, which without its rocket boosters was roughly the size »
I regret knowing the following. In 2008, music manager Scooter Braun discovered Justin Bieber (a name, thank God, my spell-check still attacks). Bieber didn’t go through the normal channels; he didn’t audition for an agent or start a band; his parents didn’t buy him a recording session. He just uploaded a few videos to YouTube, »
I had an interview in upstate Massachusetts this weekend. Two-and-a-half hours by car each way — not exactly an epic road trip. There aren’t many great things about growing up in the Midwest, but the sense of scale you acquire by your teenage years is certainly one of them: anything under four hours is a »
If you hadn’t noticed, it’s Senior Class Gift season. The middle of February always brings a barrage of op-eds and letters to the editor regarding this tradition — usually equal parts reverence, loathing, love and resentment. I’ve read them every year since I was a freshman, wondering what kind of mess might unfold in 2011 »
Gentlemen, we need to have a chat. We were doing so well. Developing our sensitive sides. Exploring the nuances of masculinity. Rejecting heteronormativity. We played rugby in high school and did the musicals, and nobody cared. We bought trendy, slim-cut suits and listened to Taylor Swift — for the music, no less — and still »
Those of you still bitter about rejection from our Cambridge rival, take heed. Below is the introduction of a successful Harvard admissions essay. “The reasons that I have for wishing to go to Harvard are several. I feel that Harvard can give me a better background and a better liberal education than any other university. »
