In the first few sessions of every graduate seminar I’ve taken at McGill, a particular routine has unfolded without fail: The class goes around the table introducing themselves, their progress in the program, and how their research interests relate to the course. When my turn comes, I take a deep[Read More…]
Off the Board
Pork before synagogue: Growing up at a cultural crossroads
Born in Queens, my mom was raised in Westchester county, New York, a predominantly-Jewish area surrounded by fellow first and second-generation Ashkenazi relatives. Meanwhile, my Arkansas-born father was growing up with Methodist parents who have deep southern roots and distant Scottish ancestry. So, when they married in 1992, a strange[Read More…]
One-tweet wonder
The thought of achieving any form of popularity had always seemed light-years away for someone like myself who is accustomed to mediocrity. I had never found the prospect of widespread admiration particularly attractive to begin with. As cliché as it sounds, external validation has always seemed a little shallow to[Read More…]
What my parents’ polyamory taught me
It was a peculiar sequence of events: I remember walking downstairs and seeing my mother lying down with someone else in our living room. I remember my dad coming home from yet another business trip. It had been about two weeks since I’d last seen him. I remember sitting in[Read More…]
The elephant in the room
Among other deeply instilled habits I’ve developed as a socially-anxious introvert, I make a point of not sharing my political opinions. Somewhere in the midst of the chaotic depression of high school, I found myself a political outsider in my liberal home state of Massachusetts. I was convinced I would[Read More…]
The art in athleticism
When I was eight years old, I got the first hit of my competitive softball career. I don’t remember where I hit the ball to, but I remember standing tall on second base, feeling shock, pride, and pure happiness: An exhilarating combination. Hits came more regularly after that. I spent[Read More…]
Learning to love my big nose
I love my big, crooked nose, but that hasn’t always been the case. The first time I was made aware of its size was when my aunt asked me if I had broken it. Her sentiment made me feel sick. I pushed aside my childhood ambitions of becoming a writer[Read More…]
Unlucky inheritance
There are many things in my life that I’ve accepted as inevitable: Breaking a bone, teenage heartbreak, and failing a final exam, for example, I have a strange sense that those events are predetermined. This may be symptomatic of a childhood spent in front of a television—each event in my[Read More…]
Corporate culture, as seen on TV
Popular media offers a vivid portrayal of modern corporate culture, but I didn’t expect it to translate so literally to my experience at my first tech internship this previous summer. It was nothing short of jarring to recognize so many phrases I had previously only heard from the mouth of[Read More…]
Identities should start conversations, not end them
Being Israeli is something that I keep to myself at McGill. After returning to school this September, my peers often asked what I did over the summer. I told them that I had been travelling, but omitted that I had actually staffed a trip that took Jewish-Canadian 17-year-olds to Israel.[Read More…]
