I have had an uncertain relationship with “non-conformity” since high school. In my early teens, I thought non-conformity could be found in Hot Topic, that scary looking shop in the mall. I shake my head thinking about the babysitting dollars I drained on plastic jelly bracelets and mass produced t-shirts. I used their “weird” and “different” clothing to express a certain discomfort with myself, because I didn’t want to fit in with everybody else.

Whatever one may say, it is impossible to deny the power of music to make humans feel emotion. Even if one is personally unable to feel a connection to specific instances of sound, that person, at the same time, would readily admit that others seem connected to it. How does music, these arbitrary arrangements of patterns of sound, elicit these feelings of connectedness from us?

“I think fourteen-year-olds should be allowed to vote,” I told my girlfriend. “Why not thirteen-year-olds?” she asked. “Sure, they can too.” “Twelve-year-olds?” “Sure, why not?” “Eleven-year-olds?” I paused to think. “You, know, I’m not sure how long someone should be a part of a rigorous education system before they’re critically thinking.” “Then how about you can vote when you think you’re ready to vote?” she asked. “Perfect!” I said.

It’s 5:55.

Just a few more minutes to go now…

Not that it really matters—I could show up an hour from now, flash my winning-smile, tell a joke or two, and slide by without any disciplinary action imposed upon my name. God, I love this place.

All right, good. The traffic lights are cooperating.

I think that leggings look great with dresses and skirts. They are also comfortable for ballet dancing, but the truth of the matter is that leggings are not pants. They are a form of underwear. They are meant to be worn underneath clothes that cover a girl’s behind. It seems that this little detail has escaped the minds of countless young women.
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As I sit here on this first cool day of my last year at Rutgers University, I can’t believe the amount of change I have seen in the world over the past ten years.

Our nation has experienced a series of devastating events, each evoking distant seeming memories of times long ago. As the Project for A New American Century (PNAC) put it, “a new pearl harbor”, found in 9/11 both shocked and energized us. The country pulled together and a feeling of nostalgic familiarity of “the just war”, last seen during WWII, made us all sure that America could rise above this crisis as it had others in the past.

“I’m not a feminist, but…”
I hear this phrase a lot, and I suppose that at one point in time I was guilty of using it too. However, just as I grew out of my Hot Topic shopping habits and eventually realized that my seventh grade obsession with wearing cat ears to school was embarrassing, I have outgrown my previously immature attitudes. What my aversion was, and what others’ continue to be, is a misconstrued vision of what a feminist is. If the thought that a feminist is a dirty hippie …

On January 10, 1999 something changed. I know, I know. You’re all probably thinking: “You’re damn right something changed! That was the day when millions of Kazakhstanis took to the polls and voted for their next president!” I mean, how could we ever forget that? But when the clock hit nine o’clock that night, something else happened.

I was shocked when I first heard the statistic that one in six women experiences sexual assault in their lifetimes. This was years ago. I didn’t know much about gender issues then. Now, however, after doing plenty of reading and having plenty of discussions, my knowledge of gender issues has increased tremendously. The statistic is no longer shocking, but it is unhelpful. To me, statistics are often so wholly abstracted from reality that they feel as though they hardly describe the world at all. As a result, “one in six” is sort of like, “1.3 trillion dollars.” It’s just hard for me to understand what these numbers mean. And with this in-depth article, I try to get just at the meaning of those numbers.

Every day on my way to and from school, I treat myself to the distinct pleasure of strolling through Lafayette Square and past the front gates of the White House. Picking my way through crowds of people clad in Bermuda shorts and fanny packs reminds me not only of where I am, but how I got there…