I’ve been conditioned to internalize the phrase: “Hard work pays off.” It’s what my fourth grade math teacher repeated as a thinly veiled attempt to motivate us students: If you spend some time studying – and I mean actually doing…

This is a throwback to an essay I wrote a while ago. As a young person trying to define what “success” really is, it was insightful to consider what role technology (and specifically social media) has in shaping visions of…

A short prose piece capturing some thoughts I had on the idea of “family.”

Renowned paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould remarked, “There’s been no biological change in humans in 40,000 or 50,000 years. Everything we call culture and civilization we’ve built with the same body and brain” (Templeton, 2010). Such ideas have led to the…

Imagine screaming your heart out not because you are suffering, but because the person you love is suffering. Perhaps that helplessness is worse than any type of pain, especially when you’re sitting an arm’s length away, watching an unspeakable act…