Other schools have finals week. Sarah Lawrence College, being a school for the arts, has conference week. Instead of studying hard and answering multiple choice questions on a scantron, SLC kids get to submit novels and short films and just all around put on a show. Basically, conference week is where you spend the entire semester working on an art project for each class, and then rushing to actually complete it during the last week of the semester, when it’s due. 

It’s in times like this that you don’t finish the semester; the semester finishes you.

My conference work went as follows: 

Finishing up where I’m at in the novel that I’m writing

Submitting said novel

Translating said novel into Italian

Presenting said novel in Italian

Presenting a skit with a group in Italian

Writing an essay from the perspective of an ancient Greek figure to a modern day figure

Churning out a worksheet listing everything I read, or was supposed to have read, for Ancient Greek literature

Here’s how that went:

I submitted my Ancient Greek literature worksheet and essay early, which is a first for that class. I got everything squared away with the novel, except for the translation, and then it came time to perform the skit in Italian class. In the skit I played an Italian speaking tiger who tries to pull off a bank heist, so I decided to paint my entire face into a tiger. I woke up early, made myself into a tiger, then showed up to class. Do you ever have those moments where you have an out of body look at what you’re doing with your day and you think, “how is this my life?” Well, after playing a tiger in our group project, I had to present my individual conference project, which was just me reading my novel in Italian. So there I am, reading out my novel in Italian, while painted like a tiger. 

Oddly, it wasn’t the first time that I’d done something like this. Earlier in the year, I showed up to Italian class dressed as Morticia Addams for Halloween. 

It’s not easy being the Lady Gaga of your class.

I was informed that presenting a class project in tiger face paint was “bad ass.” I also gained much approval from a campus security guard, the people who work in the cafeteria, and the professor in my next class. I viewed the whole thing as a weird metaphor for what it takes to do well academically at the end of the school year. 

Sophomore year sucks so much that they give it a name: the sophomore slump. Interestingly enough, your sophomore year is even more of a slump when you spend it all online. Since we all know what all work and no play did for Jack, I took my mom’s advice which is to do things that I enjoy before, after, and during my school work. In previous summers, I’d saved up my money so that I could use it in the big city, but since that was not to be this year, I decided to spend my money in Bronxville.

I stumbled upon a live jazz and blues concert at the amphitheatre and danced until the sun went down, even though there are few as uncoordinated as I.

I’ve been getting into the habit of walking to Slave to the Grind every weekend for a chai tea latte, which was what I was doing when I was ambushed by a goldendoodle puppy that might just be the embodiment of pure happiness. 

One weekend, Theo and I went to Dumpling and Noodle, a classic standby and Sarah Lawrence favorite, where we had- get this– dumplings, noodles, but also sake.

The next night, feeling a little bit more extroverted than usual, I went with Anahat to Wild Ginger, a Japanese restaurant we’d never been to, where we ordered green tea and vegan sushi.

Next door to Wild Ginger is Cookies N’ Cream, which- get this– serves nothing but cookies and ice cream. Assuming that the “salted caramel” ice cream flavor was, at the very least, chocolate with salted caramel, I ordered that in a red velvet cone, only to be disappointed when it was basically vanilla. I rectified the mistake a few weeks later by getting rocky road. 

It was a while before I went out on the town again. My friend Theo and I went to the Bronxville diner, the kind of place where they give you a patty melt with a pickle on the side and a chocolate shake with an overflow, and we discussed movies, because it reminds me of “When Harry Met Sally.”

Since my friend Tyler chauffeured me around the day before school ended, so that I could buy my moving boxes, I decided to repay him with dinner out. We went back to Wild Ginger, since he considers himself to be a “wild ginger.” Naturally, there was ice cream afterwards. The very next day, I brought all of my friends together on the last day of school, to Urban Hamlet, a restaurant that none of us had been to in Bronxville. 

I’m not sure where the Hamlet part fits in, but the urban part definitely fits. It was one of those restaurants with dim lighting and eccentric, well-presented food, but also a bar and a baseball game on television. Naturally, there was ice cream afterwards. 

• 

• 

It was a great final send off for my friends Tyler, Theo, Anahat, and Valentina, before we left for summer break the next day. I woke up the next morning at 10 am and moved out of Hill House by noon, making me perhaps the only person in Hill House who left by closing time. Every single floor was filled with college students and their horrified parents, trying to shuffle every scrap out of their child’s room and then waiting for an elevator that wouldn’t stop at their floor. I jammed my way into the elevator with two parents who were having one of those nostalgic, “back in my day” chats. “Back in my day, if it didn’t fit in the trunk, it wasn’t coming with you to college.” I then proceeded to carry both my suitcases all the way across campus, lugging about one hundred pounds behind me as I reassured myself that I had the eye of the tiger and could therefore do it. 

There was no food left on campus and I couldn’t partake in the food trucks because I wasn’t a senior, so I decided to get to the airport early and eat there. I then proceeded to sit around the airport for about two hours, waiting for the independent airline my mom booked a flight on to show up at the ticket counter. Frontier airline, some unheard of airline that probably has a shoddy safety record, is what I signed up for. It was at the end of the terminal with all of the other not-reputable airlines. I sat in front of that baggage check on top of my suitcase for two hours. Nearby Spirit airlines baggage check went through and checked in countless people. It was the first time that a person thought “wow, Spirit airline is looking pretty good right now.” After two hours of wallowing in my own hunger and thirst, someone showed up, I checked my bags, went through security and made it to the restaurant section. Half of them were closed, but I eventually scarfed down a slice of pizza that was about the size of my head, eating my first meal of the day at like 3pm, and feeling like a human being again.

Once on the plane, the pilot informed us before take off, “We had some maintenance issues earlier, but we fixed them.” 

“They really didn’t need to tell us that,” the woman beside me said. 

Also, You fixed them? You fixed the whole damn plane in a few minutes? The only thing that could have given me less confidence in this airline’s competence is if I’d seen an employee putting duct tape on the wing of the plane.

In the end, the plane ride was painless and my semester was too. I didn’t die, which can also be said for both my semester and the plane ride. Now, I’m back en route to Valdosta, where I’ll spend my summer working and probably getting sunburnt. 

I’ll keep you posted.

The Tragic Queen,

Raquel

I spent the morning sipping my Earl Grey tea, listening to “Avatar: The Last Airbender” low-fi music and the sound of the rain. Two nights later I was doing a face mask and getting to bed early, so that I could read the Fran Lebowitz book that I’ve been looking forward to. Some days, I can’t tell the difference between this and my introverted ways before COVID. Those are good days. 

It’d been raining here all week. I was going to get the Johnson & Johnson vaccine on Wednesday, administered by the school, but the nationwide halt changed that plan. In lieu of that, our school sent us to a vaccination site in Westchester. A few hours later, after a vexing online sign-up process that resulted in many tears, I went with my friend Tyler to the site. 

They sat me down, asked me the obligatory medical question of “what is your birthday,” and much to our mutual excitement the nurse and I discovered that we had the same birthday (give or take a few decades). I love meeting people who have my same birthday, because, unless I’ve imagined it, very few people seem to have been born on June 29th. Since we’d built up a rapport, I warned her that I’m not great with needles. It’s not much except for my historically low threshold for pain, the counter-intuitive nature of sticking a foreign substance into my body, and the fact that whenever I see the needle going in all I can picture is the needle going straight through my skinny arm and coming out the other end. 

The woman understood and assured me that “this too shall pass.” Instead of watching the injection, I picked a spot on the wall, which ended up being the banners of the victories of the Westchester Community College Viking’s Basketball Championships. It wasn’t bad at all. The initial injection didn’t really hurt, although soon after my arm felt so sore that I thought that my arm might fall off. It must have been the microchip. (I would like to specify for all of the conspiracy theorists out there, that was most definitely a joke). 

While waiting the standard fifteen minutes post-vaccination, I scanned a barcode, using the camera on my phone in order to schedule my next appointment. I overheard one of the volunteers instructing another person to do the same, by stating, “we’re just going to let big brother take control, right now.” I burst out laughing, hopefully validating him and his literary references. 

Once I got home, the side effects hit. At first it was just a fever and some chills, which set in that night. I wasn’t worried: this falls within the normal range of symptoms. The next morning I still had the fever, plus nausea, the kind where you feel like you’re going to throw up if you so much as take a sip of water. I spent most of the day in bed, trying to get my fever to ebb and sleeping in between my conferences. After nap number four of the day, I got up to pee, down a glass of water, eat my first meal of the day, and take my temperature. 

You know that it’s a bad sign when standing up is where the problem starts. I knew I was uncoordinated before, but my inability to walk straight and the way that I bumped into everything, was a new low for me. The dehydration, lack of food, and staying in bed all day, in conjunction with my adverse reaction to the vaccine, didn’t exactly make for a banner day in my life. I drank a glass of water, put a slice of bread in the toaster, and couldn’t find the thermometer. I stumbled from the kitchen to my room and could not see anything by the time I got back to my room.

Ringing started in my ears, then everything around me went silent. I moved toward the chair at my desk when I collapsed. Miraculously, I didn’t hit my head on anything on my way to the floor, even though there were about five different things I could have hit my head on. I did take about half the contents on my desk down with me. I dragged down my keyboard, my atlas, and, ironically, the handout on the side effects of the Coronavirus vaccine. 

I was sitting on the floor, sweating uncontrollably, unable to see or hear. I’d never had a serious health problem before; I hadn’t so much as fainted, so, when I was sitting there on the ground, missing half my senses, all I could think to do was call out for my suite mate Bella.

Bella helped me up off the floor and set me on my bed. She called our school’s 911 and gave me back my toast, although she offered to make me a new piece of toast that hadn’t been on the floor. My entire body was coated in some nice, sticky sweat.

My vision steadily came back in about a minute; the ringing persisted a little while longer, but that eventually subsided as well. I was offered an ambulance, but since my side effects dissipated and my body temperature plummeted, I decided instead to just chug some electrolytes and call it a day. 

Even though I collapsed (the perfect get out of class free card) I went to class anyway. My peers were reviewing my piece that day and since it would be my last chance to hear their thoughts on my novel before the semester ended, I felt that I had no other choice but to go. I went early, told the professor what happened, and asked if I could go first in class. I spent the whole class in bed, with many eyes carefully on me. 

I had no more serious episodes after that. I don’t want this anecdote to be mistaken for a reason not to get the vaccine. Most of the women I know have had strong reactions to the vaccine. I read that women tend to have stronger reactions than men do because the vaccine was designed with fully grown men in mind. This doesn’t surprise me. 

Apparently, for centuries doctors treated women’s bodies under the assumption that they were the same as men’s bodies, just with added, obnoxious hormones, so they thought that the best way to study and treat women is to do so by studying men. Women are 73% more likely to die in a car crash than a man is, because seatbelts and airbags are also designed with fully grown men in mind. Is that why they call it “a man’s world?” 

My female friends and I fainted and threw up and lost a day of our lives (but what’s a day in comparison to the year we lost?) My male friends got temporarily sore arms, but I’m not bitter about this. Overall, I’m just happy to be healthy and on the right track to being fully-vaccinated. 

We’ll see how the next shot goes.

The Tragic Queen,

Raquel

In class we had to read “Spring in Fialta” by Nabakov and then had to write something mimicking the language. We had to describe a location using details that felt vivid and fresh, so I had to pick a place that makes me feel a lot when I think about it. In the end, I chose Valdosta- with its auburn pine needles and green puddles of pollen- but I could have written about Bronxville. It got me thinking about how badly I want it to be Spring in Bronxville again when I can hang around campus and downtown, enjoying the sun, preferably without a mask. 

The mask part didn’t happen, but since it was a brisk 66 degrees a few days ago, I roamed the campus, mostly listening to Prince and taking in the start of Spring. I did this at the request of my Italian conversationalist, MariaGrazie, who probably thinks that I’m depressed and suggested that I go for a walk around campus, so that I could feel a little less stale and break up the monotony. This came after she asked me, in Italian, what I’d done recently, and all I could say was that I finished a Stephen King book two days ago.

So I went for my little walk.

The morning of, I had my Italian conversation and a routine COVID test, which came back as a much-anticipated negative. I’m testing negative and staying positive. Following that happy news, I mulled things over in the middle of campus, before making the hike back up to my far-off dorm rooms. 

The sky was a perfect blue without a cloud in sight. Everything was in bloom and just to prove it, I took photos. I present to you, Spring at Sarah Lawrence College:

This tree:

This tree:

This other tree:

Some billowy white flowers in front of a sky that is Easter Egg blue (on a tree):

The sad thing is, that because I’ve never seen flowers like this in real life, up until now, all I could think of was “Daisy perfume” by Marc Jacobs.

Me kicking my legs up, as I sit near the main road:

Please excuse me while I take a load off.

Tulips:

Me sitting amongst the tulips:

In doing so, I was sitting in front of Westlands, the beautifully-classic, and probably deeply-haunted building that the founder of our college supposedly shoved a woman down the stairs in. We’ve promptly named the dead maid, Gertrude, so much so that if you google search it, her name will come up as Gertrude, even though that wasn’t her real name. This might be the wrong time to mention that I want to live in Westlands if I ever get the chance.

Other planted flowers that I don’t know the name of:

This scene, which might as well have been taken out of a rom com:

Me, climbing up on these high, rocky cliffs that border the campus, that students are allowed to sit on:

There are some nice little picnic chairs up on top, which I wasn’t aware of and sat there reading my book, pleasantly-alone.

Proof that I did that in heels: 

The book that I read from atop the cliffs:

I read “Lovely War” by Julie Berry, which ended up being the perfect book for reading in this weather, with it being a slightly seductive story about the gods and goddesses that takes place in the 40s. There was even a reference in it to the Ancient Greek poet that I submitted an essay on yesterday. 

A rare pic of me, outside, not wearing a mask, because I was eating my lunch and sipping iced tea:

Some tiny sprigs of something that are growing out in front of the library:

A few photos of the streets, taken at the side of the campus, that make Bronxville look like Hobbitown:

This oh-so-sexy pergola that always has withered vines on it, regardless of the season:

In conclusion, Spring is a time of rebirth and new life, so naturally it is the time to walk around, blowing away the cobwebs in my mind. The campus seems to be reborn too, not just with flowers and trees, but with people giving tours to parents and potential new students, who are just as amazed as I am at the beauty. We’re making way for the next group of students. 

The word for Spring in Italian is “primavera,” which sounds so much more resplendent and exuberant.  

I suppose if you were to say “Happy Spring” in Italian it would probably be “buon Primavera” (don’t quote me on that).

So buon primavera, or whatever it is supposed to be. 

And Happy Spring!

Love, The Tragic Queen,

Raquel

My radiator, which works all too well, causes my room to get stuffier than an oven at night, so in order to not wake up covered in sweat, I crack open the window in front of my bed and open all three of my curtains so that sunlight can flood in. That way I can wake up to perfect sunshine and start my day off on a lovely note. This works well until the 6 am sunshine peaks over the adjacent apartment complex, grazes my clavicle ever so gently, and then burns a hole into my skin, thus waking me up. If I ever wake up without my alarm clock going off, I have to check and make sure that I didn’t sleep through it and that it isn’t now 1 pm; I wouldn’t say it if it hasn’t happened. This causes me to clamor for my phone, see that it is the ungodly hour of 6 am, say some words that are unrepeatable and then drool off into my pillow again once I’ve reassessed the trajectory of the sun. I live quite the thrilling life, I assure you.

I walk to get my lunch every afternoon wearing my fabulous coats that no one gets to see, listening to “City of Blinding Lights” by U2, and yes I am aware that that song is about Paris and not New York City. Since I’ve been sitting around in my room, bored for ages, I’ve been thinking about all of the places in the world I want to go to, and I’ve narrowed it down to everywhere. I have a rough idea of what I want to do: spend an entire year traveling like I’m on a honeymoon with myself. 

I want to soak up some sun on Bondi beach and do likewise at Copacabana in Rio de Janeiro. Then there’s whatever France has to offer and Italy of course, seeing as how I’m learning the language. I also want to see the places that Americans tend to view as off-limits, like China and Russia. I blame my parents. I’ve wanted to see the Adriatic Sea and the pyramids and Croatia since they got me to watch “Murder on the Orient Express,” “Death on the Nile,” and “Evil under the Sun,” as a kid. 

But first, I’d like to see New York again. It feels strange to be living in New York and to be missing New York. I keep reminding myself of all of the things that I loved about it, so that the distance between us doesn’t break my spirits. One of the things that I have enjoyed so much about Sarah Lawrence is the way that I could just pop into the city at a moment’s notice and check out the Mapplethorpe exhibit that they have at the Guggenheim or the Met Gala exhibit at the Met. 

There’s so much that I like and miss about New York City: the street meat, weird theatre, killer opera, and of course, the Park. I can’t wait to get back to the energy and the drama; there’s nothing lethargic in a city that never sleeps. 

The Tragic Queen,

Raquel

Since I live practically at east coast ground zero for the COVID hotspot, my school actually cares about whether or not we breathe each other’s air. The current policy is that I’m only allowed to interact with people in my “living pod,” so I only get to spend time with my suitemate, Bella, the only person I’m allowed to mouth-breathe on/near. Together, we watched “Malcolm & Marie” on Netflix, cramming our faces with white cheddar cheese popcorn, milk duds, and other movie theatre junk food. Then we watched “The Price of Everything,” my favorite documentary about the world of contemporary art, which also happens to be the only documentary I’ve ever seen about the world of contemporary art. Bella wants to be an art restorer, so I thought it’d be a good fit and as it turns out, I was correct. 

We tried to play a Valentine’s Day themed card game that the school provided us, only to find that you need more than two players. So instead we played war, attempted a card castle on her bed, and played one of those get-to-know-you-question-games. I just got a legitimate deck of bicycle playing cards and we’ll be learning how to play gin rummy. Thursday night was “sit in the hallway and socially-distance paint” night. I painted a bunch of lemons as part of my attempt to be optimistic, because when life gives you lemons you should paint the lemons or some shit.

Thursday was also the day that the school blessed us by paying for a Greek food truck to give us free lunch and a special empanadas food truck to give us dessert empanadas stuffed with nutella, strawberries, and brownies. It was exactly as amazing as it sounds. 

Then I made even more preacher cookies, this time showing Bella, and then made something called “copycat subway cookies,” that I undoubtedly made wrong.

I’ve since been able to zhuzh up my blank walls with posters representing my favorite things in the hopes of making this self-isolation a little better. Above my head, I have Jane Fonda’s mugshot, so that she can watch over me while I sleep. Some of you may recall having had a poster in your weird cinder block dorm room that said something like “Frankie Says Relax.” Instead I have Wednesday Addams, Fleabag, and President Bartlet. 

Wednesday Addams, from “The Addams Family” is, per her usual, drinking some poison. I put her up on my wall because she reminds me of childhood-me (don’t read too much into that). Fleabag, from the show “Fleabag,” is another woman who reminds me of myself, seen here cheekily turning towards the camera as she says something no doubt crass. President Bartlet, from the TV show “The West Wing,” is in Obama-style coloring, like any good president. Finally, my large tapestry of a Portugese Vogue cover hanging over my bed should immediately tell anyone who enters that I love fashion and am probably cultured (wink, wink). I got all of my dorm room decor from a website called “RedBubble,” which allowed me to set up my shrine to sassy women in black and white and President Bartlet.

Most of them fell down shortly after I took these photos. Sigh. 

I can’t wait until I can spend an afternoon watching a mediocre movie in theatres and ordering the wrong thing off a menu at a really great restaurant. I also miss the Slo parties, which take place at “slo 7” , a series of dorms on campus, where you have to venmo people for drinks and act like you’re having a better time than you are. In the coming weeks Bella and I will be watching “Jojo Rabbit,” a newfound favorite of mine and I’ll keep you updated on how the gin rummy is going. 

Much love and also Happy International Women’s Day!

The Tragic Queen,

Raquel

If you’re anything like me and you think that this year is already taking its toll then you’re probably struggling to have a loving and affectionate Valentine’s Day in quarantine. It also doesn’t help that I am and always have been single, but that isn’t the point. The point is that I like to add a sense of occasion, even to the simplest of western holidays that my society forces me to celebrate and Valentine’s Day is no exception.

This time last year, Valentine’s Day marked the end of my pre-COVID activities. After that, my school clamped down hard with its restrictions, being an epicenter for this new virus, and I went back to live with my parents. I honestly can’t believe that I’m coming up on a year, a full rotation around the sun, abiding by limitations put in place due to a global pandemic. So without knowing it, I had to make that Valentine’s Day count and I therefore want to make this one count.

Like most people on Valentine’s Day, I want to be sipping a virgin pina colada and wearing my black tights, because black tights are made for Valentine’s Day, as are pina coladas, at least in my mind. But I have no way of getting a pina colada and I left my tights at home. I could pick up some of the beloved chocolate covered strawberries from “Topps Bakery,” but since my school is actually strict about leaving campus for things that aren’t priorities, I might just wait until after they lift some of the restrictions. Then, I will practically live at Topps bakery.

So what is a single girl, locked in quarantine to do on Valentine’s day?

Well, as many of you know, I am a strong proponent of “Galentine’s.” Galentine’s day is an alternative holiday in which you celebrate your best gal pals, brought to us by Leslie Knope, the fierce feminist voice of the fictional TV show “Parks and Recreation.”

It has occurred to me that I have never read a book in which one of the themes was female friendship. I’ve read several books with great female role models, like Hermoine Granger, but even in that example Hermoine only had friends who were boys. Many of my favorite films are about gal pals, such as “Booksmart” and “The First Wives Club,” but I’ve never read a book that actually depicts and celebrates female friendship. It is for that reason that I’ve decided to observe Galentine’s day by reading a book that has been praised for its female besties, preferably one that doesn’t overcomplicate the matter.

One book that was overwhelmingly recommended to me when I google searched this was “The Joy Luck Club” by Amy Tan. So I decided to spend this holiday season reading, which is probably the safest way to celebrate anything while in quarantine. I also thought that in the spirit of “Galentine’s Day,” I should make some cookies for myself and my suitemate, the only other person I’m allowed to interact with because we share a living space together. 

They’re called preacher cookies, although I have sometimes heard them called “no bakes,” since you make them completely on the stove without an oven. That also makes them incredibly convenient and easy to make. This was my first time making them alone, even though I have made them several times before with my mother. I stood over the stove the whole time, stirring together a full stick of butter, an obscene amount of sugar, and some whole milk. What I’m saying is, this is not the cookie you eat when you’re on a diet. I got globs of peanut butter over everything and stained a few surfaces with cocoa powder, but they came out perfectly. 

My mother has promised to send me some girl scout cookies if she ever stumbles upon them, so I’ll be supporting female entrepreneurs and eating sweets for Valentine’s Day. I’m wishing everyone a happy Valentine’s/Galentine’s Day and if anyone else out there has any recommendations for stories about positive female friendships, please send me your recommendations. I’d love to read them.

The Tragic Queen,

Raquel

So, after being shuffled around a bit: staying in Massachusetts, and, prior to that,living almost full time in Valdosta, I finally finagled my way back onto Sarah Lawrence campus. I’m back baby and I’m living in my school’s notorious Hill House, without a roommate, which is the best way to enjoy Hill House. 

I’m looking forward to boxy rooms, broken radiators, allergen-safe, mostly vegan cafeteria food, chipper RAs, and the skunks that roam the campus for which I have no words and tremendous fear. Other than that, there’s the northeastern cobblestone architecture that looks like it’s straight out of “Dead Poets Society,” classes that I’m doing well in, and old friends who I’d like to see but cannot due to COVID-restrictions. So far, I’ve experienced a system that forces me to only leave my dorm room to pick up food that is to be eaten in my room and a water shortage, in which my building and several others were without running water for a few hours, because of a water main break.  

My desk is already messy, the dishes are already stacked, and I’m always one Netflix binge-watch away from being behind on my school work (calm down though, I’m not there yet). 

My mother and my aunt dropped me off and when they did I got a chance to show them a bit of Bronxville, under the guise of strict COVID protocol, of course. They definitely understood why I love the place so much. We enjoyed the character and the style of the downtown, making an obligatory stop at “Slave to the Grind” and “Topps Bakery,” where my mother got me a box of sweets as a farewell treat. 

And just as I showed up, so did the snow. The snow keeps on mounting and just when I think it’s starting to thaw it snows all over again. A fresh batch of snow makes everything seem briefly calm, making me want to sleep all day. Snow and cold days are fun until I remember that snow turns dirty and that I have to wear all of those layers whenever I walk out. The only time I’m allowed to walk out of my dorm room is when I have to hike all the way up to the campus center to get my food, which takes a bit of time seeing as to how Hill House is several minutes away from the nearest anything. 

I’ve recently ordered some new posters and tapestries for my dorm, so that I can decorate it with all of the things that I love. I’m spending all of my time learning the things that they don’t teach you about college like how groceries are expensive, credit cards are dangerous, and disappointments can be frequent. Yet, hopefully the friendships aren’t fleeting, the food improves, and I can continue to do well in school, since it’s the whole reason why I’m up here.

I’ll keep you posted on how I progress.  

The Tragic Queen,

Raquel 

Is it too late for New Year’s resolutions? New Year’s resolutions still remain the same. There’s always eating healthier, exercising more, spending more time at the office, or spending less time there. The whole idea of a “new year, new you” is frankly not true. For my part, I never want to force a New Year’s resolution on myself, so I tend to just not do them. My therapist told me once that a person can’t just change their behavior, they must first change their beliefs.

New Year’s resolutions also have a tendency to make you feel like there’s something wrong with you, as opposed to focusing on all of the things you’ve done right. 

However, recently I’ve been thinking about the small changes I want to implement in my life, and thought that I might as well make these changes and call them New Year’s resolutions. I’ve already changed my beliefs, so here is the rough draft of what I want to do differently this year: 

Less Social Media

I’d like to preface this by saying that I use social media less than most of the people around me. I’ve felt ambivalent towards social media for a while now, but my sudden interest in unplugging comes from the Netflix special “The Social Dilemma.” For those who’ve never seen it, it’s a hybrid of a documentary and a dramatization of how corrosive social media platforms are. The panelists are early employees and designers for every major social media platform, who state, unequivocally, that their product is not being used with the spirit with which it was intended. Not to sound like an alarmist, but these experts consider social media to be nothing less than an existential threat, that could bring about the end of civilization. The best case scenario is that in about two decades, the global economy collapses, unless some major modifications are made, which will only happen if immense public pressure is applied to these companies and it becomes more financially sound to solve the problem than not to. 

I am not holistically abstaining but I want to stop mindlessly scrolling on the Instagram explore page, where there is an algorithm set up to show me what I like by monitoring how long I linger over a certain post. I’m frequently exposed to political opinions, some that I agree with, and some that I decidedly do not, but I no longer want to see any of it. 

I understand the irony of me blogging about how the internet is bad, but I don’t think that all of the internet is inherently bad. It just needs to change. Until it does, I have all of my notifications turned off, I’m not getting any new platforms, and I am not clicking on a single video or news article that is recommended for me. 

Getting News Solely from News Sources

Once again, I feel like I already do this more than others. Recently, I’ve taken to watching the news and I know that the news comes with its own warning label when it comes to bias, but Kornacki will never tell me that there’s a pedophile ring at a pizzeria being run by the Clintons. My point is that it’s safer. I started watching the news when the election lasted days, then during the runoff, then during the certification of the vote, and then during the ensuing insurrection and honestly it feels good to be informed.

Caring less about what celebrities do

I don’t really care who’s starting a book club, who’s writing a cookbook, who’s playing games with Fallon on his show or what reality show is coming to an end. I also don’t care about their politics or lifestyles. In the past I’ve enjoyed seeing their apartments in Architectural Digest and their 73 questions with Vogue, but I think I’m just through caring. Sure, I’ll probably watch them tell their funny stories on The Graham Norton show and keep up with Jane Fonda’s activism, but those are my only vices. At times it almost feels hard not to care about what they do, because I feel so constantly bombarded by their concerns, rather than what I’m actually interested in. Hopefully, now that I am going to be on the internet less, it will be easy to shut celebrities out.   

I have a few more personal resolutions that are just between me and the universe, so I’ll be keeping those to myself. By correcting these small things, it’ll hopefully allow me to achieve other things along the way. I want to feel unencumbered and less manipulated and exploited, as I’m sure we all do. 

The Tragic Queen,

Raquel