Perennially, the month of September is a tense one for students. It marks the inception of a new semester, and is always permeated by a sense of suspense. How will this assignment go? What is this professor like? Will I fail all my midterms? Should I drop? Thankfully, our friendly neighborhood tech conglomerate, Apple, provides us with some rock solid information in mid-September. No longer do we students of Queens College have to wonder: what will the new iPhones be like? This past September, Tim Cook got on a stage to announce to us the reveal of three new iPhone models: the XS, the XS max, and the XR. The…
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Self-empowerment poetry: Me, Myself
I’m sitting Cramped In a tight spot So jammed between neighbors at our breathing mingles And we as a whole A Whole Act as one behemoth Consciousness Identity Being And every breath I breathe Is but a solitary note In the orchestra’s context. And yet, My timing is slightly o . I march to the beat of a unique drummer Whose booming whacks are e speed with which blood courses through me To dictate my diaphragm In its intricate intake patterns. I am di erent To be simple. Not di erent enough that I don’t belong, But also Di erent enough that I can’t belong. You see, I look like…
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Welcome Home: A Hillel Story
“Welcome! Come on in, take a seat on a comfortable, chintzy couch under these weird ball-shaped lights, participate in the activity or don’t, whatever works, just come and chill.” Welcome is right. Because, “welcome” is how every student at Queens College first feels when they walk into the Hillel space no matter their religious affiliation, race, denomination, etc. What is Hillel? Like a typical college student, I turn to Wikipedia and search the word Hillel. “Hillel: The Foundation for Jewish Campus Life (simply known as Hillel International or Hillel) is the largest Jewish campus organization in the world, working with thousands of college students globally. Hillel’s stated mission is “to…
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OP-ED: Pesticides: To eat, or not to eat?
Have you ever taken a bite out of a shiny red apple, and wondered whether or not you’re eating poison? Many people harbor serious fears that pesticides may be harmful to them in the amounts that are present in the foods we eat. Is this fear justified? Concerns about pesticides in produce began to crop up in the late 1900s due to concerns that they might cause cancer. In 1989 the Natural Resources Defense Council published “Intolerable Risk: Pesticides in Our Children’s Food,” which discussed the concerns related to the pesticide daminozide, known commercially as “Alar.” The study’s publication, which reported that Alar caused cancer in lab rats, caused…
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Does Kim + Donald = Boom?
If you are like most of us, in that you only follow the news in the periphery of your consciousness by either clicking links on Facebook or watching the latest Last Week Tonight, you may have a small, nagging suspicion that at any moment the world will careen into a nuclear Armageddon due to escalating tensions between North Korea’s leader Kim Jong Un and “The Donald.” While I certainly should hope this isn’t the case (after all, Game of Thrones hasn’t quite finished yet), it behooves the thinking person to develop an awareness of the current, tense political standoff occurring between us and the North Korean regime. To begin our…