Think About This

Posting a picture to Instagram is an event. The right filter must be found, a witty caption conjured. As likes accumulate, it is as if each screen tap is a reflection on you as a person. Not just the way you look, but also how you are perceived by others. Instagram squares have become extra limbs, a digital body we construct as a grid. This constant need to impress others online can be exhausting. The urge to exhale, to finally be ourselves in a

In a few short months, after years and years of stress, I will be graduating from college. I know, I’m not supposed to say ‘graduating’ because I go to UVA and we like to be elitist and use exclusionary language, and learning is supposed to be forever, but I’m sorry TJ. Once I get that diploma, this girl is done learning for a while.

I think I’ve earned a break after spending my whole life

I am tired of spunky heroines and one-dimensional love interests. I am neither of these types of woman, and it is not often that I see myself reflected in literature. This is because, like most women, I am anything but perfect. If I were to be a character, I would sleep until noon and sometimes say things I shouldn’t. I would, at times, not be courageous enough to say the things I should. I would procrastinate writing a paper and watch too much reality television.

The moment I realized I was in love for the first time floats into my memory more often than I’d like it to. It was summer in a small hometown with a boy. But more than that, there was me, frozen with overwhelming self-awareness and recognition of feeling. I had read every teen romance novel and seen every romantic comedy the world had to offer and lived with idyllic impressions of love circling my brain for years. Standing there, with the conscious thought of “