Think About This


Art by Kirsten Hemrich
November 12, 2018
About a year ago, I started on a journey towards building a sustainable wardrobe. I wrote a final paper for my feminist theory class on how fast fashion retailers (specifically Zara) target the “neoliberal female subject.” I felt like these clothing companies were way too prevalent in my brain, and I

Art by Kirsten Hemrich
October 31, 2018
When Jensen Montambault was an undergraduate at UVA, she chose to divide her time between two disparate fields of study--Environmental Science and English Literature. She went on to obtain a doctorate in Interdisciplinary Ecology and has since written extensively about climate change and its impact on modern societies.
“I wanted to bring the poetry back in to science,” she said. Dr. Montambault was this year’

Art by Kirsten Hemrich
October 31, 2018
Rule #1: Do not deny yourself the actual human emotion of being nervous. That’s ok. Chances are, the only reason you are nervous is because you’re creating something “unconventional.” Remember that your race and your stories do not make you unconventional.
Rule #2: With that said, do not show that you are too nervous. Don’t give them any

Art by Kirsten Hemrich
October 09, 2018
1
Even in sleep, the city is restless, humming. Like the sea at its periphery, it is never still. It thrashes beneath the first light. The call to prayer is a tinny prologue to the day, drifting discordantly from the windows of minarets. No doubt, it is a little boy tasked with the first adhan. His voice is uncertain, half-formed as it rouses the most pious from their beds. They will stumble their way into unlit bathrooms, eyes

Art by Kirsten Hemrich
October 08, 2018
The hypochondria comes at night. Always at night.
She slithers in through the window along with the breeze. The air that was once fresh becomes rancid and noxious. Fumes of anxiety and self-doubt twist and hang in the air. “You should Google your symptoms,” she whispers, her voice soft and soothing. “It will help.”

Art by Kirsten Hemrich
September 25, 2018
jesus christ, is praying still an option? i’ve been a devoutly faithless atheist for some time now,
but
i feel the end is nigh whenever i see the numbers “2019”
how did i get here?
i swear my 19th birthday just happened, the end of that night

Art by Kirsten Hemrich
September 25, 2018
My body wasn't always my worst enemy. Growing up, I didn't love my body, but I also didn't hate it. I was learning to understand it, as much as a young teenager can try to understand her body. In seventh grade, I started getting my period, and things were as they should be. My body was doing what it was supposed to be doing.
At some point, things changed.

Art by Kirsten Hemrich
September 25, 2018
On a crisp, sunshine-and-laughter kind of day, I break up with my boyfriend.
PMS sneaks up on me this way. I wake up, and suddenly it’s there, an invisible hand guiding me to do things my non-PMSing self would never think to do. My PMS laughs at me in the mirror and pinches my love handles. It goads me to send a text that is too dramatic. It spoon-feeds me sugar and angst, pats my stomach

May 30, 2018
“It’s not what you know, it’s who you know,” is often repeated advice, (Cross and Thomas). In college, the pressures to begin building a strong network for academic, professional, and personal development start early. Being an out of state, undergraduate student thrown into a high intensive work environment at an academic level, on top of working part time to support myself

Art by Kirsten Hemrich
February 28, 2018
7:00am *alarm goes off*
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Jesus Christ my eyes are swollen shut, I need, like, 10 more minutes of sleep.
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Ugh no I don’t, I HAVE to wash my hair today, it’s been long enough.