Laura Hinnenkamp
Author
Laura is a third year with a double major in English and Women, Gender & Sexuality. She believes in the value of art as a tool for social change and the power of the written word to connect us all. In her free time, Laura enjoys watching cheesy movies and reading new books.
April 16, 2019
Art by Kirsten Hemrich
I keep a list of things I want in the notes app on my phone (right below my grocery list and right above late-night ruminations on the failures of my life). Some time ago, I would use this “want” note as a safety blanket or a calming mechanism, relishing in capitalistic promises of a shopping high in the face of immediate stressors like exams and papers. Such a dependency left me feeling pretty empty inside, so I’ve left this note in neglect, and try instead to focus on the piece of journal paper taped up beside my mirror that says, “stop feeling the need to...
March 19, 2019
Art by Kirsten Hemrich
The worst year of my life started when I walked on Grounds in the stiff August heat to move in to my first year dorm (sans AC). Red-faced, insecure, and awkward, I felt like an intruder on an intimate scene--as if I had just walked into someone else’s life and didn’t know how to leave.
I felt disconnected from my space, my room, the classrooms, the food I ate, the clothes hanging in my closet. Nothing seemed to be mine, not even my sense of self, left in the backseat of the car my parents...
February 25, 2019
Art by Kirsten Hemrich
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 “you are in love” in my mind, I felt mainly discomfort. It was a very personal experience in the...
February 11, 2019
Art by Kirsten Hemrich
I completely suck at self-care. And not in a cutesy, humblebrag way or in a self-deprecating way. We just do not get along. It’s to the point where I hear someone exhort the importance of self-care along with suggestions of meditations or face masks, and I roll my eyes to the back of my skull so hard they may pop out from their sockets. My mom is probably forwarding a Tiny Buddha email to me right now, and I’m already moving it to my trash folder without reading it. When it feels like other people force certain aspects of self-care upon me, whether intentional...
November 12, 2018
Art by Kirsten Hemrich
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 needed some distance from the cycle. Sometimes, that distance means shopping at sustainable brands...
October 31, 2018
Art by Kirsten Hemrich
I was eating at Chick-fil-A with my mom when she asked me if I felt loved. I smiled, and said, “Yes, now that you bought me food.” Her question staged within that particular environment reminded me of a tweet I saw that described each of the 5 Love Languages, all...
October 10, 2018
Art by Kirsten Hemrich
I was at a sleepover for my best friend’s birthday party when I saw my first and last scary movie. It was Orphan, and afterward I had to lie on an uncomfortable couch and try to fall asleep. I knew I never wanted to watch anything like that again. My friend’s basement had a sliding door that went directly out into the backyard, and even among a big group of girls I felt...
September 25, 2018
Art by Kirsten Hemrich
A deep pit in my stomach. I checked the time on my phone every fifteen seconds, waiting for the perfect time. The perfect time to ignore down the rapid beating of my heart and the sweat that began to form under my arms; the perfect time to decide, “fight or flight?”. I picked “fight” every time, because I had no other choice.
I convinced myself I had no other choice.
I latched on to safe spaces, safe people, and...
May 08, 2018
Art by Kirsten Hemrich
Over spring break, I was at Panera with my parents when my mom said something that offended my overly sensitive nature and within minutes I was fully crying in the middle of the restaurant. I am not a pretty crier--there is a picture of me when I was young on Halloween where I was crying in my devil costume, and my face certainly matched my ensemble. A friend of my parents stopped to say hi in the midst of my breakdown, so I had to try to discreetly wipe my cheeks, put on a smile, and hope that my eyes weren’t too red as my parents...
April 24, 2018
Photo taken by Chandler Collins, originally published in the Cavalier Daily.
When I was in elementary school, I would anxiously wait for the letter that would decide my fate for the next 9 months: which teacher I would have. Throughout anything that could happen in a year, my teachers remained a constant and defining presence. In third grade, I had a brand new teacher, fresh out of college, who wore Abercrombie chinos and carried the same pattern of Vera Bradley lunchbox as me. I obsessed--I wanted to be just like her when I grew up. A year later, I would have a teacher who taught both my brothers before me and...