Laura Hinnenkamp
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Laura is a fourth year studying English and Women, Gender & Sexuality with a minor in Psychology. 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 romantic comedies and laughing at astrology memes.
July 03, 2020
When I look back at my time with the Women’s Center, I feel an overwhelming sense of gratitude. After three years, the time seems to blur slightly. The things I do recall are fewer specific moments and more themes of constancy—unvarying inspiration, exploration, and vulnerability.
I remember, after months of feeling lost and insecure as a first year, a phone call with Mary about my application to Iris. It was supposed to be an interview, and while I can’t pinpoint exactly what we talked about, I do know I left feeling excited and hopeful. (And I hadn’t felt that way in a...
April 20, 2020
Art by Kirsten Hemrich
There are two baby rabbits making a home out of a nook in the fence in my backyard. As evidenced by the pictures my dad sent our family group message, they are expert cuddlers. Their closeness makes them an intertwined blob of fur amongst leaves and grass. Lately I’ve been feeling like those bunnies.
Sometimes I just want to cuddle up into a warm spot and stay put.
I’m a textbook introvert, and someone who really values time alone. So, you can imagine that, in a lot of ways, I feel built for these days of staying inside and practicing social isolation. I’ll give you my...
March 04, 2020
Art by Kirsten Hemrich
I have a tendency to think of change as something that happens to us rather than something we enact. And maybe that’s why I don’t like change—in fact, I fear it. For someone who grasps onto control with every last fiber of her anxiety-addled brain, the idea of embracing and, even worse, causing transformation does not come easily.
The fact is, we all carry the capacity to fit change into our identity. New beginnings, new journeys, new transitions—they’re all inherently a part of what we conceptualize to be life. Each season comes, a predictable turn of unpredictable nature, and yet...
February 14, 2020
Art by Kirsten Hemrich
When I was younger, my best friend and I would beg my mom to play The Dixie Chicks’ Home album in the car, just to hear “Travelin’ Soldier”. We sat in the backseat, belting out the lyrics of a love story that traversed an entire litany of emotions in a mere 5 minutes and 43 seconds. The song felt like the embodiment of lyrical and storytelling genius. We were simply obsessed.
My obsession with a good love story has yet to fade. Love moves us, inspires us, instructs and teaches us. Love reminds us that...
November 14, 2019
Art by Kirsten Hemrich
Whenever I’m in my childhood home, I’ll spend hours exploring the cabinets of old photo albums, as I indulge in a healthy serving of nostalgia. I let my fingers graze over the crinkly overlay, ruminating over who I was and what I cared about most in each portrait of my personal history. Even today, I keep meticulous track of all my pictures and their corresponding time in place, eager to hold on to moments as they exist in time. Sometimes I even get nostalgic over a time that is currently happening, already waiting for the not-so-far future when I reminisce on the days I’m experiencing now...
October 24, 2019
Art by Kirsten Hemrich
I would love to say that I have my life together, that I am someone who moves through the world with a steady grasp on every obligation while also having a thriving social life and excellent time-management skills, but that would just be unequivocally false. My own life and I are simply not always on the same page, but sometimes I find that is something I have to accept rather than attempt to change. The weeks continue, papers are due, and deadlines approach—even if I would prefer to pause in my bed for the conceivable future.
In light of the insane pace and demands of the world, I...
October 02, 2019
Art by Kristen Hemrich
After a particularly hard day (or week, or month), I’ll buy myself something indulgent. “I deserve this,” I’ll say, as I sit down with a selection of Trader Joe’s frozen desserts or as I browse Sephora’s website. Such a transaction is easy—I feel like my actions warrant a reward. I made it through a midterm, I’m hightailing it to Juice Laundry. But I find it is much harder to conceptualize what I intrinsically deserve, just from existing and taking up space. Radical acceptance of the fact that there are things I deserve just for being myself, without doing anything to earn it, doesn’t...
September 19, 2019
Art by Kirsten Hemrich
Welcome back to another year of Iris! It’s almost fall, which means it’s finally the time of the year when I have things to look forward to, like celebrating all the best holidays (including my birthday) and being able to wear a jacket without accruing copious amounts of armpit sweat. The transition into autumn has always read like my favorite novel, like a slow and sweet descent into a happy ending, despite any brief plot twists thrown my way.
However, this semester I feel a tentative balance of simultaneous growth and stagnation. Maybe because it is my final year...
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...