1. As a child, I had an ideal version of myself which I promised I’d achieve someday. She was so pale that snow could blend into her cheeks like concealer, and so thin that you could see where her tendons conjoined muscle and bone like puzzle pieces. Her hair was to her hips – silky, soft, and shiny like spring light reflecting into a freshly cleaned mirror. She is always the shortest one in the crowd. 

She acts no different from me. We have the same sense of quirks, the same fears, the same pasts, but entirely disconnected futures. 

2. “If you eat over 30 grams of sugar regularly, you’ll be at high risk for diabetes.” 

In seventh grade, my science teacher told that to our class. This was after I started getting sick regularly, throwing up into bushes, outdoor trash cans, and kitchen sinks. It was something uncontrollable – too much excitement or movement, and I’d spew vomit. I have a vivid memory of overhearing my sixth-grade best friend’s dad on the phone with her: “You shouldn’t invite Wendy to trick-or-treat this year. She always gets sick.” 

I became obsessed with the organs that I couldn’t see, harboring in a body that I had no control over. Pure red slush torturing me. I had a recurring nightmare of being on an operating table, happy that I was finally able to see what was wrong with me – chopped, gray cartilage, growing over my stomach lining like a virus. I was terrified. I thought of the body as a front door, and I pitied any soul that had to look inside of it almost as much as I pitied myself. There was a forest fire in my throat, the bristles of a pine tree carving scars into my tonsils and uvula, all the ash settling in my large intestine below. I imagine my organs twitching and twisting before eventually succumbing to stillness, like the plaster casts of lovers in Pompeii. 

Anyways, it’s funny how my dream body didn’t correlate to a healthy one, and funnier that I thought a stick-thin body and shiny hair could co-exist so peacefully. 

3. As a 20-year-old, some days are worse than others. I don’t get sick as often, but my body hurts constantly, and I try to pinpoint when it started. Is it from dance class? Did I sleep crooked during my nap? Is it an undiagnosed problem that I’ll never know the end of? Or is it all in my head? 

Regardless of its cause, I feel very, very old. And I’m always in pain, usually underneath my shoulder blades or in my knuckles. When I do something as simple as climbing a staircase, I feel winded. I feel my lungs gasping for air. I see stars, which really should be a beautiful thing, but it means that I feel vulnerable and weak. I know that I wouldn’t be able to defend myself if something bad happened, and I’m listless among a simulated night sky. 

4. If people are unsatisfied with your words or actions, it’s easy to blame the physical. Imagining that the body alone could make you worth something, or that it’s a lack thereof that makes you lesser than. That you could be a hollow husk and still have people tugging at your limbs. If my soul itself could be the front door, would my life be any different? 

5. I’m angry at my body. Not only is it unappealing, but it doesn’t work the way that it should. 

Written by Wendy Moore

Edited by Elisabeth Kay

Dear Mr. President Persecutor,

You don’t know what it’s like. 

You don't know what it's like to fill up a gas tank. You don’t know what it's like to buy a carton of eggs. You don’t know what it's like to go hiking in a national park or on a road trip across the United States. 

You don’t know what it's like to work at an elementary school. You don’t know how to teach a child how to read or count change for their piggy bank. You don’t know what it's like to protect a child, to pray that they make it back from elementary school alive. You don’t know how to explain to a child what a lockdown drill is, or worse, harbor them in the case of an active shooter. You don’t know what it's like to be the reason children have a future. 

You don’t know what it's like to work for a small business. You don’t know what it's like to own a small business. You don’t know what it's like to work for minimum wage (for more than 15 minutes). You don’t know what it's like to have multiple part-time jobs to sustain yourself. You don’t know what it's like to work for a workers’ union. You don’t know what it's like not to have healthcare benefits through your job. You don't know what it's like to be in medical debt because you didn’t want to die. You don’t know what it's like to rather die than be in debt. 

You don’t know what it's like to apply to college. You don’t know what it's like to get accepted into college and not be able to afford it. You don’t know what it's like to attend a public institution, or have parents who work for one. You don’t know what it's like for your federal aid to be denied. You don’t know what it's like to have your federal aid taken away from you. You don’t know what it's like for your internship to be defunded. You don’t know what it's like for your research to be defunded. You don’t know what it's like to have to drop out of school because you can’t afford it. 

You don’t know what it’s like to celebrate the 4th of July in the backyard of your family members’ house. You don’t know what it's like to hear the sound of firecrackers and be afraid that it's a gunshot. You don’t know what it's like to have immigrant family members who came to the U.S. with nothing but the clothes on their backs. You don’t know what it’s like to chase the American Dream. To chase a better life. You don’t know how difficult it is to go through the naturalization process. I bet you can’t even answer the questions on the test. You don’t know what it's like not to be able to afford a naturalization test. You don’t know what it's like to be forcefully separated from your family, your children, your life. 

You don’t know what it's like to train for the military. You don’t know what it's like getting up at 4 a.m. to run drills. You don’t know what it's like to fight in a war, to be deployed. You don’t know what it's like to experience war firsthand, with your own eyes. You don’t know what it's like to lose the people close to you because of war. You don’t know what it's like to be a veteran. You don’t know what it's like to be a refugee. You don’t know what it's like to watch everything you've ever known disappear from existence in a year. 

You don’t know what it's like to be a woman. You don’t know what it's like to be catcalled outside your own house. You don’t know what it's like to be followed home. You don’t know what it's like to be raped. You don’t know what it's like to pray for a pregnancy test to come back negative. You don’t know what it's like to be on birth control, and for it to fail. You don’t know what it's like to be on hold with Planned Parenthood. You don’t know what it's like to get an abortion. You don’t know what it's like to carry a child. You don’t know what it's like to give up a child for adoption, a child who is a piece of you. You don’t know what it's like to have a miscarriage. You don’t know what it's like to be convicted of murder due to a miscarriage. 

You don’t know what it's like to die of COVID-19. You don’t know what it's like to have a family member die of COVID-19. You don’t know what it's like to be unvaccinated. You don’t know what it's like to have a family member die because they were unvaccinated. You don’t know what it's like for your newborn baby to get sick because they are unvaccinated. You don’t know what it’s like not to have enough medical research to cure your illness. 

You don’t know what it's like to feel uncomfortable in your own skin. You don’t know what it's like to be someone you're not. You don’t know what it's like to be discriminated against. You don’t know what it's like to be told that you can’t love someone, that it's wrong to love someone. 

You don’t know how to peacefully protest. You don’t know how to be accepting of others. You don’t know what it's like to be scared for your future. You don’t know what it's like to be enraged by the state of your country, a country that once promised a better life for all. 

And maybe I don’t know all of these things. Maybe I am just a girl from the suburbs of Pennsylvania, but there are people who know these things. Americans know these things. And there is one thing for sure that I know and you don’t. I know empathy. 

With empathy and no respect, 

Giulia Mauro

Written by Giulia Mauro

Edited by Kaitie Sadowski and Julia Brummell

Some of the kindest things people have said to me have actually hurt me the most. A girl that I don’t know super well approached me as we were leaving our dorm for a night out. She came up to me beaming and smiley, grinning from ear to ear, and said, “Oh my god, Liv! You look amazing! You’re so pretty in a female-gaze way! Like only girls get your kind of pretty,” My initial response was one of pride and joy. It feels good to be called pretty. It feels good to evade the male gaze. But beneath the sweet compliment, I couldn’t help but feel othered. To me, it felt like she was repeating a familiar refrain of “You’ll grow into your looks one day”. While this was something that adults constantly said to me as a kid in an attempt to comfort me, it nevertheless reminded me that my looks didn’t fit me right now. The first part of my body that grew were my legs. I was so uncoordinated as a kid, fit only for the water. While I love my hair now, I loathed it as a kid. When you see my mother, you are instantly transfixed by her long, thick, healthy, dark Italian hair. I hated my hair. I hated how it got knotted. I hated how it frizzed up. I hated when my bangs didn’t lay flat. I hated how dark it was, I wanted to be blonde. Everyone told me one day I would love my hair, and they’re right, but no one thought to remind me that I was pretty now. Pretty wasn’t unattainable; it was right there. 

These phrases echo throughout my head. I’ve never been directly called pretty. I went to an all-girls school, it wasn’t important to me. I wore my hair up every single day, wore my shapeless polo and knee-length skirt. I never was in search of beauty, I didn’t need to. I have beauty in every other aspect of my life. My friends, the sunsets I saw every night, my mother who doesn’t own any makeup. I dated in high school, I knew my partners found me pretty, and that was enough for me. Suddenly, I got to college, newly single, and was surrounded by people in search of beauty. I thought I should join the crusade for beauty. 

 I started wearing my hair down. I wore makeup and dark eyeliner to make my eyes pop. I tamed my hair by adding layers to maintain the frizz. I consciously thought about being pretty. I emerged from my all-girls school cocoon and metamorphosed into a butterfly. After never considering my looks, they were suddenly something I was hyperaware of. While my distant friend was kind and loving while she told me I was “pretty in a female gaze way,” I still felt different. Matters were made worse when one of my friends joined the conversation and told me how I was pretty in a unique way, different from the rest of my girlfriends. They pointed out how while the rest of my friends had long hair, my blunt bob is still beautiful. While they had cleavage to spare, my flat chest is still beautiful. How unique my style was. I was in shock. Suddenly, I realized how different I looked from the rest of my friends. I was self-conscious of my bangs. I thought my tattoos were too visible and masculine. My tattoos weren’t cute, dainty flowers, but my dad’s messy handwriting. 

I know my friend meant to compliment me and explain that I stand out. That “my kind of pretty” was just as good as everyone else’s. But I didn’t realize “my kind of pretty” was all that different. I think that no matter what people say about your looks, you always want what you can’t have. I’ve had my friends lament that they feel too basic, and here I am, complaining I’m too original. Everyone is pretty in their own way, and that’s okay. You don’t need to fit into someone’s beliefs about you, look how you want. Dress how you want. People don’t mean to hurt you, they just don’t know what you need to hear. Don’t wait for other people to see you for who you are, show them.

Written by Liv Kessler

Edited by Julia Brummell and Elisabeth Kay

Ode to the Acrobats

The vinyl squeaks beneath bare feet,

rimmed with sweat from the June humidity. The garage door

is open and the heat radiates

through my body as I try to catch my breath.

Jess yells 

again

and I hoist myself onto the metal bar,

curved and slick beneath my palms. It digs into my hips

leaving purple and green bruises that ache

every time I sit. Again

Jess yells once more. The women around me begin twirling

and dipping and flying through the air. I hold on

with all my might—stagnant. My bones beg

to rest after forty five minutes straight

of pure physicality.

It’s nothing like what you see on stage; the glamour.

Pain, 

failure, and

exhaustion

are the words that come to my mind. But it’s all

in the act. The great acrobat who never winces;

who makes it look easy.

Written by Leighton Curless

Edited by Julia Brummell

I don’t do well with change. I like things to stay exactly the way they are. Every time I go home for Fall, Winter, or Spring Break, everything around me changes. 

When I went home for Fall Break freshman year, my parents had completely renovated our kitchen from its original farmhouse design to a sleek, modern, white cabinet/marble countertop kitchen. I knew it was coming because I helped them pack up the kitchen before I left for school, but the place I had been making sweet potato casserole, apple pie, and cinnamon ice cream for every Thanksgiving since I was 6, was gutted. 

When I went home for Fall Break this past year, my 13-year-old sister had taken over my bedroom. All of my furniture and clothes were moved from the upstairs jack-and-jill room I had been sharing with my 17-year-old sister into our first floor guest bedroom. I knew that they were moving my bedroom because we briefly talked about it when I packed my things to go back to school, but I didn't think that things would change so soon, and without me knowing. 

When I left for college, my mom said something to me that I will always remember, “You won’t miss what you left behind nearly as much as the people you leave behind will miss you.” She reassured me that things at home will stay nearly the same while I am off in what feels like a completely different world. Yet, when I come home for breaks, it feels the opposite. I feel like 

I am the one left behind, and the world around me is changing. Every time I am home, I am the one who feels out of the loop with their lives. I don’t know the morning routine or after-school activity schedule. I can't help to decide what is going to be made for dinner that night. I don’t know what tv shows and music they are listening to, or who my sisters’ friend groups are. My mom always said that a family is a functioning unit, and all of a sudden I wasn’t a part of the unit. 

But everytime I go home, even as things change, I find myself in the same place. I am sitting at the kitchen table with my 17 year old sister, catching up on homework. Even though the table is new, I am doing the exact same thing I have been doing my whole life. 

I am sitting on my sister’s bedroom floor gossiping in the late hours of the night about dance class and theater drama that has remained the same since I was in middle school. 

I am forging my parents' signature on pick-up notes for my two elementary school sisters so that I can pick them up when 3:30pm rolls around, rather than having them take the bus home. The same bus that I had once dreaded taking at their age. And I am driving them to elementary school at 8:15 am. The same elementary school that I went to, which has the same staff and teachers that I once had. 

I am going through my mom’s closet and borrowing her clothes. I am binge watching Cobra Kai with my dad on Saturday nights. I am attending Sunday mass at the same church with the same smiling greeters at the doors when you walk in. I am laying on the couch with my two dogs on either side of me, petting them as I watch “When Harry Met Sally” for the 100th time. I am in my basement in the late hours of the night hunched over my sewing machine as I make a creation that I probably won’t ever wear. And per the request of my sisters, I am putting ice cubes in the toilets, a spoon under my pillow, and wearing my pajamas inside out and backwards in the slim chance that they will have a snow day the next day. 

So yes, things change - but funny enough, they also don’t. The feeling you get when you go home does not change. Under all of the new materiality that is change, there is so much that stays exactly the way it is, even if it is not obvious. 

Written by Giulia Mauro

Edited by Karlynn Riccitelli and Julia Brummell

I remember finding this club my freshman year, discovering interests in myself I didn’t know were there. I encountered people outside of the freshman-year-dorm-bubble I inevitably put myself in, and couldn’t believe the sense of community they offered me, a newcomer. I yearned to spend more time with them, despite my fear of being annoying, and through reading pieces as they were published I found we were more alike than I ever thought possible. I remember sitting at work reading all three blogs posted in the 2022 Valentine's day collection of blogs posted, one of them written by Kate Castello. Since that day, I hadn’t revisited these blogs. But as I scrolled through the website before writing this, please, leave me alone brought a sense of familiarity to me, as the memory of that day flooded my brain, and I took a reread.

I cannot imagine my freshman year brain reading this. The words hopeless romantic don’t quite encapsulate the state I fell into freshman year. It was a constant loop of a new campus crush, or person on Hinge, or someone I wrote a missed connection to, taking up every space in my brain. I was so focused on any ounce of romantic attention I could grab, no matter how it made me feel afterwards. I can picture myself reading the words “I want to be alone,” and thinking: well, this one doesn’t pertain to me right now. And I wish, so deeply, I could run back to that girl, sitting at her campus job, and beg her to just listen.

Two years later, I’m in a relationship I wouldn’t trade for the world. I feel loved in ways I didn’t think capable, understood, and cared for. I know the love I have to give and I know that it’s enough. And I know that, in order to get here, I had to be alone. I just wish I knew that sooner;I wish I listened to Kate. 

Link to original piece:

Written by: Elisabeth Kay

I didn’t write my first piece for the club until this year, so rather than giving a review of that piece, I figured I would choose one of my favorite pieces: Delaney Pipon's “Searching for Angels”. (You should probably go read her piece first, I couldn’t recommend it enough!) 

Delaney writes about her religious upbringing and how there are times where it feels like religion is only meant to tear you down– you walk around in your day to day life feeling a tiny bit ashamed and embarrassed and resentful towards the people who taught you to feel this way. 

I only went to Catholic school for one year, but I spent many years in Sunday school. I've noticed that many religious upbringings are similar– you end up with good and bad teachers. There are the teachers that convince you that birth control is wrong, being gay is wrong, wearing short or tight fitted clothes is wrong, premarital sex is wrong, and that as a young girl, your body is a temple. I’ll never forget my seventh grade CCD teacher who stood in a church basement classroom yelling at us until her face turned bright pink- all because some kid asked why is it wrong for a man to love another man. Worst of all, her husband stood behind her with glazed over eyes not saying a word, clearly dissociated. 

Unfortunately, for many years, this sticks with you. You feel like you don’t deserve to be where you are and you don’t belong because you aren’t as devoted as others, but then, you start to think about good teachers you had, the amazing people who taught you how to be religious without tearing you down. For Delaney, it was Ms. T, who taught her at the age of 10 to search for angels. For me, it's Ms. Bernadette and Ms. Loretta, Ms. Donna and Ms. Anna, Decan Cliff who would give us high fives after mass on Sundays, and Father Steve who we would see every time we went to Panera. These are the people I think about when I search for angels, the people who taught me that no one is perfect and that there is good in everyone. 

Delaney’s piece is beautifully written and I think it encapsulates how you tend to pull away from your religious upbringing while still remembering the good in a more diluted form. The good moments and teachings are the ones you remember, and even if they don’t fully pull you back, they are always there in the back of your mind. 

link to original piece:

Written by: Giulia Mauro

Edited by: Lauren Deaton and Elisabeth Kay

In 2022, Belle O’Hara wrote a piece titled “Basic.” This Studio 412 blog captured the idea of being basic, or liking what others like, and the negative connotations that can come with it. She discussed her favorite coffee brand being Starbucks, while admitting that she sometimes lies and claims it’s an alternative local coffee shop. 

Reflecting on the piece, this thought and mindset hold true. I sometimes feel ashamed or embarrassed when I enjoy something basic. I’ll think about how boring I am or how I am not being unique. We’re all trying to be different, to stand out, or to discover something nobody has ever heard of. But in doing so,a cold shoulder is turned to enjoying what the masses enjoy. 

But, like O’Hara says, things are basic because they are good! What’s wrong with enjoying something everybody else likes? It's likable for a reason. So, let’s be basic! Let’s enjoy what's enjoyed by others with no shame!

Link to the Original Piece:

Written by Charlie Kurland

Edited by Ashley O'Doherty and Elisabeth Kay

My first Studio FourOneTwo piece, which I wrote two and a half years ago—when I was two and a half years less wise—still holds up. As I was adjusting to the rhythms of college life, I used the media I enjoyed to understand myself so that I could project the “real me” to others through small talk. I found the friend-making aspect of school entirely overwhelming, but discovered peace and calm in the music, TV shows, and movies I knew were always in my corner. To this day I use them as a comfort blanket, retreating to my favorite AMC theater when times get too tough.

I wanted to write “Solar Power by Lorde Deserves Better and Here’s Why” for two reasons. Firstly, because I was very passionate about this album and wanted everyone to understand it the way that I did, and secondly, because I wanted to figure out why the album resonated so much. As I’ve grown and changed throughout college, this album has grown with me. Like I wrote in the piece, “[Lorde] was the older, wiser sister I never had, and she was telling me everything was going to be ok.” The beach breeze and entrancing vocals still calm me down whenever school becomes too hectic and it always makes me excited for warm weather. Now that we have some 60 degree days again and I begin to revisit the songs, I know it will be the perfect soundtrack to my first summer post-grad. 

Every day I hope there will be news that Lorde is announcing a new album. The rumors of a 2025 release excite me, and I can’t wait to see what she has in store.

Link to the Original Piece:

Written by Leighton Curless

Edited by Brynn Murawski and Elisabeth Kay

You do not have to be good.

You do not have to walk on your knees

for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.

You only have to let the soft animal of your body

love what it loves.

Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.

Meanwhile the world goes on.

Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain

are moving across the landscapes,

over the prairies and the deep trees,

the mountains and the rivers.

Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,

are heading home again.

Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,

the world offers itself to your imagination,

calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting -

over and over announcing your place

in the family of things.

--- Mary Oliver, from Dream Work (1986)

"Wild Geese" is a poem I heard for the first time last summer. Over the Christmas break, I purchased a copy of her collection, Devotions. She is one of my current favorite poets. Reading her poetry, I found, is best read aloud. It is the ultimate grounding exercise -- something you can implement in your routine at the end of the day before you go to sleep. The diction almost feels like a prayer -- without the institutions of religion jading its authenticity.

My experience with God on an institutional level has certainly been associated with shame, and for my entire childhood prayer has not always been a ritual that grounds me. The poetry of Oliver has been a wonderful guide - literature that reminds me that I can implement radical self-forgiveness for my faults as I become wiser. Our concept of God does not need to be restricted to dogma. We need to make God for ourselves.

I admire that Oliver views her place of worship (her church) as Nature. Before I was introduced to her poetry, I knew the power that Nature had when I was amid my meditations. I would often go into the woods and use the clarity the wilderness brought to write my poetry.

The Christian dogma emphasizes the vitality of repentance in keeping one’s relationship with God stable; the believer repents after sinning in the mortal realm to maintain a devoted relationship with the Christian God in the heavenly realm. This process remains deeply rooted in God as a figure that dictates the ruling threshold of spiritual hierarchy rather than viewing Him as a force that influences all facets of humanity and nature. Oliver levels the human being as a presence within nature by rejecting that repentance represents a vital component of spiritual servitude to God and advocating for love as the only essential devotional practice.

A “God-fearing” person is an archetype that not only emphasizes the intense discipline religious guides enforce onto members of a religious and/or political institution but also enforces the belief of spiritual hierarchy in traditional belief systems about God. Before the contemporary exigence of Oliver’s poetry, “Divine rights” granted the ruling class justification for their oppression of the rest of humankind; this therefore made the lower classes believe that these higher classes remained closer to God than they ever could be. Their servitude to their oppressors thus conjured their image of God as a higher oppressor. Repentance was a process borne of fear and necessity. 

When Oliver asserts the believers “do[es] not have to walk on [their] knees / for a hundred miles repenting,” she grants the individual the liberty to approach the Lord less frighteningly than initially enforced by institutions of the church and modern politics. To the poet’s self-concept of devotional practice, the believer should feel free to relish in the splendors of nature — which she ceases to deem as products of God; in fact, the splendor of Him reveals itself in the vastness of the Earth’s landscapes, “moving across the landscapes, over the prairies and deep trees, the mountains and the rivers.” These lines evoke the astonishment of observing the natural world — a condition not jaded by the fear that hierarchical authorities inflict on individuals in the human-made thresholds below them. They alter the approach to faith as a way of living (something meditative) rather than a trial before dying.

To be a living being on Earth, according to Oliver, requires nothing except to exist “in the family of things.” She draws on the image of the “wild geese,” to create a picture of what it may mean for someone to return to themself, which is equivalent to returning home and returning to God. The migration patterns of the wild geese Oliver contemplates when she wrote this piece build on the feeling of awe she expresses in previous lines and reframes her focus from the planet’s landscape to the beings inhabiting it. When she observes the living, she spiritualizes the migration as “the world offer[ing] itself to [the imagination of the living].” The body of the Earth is connected to the living through this wonder: a holy matrimony rooted in absolute love and interconnectedness. This philosophy of love molds the foundation for wonder. 

The space left after the believer abandons repentance must be filled with something so this emptiness does not compromise the connectivity of “the family of things.” God encourages the beings of the Earth to experience Him by “only [allowing] to let the soft animal of [their bodies] / love what it loves.” Love without consequence is the most Godly virtue. In this light, awe becomes tranquil when compared to its presentation from a hierarchical religious system. Love as devotion dissolves the barriers of spiritual hierarchy, and allows the believer to experience God as the fruit of living. “[D]espair” exists as a minor cycle of death in the vast portrait of what living in God’s family encompasses. The believer should simply exist, love, and never self-mutilate. That has never been heaven’s mission.

Written by Eden Mann

Edited by Julia Allie and Julia Brummell