Will Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce be breaking up soon? How long did she take to move on from Joe Alwyn after their breakup? Will her next album be about this breakup? If so, is Travis Kelce going to get his own album? In short: who cares.  

By either scrolling on Instagram, turning on the TV for Sunday football games, or watching FOX news, it is almost impossible to escape the Travis Kelce and Taylor Swift romance. With a celebrity made for the girls (Taylor Swift) and a football player all men admire (Travis Kelce), this seemingly perfect couple has blessed household televisions, becoming the next all-American couple. 

As a hopeless romantic, I too often idolize celebrity relationships. They often seem glamorous, spontaneous, and almost magical, much like the relationships we see in movies. From 10 things I Hate about You, to The Notebook and When Harry Met Sally, rom-coms often provide nostalgic support with adorable couples and predictable plots and endings. One of my favorite rom-coms for these reasons is Notting Hill, a movie where a famous actress, Anna, and a bookstore owner, William, fall in love. The film portrays what it would be like to be a “regular” person dating a famous person (12 year old me’s Wattpad fantasy). With paparazzi bombardment and secret dating, Notting Hill shows the complication with this couple while still being a cherry and uplifting movie that I often revert back to.

 Yet, as a rom-com lover, it is important to admit that rom-coms are made to be happy, often at the expense of being realistic. Although rom-coms may show disagreements and fights that arise between the couple, the movie will almost always end with a marriage and happy ending (excluding La La Land). Therefore, it is easy to idolize these fictional couples as they seem to represent a perfect relationship, and the idea of these relationships carry over when we see our favorite real-life celebrities dating. The relationships we see in movies are the best versions of the couple, and as humans looking for happy little things in a flawed world, celebrities provide a glimpse into a fairytale romance.  But the thing is, celebrities are not a fictional couple. They are real people, with their own lives and privacy they are entitled to, even one on the mega level like Taylor Swift. 

Truthfully, when I first heard about the Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce romance, I thought “Oh? That’s cool I guess.” With Taylor Swift’s love life always being so public and a seemingly open topic of discussion, Swifties and NFL fanatics alike immediately had opinions on their relationship. Some thought they were the perfect couple, some mourned Swift’s previous boyfriend, Joe Alwyn, and others assumed this would be a short fledged romance. While everyone is entitled to an opinion and would probably have one anyways, should the internet really be so obsessed with this couple?

I am not debating that celebrity relationships aren’t cute and fun to follow. After all, there have been many happy couples that I too admire when they have matching red carpet outfits. However, we are living in a social media obsessed and judgemental world where it is hard to look beyond the celebrity relationships we see on television. Yes, we see Taylor Swift attending NFL games, but we don’t see and are certainly not entitled to the little moments between the couple, like waking up next to each other in the morning and cooking dinner after a long day. However, as an 18 year old with what I would like to argue plenty of life experiences, I got to see these moments between couples. I got to see my mom cook dinner for my dad every night after he was done working. I got to see my friend struggling with his situationship. I got to see my next-door neighbor fall in love. I got to see my two classmates slowly begin to like each other. I got to see real relationships, one’s that I can look up to. Relationships are real, beautiful, messy, and often tragic. Let’s not get so caught up in celebrity couples that we miss the little moments that make life so much better. 

Written by Emma Hannan

Edited by Teagan Chandler and Elisabeth Kay

Growing up, I believed identity was merely a collection of favorites: an animal, a movie, a sport, a book, a color. I weighed these favorites as if they said something massive and unchangeable about my character. If you asked me then which color was my favorite, I would have said red. Red appeared perfect: primary, self-assured, bold, difficult to ignore. I always admired the things I figured I could never be.  Though I felt my favorite things were such a vital aspect of my identity, I was more concerned with how they would be perceived rather than how much I enjoyed and resonated with them.

If a person was as simple as color, Pink would have been a more accurate assignment. But I hated the way pink made me feel. It felt like a mockery-- a watered-down version of what I wanted to be. As much as I wanted to be, as a young girl, I was not red. Red was not quiet, sensitive, or naive. I felt imprisoned by my flushed face and fantasies of who I would rather be.

 My mother, who I always saw as a prime example of red because she was intelligent and confident, and said things with resonance, enjoyed the color pink. She said that there was power in being thoughtful and sensitive. I hated that she called me sensitive.  I blamed heredity: It wasn’t my fault that I had been born with a heart tattooed on my sleeve. But she was right, and since I did not know how to change my feelings, I changed the way I spoke about myself. 

Years later as I approach adulthood, though I feel I have changed in nearly every other conceivable way, I still often find myself preoccupied with attempts to simplify self-definition. I give power to astrological placements, Myers-Briggs personality types, and the things people say about me. I prize the way they help me gauge who I am as a person, or who I appear to be. However, I am growing comfortable with the notion that the sense of self is complex and hard to grasp, no matter how many online quizzes I take or how many friends I ask to describe me.

I don’t remember the last time anyone asked me about my favorite color. It turns out to be not nearly as important as I once believed. But for my introspective purposes, I am sticking with red, and this time I mean it. I finally recognize the shades of red inside me. I know how to deal with passion and anger. I can bandage up blood and add fuel to a fire. Still, I try to hold on to this softness from my youth, that lets me forgive the knife and the match: a skill mastered by all the pink people, present and prior. 

That is the beauty of identity-- it is everchanging. I can have two favorite colors, one for each side of me, and miraculously, no one will care at all. I am reworking my self-portrait, and I feel no shame as I color my cheeks in my most trustworthy hues. They are the only ones who know that I can be tough and mean, even if I cry at the movies and refuse to kill bugs. They understand why I embarrass myself often and with ease, why I make the same mistakes over and over, and why I sleep soundly in red pajamas, but in the comfort of light pink sheets. 

I draw on, reminding myself a person is much more than an assemblage of things they like and dislike, or pretend to like and dislike. More than a list of nouns and adjectives. I look into myself: a twenty-year-old true friend of a friend, a red woman’s daughter, and the sister to a blue man’s son. I can appreciate things I once despised, and I know I may soon change my mind. I am a collection of transformations, things I have seen, jokes I shouldn’t have made, bruises from things that hurt me, bandaids from a hundred songs, and countless fragmented stories of people I loved and even some who loved me back. Most of all, I am learning to be okay with the fact that who I am is imperfect, uncertain, and to my greatest dismay, open to interpretation. 

Written by Grace Catania

Edited by Emma Moran and Elisabeth Kay

i am an eight year old in a twenty year old’s body. i am also a sixteen year old in a twenty year old’s body. i am an eleven year old in a twenty year old’s body.

 as a young adult, i’ve found joy in chasing the younger version of me that i thought used to exist. i thought of her as a past self, not one that still exists today. but she does, and i see her everywhere. i see her as i paint my nails pink and draw white flowers on top. i see her as i eat fruit loops at my kitchen table in my college apartment in a green bowl that has been in my family for years, but i’m not quite sure where it came from. i see her on my right arm, she is my ribbon tattoo. i’ve always been in love with the idea of people expressing themselves through their bodies. whether it was physical like piercings or tattoos, or a form of creativity such as dancing across a stage; it makes people vulnerable. their expression of themselves in a world full of judgment is refreshing because it shows that they don’t care whether you like their hair color of the week or if it makes you give them another glance or two, because it’s what they want. 

in a timothy keller sort of way, to be known is to be loved. how are people supposed to fall in love with the beauty that is you if they don’t know what gets you out of bed in the morning or the exact amount of sugars and creamer you take in your coffee? to know me as my twenty year old self, you must know my eight year old self, my eleven year old self, and all of the other years that i have been on this earth because they are the reason i am here writing this right now. that is why i have this tattoo. i love when people ask me about the meaning because it means i get to introduce them to eleven year old inessa who wore a different bow in her hair every day of fifth grade, who found joy in expressing herself through a small aspect of her appearance despite the uniform placed on her by a school that is now closed. the school might have shut down, but the memory of adorning my hair in a different ribbon each day is never leaving. sure, i wore ribbons when i was eight, but that was most likely from my mother who dressed me, except for the days in which i wouldn’t leave the house unless i had a tutu on my waist. in a world of strict rules in place about what i could put on my body and how long my hair could be and what color shoes i had to wear, ribbons were my choice. it was my first time having the creative freedom to choose how to express myself, and although i couldn’t do it through clothes, i got to spend each morning choosing one of the many bows from claire’s that i had carefully curated in my collection. 

although i only use one of those childhood ribbons as as my twenty year old self, i still feel like a giddy eleven year old when i put a ribbon in my hair that matches my outfit. and i find myself feeling even giddier when people recognize that about me. when they say, oh, i saw a bow today and it reminded me of you. when my mother puts on a dress and asks me to tie the bow for her. when my friends tie a ribbon and it looks off, so they ask me to redo it for them. when i receive a gift and it’s wrapped with a pretty ribbon that i get to keep and tie in my hair later. my mother did that this past christmas. as i unwrapped the gift, i mentioned the beauty of the ribbon and how i planned to keep it for later. she said, of course, that’s why i put it there. to be known is to be loved. and to be loved is to be a gift tied with a bow.

Written by Inessa Kiefer

Edited by Wendy Moore and Elisabeth Kay

Memories aren’t lost just because the people in them are.

My mom has boxes upon boxes filled with pictures of my brother and me from our younger years, all with the well-known orange digital camera date and time in the bottom right corner. 

My favorite picture from one of the boxes is that of a little four-year-old me sitting on a deck box by our old boat. Beside me is my grandpa, smile bursting, and his mouth covered in chocolate ice cream. This picture means more to me than ever since he’s no longer here to share the memory with me. I don’t remember this day, what the ice cream tasted like, or even what we did after that moment, but the memory will never be lost. Someone saw it and knew it would make an amazing photo. No, it's not phenomenal quality with perfect editing, but it perfectly captures the moment. It’s perfect to me. The pure joy in both of us, with the sun beating down, and the melting ice cream.

Now, my camera is my most prized possession. I don’t own a vintage digital camera like everyone else, but my Canon T7 has my heart anyway. Since middle school, I have been obsessed with taking pictures and documenting anything and everything. I was hooked the first time I held a real camera in my hand— it was during a high school newspaper class and  I couldn’t figure out how to zoom out far enough to fit all of our student council in one photo. Nevertheless, I knew it felt right. 

I got my first camera for Christmas 2021. Photography is what connected me to my surroundings. From the grainy underexposed pictures taken on my iPhone 6S posted on an Instagram page with nine followers to taking my friend’s senior pictures last summer. I am the 0.5 friend, always flipping my phone around and holding it up in the air. I’ll always be the one to ask for a picture. Upwards of ten thousand memories reside in my photos app. Ten thousand pictures taking up storage, that I’ll never delete.

It's no surprise that our generation loves trends of the past. We long for times of no social media and the simplicity of physical pictures with no photoshopping.

Everything comes back around. This rings true with stylistic choices such as our beloved high-top Converse and mom jeans, which my mom hates when I wear. The latest comeback has been the digital camera. Some people may have gotten a digital camera just to follow the trend, some may have gotten one as a gift, and some may have even received one as a hand-me-down from a family member. 

Is their purpose to find the simplicity of a physical camera and move away from the forced perfectionism of social media? Or is it just to participate in yet another influencer-based trend?

If all people are looking for is the aesthetic of a digital camera—easy—pull out your phone and download any editing app. I believe people are searching for nostalgia, for the simplicity and genuineness that a physical camera gives. I used to look through my parents’ scrapbooks from high school and college and admire the genuine memories captured, precisely taped in, names and dates written in ink below.

The first camera trend I remember was the pastel-colored Instax Mini polaroid cameras which featured way too expensive film and less than stellar quality (I had the light blue one). The next obsession was the bright green disposable cameras where your local Walgreens took months to return the pictures to you. They were cute though. 

I am simply pro-capturing the memory, no matter what form you use to do it. Take the BeReal, take the Lapse, and make the Instagram post. Make your friends pose. Ask the stranger to take a picture. Use the flash on the street. 

Capture the memory, because one day it may be all you have left.

Written by Megan Reynaert

Edited by William Beddick and Kate Castello

In recent years, Tate McRae has made a name for herself as more than a dancer or YouTube singer/songwriter. Just last year, the Calgary-native pop star stunned the world with the success of her song “Greedy.” But despite her random success, which was seemingly out of nowhere, in 2023, she’s been in the industry much longer than you may think. 

In an interview with Elle, Tate McRae explained that she thought she was going to be a backup dancer for the rest of her life; and she wasn’t entirely wrong. McRae started dancing competitively in 2013 attending Berlin State Ballet, winning awards at the 2015 Dance Awards, performing on The Ellen Show, and finishing as a finalist on So You Think You Can Dance. 

In the interview, McRae said that she discovered a passion for poetry. When she was 6 years old, her grandfather got her a piano, and that’s when she realized she could sing her poetry. At 13, McRae then started uploading original songs on YouTube. 7 years later, it came in clutch for her. 

Tate McRae caught the attention of RCA Records in 2019 after many of her original songs gained attraction on YouTube like her 2017 song “One Day.” After her signing, McRae released her debut EP All the Things I Never Said. A few months after the EP’s release, she released one of her biggest singles for her second EP, Too Young to be Sad, called You Broke Me First. This song broke the record for being the song with the longest stay on the Billboard Hot 100 by a female artist in 2020. To stay consistent on the charts, she performed the song at the 2020 MTV Video Music Awards, 2020 MTV Europe Music Awards, Jimmy Kimmel Live, and The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon. 

In 2022, Tate McRae released her debut album, I Used to Think I Could Fly. The long-awaited debut album brought the fan’s expectations to reality—however, the rollout was underwhelming. With the success of the second single on the album, She’s All I Wanna Be, fans expected a brand new groundbreaking artist. The album debuted at #13 on the Billboard 200 lasting only 7 weeks on the charts. With how much potential Tate McRae has with her skills in dancing, singing, and songwriting, the expectations for this album were not met. A lot of people blame it on RCA’s reputation with other artists like Flo Milli, but Tate might’ve broken that reputation. 

It’s no surprise that artists use TikTok as a platform to promote upcoming songs. But even with the promotions through TikTok, sometimes they still don’t become successful, like Tate McRae’s “Uh Oh.” In August of 2023, Tate McRae posted a TikTok promoting her new single “Greedy.” Even though the song wasn’t released, it went viral with more than 220,000 people using the sound for their own different trends. With the release of “Greedy” on September 15th, the full song was expected to become a big hit. 

Despite its popularity through TikTok, the song itself sounds original. Tate McRae is known for sappy love songs, while “Greedy” brings in a new wave with fans seeing a feistier and more playful side of her. The current trend for music however is sampling a lot of songs that are considered “nostalgic.” Tate McRae interpolates Promiscuous by Nelly Furtado and Timberland. To keep up with people’s short attention spans nowadays, McRae’s song “Greedy” is short but sweet. A lot of songs tend to suffer from being super short, but Greedy feels like a complete pop song. McRae hit the chorus within 20 seconds and had all of the pop song elements including a bridge. 

RCA Records took advantage of this opportunity immediately rolling out McRae’s sophomore album called Think Later, released on December 9th of 2023. With the success from her second single Exes and Run for the Hills, her sophomore album debuted at #4 on the Billboard 200 competing against Nicki Minaj’s Pink Friday 2. In this era, she trades neon sweatshirts for hockey gear becoming a Canadian Sporty Spice. Compared to her debut with blunt ruminations on teenage love, her second album toughens up that first impression with homogeneous one-dimensional introspections.

An industry plant is an artist who has a major label backing their movement but presents themselves as a “homegrown start-up” to create a pseudo-organic following. Because of this wild random success from Tate McRae and entering the main pop girl era, accusations of being an industry plant come along. During a conference office in Los Angeles, McRae mentioned “I’ve been grinding since I was 13 years old! I’m probably the furthest thing from an industry plant for how long I’ve been doing this.” It’s no surprise that McRae is offended because it discredits all of the hard work she has put in to get to where she is now. 

With a growing generation now relying on becoming viral on YouTube, TikTok, or Soundcloud. It is really easy for people to consider so many new upcoming artists and industry plants. Nowadays, it is super hard for people to organically grow through record label promotion. There is also a huge trend where artists are now considered indie despite being backed up by a huge team but isn’t that what people wanted? Aren’t people tired of seeing the typical pop girl? It seems hypocritical when people want more diversity in the music industry, but then afterwards call them industry plants. 

If an artist truly claims to be independent while having the backing of a label, they could be considered an industry plant. Lorde is a great example. 

Lorde made music that was considered “different” and not just about sex, drugs, and money. Billie Eilish brings a depressed girl persona with her deep lyrics and baggy clothes. Being an industry plant doesn’t mean bad—being an industry plant can be a positive thing. In easier terms for people calling out “industry plants” just say that their growth in the music industry is just manufactured differently.

Written by Justin Pello

Edited by Kate Castello and Elisabeth Kay

My clearest childhood memory is when I held my sister for the first time. She was so small and frail, bundled in soft white blankets. Her hair was dark and wispy, peeking underneath those knitted beanies they give out at the hospital. She was so tiny. 

I often wonder how much of my personality is shaped by my birth order. How much of me, if not all, is due to the fact that I was born first? 

Being the eldest daughter meant having to miss sleepovers and birthday parties because Mom was always working late and I needed to babysit. It was okay though because I had offered: I was free help and she needed as much of it as she could get. Her hair was thinning and falling out from all the stress and weight she was carrying around day to day, so as soon as I was able, I lifted the load.  

It was never too much to handle. It is never too much to handle. 

When I was a freshman in high school I was waking up at four in the morning to help my sisters get dressed and pack lunches from the meal plan I curated at the beginning of each week because I wanted to be helpful. That is always the goal: to be helpful–lessen the load until your back is practically breaking but you can’t let anyone know because this was a choice, your choice. And I chose to write notes in my sister’s lunchboxes with stupid jokes on them just like my mom used to do for me.

Being the eldest daughter means that I plan every birthday party. I buy the decorations a week in advance and I stay up until five in the morning to set them up. I bake a cake from scratch every year. I send out the invitations, I follow up with parents, and I make it happen.

I have never had a birthday party. 

I didn’t have my first sleepover until I was fourteen.

I have to order my own birthday cake. 

Being the eldest daughter means that I teach what no one ever taught me so that my sisters don’t face the same struggles I did so that they are spared of the embarrassment I experienced. No one ever taught me to do my hair but I’ve been doing my sister’s since I was ten. I just bought my twelve-year-old sister a basket of her own curly hair products as a Christmas gift with a tag that said “From Mom” on it.

Being the eldest means feeling like a parent and not like a sibling. I can’t tell my sisters about a school crush I have on a boy or why I’ve been crying for the past four days straight—I remind them to do homeworks and look over book reports and ask them why they didn’t finish their lunch. I had no one to look up to. I had no one to ask what to wear on a first date or how to put makeup on. No one to steal clothes from or ask for advice. I am meant to fill that role but how can I when I was never shown how?

I’ve come to realize that being the eldest means that I am never the one being surprised. I will always go above and beyond and kill myself bending over backward for people who would never lift a finger for me. I am always the listener and never the talker. I will always show up when you call. I will apologize when I never had to.

Being the eldest means that my mom hasn’t seen me cry in three years because I don’t want her to think I’m not doing well even if sometimes, I’m not. 

Being the eldest means that I felt like I abandoned them once I left for college—it seemed selfish to divorce my family and to even wonder what life was like without them constantly around; they had been my life’s purpose for so long. How could I possibly want freedom? Freedom feels like an exaggeration. Helping around was not a prison, but somewhere along the line of life, I traded my childhood at its expense.

I didn’t even realize how much of a childhood I wasn’t afforded until it was over. It’s almost as if when I held my sister for the first time, the door to childhood and childhood things began to close. I didn’t watch it close. How could I? I was too busy making sure my siblings’ childhood was magical, making sure it was everything mine wasn’t. I was so busy that I forgot I was only seven or eight or nine years old. I was so busy that I couldn't even try to stick my foot out to stop it. It had closed and locked and all I could do was stare at the wooden slate, reaching and longing for what I didn’t even realize I’d lost. 

And I don’t expect an apology because it was my choice. 

But I was seven. I was a seven-year-old little girl who just wanted to be helpful and thrived on feeling appreciated. 

And now in my embraced role as the eldest daughter, I am supposed to be perfect all the time but I won’t ever feel good enough. I am the role model who always needs to put on a brave face. I have to be the person that everyone leans on, but who am I supposed to lean on? Who am I supposed to trust? I’m the person who is never allowed to break… but I have been cracking for years. Surely, a seven-year-old isn’t meant to carry the same weight as her thirty-seven-year-old mother.

But I don’t want an apology. 

In my role as the eldest daughter, I put others first, I worry extensively,  I help with homework, I attend the concerts, I make the schedules, I plan the birthdays, I wrap the Christmas gifts, I make the reservations, I do the school supply shopping, I drive to and from, I know every in and out of every single person of the household, and I get absolutely nothing in return…

But I don’t need an apology.

I am a walking one-man show but I accept it with all that it comes because who even am I if not the eldest daughter?

Written by Camille Ware

Edited by Lauren Myers and Kate Castello

I notice it on the second week of Christmas break. 

My parents are both working late, so I volunteer to make dinner, putting together the same soup my mother used to make whenever I was sick as a child. My little brother has been convinced to set the table, and I blink when I see the plates he took out. “When did we get new plates?”

He stares at me and then looks down at the plates in his hands. They are white and have a pretty border of green swirls. The plates I remember were completely blue. 

“Oh. Dad dropped one last month so mom got a new set.”

“I didn’t notice before.” How had I not noticed? 

My little brother shrugs, “I mean, it’s just plates. You don’t live here anymore, so it’s not like you knew we switched them.”

And then he walks away to finish setting the table like he didn’t just shoot me in the chest.

I don’t know when it truly hit me that I didn’t live in my childhood home anymore. Maybe it was when I started saying I was “going to my parent’s house for the holidays” instead of just saying I was going home. Maybe it was when I bought my own blender instead of stealing my family’s old one. Maybe it happened the second I stepped into my freshman-year dorm. 

But I haven’t lived in that house for more than a few weeks for over a year now, which probably means that I need to start moving on.

I’ve been trying to define the word home, recently. When I was a kid, home just meant the physical location. I used to have these vivid nightmares where my childhood home would catch fire, and they scared me more than any monsters under my bed. I used to think it took having a physical, permanent place to stay that made a home. 

The past three years of my life have proven that wrong. I’ve bounced around and around, from two different dorms to a summer internship apartment in a different city, to finally my own apartment. But even that won’t last forever. Now, I’m looking at graduate schools all across the country, and not a single one is even in this state. 

But in every single place, I’ve still had a home. 

My mother still has the string of photos from my graduation on the living room floor; the posters that decorated my first-year dorm hang in my new apartment; my second-year dorm probably still has the stains on the sink from dying my roommate’s hair black; I have the flowers that decorated my bedroom this summer pressed between the pages of an old journal. I bring people into my new apartment, take photos of every event and party, frame my friend’s smiles with the lens, and immortalize my love for them. I’ll bring them into whatever place I end up next, and place the old photos on the fridge, leaving room for new ones too. 

I still don’t think I can properly define home; how do you define something that stretches through time, that exists in fifteen different places, that changes every step of the way, that walks the line between a physical place and a concept you can only hold on your heart? Sure, I don’t live with my parents anymore, but it’s still home. The old porch light will still glow in the distance when I come back; it will always be there when I need it to be. Every time I leave for some new place, I’ll reach into the lamp and pull out a little bit of its flame, and I'll use it to warm my new hearth. 

It’s not a true definition, but maybe it’s a start.

Written by Emma Moran

Edited by Lauren Deaton and Elisabeth Kay

iPad kids are the bane of modern existence, for parents and bystanders alike. They affect everyone with their temper tantrums and sheer inability to exist without constant instant gratification. This is a phenomenon that didn’t quite exist when we were kids: we were young enough not to remember a life without technology and yet it wasn’t so ingrained in our culture that we couldn’t step away from it. I believe that Gen Z was graced with the perfect era to grow up in, but that is no reason to gloat. Unfortunately, for all future generations, that won’t be their reality.

I do, however, find that people overly villainize this group of kids. Sure, they can be hard to please and massively greedy, but they didn’t put themselves in that position—it was capitalism and corporate greed that stuck a tablet or phone in the hands of any child who would accept it. I also think that they will grow up to loathe technology and actively work against it, just as Gen Z has. They just don’t have the means to yet. For the time being, I will avenge the iPad kid, with some firsthand knowledge I’ve so graciously been able to experience. 

My first piece of technology was a Kindle Fire tablet, that is if we discount the desktop computer and cable television; the Kindle was mine and mine only. It wasn’t connected to the internet and was merely used to play games; I don’t even think it had a camera. There was a kind of subtle bliss that came with the Kindle, where I was still disconnected but also didn’t feel left out. I had a few more iterations of the tablet before I received the ‘godforsaken’ iPad, which had less parental control and more online access. It also came with iMovie, and my creative life blossomed.

I became an instant filmmaker. My friends and I found so much joy in making movie trailers and silly videos. Eventually, I had my parents set up a YouTube account for me to share my creations with the world. I know that nowadays, it is hard to limit YouTube access and what is safe for children on the platform, but I relished it in my two followers (my parents). I’m also so glad I was able to make this archive of videos, full of childhood wonder, that are still up today. Every now and then I revisit CupcakeFrenzy17 and smile, reminiscing on the kind of secluded glory that children sadly don’t feel today. Whenever I come across a viral clip of a child posting a video, whether it is a fake vlog or a GRWM video, I think back to myself and thank god there were no weirdos and haters in my comment section. Why can’t we just let kids be kids?

This is why I will always defend this new generation. They have been set up for failure, and it is all our doing. I gawk when people say that all childhood creativity has been lost on this new generation because I know they haven’t actually been perceiving kids. Over the summer, I worked at an overnight camp where kids came for at least a week. They slept in cabins with screen doors and played outside, unplugged from the virtual world. This is not a new phenomenon either, because when I was younger, I went to this camp, phoneless and all. You’d be surprised at the number of kids who came to this camp of their own volition, who wanted to escape the pressure and consistency of the internet and constant communication. Just because it may be hard for them to disconnect—one of my campers asked to hold my phone just to “remember what it felt like” on their last night—doesn’t mean they don’t want it. 

I worked with middle schoolers and soon-to-be freshmen in high school, and I could see how they flourished being away from technology. At this point, it is on parents and all adults to bear the burden of what we have done to kids. This is not a problem we can get mad at them for; that would be irresponsible. So next time you think this generation is “so lazy and uncreative,” think first about who and what made them that way. Gen Alpha, you will be okay.

Written by Leighton Curless

Edited by Gabi Amorim & Elisabeth Kay

I’ve always clung to labels. I collect them like prized medallions and pin them across my chest. A redhead. A twenty-something girl. A Libra. A lover of Fleetwood Mac, specifically Stevie. A perfectionist and a procrastinator, somehow simultaneously. 

I just love the notion that people perceive me in some sense. As something or other. I know that spelling out the concept on paper makes it sound redundant, but the core of my high school beliefs boiled down to one absolute truth: to be seen, is to be loved. 

When I was a senior in high school, I received the superlative “Most Likely to Brighten Your Day.” I was eighteen, freshly committed to Pitt, and planning on pursuing a career path that made most adults ask if I had a backup option. I was begging for someone to give me another prompt to follow, and those six, tacky words provided the perfect mold to cement my senior-year persona. Six words fashioned into a barbed-wire fence that I could herd my mess of complexities into. I practiced a permanent, toothy smile that never ceased to feel forced. 

Sure, the superlative was somewhat true. I’m a glass-half-full kind of girl, and I will most likely always have something to add to a conversation… But what about the other side of the coin? What about the part of me that dreamt of clawing my way out of my small-minded, suburban bubble? What about the part of me that was aggressively opinionated, unsatisfied, and most contrastingly, unhappy? It was left to rot under the guise of a sickly sweet pushover, a school mascot for everything I used to go against. 

A couple of months that felt like years whirled together and spat me out in a graduation gown. I offered teary goodbyes to girls that I had spoken to twice and teachers that I was never very fond of. As far as emotional depth goes, I was barely skimming the surface, but at least I had made it into the pool. 

Within that agonizing purgatory sandwiched between graduation and college, “How do you feel now that you’ve graduated?” was a commonly used icebreaker. 

To which, without fail, I would always respond, “Bittersweet,” through gritted teeth… even though the bitter-to-sweet ratio was a solid 20:80. How ironic that I forced myself to be the brightest in the room until the socially appropriate response was to be sad. Those six words plagued me with an inner monologue that functioned like a PR team, keeping my record of polite conversation clean and consistent. 

That is, up until college.

When I got to college, many things changed, and most things didn’t. In the span of four months, I had lost any semblance of familiarity, and in return, gained ten years’ worth of friends. When adults asked if I had a backup plan, I started saying no. 

But I was still putty fresh out of the casing: shapeless and impressionable. Who am I if I’m not perceived as something tangible? Surely that decision doesn’t belong to me. 

For the first time in years, I had no veil to conceal my mess. What began as something purely internal, soon trickled out and solidified as something physical. Laundry routinely blanketed my dorm floor. With each passing Wednesday, I was one half-off bottle of wine closer to emptying my savings account. My thumb had adapted to five-second intervals between each methodical flick, muscle memory on par with my doom scrolling. 

How to be successful by twenty-five! You should be successful by twenty-five. Flick. Get your Summer body by March! Flick. Get ready with me! Gym. Study. Green juice. Gym. Coffee. Class. Gym. Flick. 

With each methodical flick of the thumb, I was hooked on the perception of being methodical myself. I was hooked on hair matted into sleek ponytails. A glossy makeup routine disguised as natural beauty and minimalism. I was plagued by this Clean Girl Aesthetic, this virtual perception of girlhood rooted in consumerism that I couldn’t afford to consume. Finally, I could pour my mess into another mold. 

That is, up until I couldn’t. 

I tried relentlessly to slick back my hair in that polished fashion that appears so seamless online, only to find that it reminded me of middle school, dunking my curly hair under the shower nozzle so that I could try to comb the ringlets out of it. I had spent years chasing a cure to my dissatisfaction, only to realize that I was trapped in an endless loop of unattainability. 

Now, if there’s one label I’ll cling to, it’s that I’m a writer. And ever since, I’ve been able to romanticize my mess. A half-off bottle of wine is now a small price to pay for three hours’ worth of stories, and a senior superlative is now nothing but six, tacky words.

Written by Delaney Pipon

Edited by Renee Arlotti and Kate Castello

I never really understood why it was hard to find love in a city, especially one like Pittsburgh which has many universities. I finally decided to enter the dating scene here a few months ago and boy, is it a marathon. I’ve realized that finding love in this city is not my problem; it’s finding someone who wants a relationship. Rivaling with passing organic chemistry with an A or surviving sorority recruitment with your identity intact, finding someone who might just want to maybe, possibly start a relationship with you is impossible.

I had this conversation with my girlfriends repeatedly, and we all attempted to answer the same question: is love dead in Pittsburgh? It left me thinking for days and I finally came up with an answer: sort of. Now, that sounds like a cop-out, but hear me out! I find that the love I am searching for is too hard to ask of a college man. We are only so young and in my experience, a college man doesn’t want to find the head-over-heels love of his life. Rather, he wants to find someone that could have interest in him and then once you display that interest, he freezes up and calls it quits, leaving you and your dignity thrown into the trash like a SPAM email. 

Even worse are the dating apps, you see a guy you think is cute and he has in his dating intentions “Short-term relationship, open to long” or even worse than that, “Long-term relationship, open to short,” which both sound promising. But, most of the time, they’re not. Instead, they are just words on a screen without the intention of actually meaning much. Entering the dating world is being thrown into the biggest game of catfish, but with words, not pictures. Anyone can say anything they want on their profiles and if you are new to the dating scene like I was, you’re going to believe it all. I believed everything and anything a man told me about their life or their intentions. God, I even believed a man when he told me that he still liked me after he said he wasn’t exclusive with only me. Was I wrong to believe that? Absolutely.

My experience with love (or lack thereof) in Pittsburgh has been a convoluted one. Every time my trust is betrayed, I am brought back to the same starting point: is love dead in Pittsburgh? Now, I can only speak on my experiences– as a man looking to date other gay men–but it is eerily similar to that of my girlfriends seeking out straight men. In fact, a girlfriend of mine was detailing to me her past situationship and how it went from the obsession–the texting every day, the asking how your day was, the getting to know her roommates, and the meeting of his friends and hers–to complete radio silence. How is it that a beautiful, intelligent woman like her can get stood up by a man who in fact, started it all? 

Even worse, another girlfriend of mine was recently victim of a love bomber: one who showers you with constant love, affection, and adoration to ultimately gain control of you and the relationship. Once she ended things with him, he was quickly back on the dating apps to find his next person to assail. This is exactly how both cases, the obsessor and the love bomber, can get you and your emotional stability wrapped around their fingers. Right when you display interest, it’s game over and you are thrown back into the sea of eligible bachelors, drowning as each wave is thrown your way.

So where do we go from here as young adults joining or still stuck in the dating pool? Is love really dead in Pittsburgh? When entering (or drowning in) the dating pool, you should remember these three things: protect your peace, have fun with it, and always make sure to listen to your girlfriends (or your boyfriends if they are at all competent to the issue, which is rare I might add). We are only this young once, so make the most of it. Now go and call your girlfriends, they can probably relate to this one too.

Written by Will Beddick

Edited by Ruby Kolik & Elisabeth Kay