Sometimes I feel like I’m trapped in a junk drawer. You know, that place in your kitchen that you kind of just throw random things in? Some scissors you don’t feel like bringing back upstairs. A few pencils or paper clips that are used only once in a while, collecting dust in that dark space. That one report card from middle school that your parents for some reason never threw away. Or like, a photograph of your fifth grade softball card that you hide in there, hating the way your tucked uniform accentuated that little soft spot on your stomach. Okay, that might be a little specific…but you get the idea. The infamous “junk drawer” that almost every household has somewhere—easy access to those random items but far enough to be able to forget about them. 

There are days where I feel like I’m a part of that medley of items. I am those pairs of scissors, not where I am supposed to be. Like I’m waiting for the moment where I feel at home. Or those paper clips–taken advantage of by that certain boy who has so much power over me. Taking me out and using me whenever it’s convenient for him, only to be thrown back into the junk drawer when it’s not. Relatable right? Gosh, men can really suck. 

But there’s also a another side to being in a junk drawer. You’re counted on. You’re relied on by others. My mom doesn’t go all the way upstairs when she needs a pen because she knows there's one in the junk drawer. It’s so unbelievably weird to feel simultaneously counted on yet taken for granted. Even the name “Junk Drawer” is contradictory. It implies all the items in the drawer are useless, yet each and every thing has a purpose. 

Perhaps that’s the tragedy of the junk drawer: people assume the things in it are junk. But in reality, being tucked away doesn’t make something “junk”, it just means people forget how much they need it until it’s gone.

Written by Alyssa Valdivia

Edited by Avery Polinsky and Daria Shepelavy

Graphic by Sophia Carithers

Last year, I moved into a new apartment, into a very small room with one small window. I spend most of my time sitting on my bed, window open, reading, journaling, and watching the sunset and the city skyline. It also opens up to my apartment complex’s parking lot. Said parking lot is home to many pregames, parties, and mixers, keeping me awake - not that I mind; as a nosy person, one of my favorite pastimes is eavesdropping. 

One Friday night, last semester, a group of guys was topping off their big night out at the bars by chain-smoking with a side of political debate. Between their coughing fits after each puff, they so diplomatically asserted that they would never trust a woman to be president. I froze for a moment, astonished that what I knew so many guys around me thought, they felt so comfortable and sure saying out loud. I am not naive to shared looks between men when my friends and I bring up politics; what I can see playing behind their eyes and twitching the corners of their mouths into a smirk, signifying they can apparently “see beyond the guise” of women in power and I’m blinded by the frenzy of feminism. My shock began to slowly turn to anger. How can these boys say such a thing with such ease, matter-of-factness, and arrogance, completely unbothered that their words could be overheard by those who have experienced the adversity they’ve never even considered? They remain completely confident in their ability to retain their friends, girlfriends, job, and reputations after saying that. And they probably will. 

There is no pretty way to tie this up. And I know my efforts in this essay are probably fruitless. I doubt a man will be scrolling through Studio 412 blog looking for some light reading and clicking on an essay about suffrage, but if he does, I know it will probably be interrupted by mockingly showing his friends some token lines taken out of context. But there is no happy ending, except for them. They can waltz through life, expressing their half-regurgitated views, protected by the haze of their cigarette smoke. The barrier they have created has made them seem untouchable, and therefore whatever they say is seen as gold by those in their circle. 

I’d like to think of myself as an optimistic person. Extremely optimistic. However, when it comes to this, their words snuffed out my light. Maybe it is because my parents raised me on the sounds of what we coined as “angry divorcee music.” Maybe having my dad play Alanis Morissette's “All I Really Want” on car rides back from YMCA play rehearsal instilled these feminist values and lit a fire under me in this way. It is hard to form this type of anger into words that might make a difference or have any sort of impact. The audience that this would be directed toward would just as soon blame any sort of offense I took from this on my menstrual cycle and estrogen levels. The message has to be calculated and watered down, insulting my own intelligence just to be given the chance to be heard. 

More recently, I did pick a fight with a man who tried to tell me that modern-day sexism didn’t exist, and if it did, we shouldn’t care because there is nothing we can do to fix it. This made me stop and check myself, and, of course, him. I thought back to all the waves of feminism that resulted in policy changes for women. I mainly cited the suffragette movement and the Seneca Falls Convention, explaining how they brought forth the 19th Amendment, none of which he had ever heard of. Looking at how far we have come, only to still be stuck so far behind. Looking at all the work previous generations of women have put in, only to be shot down by drunk college boys proclaiming their “emotions” make them unfit for office, and tuning out the suffrage lesson in their history courses.

In some ways, that boy was right; sexism will always be around. However, we can always and must always fight against it, using the movements of the past to inspire future change.

Written by Clare Flanigan

Edited by Ashley O'Doherty and Julia Brummell

Graphic by Nora

I have heard a million times that “a woman's intuition is her strongest asset,” but what I didn’t expect was how true this statement would prove to be and the influence it would have on my life. 

There’s a strange shift in your body after you’ve trusted the wrong person too many times. Around 16, I started noticing this uneasy sort of feeling in my stomach when someone said something that did not feel quite right. There would be a certain off-putting energy in the air in conversations with people I had grown up with or partners that were so longstanding that I couldn’t imagine life without them.

I started moving through my day-to-day life with hesitation–the kind you don’t notice until you catch yourself analyzing body language, thinking about conversations that happen in rooms you weren’t in, and putting more emphasis on what someone doesn’t say than what they do. 

More times than I can recall, my intuition has taken me to new heights and helped me escape harmful situations before I knew where they would lead. It has told me when to walk away, when to ask questions, and when something was not meant for me–even when I could not yet explain why. For a long time, I thought this instinct was a weakness that made me overly cautious or too sensitive. I wondered whether I was overthinking, being too dramatic, or feeling the need to give people the benefit of the doubt despite every alarm in my body was going off.

I have learned that intuition does not always arrive as a clear answer. It is the pause before sending a text, the sudden urge to leave a party, the feeling that something has changed in a friendship, or the realization that you are constantly making excuses for someone else’s behavior. 

It is the little voice in your head that tells you to get out before you have all the evidence to explain why. 

As women, we are often told from a young age to question our instincts; to be polite, forgiving, and avoid being difficult. We are taught to second-guess the uneasy feeling in our stomach because we do not want to be wrong. There is something incredibly empowering and comforting about learning to trust yourself and your instincts. It taught me that I no longer have to wait until I am hurt to know when something does not feel right. I urge every woman to learn to trust that quiet voice within her—the one that knows her worth, recognizes when something is wrong, and reminds her that she is never too much. Our intuition is not something to fear or dismiss; it is a strength that has been within us all along, only now we choose to hear and listen to it.

Written by Avery Polinsky

Edited by Alyssa Valdivia and Daria Shepelavy

Graphic by Allison Ewbank

⋆˚SOPHIA C˚꩜｡⋆

Dearest readers,

I always find that people’s shoe choices, especially their everyday shoe, says more about them than words ever could. I always look forward to seeing what funky sneakers Audrey will wear, and I always recognize my friend Nathan by his bright yellow crocs. One of my dearest friends, Tyler Campbell, wears his Converse nearly every day. To me this is one of his defining characteristics. 

“My Converse were my first big purchase when I got my debit card in Summer 2022. I was 14, and they were kinda my first accessory that felt “teenaged,” and not just something my parents picked out for me from Famous Footwear. They felt like a way to be independent from my monotonous school uniform and to be a “cooler teenager.” My parents thought they were ugly, but truthfully that only made me love them more. I wore them religiously until the summer of 2025, when they had their last outing at Hinterland in Iowa with my best friend David. They quite literally tore off my feet and fell apart on the last day. It felt fitting though, to lose them in August, right before my freshman year at Pitt began. I closed one chapter of my life, and started a new one when I bought my next pair.

My first pair of converse was one of my favorite things to photograph alongside my friends, and I still think of them fondly!!!!”

⋆.˚✮AUDREY｡✴︎˚｡⋆

I’ve always fallen in love with shoes that hurt my feet. I can remember the first pair that ever did. Beaded magenta mary janes that had a little buckled strap on top and flower embellishments on the toe. I was four years old and they made me feel like Strawberry Shortcake, the most powerful girl in the world.

This past week, I wore my tan Doc Marten boots. It was a bad decision. Not only was it 82 degrees, but my boots are also fur-lined. I was sweaty and started to worry I had plantar fasciitis because every time I stopped walking, my heels would BURN. I had to pause and stand before crosswalks on my toes so my heels wouldn’t touch the ground. The pain was so bad I had to walk all the way to CVS to get emergency Dr. Scholl’s inserts. I thought Doc Martens were supposed to be comfortable!!!!! 

After receiving countless images of carabiners this week for the blog, I became inspired to update my own apartment keys. Attached to my key and fob are a vintage Virginia Slims advertising keychain, a small friendship bracelet, and a bullet casing made into a small pencil!!

Here, I styled my favorite two pairs of walking shoes (my Fenty X Puma creepers and Adidas Superstars) and the Doc Martens that destroyed my heels.

Until next time ᯓ★ express your true self, if the shoe fits!

My whole life, I have felt like I have been “almost” there,

The backup second baseman on my high school softball team,

runner-up in every competition, the second-choice friend,

and half a point away from getting the higher grade.

I am always the friend everyone goes to when their other friends are busy,

the one who walks behind the group on the sidewalk,

and the person left to sit alone in the back seat of the car.

Involved yet never included.

My entire life has been an identity crisis of sorts,

like I am too much for some and not enough for others.

It's as if the universe has made everything unclear,

except for the fact that I am always so close to something.

Maybe that is why I have learned never to get my hopes up,

because being almost something feels safer than believing I could be.

I have become familiar with the feeling of watching

someone else get what I wanted, 

while telling myself I am happy for them.

Still, I keep wondering what it would feel like to be someone's first.

To be chosen without hesitation,

to be wanted without having to earn it,

to walk into a room and know I belong there.

Written by Avery Polinsky

Edited by Giulia Mauro and Julia Brummell

Graphic by Sophia Carithers

From Chinese and Japanese folklore, the Red String theory states that the people whom we love are connected to us by invisible red strings. We are destined to be with them regardless of the time, place, or circumstance.

I have always believed in the Red String theory since the minute I learned about it. I believed that too many “coincidences” happen in life for them to truly be coincidences. There are too many people I have met in my life that I am strangely connected to, or that I have met more than once, for that matter. 

But I think that the Red String theory is more specific. I think that Pittsburgh is actually the red string, pulling together my life. 

Since I was young, Pittsburgh has pulled me like a magnet. I lived in Vermont as a kid, and loved every minute of it, but when I acted up in preschool, I would tell my teacher that, “it doesn’t matter if I listen because soon I'm leaving for Pittsburgh.” Pittsburgh was always on the back of my mind. When it came time to pick where I was going to college, I was given the choice between New York and Pittsburgh, and I chose Pittsburgh. It wasn’t my first choice, but something about Pitt reeled me in. 

Unlike other large cities, there's a chance you know someone from every part of Pittsburgh. It’s small with a population of 310,000 people. New York has a population of over 8 million, and Chicago’s is nearly 3. Of course, this means that you are more likely to run into people, but that doesn’t explain the Pittsburgh diaspora- the people I’ve met thousands of miles away from Pittsburgh, who are from Pittsburgh. 

I wanted to hear other people’s stories, and I wanted to reach as many people as possible. Strangely, the way to reach the most people in Pittsburgh, whose demographic is mostly students and old people, was through Facebook, so I put out a Facebook post asking people to share their Red String story– specifically one that related to Pittsburgh. 

On the first day, I got 15 replies, and by the end of the week, 54. The stories were heartwarming about love, friendship, and overall how Pittsburgh brought together people’s lives, proving my theory that Pittsburgh ties us together; it is the center of the universe.

Here are some of my favorite stories. The ones that made me laugh, cry,  and realize just how much I love Pittsburgh. 

Ella’s Story:

“I'm from upstate NY, and I went to high school at a boarding school in northern Michigan. I had a lot of wonderful friends who I stayed in touch with, and some who I didn't. 

I went off to college in NYC, then worked around the country for several years until I moved to Pittsburgh in 2016. I sublet a room in a house from a grad student who was gone over the summer. A few days after I moved here, the landlord let me know I'd be getting a roommate. I came home and there was a stranger in my kitchen: my new roommate.

She introduced herself as having just moved to Pittsburgh for med school and said, ‘Hang on, do I know you?’

No, I said, I'm not from here.

‘Wait,’ she said. ‘Did you go to boarding school in northern Michigan?’

Turns out she lived across the hall from me our sophomore year. She'd graduated a year ahead of me. We'd been friends but not super close, so we'd lost touch. And then about a decade later, we ended up subletting from the same grad student to start the next chapter of our lives in Pittsburgh, hundreds of miles from where we first met.

Now we're good friends, and I love her like a sister. She moved away a few years ago but she's moving back soon, and I can't wait.”

Judith’s Story: 

“Had my knee operated on by Dr. David Steele at Allegheny General Hospital and was in Hilton Head, SC, recovering... sitting on the beach when a runner came by...we exchanged pleasantries. He asked who did my knee surgery, and I said Doc Steele...he asked which one... I said David... he said... ‘that's my dad and I just finished talking to him on the phone.’”

Bonnie’s Story: 

“My dad arrested a guy in North Strabane Twp in the early 80s. Arrested him in Pasco County, FL, and then again in North Strabane. All in the early 80s!”

Donna’s Story: 

“When I met my husband, I lived in Crafton, and he was from Carrick. After dating for a while, when our parents met, we learned that 40 years before that, our moms had been friends and walked to grade school together!

We also had many mutual friends through the years... but he and I never met!

Now, we have been married for 38 years.” 

Audrey’s Story: 

“My one grandfather came as a young man with only a couple of kids; the other came to Pittsburgh as a four-year-old. They lived a block away from each other in Allegheny City (now the North Side). Twenty years later, they were living two blocks apart in the Bluff. Thirty years after that, my folks would meet and get married, one set of grandparents lived at one end of a long street in Squirrel Hill, and the other remaining grandmother lived at the other end! The remaining grandma actually met my mother before my folks were married, but she was in the hospital and did not live to see their wedding. 

We presumed that both sets of my grandparents had never met, but after we researched where they lived, we found out they may as well have!”

Barb’s story: 

“I live in a small town in Eastern PA near Wilkes Barre, but I grew up in Shaler Twp. One Christmas vacation, my husband was in a bar with my father. They were talking to a friend of my dad’s, and he was introduced to his friend as being from Berwick, Pa. My dad’s friend said his daughter just bought a house there! My husband asked where it was, and it turns out they moved into our house that we just sold! His daughter and I both graduated from Shaler and lived in the same house 250 miles away! The reason we never knew that is that her mother-in-law actually purchased the house for them. In addition, the people we bought the house from were originally from Pittsburgh, too!”

Michele’s Story: 

“Years ago, when I moved to Ohio from the Pittsburgh area, I randomly picked a place to get my nails done. After chatting with the nail tech, I learned that her parents were from the same town as me. Turns out her parents were in my aunt and uncle's wedding, and her uncle was my softball coach when I was a kid!”

Nick’s Story: 

“I travel the tristate area and run into Pittsburgh natives all the time, especially those living in WV and OH. Many are connected to someone I know; it seems like Pittsburghers do have tighter connections than other cities. Mitch Albom wrote a book that said everyone can connect within six questions. In Pittsburgh, it's three. My dad worked at Westinghouse and J&L steel, and there is never a failure to be a person whose relative also did!”

Barbara’s Story: 

“My parents married in 1941 at St. Mary Magdalene in Homestead. They found out that they had both been baptized at that same church on the same day in 1918. Their families did not know one another until years later, when my parents were dating.”

Alice’s Story: 

“Just a few days ago, we were visiting in Eureka, California, and we went to a little tiny lighthouse near Trinidad, I believe. While we were searching the low tide area, there was another couple doing the same thing, and we started chatting. It turns out he was from my hometown of West Newton (near Pittsburgh).”

Paul’s story: 

“I was born, raised, and educated in Pittsburgh. In 1970, I moved to Tulsa, Oklahoma, for law school. I stayed in Tulsa and have been a private practice attorney since 1973. I have met many expat Pittsburghers in Tulsa and on my travels. Many of my connections have come up because of Steelers or Pirates gear. I met one man at the Tulsa Drillers (minor league baseball), and he was wearing a Steelers shirt. It turned out that we were the same age; he graduated in 1966 from North Hills High School, and I graduated from North Allegheny. We both played sports in high school and probably competed against each other. My new friend's father was a coach at West View High and later at North Hills. He coached several of my cousins!”

Annie’s story: 

“My partner and I actually tattooed our red string of fate on our pinkies. We fell in love in HIgh school in a tiny town three hours from Pittsburgh, but lost touch for seven years. We both moved out here and reconnected. We've been together for almost two years now!”

Carrie’s Story: 

“My story doesn’t start in Pittsburgh, but it came all the way to Pittsburgh!

When I was three years old, I had a babysitter named! She was 16 at the time. 

V had a rough home life and eventually ended up in foster care. My parents informally adopted her, and when she turned 18, she took a nannying job in NYC and went off. She’d send Christmas cards the first few years after moving out, which is how we were able to keep track of where she was, but after a while, the cards just stopped. This was before the age of cellphones and social media, so we fell out of touch completely. 

I’d think about V sometimes and hope she was doing well. I had fond memories of those few years when I had a big sister. I’d never had a way to reach out to her, and if she was on social media now, she wasn’t using her full name. 

Fast forward to 2025, I am 31 years old and married. I met my husband at Syracuse University and ended up settling down in Pittsburgh, closer to his family. 

Recently, out of the blue, V called my parents’ house. She wanted to thank them for everything they did for her all those years ago. During their conversation, V mentioned that she was now living in Pittsburgh, PA.

My parents had a trip already planned to come visit, and while they were here, we made plans to meet up with V. Since then, we have met up on numerous occasions for coffee, dinner, and game nights. She has a 7-year-old daughter and is the best mom. 

It’s incredible to have her back in my life nearly 30 years later, and somehow, we both ended up in Pittsburgh.”

Written by Giulia Mauro

Edited by Julia Brummell and Elisabeth Kay

Graphic by Allie Ewbank

I’ve always defined myself by my pursuit of love. I’m addicted to anything romantic, even if there’s no happy ending. I remember sitting on my bathroom floor in high school, ready to define myself by another Internet-chosen trait: my love language. I tapped through different options on my illuminated screen, excited to see how I could apply these results to the relationship I’d make up in my head with the person I had a crush on that week.

My infatuation with love hasn’t gone away; if anything, it’s grown. But through years of heartache, delusion, and throwing myself away, I’ve abandoned the notion that love can only find me through a partner– and, funnily enough, love has found its way back to me through that, too. My obsession with love is rationalized when I count up all the different languages it speaks to me in, and I pray it never stops.

Quality Time

My dad’s favorite part of every day has always been sitting at the dinner table. While he’s happiest when eating, it’s the people occupying the table that make it his favorite. At home, each member of the immediate family has unassigned assigned seats; this even includes Gibby, our family dog who’s gone blind in his years of old age, who sits on his own chair in the corner. We don’t believe in leaving anyone out, obviously. In high school, when a friend of mine would join for dinner or a family member from out of town would be in for the holidays, our seats didn’t change. Instead, a new chair would be added, and the top of the small dining table would become crowded with a few more plates than normal. When I come home now, my seat waits for me, and so does my dad with a bottle of wine instead of Diet Coke.

In my apartment, the brown pleather sofa is my dinner table most nights, occupied by my roommates and I. Usually a YouTube video is put on the TV that sits on our decorated mantle, and one video turns into five or six. Our empty plates go cold as our laughs grow harder, putting off the work and evening routines that wait for us in our respective rooms. I’m spoiled enough to never want to spend another dinner alone again.

Physical Touch

The brown pleather sofa in my living room has a love language of its own. When responsibilities are limited and couch time can be never-ending, I’ll find my body inching closer and closer towards my roommate’s next to me, until something in a movie or TV show will make us scream and grip each other’s arms. This isn’t a rare occurrence; I’m lucky enough to have found myself two girls who are just as reactive as I am, making every moment feel big.

Our couch has seen other lovers, too. It’s seen me nervously put my knees on top of a boy’s I’ve known for a while, blurring the lines between friends and more as my cheeks flush. Weeks later, we sit in the same spot, but the couch is full of my roommates and more friends, and I’m nuzzled between his arm and chest; a spot I’ve grown comfortable in. My roommate sits next to a boy who once laid his head in her lap in the same nervous way, until they decided their love was better platonically.

Acts of Service

My college apartment has taught me a lot about what it means to be an adult, and the mundane tasks that come with it. It’s taught me to appreciate walking into the kitchen to see the dishes cleaned after a long week, or my laundry neatly folded for me after time had slipped away from me. If I ask who did it, the answer is always the same: a fairy.

The fairy that lives in our apartment does more than just dishes and laundry, though. I keep a note the fairy left me on a particularly bad day once on my wall above the ceramic gnome it was left with. It catches my eye at least once a day as I do my make up or agonize over an assignment, reminding me of those who love me when I can’t find it in me to love myself.

Words of Affirmation

I’m quick to say I love you. I’m not shy to remind those I love just how much I do, through notes, or cards, or a simple text. Sometimes, I’ve been convinced that I’m almost too much when it comes to this– convinced I didn’t deserve that back, and that’s why I wasn’t getting it from the one person I wanted it from the most.

But it’s all around me, in other forms. It means more to me when my roommate surprises me with an I love you before leaving for break, or in a barista complimenting my outfit on a day I didn’t try as hard as I normally do. Hearing simple I love yous or compliments feels better when they’re genuine– and now, that’s all I’m surrounded by. Because I’m not too much, I was just loving the wrong people.

Gift Giving

I get my love of reading from my mom; so much so that every year for Christmas, or Mother’s Day, or her birthday, at least one gift will be a book. I learned that when I was four, and my dad decided to let my brother and I tag along to Christmas shop with him. I’ve never been the best at keeping a secret– my brother continues to remind me that I have a big mouth– and when overexcitement took over my tiny body, I couldn’t contain myself. I got home, crawled into my mom’s lap, and began to tell her everything we’d bought for her, starting with books. It didn’t take long for my dad to shout from another room to get me to stop.

While I’m still not the best secret keeper, giving gifts comes naturally to me. It’s worth it– I watch my roommate open the gift I ordered her months before, tears brimming her eyes as she jumps up and down with incoherent screams of thanks fly from her mouth. I physically shake as my brother and I execute a surprise for my dad’s sixtieth birthday we’ve been orchestrating for months in advance. I make at least four different Valentine’s Day cards, until I can perfect my cursive writing or decide on something else.

Written by Elisabeth Kay

Edited by Julia Brummell

Graphic by Elisabeth Kay

I mean, can you blame us? It's hard to break habits—even harder to break addictions. And that's what the constant scroll on social media is. An addiction. An addiction that has become so normalized that it's been mystified as natural. But there's nothing natural about waiting for the elevator in your building and choosing to stare at a small rectangular screen instead of engaging in conversation with the complex individual standing next to you. 

Even waiting for the bus has become a sight for sore eyes. I'm filled with this dystopian dread when I observe my surroundings. Necks are drooping, and fingers are scrolling. 

And it doesn't have to be this way. We can all agree that we don't want it to be this way. When talking with my friends and peers on this subject, not one has expressed that they want to spend more time on their phone. It's always, “Ugh, I need to stay off of TikTok” or “Yeah, I’ve been setting time limits for Instagram.” Maybe we are beginning to realize how much we are missing out on. We are missing out on the world around us. Missing out on conversations. Missing out on hearing new voices—untamed volumes. Missing out on seeing new sights: new shades of sunset and new shades of natural blush on people's cheeks. We are missing out on the college experience we were promised. 

This is certainly not the college experience I was promised. Not the dinner table I was promised. Not the world I was promised. 

So let's not accept this world. 

Older generations worry about our social capabilities. But let's not give them a reason to worry.

Let's connect. 

Let's welcome boredom. Let's welcome boredom and let it take us to creating art. Take us to talking to a new person in class, to meeting our lovers, and to finding our passions. 

I shouldn't have to compete with this uninvited, digital third party. When I'm with you, I shouldn't have to fight for your eyes' attention.

My senior year of high school, I was given the opportunity to go on a retreat with 40 of my peers. None of us had access to our phones for three days. It was an adjustment on the first day—hands reached for empty pockets and were quickly met with the reminder that a phone is not a body part. But that initial discomfort faded quickly. Friendships formed fast, and conversations flourished. You could feel this collective starvation of deep human connection. And finally, when our phones were nonexistent, we starved no more. 

I made close friendships with individuals that I had barely even spoken to before the retreat. Others had the same experience. It was beautiful. We invented games and created art and formed genuine relationships. At one point, all of us gathered in a circle and orchestrated a rap battle. We experienced pure joy. 

It felt refreshing to know that, as young adults, we’re still capable of experiencing this pure joy. We’re still capable of cultivating creativity. We just need to resist reaching for our phones. 

We are capable of so much more when our eyes aren't glued to those tiny screens. 

We are capable of connecting. 

So go on your phone in solitude. It's your choice to devote your alone time to scrolling. But how dare you choose to scroll when you're surrounded by interesting minds just waiting to be explored?

Let's connect.

Let's view scrolling like how we view smoking a cigarette—indulging occasionally, knowing it's bad for us. We look down on the idea of doing it in public and around others.

This is not to say that filming TikTok dances with your friends is bad. Let's keep doing that. Let's keep sending our friends memes, and let's keep using social media…in smaller doses. Because it is fun. But with the dosage we are using now, is it more fun than playing outside all day? More fun than having a movie night? Is it more enjoyable than going for a walk with your roommate and having a philosophical conversation? Is it better than being challenged and feeling you've grown because of it? Than experiencing love? Than hugging someone? Than being complimented by a stranger? Than making up a game to play on a long car ride? Is it better than the feeling you get when you're laughing with the people around you, so immersed in the present moment? 

So let's hold each other accountable. Hold me accountable. Talk to me. I'd much rather talk to strangers and have my own experiences than be consumed by the experiences of others on TikTok. 

Inevitably, this addiction will consume us some days. But it doesn’t have to every day. Don't let it. Don't let it become so normal. Please. 

Let's be able to have memories to reminisce on. 

“Remember that beautiful hike we went on?”

“Remember when we laughed until milk came out of your nose?”

“Remember when we would get frozen yogurt every Friday and catch up?”

“Remember when we stayed up until 1 a.m. playing Uno?”

Let's not be able to say, “Remember when we stared at our phones all day?”

Let's connect.

Written by Ella Aben

Edited by Liv Kessler and Julia Brummell

Graphic by Ella Aben