When people say study abroad, they envision art museums, brunch in quaint cafes and tall men with French accents. But studying in a foreign country has highs and lows like any other experience, and it isn’t always what it’s cracked up to be.
I’m excited for this edition because I’ll be reviewing an essential part of Tufts: The Sink. This on-campus, student-run coffee shop is located in Tufts’ Mayer Campus Center. Its name is appropriate for the basin shape of the seating area around it, which looks like, well, a sink. Two tables sit across from the cafe, then there’s a lower basin area two steps down which leads to four tables. The tables seat one or two people on comfortable benches and two or three people in chairs around the table (depending how many people squish in; I’ve seen up to six!).
Picture this: You wake up, the sun shines through your blinds and you feel an unnerving sensation tingling in your nostrils. The worst possible feeling has descended upon you — a stuffy nose. As a student, being sick is one of the most irritating inconveniences to your day. It can start with a sniffle or a throat itch, and then BOOM! You’re on bed rest.
Sports are about money. Nobody understands that better than owners, whose money is the principal currency of competitiveness. Two of them, Golden State Warriors owner Joe Lacob and Boston Red Sox owner John Henry, recently gave interviews to The Athletic about funding their respective enterprises, the former approaching dynastic status and the second in panic mode. Let’s see what they had to say.
Queeries: Valentine's Day special
Refereeing is literally impossible. That makes no sense, so I’m going to explain it with my favorite overly-complex comedy bit: responding to an imaginary heckler. Action.
Have you ever sat through the credits after a movie and watched thousands of names roll across the screen? I used to think there couldn’t be that many people in the country, let alone on a set. There are millions of titles I don’t even know the meaning of — key grip, best boy, script supervisor — all coming together to make one 90-minute feature.
Given that I was disappointed when a new collective bargaining agreement in 2022 forced the National League to adopt the designated hitter, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that I’m not the biggest fan of the rule changes that the MLB is introducing for 2023. And yet, like the universal DH, I understand why the league is making them.
As interpersonal relationships play a good role in the survival and well-being of social animals like humans, ways to establish, maintain or repair connections between subjects have been perpetual hotspots for public opinion to either discuss or reflect upon. Moreover, it has been an aspect that is inevitably analyzed in academia whenever the issue relates to social psychology, anthropology and sociology discourses. Of course, I am not a relationship scientist, but simply writing from my lived experiences.
What should you get involved in, in college? Since I entered college last fall in 2021, I'm curious. Some say that there are activities in college that you can only do during these four years and at no other time, while others say that such activities are the only way to keep yourself busy or distracted from the hustles, worries and bustles surrounding the rest of your day, week, month, semester, year! So, are we giving up too much of our free time, or are we not giving up enough?
If you’re a Tufts student, chances are you’ve been to Tamper. It’s a short minute walk from campus, depending on where you are, and you can get there from lower campus without climbing any hills (a big plus). I feel a personal connection to this spot because it was the first coffee shop I stopped by when I first toured Tufts. And it feels very “Tufts” with a lot of students working there and comprising much of its customer base.
“Just give it a few weeks, and you’ll settle into a routine.” That’s what I heard my entire first week in London. “It’ll get so much easier once you get your schedule down. Just wait until things get a little less crazy.”
While most will remember Diego Maradona in the iconic sky blue and white of Argentina, some might recall his time in Italy, where the Argentine magician wore a darker shade of blue. A symbol of hope for a suffering city, Maradona brought life to Naples, taking Napoli from near relegation to its first-ever Scudetto in 1987 and adding another in 1990. In the post-Maradona era, however, Italian football slipped back into its usual three-horse race between Juventus and the two great Milan clubs. Since 2002, only these three sides have shared the glory of Italian football, a period which included eight consecutive titles for Juventus. This season, however, the familiar script of Italian football has taken an unexpected twist with the renaissance of Napoli.
If you didn’t tune into the 2023 NHL All-Star Weekend, hosted Friday and Saturday in Sunrise, Fla., you missed seeing Maple Leafs forward Mitch Marner dress up as Miami Vice’s Sonny Crockett on a breakaway challenge, the hard-nosed Tkachuk brothers perform a beach-themed on-ice skit and the “Great 8” Alex Ovechkin’s 4-year-old son, Sergei, offer a glimpse into his hockey future.
Hello to all our queers, peers, queer peers, etc. Queeries is coming right back at you again for the spring 2023 semester. Similarly to last fall, we’ll be discussing anything and everything queer. We’re here, we’re queer and we’re here to spread all the love and joy. Please enjoy our iterations this semester.
Although I decided to study film in Prague for a semester, I’ve always been nervous abroad — a byproduct of my woefully American fashion sense and drawl. Despite possessing an English mother, I’ve found my accent does me no favors in Europe; my brother and I joke that as soon as we dare to speak within London, the surrounding passersby’s estimation of our IQ drops by 30 points. At times, it’s difficult to not feel judged.
On Jan. 28, the Boston Symphony Orchestra finished the month with a familiar formula for programming at this point.Steven Mackey’s “Concerto for Curved Space” opened as the contemporary work, Dmitri Shostakovich’s “Violin Concerto No. 2” followed, continuing the BSO’s Shostakovich cycle and Johannes Brahms’ “Symphony No. 4” closed as the vetted canonical work.
Once the most popular sport in America, there’s no denying that our national pastime is far from its former glory. For a sport seemingly as American as apple pie, baseball is far behind football as the most popular sport in the country, and this is especially true among younger Americans: Only 7% of Americans under 30 say baseball is their favorite sport, well behind football (24%) and basketball (17%).
If you’re a Tufts student, you may not know about Simon’s Coffee Shop (located at 1736 Massachusetts Ave. in Cambridge). It’s a bit of a hike from campus (about a 40 minute walk or a 20 minute T ride), but it’s worth venturing to because the cozy vibes are off the charts.
I heard someone say that Kyrie Irving is an allegory for the modern American worker. Employers want a return to pre-pandemic normalcy — complete with in-person offices and regular working hours—while their employees increasingly expect their work to adapt to how their lives have already changed because of the pandemic. Except Irving is not down-to-earth, flexible or even making logical demands. He is a missile launcher aimed directly at the heart of whatever NBA franchise he happens to be on.
