off the beat

If you see me taking notes during a movie, I’m having a great time. It sounds hopelessly academic, but in my defense, it’s 50% analysis, 50% commentary.

This moment with my cousin was memorable and valuable for both of us because these interactions with “the other side” are becoming fewer and fewer. The instant that we identify whether a person is a Democrat or a Republican, we often stop listening as we expect to learn nothing.

With the release of an approximately 1,300-page grand jury report detailing years of sexual abuse of minors by members of the clergy in a handful of Pennsylvania dioceses, the Roman Catholic Church has found itself facing a similar set of options — to either take responsibility or ignore the problem.

It was a constant battle trying to decide if I wanted to conform to the standards of success set by any given community on campus or if I wanted to create my own path and do me.

Sometimes, Berkeley just seems too large, and my odds of finding what I’ve lost are subsequently just too small. Sometimes, it just seems like too much of a commitment to invest the time into finding what I lost.