I spent the evening of the 2016 election at a victory party for Hillary Clinton.
I arrived at the door that night smiling. I had spent the whole day looking at the productive part of my computer, not the internet part. I knew nothing.
The first crack in my optimism came when I saw my colleagues clustered around the television. The electoral map loomed on the screen. The newscasters did not sound happy. Neither did anybody watching.
Then came the round of furious Googling on my cell phone, as I tried to catch up on everything I had missed. The…
I’ve spent the better part of the last three weeks fighting a nasty chest cold. It’s insidious — the type that attacks in waves. The first wave started in the back of my throat and then migrated into my chest, the way most of my colds normally do. I spent a few days coughing up god-knows-what. For a few days I sounded like a frog choking on a kazoo, but eventually the hoarseness resolved, and I relaxed because it was over.
Except it wasn’t.
The second wave started deep inside my chest. I thought it was just a lingering scratch…
Graduate student, social scientist, and writer. Also, totally unrelated to those three; I overthink things.