Inner Voices

A particular kind of love emerges when choice is suddenly revoked. Not violently, as if someone stormed in and took your options away, but politely — through circumstance.

I am currently sitting in front of my computer, definitely too late considering that I have to wake up at 6… and it is already the a.m., with me staring at a problem set that I intuitively understand is unsolvable, much like the broader equation of my life.

I had to excuse myself to the bathroom after this one. Just sat there in the stall crying, trying to be quiet. It felt embarrassing, but also, I couldn’t stop because it felt like something inside me was finally breaking open.

The sound is unmistakable. Click-clack. Click-clack. Hard plastic striking frozen asphalt. It is the music of 5:00 AM, played out in the dark parking lots of the Dolomites. I was three years old when I first learned the rhythm of it, my small, gloved hand lost inside my father’s palm.

I’m sitting here three days later, and I still can’t get it out of my head. The movie, I mean. Wicked. I went because everyone was going and I needed a break from studying for finals and maybe because I was curious about all the hype but I wasn’t expecting… this. I wasn’t expecting to leave the theater feeling like someone had reached into my chest and rearranged everything.

There will always be that strange feeling—the fear of not belonging, the sense that everything I do is so tiny, so fragile and transient that nothing will remain.

They call it the American Dream, but no one talks about the weight it places on your shoulders.

When I took over the Tech Editorship in April 2023, I only knew one thing about journalism: it was going to stop happening at Caltech unless somebody stepped up to lead it. With a dream of remedying the post-pandemic admin-student animosity but zero reporting experience, I was in for a daunting task. Then Richard Kipling emailed me and offered to buy me a coffee.

The second floor of Kerckhoff had an unusual stillness that evening. People trickled into the small library room for the Science and Faith Examined (SAFE) talk, uncertain yet curious. I sat near the back, notebook open, listening to Tara—a physics PhD student and president of GCF—unfold her reflections on quantum field theory and the Bible.

10:30 p.m. Heavy eyelids slowly closing, a reassuring lethargy gets hold of the body, tired after training.