Would you like a sample? asked a woman in a uniform just past the store’s threshold, gesturing out a sample in a small white cup, similarly to how pills were handed out in prisons on TV shows. The rows of food reached nearly to the ceiling of the store, so high they required a forklift to be lowered down to the patrons. A child begged her mother for a sample of an unfrozen fried Wonton appetizer, which her mother steadfastly denied. Sure, Stacey said, accepting the small cup, finding it pleasantly crunchy with afternotes of carrot.
Author: Claire August
A Completely Precedented Goodbye For Unprecedented Times
I received an email from The New York Review of Books, though I do not remember signing up for their mailing list, advertising gifts for the Class of 2020. Enclosed in the email was a catalogue of thin silver bracelets with quotes from famous authors. The advertisement’s featured bracelet had a quote from Thoreau in a handwriting-like font that said: “Go confidently in the / direction of your dreams— / Live the life you’ve imagined.” I will not be buying one of these silver bracelets, nor have I learned, these past few months, how to bake sourdough.
Lolmythesis: BCB Edition 2020
This past Friday, BCB seniors handed in their final thesis project and celebrated with an online reception. Despite the online nature of the celebration, spirits were high and the seniors were ‘crowned’ as per BCB tradition. In this compilation, I asked current fourth-years to contribute to a BCB edition of Lolmythesis, in which contributors are
Five Essays in Miniature
I walked in on the dog in my room staring at himself in the mirror. His nose was right on the surface and he was just staring and doing nothing else. When he heard me come in the room, he looked around, appeared to be embarrassed, as did I.
From the Archives: Identity
“So writing, I think, is an interestingly perverse occupation. It is quite sick in the sense of normal human enjoyment of life, because the writer is always removed, the way an actor never is,” states author Edna O’Brien in an interview with The Paris Review. “An actor is with the audience, a writer is not
“Thinking Things Together”: An Alumni Interview with Philip Euteneuer
I met up with Philip on an early December afternoon, in a cafe near campus, which is populated mostly with mothers, cradling shrill babies. From the windows of the cafe, I could notice the great stacks of Christmas trees installed in a market near the bus stop. When Philip enters the cafe, he sees a friend, who he greets in German. Our interview paused only for Philip to order a slice of poppyseed cake.
From the Archives: On an Excursion
Each fall break, BCB students disperse from leafy Pankow into the city of Berlin and beyond. While some students travel home, others take trips around Europe, and some use this valuable week to rest after midterms and explore Berlin. In this edition of “From the Archives,” we take a look at various excursions and adventures
Lolmythesis: BCB Edition
This compilation is inspired by the blog Lolmythesis, in which contributors are asked to “sum up years of work in a single sentence.” I asked BCB seniors to make similar one-sentence spins on their theses after a year of hard work. Fear not, the real theses are far more academically rigorous than portrayed below.