3 Things I’ve Learned About Failure

1. Take action against failure. The worst thing you can do to yourself is to start something expecting it to end in failure. A certain awareness of the possibility of failure is needed for everything, but predicting failure as the most likely outcome of anything and everything you do will make everything seem futile. Relax. …

Five Movies We Really Should Be More Stoked For

5. Chappie. A coming of age story set in a grim future featuring a robot with a name so saccharine it would give a Gummi bear diabetes. Its 2016, and a robot police force controlled by corrupt and vindictive officers rules with an iron fist. A young scientist creates a machine capable of empathy and …

Five Suggestions for Weight Loss

I started the title of this post tempted to stick an “easy” in between the words “five” and “step”, but then I realized I would have been typing to deceive, not to inform or encourage. It’s not easy; it’s never been easy. It’s a commitment, one reaffirmed everyday, from the second your feet touch the …

Surviving an Internet-free Weekend

A while back a friend of mine participated in something that sounded less like an experiment and more like a dare suggested by a sadistic college student; he was to go a week without using the internet. No internet for seven days and seven nights. Not even for Google. No Skype, no Netflix, and definitely …

Five Things to Think On

1. Get out. There’s a college beyond your dorm room door. Don’t keep it waiting; let it in for a chat, maybe an hour of Netflix. You’ll meet some of your best friends for the next three years in the first three weeks, so get out and get busy putting names to faces. 2. Get …

‘Twas the night before snow….

  I had gone to bed the night before listening to snowflakes drifting into my window, like clouds of silver flies swarming mutely around a lit lamp. The light from the street lamp outside was flecked with the tiny of airborne ice, soft grey shadows against latte-white light. I wondered how many feet of snow …

Homesickness Hates Company

Homesickness is like chickenpox; I’ve never gotten it, but have been told its a necessary evil of life everyone else has suffered from. I’ve never known why I’ve never been homesick; home is awesome. Home is the feverish, erratic pulse of Accra under the warm afternoon sun, the cries of the hawkers and peddlers toting …

Your World, Your Pace

My third September in Holland heralds its arrival with the return of the sharp Midwestern wind, the promise of warm apple cider and early Halloween decorations in department stalls and malls. With this December marking the end of my third year at Hope and New Year’s January the beginning of my last, it’s about time …

Alexander’s Adventures in the Midwest

Its been good to get back to Hope; to the rolling greens of the Pine Grove, the austere brickwork of century-old buildings like Van Vleck Hall and academic buildings on campus. To friends, professors, teammates, roommates and even the faculty members in dining halls and work crews. Its been good to walk along the spotless chrome-lit …