Student Life

When I was in high school, I made the unfortunate decision to take a job as one of Santa’s helpers at my local mall.

In a corner of my living room at any given time, there’s a pile of Whiskas cat food scattered across the hardwood floor.

With Kingston claiming the title of highest per capita restaurants in the country, it’s no surprise the city is saturated with charming, small-town coffee shops.

For many of us, this year’s university experience has been confined to a computer screen, splitting our time between refreshing OnQ and attending dreaded Zoom lectures.

Nicole Osayande, ArtSci ’21, launched her YouTube channel and digital community, Black Beauty Tech, this week. Her first full video, titled “Black Women Dating at Predominantly White Institutions,” is a roundtable conversation featuring seven Queen’s students.

“Are you still watching?” This is the prompt that appears when Netflix is concerned you’re spending too much time in front of the screen.

“How to figure out your curl type.” “Product dos and don’ts for curly hair.” “Common curly hair mistakes and how to avoid them.” These are just a taste of titles from the overwhelming slew of articles meant to guide you through the challenges of managing curly hair circulating online.

The concept of ‘gifted kid burnout’ has been around on the internet for a while, but it’s recently found a second wind on TikTok.

COVID-19 cases have spiked once again in Ontario, bringing a stay-at-home order which has relegated us back to our homes and away from socially distanced in-person interactions with friends. Much like last spring, as restrictions tighten, you might find the limits of your friendships tightening, too.

The average person will spend a total of six years and eight months on social media in their lifetime—that’s a staggering commitment.

I can’t believe it will be March in less than two months. It doesn’t feel like it’s been almost a year since I was franticly packing, booking overpriced plane tickets, and finding a way to get to the airport as announcements of borders closing and rising COVID-19 cases broke daily.

This winter break, I’ll be spending my holiday apart from my friends—but that doesn’t mean we won’t still hang out.

Staring at a computer for hours on end, only to take a break by switching to stare at your phone, is hardly the healthiest way to spend your day. Unfortunately, with online work and classes to study for, it’s the reality for many—if not all—students.

Family dinners at my household have always been filled with vibrant conversation. Growing up, popular topics included what my brother and I learned at school, complaints about workdays, and drama surrounding social lives. But when I moved home this spring at the beginning of the pandemic and family dinners were reinstated, conversation topics had shifted to more mature subjects.

When choosing to attend university a five-hour flight away from where I grew up, I knew I was in for a weather change. Growing up in a temperate rainforest, I was used to what most people would classify as ‘bad’ weather: in Vancouver, it usually rains more than 150 days a year. How could a little bit of snow be much worse?

I’ve always been proud of my American-Canadian dual citizenship. While I grew up in a small, Connecticut town, my summers were consumed by month-long visits to my grandparents’ cottage near Westport, Ontario. Christmas often meant travelling to Ottawa to see grandparents and cousins.