As I scrolled through the news headlines back in July, “WE Charity Scandal” caught my eye for a moment, but not enough to entice me to click and read the article. Pandemic predictions, historic civil rights movements, and university updates had all of my attention.  

In March, the pandemic shut down campus. In April, I found out my Opa had cancer—it was in his esophagus, his lungs, his brain. In May, he died.

Two days after St. Patty’s weekend, I got an unexpected call from my dad in the States. “I’m coming to get you tomorrow,” he said.

As  a child, I hated shopping for clothes. 

If you had asked me a year ago what I thought my third year at university was going to look like, I can promise you I wouldn’t have said “learning in the midst of a global pandemic.”

When I was in the third grade visiting family in Bangladesh, I wore a lot of short skirts and shorts to keep cool in a tropical climate. 

A lot of people hate running. It’s not the easiest sport to like—it can feel boring, interminable, and even painful. However, growing up, my dislike of running went a bit deeper than most.

I was born in Baghdad to Iraqi parents who fled war to Amman, Jordan. Although I grew up as part of a marginalized Iraqi community in Jordan, I was also part of the majority of the population, adapting to the Jordanian accent and identifying as both an Arab and a Muslim.

When I walked into 190 University Avenue on May 1 and saw my name on the office door, I burst into tears.

In light of the spread of Coronavirus cutting this semester short, The Journal put out a call to students graduating in 2020, asking them to submit a final message to Queen’s.

At the end of my third year of undergrad, I was diagnosed with vulvodynia, a form of sexual dysfunction which makes vaginal penetration extremely painful.

I’ve been overweight for most of my life.

When I was in my final year of high school at a diverse school, I remember telling my friends I was planning to accept my offer to Queen’s.

My dad died when I was 16 years old.

“I just wish they were dead.” To this day, I can’t believe I had ever been at such a point of darkness that I was able to speak such words about my abusers.

University usually marks the first time that teens move away from their home and their parents, and when they really start developing into independent young adults.

A cruel and unaddressed racist rhetoric in South Asian communities means that we might just take the trophy for self-righteous anti-blackness.

As a Film and Media minor, I knew entering university that I wanted to get involved in extracurricular activities that fostered my interest in making videos. Little did I know that, now, as a third-year student, I’d be the video editor at The Queen’s Journal.

When the clock struck midnight this New Year’s Eve, the world not only said goodbye to the past year, but to the past decade.

When November rolls around, many people are left wondering what Movember is and why a bunch of guys are trying to grow mustaches (even though sometimes, they can’t).