The Observer is a student-run, daily print & online newspaper serving Notre Dame, Saint Mary's & Holy Cross. Learn about us.
-Ellie Konfrst | Tuesday, April 5, 2022
I’m not very good at settling on a favorite anything, but when people ask me what my favorite movie is, I usually tell them 2017’s “Lady Bird.” It’s a pretty basic answer for a twentysomething white woman, but I tell anyone who will listen that my favorite artist is Taylor Swift, so it’s not like
Ellie Konfrst | Tuesday, March 22, 2022
For me, it started with an email. I didn’t know it then, but the email I received with the subject line “COVID-19/MANDATORY MEETING” was the first of countless I would receive about the pandemic from Notre Dame officials. I was studying away in Washington, D.C. at the time, so the email (and subsequent mandatory meeting)
Ellie Konfrst | Tuesday, March 1, 2022
As part of my internship-less and vaccinated summer, in August I visited Glacier National Park with my boyfriend. We braved 1000 miles of Interstate 90 to have a chance to visit one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever seen, and I loved every minute of it (well, not every minute). On our second day
Ellie Konfrst | Tuesday, February 15, 2022
I have to be honest for a second. I have no idea what to write this column about. Normally, my discernment process for column topics is pretty easy: I think about whatever I’ve seen or read or heard that made me feel something in the past two weeks (that something is usually anger) and decide
Ellie Konfrst | Tuesday, February 1, 2022
I’m not sure whether it’s the warm allure of my bed or my tendency to leave my desk to gossip with my roommates, but trying to do any work at my apartment has become a pretty hopeless endeavor. So, to write this column, I have braved the 12-degree South Bend weather to drive three minutes
Ellie Konfrst | Tuesday, January 18, 2022
Since I was in middle school, one of the only things that has gotten me through the long, cold winter months was the awards season for film and television. I follow analysts online, listen to podcasts every week and try to watch as many “Oscar movies” as possible to be fully prepared for the discourse.
Ellie Konfrst | Monday, December 6, 2021
A week before Thanksgiving, Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt commuted the sentence of Julius Jones, a death row inmate set to be executed for a 1999 murder, in dramatic fashion. Advocates and attorneys for Jones spent weeks biting their nails after the Oklahoma Pardon and Parole Board recommended his sentence be commuted at the beginning of
Ellie Konfrst | Tuesday, November 9, 2021
When I was growing up, my family went on a lot of road trips. Some were reasonable, only a few hours away in Illinois, and some were a bit more intense, like the semi-regular fourteen hour drive we took to see family in Georgia. In general, if we could drive, we drove. In return for
Ellie Konfrst | Tuesday, October 26, 2021
There’s a picture of me from when I was young that my mom loves to show to whomever she can, from Facebook friends to any of my friends who come to visit. I’m probably about two or three, asleep in my bed, surrounded by at least a dozen books, some open and some closed, all
Ellie Konfrst | Tuesday, October 12, 2021
I missed my therapy appointment last week. It was completely my fault: I thought the appointment was at a different time, but the hour I was actually scheduled was during one of my classes. I shouldn’t have been that upset — I had been laying in bed for the half hour before my appointment thinking