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-Ellie Konfrst | Tuesday, May 4, 2021
I’ve never been a huge fan of New Year’s resolutions. Even aside from the gross ways diet companies exploit people’s insecurities around the first day of every year, New Year’s resolutions seem doomed to fail. In the two decades of New Year’s Days I’ve experienced, I’ve tried my hand at a few resolutions (meditate more,
Ellie Konfrst | Tuesday, April 20, 2021
If you’re a friend of mine, a family member, or honestly anyone who’s interacted with me in the last few weeks, I’ve probably asked you the same unanswerable question: Should I cut my hair? It’s always the same conversation. I feel like I need a change, but I like being able to braid and style
Ellie Konfrst | Tuesday, April 6, 2021
This semester, my Thursday nights are usually entirely forgettable — I have class until 5:10 p.m., so when I get home my brain is completely fried. My roommates are usually at work, so I boil some pasta, change into sweats and watch a few episodes of whatever show I happen to be binging. A few
Ellie Konfrst | Tuesday, March 23, 2021
Alright, I’ll admit it. In the heat of the lockdown summer, around June of last year, I found myself down a rabbit hole of conspiracy theories. I was consuming heaps of media centered around conspiracies, from binging “The X-Files” to spending sweltering afternoons watching “documentaries” on The History Channel with my dad. I found learning
Ellie Konfrst | Tuesday, March 9, 2021
Growing up, I spent most of my time learning about the world in two rooms: my church sanctuary, and my living room, with the TV tuned to MSNBC. Religion and politics have always been a part of my life, but they were always completely unrelated. I’d hear my minister mention something about racial justice, or
Ellie Konfrst | Tuesday, February 23, 2021
We all know the one about the tortoise and the hare, right? I assume I don’t need to spend time recounting the tale, the fable employed to teach every third grader in the country about the importance of hard work and perseverance. From a young age, we’re taught that “slow and steady wins the race,”
Ellie Konfrst | Tuesday, February 9, 2021
If you know nothing else about me, you may know that I am a pretty big Taylor Swift fan. After I first heard “Red” when I was 13, I quickly devoured the rest of her discography and began anxiously anticipating her next releases. In a sense, I grew up with her, letting her stories of heartbreak
Ellie Konfrst | Tuesday, November 10, 2020
When I was about nine, I fell off my bike. My brother and I had ridden our bikes to the park, and on the way back, I veered off the sidewalk, fell on the pavement and skinned my knee. It was a pretty nasty fall — my poor, seven-year-old brother stared at me with wide
Ellie Konfrst | Tuesday, October 27, 2020
It’s a tale as old as time — or, at least, as old as cable news. Americans are more politically divided than ever, and traditionally unifying places, such as the Thanksgiving table, have become battlefields filled with impeachment-shaped land mines. The conversation about American political polarization is more salient than ever as the country approaches
Ellie Konfrst | Tuesday, October 13, 2020
It’s fair to say that these past few weeks have been a bit of a whirlwind — I keep feeling like every day I need a recap of all the news from the previous day, like the ones they put at the beginning of TV episodes. Yet, through all the debates and discussions and COVID-19