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-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
Ellie Konfrst | Tuesday, September 29, 2020
The moment news broke of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s death, I was, unfortunately, on Twitter. As I processed the implications of this news, I watched my entire timeline do the same, in real time. First came the emotional reactions from those who idolized her, then the backlash highlighting the more conservative parts of
Ellie Konfrst | Tuesday, September 15, 2020
Other than a Girl Scout sleepaway camp, before I turned 18, I had never been camping before. Nevertheless, my freshman year of college was bookended by two camping trips that changed the way I saw myself and the way I saw the world. Two days before I moved into my freshman year dorm room (miss
Ellie Konfrst | Tuesday, September 1, 2020
This summer, while driving across the country for work, my friend and I stopped at a rest stop in Oklahoma. If it weren’t for us and the rest stop employee in our masks, you probably wouldn’t have known there was a pandemic going on. Walking into the small, cramped bathroom, I heard a (maskless) woman
Ellie Konfrst | Tuesday, August 18, 2020
In kindergarten, my answer to the question “what do you want to be when you grow up?” was a teacher, maybe a veterinarian. In first grade, it suddenly became President of the United States. That abrupt switch echoed the sentiments of many of the adults in my life who lauded me by remarking on how