I grew up around a college campus, as my father is the Senior Food Services Director at a small university in northeastern Pennsylvania. As a result, I learned a lot about how food services departments work and should be run. I remember watching my dad walk around the dining hall […]

“I don’t know what to say, except it’s Christmas and we’re all in misery,” Ellen Griswold (Beverly D’Angelo) tells her daughter, Audrey (Juliette Lewis), to quell her complaints in the 1989 movie National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation. Like Ellen, many protagonists of Christmas-themed comedies suffer through the motions of domestic life, […]

Walking out of the theater, I felt my legs shake beneath me even though I’d only been sitting for an hour and a half. My body had to adjust from being brought out of orbit by Alfonso Cuarón’s Gravity. The movie is seen from Dr. Ryan Stone’s (Sandra Bullock) perspective […]

Growing up in Sierra Madre, Calif., Hannah Seymour ’17 often wondered why none of her school peers wanted to visit her house to play after school. It couldn’t have been her parents, Sally and Ralph. In her opinion, they were “the gold-standard of parenting.” Logically, she concluded that she was […]

Audrey Maney ’14 first developed a Francophile disposition as a child while visiting her friend’s house. Throughout her play dates, Maney watched as her friend and the girl’s mother casually spoke to each other in French. Inspired, Maney enrolled in French in middle school and continued through college. Her childhood […]

Editors’ Picks: Every week, the Mount Holyoke News e-board shares their favorite stories, columns and videos from the past week. —— Erica Moulton, Editor-in-Chief, recommends: Arts blog, The Sweet Spot, on The New York Times’ website. A. O. Scott and David Carr discuss and debate cultural issues. Larkin Turman, Publisher, recommends: […]