By: Kimberly Crowley

As our college years are coming to a close, my friends and I have begun to learn what we think is a pretty well-kept secret about senior year, particularly regarding Senior Week and graduation-it’s incredibly expensive.

By: Kimberly Crowley

I remember exactly what I was doing when I found out that something terrible had happened during last year’s Boston Marathon. Since I was studying abroad in Beijing, my situation was a little bit different from the norm. When I returned to the U.S., I was pleased to learn that  the sentiment of support, love, and friendship had been nicely wrapped up in a new mantra-“Boston Strong.” I was proud of Boston and how it had responded. Unfortunately, I can’t say that I have continuously been impressed with or proud of how “Boston Strong” has been used in the year since the incident

By: Kimberly Crowley

As an education dork fascinated by policy issues, I recently spent a lot of time reading about the Common Core. For those of you who haven’t heard of it, the Common Core is a set of academic standards and learning goals that outline what a student should know and be able to do at the end of each grade. What motivated me to write this column was my shock at turning on my computer the morning Indiana dropped out and realizing “Common Core” was trending on Facebook.

By: Kimberly Crowley

I’m not sure if all of my readers will feel the same way but, personally, Valentine’s Day seemed to be a much bigger deal this year. I was confused as to why Valentine’s Day had never felt this dramatic to me before this weekend. I started thinking of how I had spent Valentine’s Days past and, suddenly, had a flashback to something I had not thought about since high school. My Valentine’s Days were always special because I always had a Valentine, and he was my hero the other 364 days of the year.

By: Kimberly Crowley

With Valentine’s Day creeping up on us, my friends recently devised an interesting challenge-we each agreed to write speeches about what love means to us. I realized that there are plenty of people who are willing to try to explain love in definite terms. I’m not going to make overarching claims, however. Instead, I’m going to admit that I can only try to interpret what love means based on how I’ve experienced it.

As a senior who studied abroad in the spring of last year, I am reaching that point of the semester where I am starting to feel nostalgic for my time abroad, and with that nostalgia comes a memory of the anticipation and nervousness I felt around this time just a year ago.