Kristen Ng
Kristen Ng
Recent Stories
Ng: It is what it is
CHICAGO — My days usually begin at 4 a.m. This leaves just enough time to shower, finish prepping for the day’s lessons, eat breakfast and scurry off to catch a bus so I can get to school early enough to make enough copies for my four classes. My lunch periods are spent with students I’ve held for detention or who want extra help with material. After school lets out, I work with students, clean up my classroom or run off to graduate school until about 9 p.m. By the end of the day, I collapse on the couch we purchased off Craig’s List and forcefully will myself to grade papers and drowsily make Powerpoint slides for the following day’s activities.
Ng: Learning to be forgotten
The Kristening
We think a lot about legacy here. Surrounded by statues and buildings with hyphenated names, we think about how we might change this place forever, do what no one before us has done. We start cultural groups and non-profit organizations and run for elected office, striving to find validation in word processed letters thumbtacked to departmental bulletin boards or engraved in gold on the walls of society tombs.
Ng: The people behind professors
Here’s a confession: In my four years in the economics major, I hardly went to office hours. After freshman year seminars transitioned to a life of lectures and curves, I sunk into the routine of attending lecture and section, handing in problem sets, taking exams and kicking the dust off my shoes as quickly as possible.
Ng: A ritual for the unfamiliar
The first time someone close to me passed away was a foreign experience. I was 7 and it was my mother’s father. I didn’t know whether to wear navy blue or black, so I wore both. I clung to the leg of my father’s pants as we stepped in and out of dark limos. My relatives gave out small pieces of candy and change, and I was told to spend the quarters on something sweet before we got home. We had a large meal, and the family disbanded.
Ng: Intellegence, per se
The Kristening
In my first foray into a life divided into semesters, I learned something that I’d like to believe many experience at the beginning of their Yale careers: I was not as good at math as I thought.
Ng: A semester to remember
The Kristening
The realization of the impending finality of college life had instilled in me a newfound sense of excitement, akin to discovering experiences for the first time. I felt compelled to saturate every moment with productive activity, much like when I first arrived on campus.
Ng: Yale, Act II: Still without answers
I expect many things during the first weeks of the semester: the sensory deluge of Camp Yale, the chaos of shopping period, the feeling of inadequacy at the mention of my classmates’ summer adventures.
Party’s over, sophomore slump: We’re through, finally
At the beginning of the semester, I was a woman on a mission. I resolved that by May, I would have everything figured out: My major(s) would be decided, my study-abroad plans settled and my GPA reminiscent of high-school glory days.
In housing, vicissitudes of fortune spare no one
For most, another rooming cycle has already come and gone. We have survived. Everyone eventually gets a room. If you got what you wanted, congrats. If not, get some perspective.
Dropping courses, setting out on new ones
We never have all the time that we need. Many times, there’s nothing we can do to influence the outcome. In these cases, we just gotta roll with the punches, overcome and drink in the delicious, undeniable uncertainty of it all.