Contents

March

Being a student at Penn starts off benign, until there’s a moment of sinister absurdism, and you come out totally wrecked on the other side.

EXECUTIVE BOARD

Walden Green, Editor–in–Chief green@34st.com

Arielle Stanger, Print Managing Editor stanger@34st.com

Alana Bess, Digital Managing Editor bess@34st.com

Collin Wang, Design Editor wangc@34st.com

EDITORS

Avalon Hinchman, Features Editor

Jean Paik, Features Editor

Natalia Castillo, Assignments Editor

Kate Ratner, Assignments Editor

Anna O'Neill–Dietel, Focus Editor

Naima Small, Style Editor

Norah Rami, Ego Editor

Hannah Sung, Music Editor

Irma Kiss, Arts Editor

Weike Li, Film & TV Editor

Rachel Zhang, Multimedia Editor

Kayla Cotter, Social Media Editor

THIS ISSUE

Julia Fischer, Copy Editor Deputy Design Editors

Wei–An Jin, Ani Nguyen Le, Sophia Liu Design Associates

Heaven Cross, Raymond Feng, Erin Ma, Janine Navalta, Allyson Ye

STAFF

Features Staff Writers

Katie Bartlett, Delaney Parks, Sejal Sangani

Focus Beat Writers

Leo Biehl, Dedeepya Guthikonda, Sara Heim, Sophia Rosser, Rahul Variar

Style Beat Writers

Layla Brooks, Emma Halper, Alexandra Kanan, Claire Kim, Felicitas Tananibe

Music Beat Writers

Land Acknowledgement

The Land on which the office of The Daily Pennsylvanian stands is a part of the homeland and territory of the Lenni-Lenape people. We affirm Indigenous sovereignty and will work to hold the DP and the University of Pennsylvania more accountable to the needs of Indigenous people.

CONTACTING 34th STREET MAGAZINE www.34st.com © 2023 34th Street Magazine, The Daily Pennsylvanian, Inc. No part may be reproduced in whole or in part without the express, written consent of the editors. All rights reserved.

If you have questions, comments, complaints or letters to the editor, email Walden Green, Editor–in–Chief, at green@34st.com You can also call us at (215) 422–4640.

Kelly Cho, Halla Elkhwad, Ryanne Mills, Olivia Reynolds, Mehreen Syed

Arts Beat Writers

Jojo Buccini, Jessa Glassman, Eyana Lao, Giulia Noto La Diega

Film & TV Beat Writers

Alex Baxter, Mollie Benn, Kayla Cotter, Emma Marks, Isaac Pollock, Catherine Sorrentino

Ego Beat Writers

Sophie Barkan, Noah Goldfischer, Ella Sohn, Vikki Xu

Staff Writers

Morgan Crawford, Heaven Cross, Angele

Diamacoune, Rayan Jawa, Enne Kim, Jules

Lingenfelter, Luiza Louback, Dianna Trujillo

Magdalena, Yeeun Yoo

Audience Engagement Associates

Annie Bingle, Ivanna Dudych, Yamila Frej, Lauren Pantzer, Felicitas Tananibe, Liv Yun

At the beginning of last semester, I started Prozac. That’s the brand name of fluoxetine, which is an SSRI—selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor. Pretty much my brain either doesn’t make enough serotonin, or takes it back up from the synaptic cleft too quickly. My psychiatrist didn’t test for any of this when I met with him; he knew I had a family history of depression, and asked me to describe how I felt in one of my lows.

I told him there was a sadness there, but not the sharp, cathartic kind, accompanied by hopelessness about my own future and the kind of existential dread that makes it hard to tell whether humans have always felt this way or if that’s just what late stage capitalism wants you to think. The depression didn’t come from nowhere; it would start with a reminder—that I was more single or less accomplished than I’d wanted to be—that would balloon out until I had to ask if normal people got this miserable about the same things.

He decided Prozac and I were a good fit.

Before anything else, there were the side effects. I got really tired, but whenever I slept I’d have these multi–night stress dream marathons. The first few weeks featured daily bouts of derealization, which means that the world felt suddenly dreamlike. When the meds finally started to work as intended, it was hard to notice them. The effects just weren’t hitting me as hard as they used to, and my “recovery time” went down from days to maybe a day at most.

There was a problem though: I was still sleeping through my lectures, and my verve for working hard in classes with less–than–inspiring profs had yet to bounce back. A kind of fundamental shift had happened. Without the looming threat of a grade–induced depression, grades didn’t seem as important. Somewhere along the way, I shifted from a primarily fear–based motivation to one that was driven by passion.

People love to throw around the phrase, “Prozac Nation,” as a scare tactic, conjuring images of a lobotomized society too Xanned–out to feel anything. But the original Prozac Nation, a 2001 cult classic starring Christina Ricci (j’adore), has the opposite message. The film is set in the pre–medication ‘80s, following a Harvard student named Lizzie—in an uncanny bit of coincidence, she’s also a music writer—as she spirals out of control, choosing every wrong option to cope with her instability.

I was worried, in a way that a lot of people are worried when they start psychiatric treatment, that I’d become dull—a shell of the former self who loved that I could relate to Fiona Apple because we both felt too much. Of course, I needn’t have been. My brain just needed a little recalibration.

This issue is called ‘Your Brain on UPenn,’ but it’s not really about the havoc Penn wreaks on your psyche. These stories begin after the damage has already been done, and ask how we can recalibrate our minds to reach some semblance of our former selves, or emerge on the other side a new, more whole version. Some of us turn to comfort shows or cut our own bangs, while others rewire their brains with psychedelics. Our feature explores the doctrine of positive psychology, certainly the healthiest approach, but perhaps not as much of a panacea as it’s cracked up to be.

If there’s one thing our staff learned putting this package together, it’s that not everyone needs Prozac, but everyone needs a way to cope. When you look at it that way, antidepressants don’t seem so bad anymore.

Of the 3,404 students admitted to Penn’s Class of 2024, 168 of them hailed from the city of Philadelphia. While it is highly unlikely that every Philadelphia admit accepted their offer of admission from Penn, it can be assumed that around 5% of the 2,400–person junior class possesses the unique perspective of attending college in the same city where they reside based on the number originally admitted. Statistically speaking, then, being included in this percentage is a rarity on this campus.

I am part of that 5%. Whether it’s the 19145 zip code on my driver’s license, the 215 area code at the start of my phone number, or my mispronunciation of words like “water” or “bagel,” there’s no mistaking that I grew up in the city that