THIRTY SIXTH ISSUE
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4. COMPETE WITH YOURSELF 6. ON THE HUMAN SPIRIT 12. THE RESOLUTION OF SHARON TIRADO
ZAREEN CHIBA
SUNSCREEN AND STRAY DOGS MADISON MELTON
14. TOGETHER AS ONE 18. DEAR 2016 EDGARDO SCHIENA
PLEASE BE GOOD TO ME BIANCA BARSAN
New Year’s Resolutions
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I
t is that time of the year again. At the end of the year, every year, we place in our eyes the movie of our lives in the past 365 days. Some of us evaluate what we did right, what we did wrong and what we accomplished. However, there is something wrong with humans when evaluating ourselves. And by evaluating I don’t mean every year, but every day. The problem with us, individuals, is that we will never feel completely good about what we did, some of us always want more. In other words, we always remember what we did wrong, instead of what we did good. This is nothing bad, however, it makes us feel guilty of the things we could not accomplish.
I remember one December, when I was feeling miserable for a bunch of things that were happening to me at that time. That December I flew back home for Christmas holidays with tears in my eyes feeling like I didn’t accomplish anything I was supposed to. Moreover, I was feeling really uncomfortable with myself, lacking self-awareness and self-confidence. I guess those are times everybody experiences once, moments in which we fall and after that we need to stand up, and in fact, that’s exactly what I did. One morning my mom came to my room to bring me breakfast and asked me how I was doing with the whole situation I was living. Without words that could explain my feelings, I started crying. After that my mom stood up and
yourself started walking around the room numerating the amounts of things I achieved in my life. After that she gave me the best lesson she could ever give me “Never feel insecure about achieving your goals in life. And when you do, just look at what you have accomplished in the past. That is the only thing that is going to show you, that you can make it” I wanted to share this moment of my life with ISM because of many reasons, but especially because I want all readers, and editors of the magazine to remember this lesson when doing their respective new year’s resolution. When writing down your goals for next year, write down things you think you can achieve. Remember
COMPETE WITH YOURSELF | TRIADO SHARON
to Compete with yourself, there is nothing more powerful than finding out that you are better than what you were in the past. There is no need to look at someone else goal’s, but ours, since these goals are the only ones that we can achieve. To finish, do not wait until last minute to write down all your plans for next year. You might want to dedicate some time to revise all that you achieved last year’s resolution. And most important… remember not to ask yourself too much.
TIRADO, SHARON @shatirado
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G
lad holiday tiding to you all, and I hope you’ve been celebrating life and love more in this period. I write the below from the inner reflections that have welled up in this year. I’m celebrating the fact that evolution has meandered and mutated and brought me this far, and that 2015 has marked my twenty-two years as a contributing life form. I’m celebrating the survival of one more year of medical school. I’m celebrating one more year of good health for my family and friends, and I hope to continue celebrating these things. My hopes and resolutions are personal to me, and the list goes on— what I will do below is not to bog you down with my wish list for me, but for all humankind for the upcoming year. On health and wellbeing, for this is a personal and academic priority of mine:
I wish for peace in the practise of healing, for militaries to stop bombing war hospitals accidentally or otherwise—and I wish for those individuals who did to suffer only in the guilt that they have deprived families of the gift of health and the alleviation of suffering. I wish for the uninformed to willingly learn where possible about effective medicines, and for those who actively stop their children from the right to life-saving medicines on the basis of faith to stop before their actions result in morbidity or mortality (antivaxxers, please get a grip, read up on the scientific literature and vaccinate your children. Please. Polio is not fun.)
CHIBA, ZAREEN @Zarcchi
ON THE HUMAN SPIRIT
| CHIBA ZAREEN
On the Human A WISH LIST FOR Spirit THE NEW YEAR WITH THE PASSING OF ANOTHER YEAR, AND FROM THE ACCUMULATED KNOWLEDGE AND EXPERIENCES I HAVE BEEN FORTUNATE TO GAIN, I WRITE A SOLEMN (AND PERHAPS CONTROVERSIAL) WISH FOR ON THE FUNDAMENTALS OF MY LIFE: ON BEING WITH HEALTH, A WOMAN, AND THE SCIENTIFIC SPIRIT. Source: http://www.hgsitebuilder.com/files/writeable/uploads/ hostgator502491/image/papaya_mango_mate_tea.jpg
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Photo Credit: Jan Banning
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ON THE HUMAN SPIRIT
On women and sexuality, for this is fundamental to my freedoms, rights and responsibilities: I wish for an increased respect for women’s bodies, and for the self-serving senators and picketprotesters that line Planned Parenthood clinics and communities that subject their daughters to each stitch of the procedures of female genital mutilation to put down their instruments of pain and ignorance, and to consider the faults of what they are fighting for. Our mothers bore us through pain for the better part of one year, and to harm the womb out of excuse of tradition. I wish for the eradication of the culture of sexual trafficking and harassment, and for the relevant debate to blow wide beyond the protectionist doors of colleges and law enforcement. I
| CHIBA ZAREEN
wish for victims of sexual assault to have the platform and courage to tell their stories and not be attacked or shunned for it. I wish for the men, women and children who have been trafficked from a young age to have the will to recover from their physical and psychological traumas, and to live a normal life that should always have been theirs. On science, space and innovation, for Man has always dreamt of the stars: I wish for Big Pharma to reasonably price life-saving medicines, and not to extort from HIV, hepatitis or cancer patients via methods of evergreening and other unjust pricing mechanisms, and if this is not achievable, for governments and academia to place subsidization of life-saving or highincidence tropical drug research as a priority.
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And to end on a happier note, I wish for more funding for space research and exploration so that we may one day feel the sun of a new world, and for those who are not convinced, I hope every single person with internet access will have a chance to view the beauty of our planet Earth from space (see here for Earth from the International Space Station), and for our increasing fascination for science fiction linger on for years to come.
I do not claim to be an expert on the above topics, but from what I know, these are the things I can hope we change in. We’ve done well as a species, and rightfully do we celebrate in this festive season, and in the new year,
May you feel a thrill of hope as the weary soul rejoices, For yonder breaks a new and glorious morn.
ON THE HUMAN SPIRIT
| CHIBA ZAREEN
Photocredits: ISS, ESRS, NASA,
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I
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spent the best New Year’s Eve of my life lying on a bench outside a 24hour convenience store in Phuket, Thailand. Throughout the night, the ache of a clinically concerning sunburn shot through my skin. Blisters were already beginning to form on my face and back, and my skin felt too tight. I was sick as well, sun stroke I expect. Like my skin to my body my brain felt too large for my skull. Hannah, my traveling companion, generously let me sleep while she stayed more
or less alert, scanning the petrol pumps and, further on, the small road and clusters of trees. She tells me later that several stray dogs came around to sniff me as I slipped in and out of sleep on the bench that was just too short to comfortably curl up on. Eventually I gave up, and as we sat silently and waited desperately for the sun to emerge over the horizon, Hannah graciously passed me
The Resolution of kinds of disaster, independent, and what I would call productively reckless. Productive because recklessness is only truly reckless if there is nothing learned from the experience. In this particular case, the most important learning was not the sunscreen or the finer points of a travel itinerary, but that even if the sunscreen were to be swept away into the ocean and the hostel were to spontaneously
burn down the night before a reservation, optimism, humour, and quick thinking are far more durable assets. A memory that might have been downright miserable when it was experienced can become one of the best if, in retrospect, it helped to build relationships, confidence, and a resilient fearlessness for the world. Now, three years later, I consider not what I hope to accomplish in 2016, but what my actions over the past
THE RESOLUTION OF SUNSCREEN AND STRAY DOGS
a piece of gum. It was too much for my queasy stomach. I dashed for the bathroom and almost-not-quite made it to the toilet before throwing up an alarming black sludge. I provided a full report to Hannah when I got back to the bench. She could only laugh—that her tiny act of charity was somehow the night’s final undoing. The sun came up and we went in search of the third member of our recklessly incapacitated bunch who we thought we’d lost earlier during the night, only to find out she’d found a spacious
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bathroom and spent the first hours of 2013 sleeping on its cool tiles. I don’t remember if I made any resolutions that year. If I did, “wear sunscreen” and “book hostels on major holidays” were definitely on the list, but I don’t think it was necessary to be so specific. In the misadventures of New Year’s Eve day that had led the bench, the dogs, and the vomit, my actions themselves seemed resolution enough that I would spend my year open to the joy of certain
Sunscreen and Stray Dogs few months have said about how I resolve to spend each day, and what that will mean coming into a new season. As I start my final year of undergraduate studies and start to plan for what’s next, I hope for the wisdom of my favourite nights—the ones that, although not always fun, are the ones I still write about because they are the ones I cannot forget. A memory bursting with the gory details of
knowledge grown is far better than a hazy timeframe of lessons forgotten. And on nights like that, the memory itself becomes the resolution.
MELTON, MADISON @nomad_melton
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Together as one
TOGETHER AS ONE
S
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finally canceled from the face of the Earth. Every time I strongly believe that the upcoming year could finally be the one where something real can change, something that affects millions of people around the world. But as time passes, not only are we incapable of solving the existing problems, but more and more new problems come to life.
lowly I am getting older and older, and instead of things getting easier it seems that they are becoming more and more complicated. This year has been intense not just from a personal point of view, but also from a “citizen of the world� point of view. I am tired of talking only about myself, given that the world right now is experiencing bigger problems that Throughout 2015 I came to a very are shaping our society. personal conclusion; the world is way too big and complicated. Humanity When a year comes to an end, I makes such a huge effort to try always think about the role I had in it, to understand and find a solution the successes I lived, the mistakes I for everything, when sometimes made and what I could have avoided. there is no answer at all. The world Each and every year’s end I go to bed keeps changing and will never hoping of a more prosperous and stop to change, a mutation that better new year, in which politicians unfortunately nobody has the power and governments show more to control. We have to be smart and transparency, wars and conflicts adapt to those changes in order stop and diseases and poverty are
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to live a better life. Most of the times, though, these changes give rise to events and catastrophes that leave a deep mark in humanity. Just by looking at 2015, we can easily see what those kind of changes can give birth to; the multiple terrorist attacks occurred in many different locations throughout the world, the planes crashes, the Syrian civil war, the spread of Ebola. These are only few examples of what kind of events happen when humanity doesn’t adapt and collaborates in our modern society. Luckily, on the other hand, 2015 was a year of remarkable and influencing changes, such as the end of hostile diplomacy between the United States
and Cuba, the meeting between the Chinese and Taiwanese former presidents after years and years of conflicts, the first ever popular vote to legalize same sex marriage occurred in Ireland and many others. As I said before, the world is changing and will always change, but we are the ones that can make the real difference. When humanity stands together as one, amazing things happen that may seem unthinkable. This New Year’s resolution is not directed to myself, but I want to share it and dedicate it to all the readers and people in the world. Let’s stop thinking just about ourselves, and let’s start addressing our attention more to what is
TOGETHER AS ONE
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happening around us and start to think in which way we could solve a problem. This world needs more collaboration, sympathy, trust, peace and less war, discrimination, racism and every other dark word that is slowly obscuring our society. In order to achieve this, we have to stand together, talk to each other, listen to each other and act together, because when humanity collaborates it is capable of amazing and unthinkable acts.
SCHIENAS, EDGARDO @Eschienas
This is my New Year’s resolution for this year, a better and healthier world where everyone will have the will to put their small but significant contribution. As President Obama always said, “Yes We Can!”.
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Dear 2016, please be good to me!
DEAR 2016 PLEASE BE GOOD TO ME |
BARSAN BIANCA
A
s 2016 was approaching faster and faster each day these past few weeks, I found myself sat down on my laptop - now a memory long gone, as I have somehow managed to spill tea all over it whilst typing this very article! - writing down a few things that I really want to achieve in the next year. You probably know by now that I am one of those ‘if it is not on my list then it will not happen’ kind of girl, so it should come as no surprise that what is about to follow is exactly this: a list of dreams and wishes for what I hear, and hope, to be an adventure-filled, exciting new year of 2016 (here’s looking at you Jupiter)!
BARSAN, BIANCA @biancaomikami
one.
Read, read, read! My mother has always said to me there is nothing to be ashamed of in terms of yourself and your actions, as long as you are not hurting anyone or causing damage to anything in any way, yet I have come to be so ashamed realizing that during the past year I have read very - and I mean very - little. Outside of hundreds of academic papers and book chapters, I can honestly say I read around fivesix books out of pleasure, which would have never been the case a few years ago. Having said this, my first resolution is to read more; also, I would love to challenge you to do the same! If you think reading is not for you, maybe you have just been
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two.
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Work harder - yes, I said ‘work’! It may seem odd to wish for even more work in the year to come, but for me and the industry I wish to start a career in, being hard-working and motivated is a must! It goes without saying that if you are passionate about something, you will work out of your own initiative and you will only give your very best. Also, if you know me, you will know how excited I am at the moment about kickstarting a career in fashion next year and how hard this is for anybody relatively new to the industry - so putting in
long hours and sacrificing going out will definitely be worth it! I guess this could also be a wish related to priorities and knowing what is of utmost importance to me, making better decision and so on - you know how it goes!
three.
Kind, kinder, kindest. As an ongoing process of bettering myself, I have taken to kindness to change the small things in my life that are going not-so-great. How is this related to my resolution? Simple. Being kind does not always mean “be kind to others”, although that is a beautiful piece of advice, but it also means “be kind to yourself”, which truly is the first step to helping
DEAR 2016 PLEASE BE GOOD TO ME |
others too, in the long run. I wish for me to be kinder with myself, more forgiving, less harsh on myself in the next year. I wish to know when to say ‘Bianca, it was not your fault’ and how to believe it. I wish to eventually stop blaming myself for things that were not meant to happen in the first place, or which were out of my control - remember that cup of tea that broke my laptop? Things like that. Once you can be kind to yourself and accept we, ourselves, can make mistakes, it becomes a whole lot easier to accept the same for others. See? Simple! But enough about me; what are your resolutions for 2016 and how do you plan to go about them? Whatever they may be, I wish you the best of luck and, since I have just realised that by the time you are reading this, we will have already passed into 2016, have yourself a very lovely New Year and may all your wishes come true! Stay kind and positive, readers!
BARSAN BIANCA
Happy 2016!
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