In the morning as we waited in Senator Amy Klobuchar’s office with the files of the different issues to urge the member of the congress, Minnesota senators and representative to co-sponsor and hold a day of floor statements for Championing the Value of International Students and Scholars, Senator Paul Simon Study Abroad Program Act, and the Bridge Act, I tried to keep myself calm and focus on the briefings we had learnt from the previous day’s training with NAFSA. The 2017 NAFSA Advocacy Day was...

I had always been surrounded by the ocean because of my dad's career as a marine engineer. As a kid, I got to visit ships, ask questions, and learn more about environmental issues. This experience propelled my passion to protect the oceans. As a society, more than three billion people, or about 40 percent of the world’s population, rely on coastal biodiversity for their livelihoods. This is a substantial number and shows just how reliant we are on this resource. From fishing towns in China to oi...

Every day I wake up early in the morning as the sun rises. Many would say that I may not even sleep, and that’s kind of true. After getting up, I make my way towards the garden, where I grow an outstanding variety of plants, from sycamores to cactus, as well as plenty of fruits and vegetables.The garden is where all the animals are as well. It’s difficult to maintain it, but I do it for my children because I love them dearly and I’d do anything for them, and I know that they need the food that...

There are plenty of ways to die. Enter Gary Hoy, an enigmatic and skilled lawyer. Having graduated as an engineer before studying law and moving into the industry, Gary was a well-respected member of the firm. Tasked with showing articling students around the firm's headquarters at the Toronto-Dominion Centre, he boasted to them about how the glass windows on the 24th story was bulletproof. As he always did with these groups, he threw himself at the glass to prove it. Whereas previously he had b...

*BEEP* *BEEP* *BEEP*I force my heavy eyelids open ever so slightly, and lean over to smack the alarm clock. My head is pounding. 5 AM. Only 3 hours sleep in total. But I have to get up and get going.I drag my body to the edge of the bed, and contemplate the day ahead. It seems like a lifetime will pass before I can return to this bed and rest once again, but it's just another day to tackle.I wake my baby, dress him and carry him downstairs for breakfast. I open the cupboard, but inside is bare....

China“Xin nian kuai le gong xi fa cai!” The five year old me looked up at a wrinkly rosy face, with my palms up, giddy and excited. “Hong bao na lai!” I pleaded with delight. My grandma looked at me and laughed her usual warming laugh- a sound that was very familiar to my ears for they heard it almost everyday. She handed me a red package with golden writing. My fingers traced the glittering words and I looked at it in awe. Inside was a whole five dollars! I grinned, feeling the skin around my...

I think that all of you, people reading this post, want to change the world.It’s our human inner-sensitiveness. When we don’t like things we can both criticize them and wait for others to change them, or act for a change.Personally, I have a dream and this dream is about all of us. My dream is that one day my generation, the so-called “Millennials” will change the world and exploit our potential which is as immense as it hopefully could be.The people coming after us shouldn’t worry about the hol...

A woman should and is supposed to stay at home, he said.Her job should be taking care of the kids and the house, while her husband is at work providing for them, he said.What a sexist, I thought.What an uneducated, clueless man. Maybe I am only 17, and I haven’t even finished college yet, and I do stupid things in life because I’m young and reckless, but it’s rather him than me who is completely inappropriate and uncultivated.What is the difference between a man and a woman? They both have a chi...

Justify your self-proclaimed superiority. Illustrate the sources of your higher dignity and help us identify the causes of their fewer rights. What intrinsic flaws does your purity see in them? Why would our artist put more value in you and let that be the cause of their suffering?I don’t believe in their inferiority, nor do I acknowledge your superiority. Let’s not cite words such as “race” or “ethnicity” if man is so skilled at assigning a grievous power to simple names. Women, black people, M...