Personal narrative

I’ve been blonde for as long as I can remember. My childhood was filled with ‘dumb blonde’ jokes, and even after my bright locks faded to a light brown, I felt connected to the hair color. So much so, in fact, that I began dying my hair back to blonde at the age of 14. However, this hair color has always subjected me to playground insults. Classic ‘dumb blonde’…

I immediately started drawing parallels between this story and climate change. Maybe it was because of the class I am currently taking (Global Ethics and Climate Change), or a history paper I wrote about environmental advocacy between the 1950s to 1980s, but regardless, the connections became pretty clear to me. The tiger on the verge of eating the monk can be likened to our climate reaching its ‘carbon budget,’…

Five years ago, sitting in the passenger seat of the car, all I could hear was a mixture of engine noise, wind, and my dad’s mumbling. I could stare out the window in peace. When we drove by the river at dusk, apartment towers on the waterfront created beautiful reflections in the dark waters, much like Van Gogh’s Starry Night. In Seoul’s urbanized version of the pastoral scene, windows…