When I was fifteen, my aunt bought me a yellow copy of Sylvia Plath’s poetry collection Ariel for Christmas. Later that night before bed, I scanned the table of contents and “The Manor Garden” caught my attention:

The fountains are dry and the roses over.
Incense of death. Your day approaches.…

“The truth is… I am Iron Man.”

This is the iconic phrase that almost any film watcher recognizes as both the start and the end of an era. Many can recognize this phrase as the one spoken by Tony Stark at the end of ‘Iron Man’. This 2008 film kickstarted the Marvel Cinematic Universe and shows Tony Stark taking on the role of the weapons creator for the Avengers and moving on to his journey to becoming a true hero:

This phrase has had a significant impact on the film industry as it marked the true beginning of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU).…

Children’s literature is a genre that focuses on simple storytelling for the sake of its audience’s understanding, but also often incorporates life lessons that help young people navigate challenges such as friendship and family. One common way that children’s literature does this is through the trope of the “found family”–a group of non-biologically related characters that form bonds that enable them to act as an interdependent unit, similar to a biological family.…

Haruki Murakami did not consider himself an author until the age of thirty, when, seemingly on a whim, he began to write his first novel, Hear the Wind Sing, in the spring of 1978 after watching a baseball game. Since then, over twenty of his fictional novels have been translated into English, along with a number of non-fiction novels, essays, and short stories.…

Martin Scorsese’s Taxi Driver is a film that changed my life. When people talk about the magic of cinema it is almost impossible to define. I think that you know it when you see it though. That could not be more the case than with Taxi Driver. This film has tremendously guided my personal work, as I plan on writing and directing feature films for the rest of my life.…

The digital sphere has recently erupted with stories detailing young adults’ experiences with burnout. From blog posts to Instagram stories, many people have begun coming forward with stories of how they slid into burnout, all of which tend to follow a similar pattern. 

Many testimonies begin with a high-achieving person, more often than not a woman, who begins by talking about her seemingly perfect life before developing burnout.…