Author: Kathie Tran

  • How to Stay Informed Without Emotionally Decomposing

    How to Stay Informed Without Emotionally Decomposing

    There is a particular kind of fatigue that comes from trying to remain a responsible, well-informed person in 2025. You pick up your phone in the morning with innocent intentions—just a quick check of headlines—and seconds later you’re staring into a digital mural of collapsing institutions, international disasters, economic mayhem, political drama, and the occasional algorithmically mysterious TikTok dance tutorial. Before coffee even enters the bloodstream, the day already feels like a mountain you did not agree to climb. The human brain evolved to track village gossip and occasional cattle theft, not 12 geopolitical flashpoints before breakfast.

    Modern news is produced with velocity in mind. Instead of the slow, measured rhythm of a morning paper, we now receive a constant intravenous drip of updates, alerts, and anxious editorial rhetoric. Stories arrive stripped of context, competing not for understanding but for immediate reaction. The system rewards speed, emotional charge, and instant certainty. Anyone who feels overwhelmed in the face of that environment is having a normal, proportionate reaction to a culture that fires information like artillery.

    Responsible engagement no longer means consuming everything the moment it emerges. It means setting boundaries with the pace of the news cycle, the same way someone might set boundaries with a friend who calls at all hours without checking if you’re awake. Designated windows of attention create space for another mode of living—reading for pleasure, noticing the weather, staring out a window, or simply existing without the sense that the fate of the world hinges on constant vigilance. Few citizens function well when their nervous systems run in emergency mode from dawn to midnight.

    Depth offers another form of protection. Endless scrolling supplies a sensation of awareness while delivering very little comprehension. Longer reporting—articles, podcasts, in-depth interviews—often creates a calmer psychological atmosphere, precisely because it unpacks the complexity that headlines reduce to blunt impact. Understanding a single issue thoroughly can be more grounding than scanning a hundred brief updates that leave no time for interpretation.

    Curiosity also matters. When something upsetting appears on a screen, take a moment to notice what your mind and body are doing before you decide what the story means. Anger, fear, and sorrow are reasonable responses to many events in the world, but allowing a moment of internal observation can open a window between reaction and judgment. That small pause often reveals the questions hiding beneath the feelings: what precisely is being reported, how much is confirmed, what context is missing, and what kind of response might be possible. Curiosity keeps the imagination moving instead of collapsing under the weight of assumption.

    The way we talk to one another shapes our political climate as well. Online culture encourages debate as spectacle, performed for invisible audiences rather than the person actually participating in the exchange. Real dialogue requires something more generous: the willingness to assume that the other person is attempting to communicate in good faith, to ask genuine clarifying questions before responding, and to acknowledge one’s emotional state rather than disguising it behind performance. A conversation that concludes with mutual clarity, even amid disagreement, is far more civic than a flawless takedown delivered for retweets.

    A sense of agency can keep despair from hardening into resignation. Small steps: supporting an organization, volunteering, writing a letter, helping someone close to home—shape a narrative of participation rather than helplessness. Change often begins at a scale that looks inconsequential from the outside. On the inside, these choices affirm that history isn’t something happening to you while you watch from the sidelines.

    In the end, staying informed without emotionally collapsing involves a set of habits rather than heroic resolve: giving yourself breaks, choosing richer sources of information, letting curiosity guide interpretation, speaking to others with humility instead of competition, and taking action where possible. Some days will still go poorly; occasionally the world will feel like a weight pressing down, and there will be nothing to do but close the laptop and walk away. But even that—protecting one’s own ability to remain human—is a form of participation in its own right.

  • Postcolonial Hierarchies and the Narratives Women of Color Inherit

    Postcolonial Hierarchies and the Narratives Women of Color Inherit

    Introduction

    Every culture tells its daughters who to become, but some inherit mirrors already cracked.

    For women of color, those mirrors were often made elsewhere—crafted from someone else’s image of beauty, civility, desirability, and power. Colonialism didn’t just redraw maps; it redrew faces. It arranged the spectrum of color and culture into a ladder, and many of us still climb it without realizing who built it.

    Even now, when representation flourishes on screens, there’s a quiet script underneath: who gets to be “universal,” who gets to be “niche,” who gets to be desired but not complex.

    These hierarchies don’t shout; they whisper through casting calls, brand campaigns, algorithms, and dating apps.

    They tell certain women of color they are “too much,” and others that they are “not enough.”

    Postcolonial theory often focuses on politics and land, but its most intimate frontier is the body.

    Colorism, hair politics, accent shame—all of these are residues of an older order where proximity to whiteness meant safety.

    Even today, self-love campaigns coexist with whitening creams. The language has changed—“brightening,” “toning,” “refining”—but the longing remains: to be palatable, to be legible, to be loved without complication.

    These standards don’t just operate externally; they become internal governance. We curate ourselves before we’re even aware of performing. We learn to modulate tone, gesture, and even joy, careful not to appear too loud, too assertive, too foreign.

    It’s not vanity—it’s survival.

    Gentlewoman of Empire

    Certain narratives reward compliance. The “model minority” myth, for instance, dresses submission as success. It promises belonging through perfection, invisibility through achievement.

    But beneath that polished surface is exhaustion: the emotional labor of disproving stereotypes while trapped inside them.

    Women of color are often told to be grateful for progress while still navigating institutions that mistake endurance for equality. Even empowerment becomes scripted—neat, marketable, inspirational.

    Yet real liberation rarely photographs well. It’s messy, angry, self-doubting. It doesn’t fit the colonial frame.

    Storytelling as Resistance

    Narrative is how domination sustains itself—and how it breaks.

    When women of color write, speak, film, or organize, they aren’t just producing art or activism; they’re revising the archive. They’re saying, “I exist outside your taxonomy.”

    The internet has made visibility easier but also more treacherous. Algorithms flatten difference, pushing certain faces forward while erasing nuance. Aesthetics of diversity replace actual structural change.

    Still, the act of telling one’s story remains insurgent. To name your experience is to reject the silence colonialism taught.

    The most radical work may happen not on stages or feeds but in friendships, in sisterhoods, in private spaces where women of color learn to see each other fully.

    These spaces allow for contradiction—to be strong and uncertain, beautiful and unbeautiful, seen and unseen.

    Postcolonial hierarchies thrive on comparison; intimacy dissolves it.

    When two women of color affirm each other’s complexity, they perform a kind of quiet decolonization: they return language, softness, and agency to where it was once denied.

    Closing Reflection

    Colonialism taught us to look at ourselves through the eyes of empire. The project of this century is to look back—with our own eyes, and each other’s.

    The work isn’t just to critique representation, but to repair relation: to see beyond archetypes, beyond scarcity, beyond the illusion that there’s only room for one.

    To unlearn the mirror’s bias is not to reject beauty—it’s to redefine it.

    And in that redefinition lies something more than resistance:
    a language of love built from the fragments of what was never supposed to survive.

  • Your Personality Might Be a Colony of Capitalism (And That’s Okay, We’re Working On It)

    Your Personality Might Be a Colony of Capitalism (And That’s Okay, We’re Working On It)

    When You Realize Your Identity Has a Subscription Fee

    Somewhere between the fourth and fifth hour of your doomscroll, there is the creeping suspicion that you’ve forgotten something important.

    It’s when you realize that your personality isn’t entirely yours. It has been shaped, sanded down, and polished by years of advertising and the quiet pressure to be someone with a five-year plan and a consistent aesthetic.

    In the 21st century, empires no longer arrive with anchors and armed ships. They arrive with subscription renewals and branded self-improvement language.

    Capitalism has become the kind of roommate that is always present, rarely helpful, and constantly leaving its fingerprints on your decisions. It insists you turn hobbies into side hustles and forces you to feel guilty when you sit still. Even resting can start to feel like slacking, and simply existing becomes another item on the to-do list you never quite finish. Somewhere along the line, childhood curiosity was replaced with “personal branding,” and the desire to be interesting turned into the pressure to be marketable.

    It’s not that we consciously agreed to this arrangement. It’s that from an early age, we learned that to be taken seriously we had to sell ourselves—on college applications, in interviews, through perfectly crafted statements of “passion,” “drive,” and “thriving in fast-paced environments.” For many people, staying afloat meant performing competence even when everything felt unstable. Capitalism colonized not just the workplace, but the psyche. The colony lives not in land, but in how we think about ourselves.

    The irony is that Gen Z is painfully aware of this. We can critique capitalism while still shopping under its fluorescent lighting. We can repost anti-corporate memes while scrolling on devices powered by global supply chains. The self-awareness doesn’t exempt us; it just means we can see the machine even while we’re moving through it. We are perhaps the first generation that can describe our condition in detail while still being fully immersed in it.

    Decolonization Is Not Aesthetic

    Decolonizing the self rarely looks like dramatic overnight transformation. It looks like small, deeply unglamorous decisions: appreciating something without needing to post it, reading a book because it feels good rather than because it builds your résumé, refusing to speak about yourself only in deliverables and accomplishments. It looks like resting without guilt, or admitting that you are exhausted not because you are weak, but because the world is demanding more of you than a human body can realistically give.

    Machines are consistent and efficient. Humans are not. Humans get overwhelmed, dream too big, run out of energy at 3 p.m., fall in love at bad times, and occasionally cry in the shower before carrying on with their day. Capitalism would prefer we behave like automated systems, productive and predictable.

    The goal isn’t to abandon society and become a wool-spinning hermit in the woods (although if you do, please start a newsletter). It’s simply to live like you are more than a product: to see your identity as something unfolding, not something curated; to understand that your worth isn’t a KPI; to remember that you exist outside the marketplace’s expectations.

    Yes, capitalism has colonized the world, and in many ways it has colonized our personalities too. But refusing to become fully mechanical, refusing to let the grind hollow out your sense of self, is its own quiet rejection. We are all working on it. And for now, that’s all we can do.

  • No One Talks About the Girls Who Didn’t Get Chosen

    No One Talks About the Girls Who Didn’t Get Chosen

    Kathie Tran

    It’s time to put away the rom-coms.

    No dramatic kiss in the rain, no last-minute chase through the airport. Just quiet exits and unanswered texts. We learn to laugh it off, to cheer for others while wondering if we’ll ever get a turn. But maybe it’s time to stop waiting. Maybe it’s time to talk about what it’s really like to never be the one—and why that doesn’t have to define us.

    Introduction

    I’ve always been the one they don’t pick—the “friend,” the “almost,” the “not quite.” I’ve spent too many nights watching everyone else find love while I stayed invisible, never the one they wanted. No one talks about the girls who don’t get chosen, the ones left behind, wondering why they’re not enough. We’re told to be patient, to wait our turn, but sometimes it feels like we’re just waiting for a love that never comes. We’re the forgotten girls in someone else’s story, and it’s time someone told our side.

    The “Not Quite” Experience

    Being the sidekick is a complex, silent burden. It’s a role we accept without questioning, yet we carry it with a quiet ache. We tell ourselves, I’m fine with being the “good friend.” But the truth is, the weight of that title often feels like it’s made of nothing but air—light and easy to carry, but it leaves us floating in a space where no one notices, no one cares. The questions linger: Why does this feel like not enough? Why do I feel like I’m always just on the edge of someone else’s spotlight, but never in it myself?

    We say we’re happy to see our friends succeed, and we are. We genuinely want them to thrive. But the sting comes in when we realize our success, our recognition, is always secondary. It’s as if we’ve agreed to be the background, the supporting cast, the one who is there for everyone else but never truly seen. We don’t just long for recognition—we yearn to be wanted. To be the one who matters enough to be chosen. But is it selfish to want this? To want someone to look at us and say, You are enough, you are the one I choose?

    There’s a deep ache that comes with being physically present but emotionally invisible. It wears down on us, little by little, as we watch others be seen while we fade into the background. The constant balancing act of showing up for others, even when we know no one is showing up for us, starts to feel like an unpaid job we never signed up for. We pour our energy into making others feel seen, but who is there to acknowledge us when we need it? Our egos, fragile yet desperate for affirmation, crack a little more each time we’re left unchosen, unacknowledged. The desire to be seen becomes so overwhelming, it threatens to swallow us whole.

    And still, we wonder—why does it hurt so much to not be the one who’s wanted?

    The Emotional Impact of Being Overlooked

    Like a slow poison, these degrading thoughts seep into the deepest parts of our minds. I remember the shock on my face the first time my friends remembered my birthday, truly remembered it. It was a simple gesture, yet it shook me. Had I really become so lost in the shadows of my own longing, so consumed by the silent ache of never being wanted, that I had forgotten the importance of platonic love? How could I, the one always there for others, forget to recognize the value of the love I had all along?

    That’s when it hit me. We are conditioned to believe that love can only be meaningful if it’s romantic, if it’s tied to the idea of the “chosen” one. We grow up on movies and stories that tell us our worth is tied to being someone’s one and only. But no one talks about the gnawing emptiness of being loved in a platonic way, yet never in a romantic sense. It’s like being seen but never truly noticed, like being there but never enough.

    That’s when I realized how deep the trap had sunk. The fairytale I had been chasing? It was a fantasy, a facade. There was no prince, no grand, sweeping romance that would rescue me. The only one I was waiting for was myself—waiting for me to choose me first. It was time to wake up and see the world for what it really was. There was more to life than hopeless fantasies about being “chosen.” I was still a young woman, with tight skin and so much to offer—not just to someone else, but to myself. And that, right there, was enough.

    It was a revelation that didn’t come with a happy ending or a prince. It came with a quiet, powerful truth: love isn’t just about being chosen. It’s about choosing yourself—seeing your own value even when the world keeps telling you it’s not enough. I didn’t need a fairytale to know I was worthy. I needed to realize that I already was.

    Breaking the Silence: Why We Need to Talk About This Experience

    It’s time we start talking about the emotional and mental toll of being the “almost” girl. The one who is always close to being the one, but never quite enough. This experience isn’t just a passing phase—it shapes how we view ourselves, our worth, and our relationships. For years, the world has told us that being chosen is the ultimate validation, that romantic love is the crown we must wear to prove we’re worthy. But we need to break the silence about what happens when that love doesn’t come. We need to talk about the quiet heartbreak, the lingering self-doubt, and the feeling of invisibility that so many of us carry. It’s time to recognize the toll that being overlooked takes on our mental health—the insecurity, the longing, the self-questioning that cuts deeper than any rejection. No one talks about the emotional labor of always being the one waiting in the wings. We need to bring these conversations to the surface, so we can stop pretending that it’s just a phase and start acknowledging how deeply it affects our self-esteem and sense of worth.

    The romantic ideal that we are only valuable when we are chosen needs to be challenged. It’s time to redefine love, desire, and worth in ways that don’t tie them to someone else’s approval. We don’t have to wait for someone to choose us to feel validated. We can learn to choose ourselves, to recognize our beauty and power, even if no one else does. That’s where true strength lies, in recognizing that we are enough without needing to be chosen by anyone else.

    Conclusion

    It’s time to reframe our idea of worth. The notion that our value is tied to romantic selection, to whether or not someone finds us desirable, is not only limiting but harmful. The “not quite” girl is just as worthy, just as powerful, and just as beautiful as anyone else. In fact, this experience shapes us into fuller, more complex individuals. We learn to find our worth in places that don’t require validation from the outside world, whether it’s through personal growth, friendships, or passions.

    We need a cultural shift that celebrates the “not quite” girls, the ones who aren’t chosen, but who still hold immense value. It’s time to embrace the truth that our worth isn’t dependent on someone else’s recognition, but on how we recognize and affirm ourselves. Being the “almost” girl doesn’t mean we are incomplete. It means we are learning to define ourselves beyond the narrow confines of romantic desire. And in doing so, we become whole—stronger, more resilient, and more aware of the incredible power that comes from choosing ourselves, no matter who chooses us in return.

  • About Us

    Welcome to our lifestyle magazine — a student–run space dedicated to intentional storytelling and the art of making online spaces feel human again.

    We believe in culture and connection : in empathy, dialogue, and the power of well designed communication. Our team cares deeply about presenting ideas in a way that is both effective and aesthetically compelling. Every piece we produce aims to resonate.

    Whether we are examining current events, reflecting on community, critiquing pop-culture, or discussing social change, our mission remains the same: to curate writing that bridges distances, sparks reflection, and reminds readers that digital spaces can still feel personal, intentional, and alive.

    Thank you for reading, supporting, and thinking with us.

    Got questions?
    Feel free to reach out.

  • Kithéa’s Ultimate Guide to Lowering Screen Time

    Kithéa’s Ultimate Guide to Lowering Screen Time

    There’s a strange kind of discomfort that creeps in when the screen goes dark. No notifications to check, no feed to refresh, just an unexpected stillness most of us aren’t used to anymore. It’s in that moment—when the noise fades and the distractions fall away—that you start to notice how much of your time has been swallowed by scrolling. The absence feels awkward at first, like something’s missing. But maybe that feeling isn’t emptiness—it’s clarity. And maybe it’s been trying to reach us all along.

    It Begins with Reflection

    In a world of endless content and mind-numbing doom-scrolling, boredom is becoming a lost art. I learned this the hard way a few months ago when my phone rudely interrupted my scrolling spree with a brutal reality check:

    “Your screen time has increased by 26%, reaching an average of 15 hours and 23 minutes per day.”

    Fifteen. Hours. A day.

    What was I even doing?

    Somewhere between the mindless swipes and auto-playing videos, I had unknowingly handed over hours of my life to a silent time thief. So, I did something radical. I put my phone down. And here’s what happened:

    Time stretched. Without the endless glow of blue light, minutes felt longer. But instead of filling the silence with more scrolling, I filled it with something better. I reignited my love for journalism. I started volunteering at a community assistance center. I picked up new hobbies. And, shockingly, I was happier.

    So, what’s the takeaway?

    Put the phone down. Boredom isn’t the enemy—it might just be the reset button we all need. The relentless cycle of microtrends, unrealistic beauty hacks, and toxic standards is expertly disguised, and widely accepted across today’s social media platforms. But here’s the truth: you’re more than an algorithm’s latest obsession. It’s time to step back, unplug, and remember—there’s a real world waiting for you. Don’t shrink yourself to fit an on-screen mold.

    Our Elevated Guide

    Make your phone less appealing to reduce the urge to scroll. Try removing decorative widgets, turning your screen to grayscale, and stripping away visual clutter—dulling the sensory appeal can help break the cycle of mindless use.

    Download a blocker app to take control of your screen time. Built-in tools are often too easy to bypass, but at Kithéa, we recommend Opal—a firm, no-nonsense app designed for even the most persistent scrollers.

    Turn off your notifications! Those tiny buzzes and pings might seem harmless, but they’re major culprits in frying our dopamine receptors. Keep only the essentials active—fewer interruptions mean more focus and less temptation to scroll.

    Pick up a new hobby! It’s never too late to learn something new. Keeping your hands (and mind) busy can spark personal growth and fulfillment. Keep your eyes peeled for our upcoming feature on the chicest, must-try hobbies of 2025. From elevated everyday pastimes to trendsetting skills that are taking over social feeds and social circles alike, we’re diving into what’s hot, what’s fulfilling, and what you should be trying next.