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Dreamland Ch. 7: Why you should send that cold email

Thursday, July 24th, 2025

You’ve surely been told that the worst thing someone can say is “no.” It’s true, and useful, but I think it’s a bit unempathetic. No one ever tells you how awful it can be to actually hear “no” then have to move on knowing there’s nothing you can do — and no real reason to feel resentful of that response. As a teen writer, I heard “no” quite a bit, from publishers who didn’t work with minors, agents who weren’t interested in representing me because they “didn’t fall in love with the idea,” and other professionals who passed on the work for some reason or another. I just had to accept this and move on, every single time.

Like I’ve said, I’m self-published. Not traditionally published. It’s definitely a hurdle, as there is no reason for anyone to go looking for my books, and I’m still learning how to market myself. But for any young authors out there looking for accessible ways to put your work out there, I definitely still recommend self-publishing. Try out other things, but this is always an option, not just a last resort.

I started off looking for professionals on Reedsy, where you can hire freelance editors, illustrators, etc. to work on your project remotely. I found an editor based in London who provided a more seasoned perspective on my work, even for a book targeted to teens. Then I found an illustrator, but I actually should have found a formatter first as I needed to send the fully formatted manuscript to the illustrator so that she could size the cover and deliver the proper files. This was a mistake I made, and then I did it right for the second book.

The hub for writers and professionals. Image Credit: https://www.authormedia.com/how-to-use-reedsy-to-independently-publish-your-book/

However, the second book had a completely different issue. Due to extenuating circumstances, my illustrator had to drop out of the project. This was mainly an issue because she took months to communicate this to me and didn’t help me find someone else, meaning I couldn’t rely on Reedsy anymore as I needed a quicker response and turnover time.

So I went hunting. I found websites and portfolios that were similar enough to the previous illustrator’s style that they could adapt. I found covers that those artists created that I liked, that would suit the genre of my book. One email I sent didn’t immediately produce a collaboration, but the artist sent profiles of other artists that she thought would be able to work with me. And it was one of those profiles that ended up becoming my illustrator for the second book.

It was a hectic and scary process. Things fall through, and you always have to hope for the best and prepare for the worst. I’m so grateful I managed to secure these collaborations each time, and I pray I’m able to keep them for when I’m finished with this third book.

This whole ordeal reminded me that I’m still responsible for the labor of getting my work out there, since I don’t have a big company investing in my talents to do it for me. If you’re looking to self-publish, send out emails. Find freelancers and professionals that are familiar with young writers and can teach you about the industry. Don’t be afraid to not know everything and everyone immediately.

Since I had to do all this myself at such a young age, I’m truly an expert at cold emailing. I can’t even tell you how many applications I’ve sent out into the void, how many email threads I’ve followed up on weeks after getting completely ghosted, how many reporters and publications I’ve contacted as a marketing intern. It can be tiresome and tedious, but you never know what lifelong connection you’ll forge from a simple email.

Self-ownership is both terrifying and freeing. It’s wonderful to have control over my work and authority over the people I work with, but it creates so much more labor for me, a full-time student, and also has little to no guarantee of profit. Amazon, which hosts Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP), takes far more royalties than I do. It’s quite irritating. If you self-publish, be aware that it does more to build your portfolio than build your bank account. It’s still valuable, but you should definitely look into different ways you can use your storytelling skills to make a long-term career.

Until then, cherish the liberty of being creative. You are no less an author if you publish online. You’re just taking the necessary steps to put yourself out there. Always aim for the stars, but it’s also always alright to just aim for an email back.

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By Oshmi Ghosh

Oshmi Ghosh is a rising junior at NYU’s College of Arts and Sciences, pursuing a bachelor’s degree in English with minors in Creative Writing, History, and Entertainment Business. You can usually find her appreciating the simple things in life: tea with milk and sugar, a good book, and/or intensely competitive board games.

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Tags:creative writing, english major, self-publishing
Posted in Creativity, on Writing, onCollege, onTalent, Writing | No Comments »

Dreamland Ch. 6: The Notes App, and other holy grails

Wednesday, July 16th, 2025

If you’re getting sick of my complaining, you’re in luck — I’m finally going to talk about my actual process of writing. My routine is hardly defined and not in any way a rulebook, but I believe it capitalizes well on my sudden bursts of motivation but also works well with a lack of powerful motivation.

It always starts with a note. The birth of an idea, the concept of a concept, that I scramble to make real with text before it fades away.

I first conceived my fantasy series when I was in sixth grade.My memory of this time of my life is hazy, so for the purposes of this first step I’m going to use a slightly more recent example. In tenth grade, I did a project on World War I and spent a lot of time researching that era of history. I had also been reading a lot of young adult and teen fantasy, returning to recreational reading for the first time since middle school. Sitting in that overlap for multiple months, much of my imagination branched off from this mindspace, and one night I shot up from my bed in the pitch black, already reaching for my laptop.

I ended up with an incoherent, garbled mess of ideas listed in my Notes App — the early scraps of a duology set in a fictional world based on 1910s Slavic Europe. The main takeaway here is that inspiration will strike quite randomly, so if you aren’t able to force yourself to find it (just as you might not be able to force herself into “the zone”), do what you can to more naturally find a spark. Engage with the things that you are already interested in. Read books, watch movies, learn new topics and skills. While I was fostering an interest in history, I discovered a wellspring of images and narratives. You might encounter the same phenomenon doing something completely unrelated, like with a niche hobby or even while scrolling on your phone mindlessly. You’re never truly mindless, is what I mean.

After this initial conception, I reconfigure the mess into something more comprehensible: a vague summary, followed by a bulleted outline of story beats, and then a chapter-by-chapter outline. Essentially, break your book down, and then break it down some more. Each book in my current series is split into three parts (you obviously don’t have to do this), which helped me visualize the arc for each part and then sever those arcs into individual chapters. I determine what each arc needs to accomplish, so even if I end up shifting chapters around, I don’t lose focus.

For the story I’m currently working on, the third in the series, the main notes folder currently holds three pages: an outline, a bulleted list of various things to look out for during my rounds of edits, and random notes that include a hastily drawn map and outlines for very specific events in the book. For example — spoiler alert — a prison break.

My three homepages. Don’t mind the caps lock.

There is also a sub-folder for “potential scenes” that I need to have prematurely written lest I go insane with all the circulating images in my head. Remember, your story may follow a certain chronology, but you don’t have to. Even in my drafting, if I don’t have the motivation for a certain scene or I want to skip a little ahead, I’ll type in something like “[more dialogue]” or “[walking along the road]” to signal to future me that a transitional or elaborating scene has to be entered here. If you have the motivation to write at all, don’t waste it — write what feels right.

Of course, the outlining structure depends on the book and what I think feels right for this particular style and/or genre. Below is the way I created sub-folders for the 1910s-inspired story I mentioned earlier. Here I have a section for characters, because of the multiple points of view, and world-building because of the more intricate details of the setting.

An alternate way to organize your folders.

Don’t box yourself into my process, because I don’t even box myself into my process.

The rest of the method varies. I draft the entire story, rewrite scenes or even entire chapters, and cycle through rounds and rounds of editing until I feel confident in sending the manuscript to my editor. Sometimes, I find things like Google Calendar or Notion helpful to carve out time during the week to work on writing. Next chapter, I’ll talk about the process of finding professionals and self-publishing, but for a long time you as the author have sole authority over your draft. It sounds terrifying, and it is, but it is also liberating.

Your process is your process, ultimately, but I highly recommend taking the steps to make the actual writing and publishing part feel less daunting. It will take more than that to surpass the initial insecurities, but I promise you will benefit from breaking down your ideas into palatable, consumable pieces. Even if things change later on, even if you as a writer and person change later on, outlining and planning will keep the heart of your original idea alive — thus honoring who you were when you woke up in the middle of that fateful night, already opening up the Notes App.

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By Oshmi Ghosh

Tags:creative writing, notes app, writing books
Posted in Creativity, NYC Student Guide, on Writing, onCollege, onLife, onTalent, Writing | No Comments »

Dreamland Ch. 5: Worldbuilding at 2am, breakfast at noon

Wednesday, July 9th, 2025

There is one thing that any artist understands: the elusive “zone.” The runner’s high of writing. Your brain, your heart, and your fingers forming a holy trinity. The story unfolding on its own. It’s a constant chase, finding the zone. It escapes you, but you don’t escape it. Some people melt into it, some dissolve completely, while some throw pebbles at it until it remembers that you’re still there waiting. I covet this feeling all the time, even when I’m working on schoolwork or writing an email. Hell, even this chapter. I feel the healthiest when I’m at my most productive, and vice versa, but per the last chapter, striking this productive balance is a battle of its own.

Something that’s been fairly difficult to admit to myself is that in order to be productive, I need structure. I’ve always been an imaginative kid at heart, and I’ve always aspired to have free time and flexibility. In my mind, this gives me the space where I have the most control, where I decide what I do, and I determine my own capabilities and limits. Instead, I retreat into a less productive, less ambitious, less willing version of myself, when I am normally very eager to be doing something. Idleness is one of the worst feelings to me, and yet I seek it out so frequently.

If I don’t have something to do in the morning, I don’t get out of bed before 11 AM. Without classes and deadlines, I spend the hours until lunch on my phone or computer doing nothing. In the evening, I might push myself to write half a chapter or work on something for my internship, or at least talk to my friends in a way that feels emotionally or intellectually stimulating. But ultimately, the day ends the way it did the night before, with me thinking to myself, “Tomorrow will be better. Tomorrow won’t be a waste.”

In my most introspective moments, I wonder if this regression happens because it’s safer than trying and failing. Safer than realizing I’m not as good as I’ve been made to believe. Safer than confronting my shortcomings. Or I might just be lazy — until, of course, I know that something is expected of me by someone else, and I have a time limit.

None of us need a Hallmark card to know that the only real failure is a lack of trying.

Still, the pressure of a blinking cursor near equals the potential. I am just as anxious as I am excited. Every day, I wish I could airlift the beautiful images I’ve conjured in my head and put them to paper without having to lift a finger. I can imagine all I want, and I do, but if I want to write, I have to just write.

In my experience, the strategy is to be willing to write without the zone. If you’re a student, or you work, or you just have many obligations, you likely will have long stretches of time only once or twice a week. Which is why you can’t be afraid to just spend five to ten minutes writing uninspired paragraphs of nonsense that you can return to when you’ve actually found the zone, gawk at them because they’re so bad, and edit.

This is a tough habit to contend with because it makes my fear of mediocrity a self-fulfilling prophecy. I delay writing because I don’t want to be bad at it, and every time I try writing, it’s bad — and I just have to accept that. Consider it a sort of exposure therapy, and remember that by writing something, literally anything, you’ve already evaded failure.

As you do this, structure will follow. You’ll find the times of day that feel the most motivating. You’ll improve as a writer, little by little, until you’re confident enough in writing past those ten minutes, maybe even reaching a whole hour. You’ll realize you have a couple boring, unoccupied hours here and there. Once you develop a willingness to start writing, set timers and do nothing but write until the alarm goes off. You might not begin in a zone, but you’ll induce one and stay there for longer than you expect.

The idea here is to stop crucifying yourself for not meeting your expectations of productivity or quality but to also stop enabling your lazy behavior. Not everyone can naturally fall into an ideal routine, especially in a world with so many things begging for your attention.

Your attention is so much more valuable than you think. Direct it to fulfilling, meaningful activities. If you think you aren’t good enough, prove yourself wrong.

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By Oshmi Ghosh

Tags:creative writing, english major, productivity
Posted in Creativity, NYC Student Guide, on Writing, onTalent, onValues, Writing | No Comments »

Dreamland Ch. 4: You are not a sellout, you are just 20 years old

Thursday, July 3rd, 2025

Every college student struggles with time management, with classes piling upon classes and the additional pressure to build your resume with clubs, jobs, internships. They say every hour of your day should be spent investing in the rest of your life, which leaves nanoseconds for fostering hobbies and interests. But over time, it gets easier. I’m surely not the first to say to you that you should allow yourself free time; that in itself is investment in your future. If you have it figured out, congratulations.

I do not.

It’s not so much that I overbook my time or even procrastinate. More often than not, I frontload my work and finish all my smaller tasks before the weekend. I take pride in my work ethic when it comes to my academic life, but the remaining time is no man’s land, a space where a million obligations orbit and eclipse one another. When I’m writing, I think to myself that I should be applying to jobs. When I’m applying to jobs or generally lengthening my resume, I want to be writing because it feels more meaningful. I often end up doing neither, and the idleness at once comforts me and tugs at my skin.

This is only a dilemma because my brain compartmentalizes these two activities — writing books, and working toward a good resume — as not only different things but polar opposites. There is a solid rationale here. I’m not pursuing creative writing as my full-time career, which means I have to find other things I’m interested in that suit me. That’s what I suggest everyone does. However, I find myself also separating the pursuit of stability and the pursuit of fulfillment and creativity.

I end up prioritizing quantity over quality. In many ways, this works. You should apply to and try out as many things as possible to find what you like. But sometimes this habit decays into an ingrained psychology where what I’m interested in does not matter. Anything will do, as long as I am doing it.

Content warning: job application. Image Credit: https://www.verstela.com/blog/tips-to-get-your-job-application-noticed/

In practice, I haven’t done anything that I absolutely despise. Not yet, at least. But no matter what I do, I feel that I should be doing more, something better, something that plants a direct line to six figures by my mid-twenties. I don’t actually care that much about money, but that lack of care itself is a huge privilege that I might someday lose. Rent is so expensive everywhere, entry-level positions require master’s degrees, eggs are a million dollars, and I still haven’t made time to write today.

The more I spiral, the sillier and guiltier I feel worrying about problems that I created. Isn’t it so terrible that I can’t manage my time at a prestigious university because I get insecure sometimes? There’s no “but” here. It really is just silly. What I’m trying to say is that I don’t want to waste the amazing opportunities I’ve had by making no solid, practical plans for a job, but I also don’t want to waste my capacity to care about things outside of these plans.

Like me, you may be a natural creative and plan to pursue something adjacent to that passion (or entirely separate from that passion, even) with your creative outlet on the side. Like me, you may not know which you should focus on at any given time, because each is unfulfilling in its own way, emotionally or financially. The best advice I can give you is to avoid thinking of your creative passion as lesser or smaller and instead let it run parallel to your practical pursuits.

I’m sort of stating the obvious here, I know, but it’s very easy to abandon parts of yourself when you grow up, and that abandonment begins in your formative years. In between classes and other obligations, you should be making time to tend to your lifelong dreams, even if they end up having nothing to do with your career. Don’t treat them as a waste, and don’t even treat them as a hobby. Treat them as sustenance, the very essence of you.

And if you want some even better advice, make a schedule for each week. Life-changing.

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By Oshmi Ghosh

Tags:college student, creative writing, english major, job applications
Posted in Creativity, on Writing, onValues, Resume Building, Writing | No Comments »

Dreamland Ch. 3: Humility, and how the city of dreams can make you feel like a nobody

Wednesday, June 25th, 2025

The city of dreams in question. Image Credit: https://www.rolcruise.co.uk/blog/a-guide-to-new-yorks-skyline

It turns out I’m not the only person in the world who loves to write. Wild, no? I grew up around Indians and Indian Americans, which meant that, generally speaking, any artistic prowess was meant to be fostered in between better, more lucrative things. But more than that, I just happened to not surround myself with people who would’ve thought to seriously pursue English. I didn’t think myself above or below them in any way; we were just different. I appreciated that, honestly. But I did spend those months before college eager to meet more like-minded people, and it was still a shock to see the gradient of creatives walking down the street alongside me.

Something I didn’t expect to contend with was this feeling of no longer being special. I’ve always been friends with curious, bright people, but at NYU it’s as though every single person I meet has created something, reinvented something, pushed something to its limits and then beyond. I, on the other hand, have written something that falls in a long line of stories in the same exact genre, and will soon fall to obsolescence.

In New York, I began to feel this immense pressure to be entirely singular. I have always been reserved about sharing the details of my writing with other people, but I now felt obligated to add caveats: I wrote these books at such a young age that they are bound to be less than perfect, I plan to move beyond this genre when I’m older, I read so much more than this (I read classical literature, please recognize my intellect).

The craziest part about this? Nobody cares.

I keep having to remind myself that I can still take pride in having put in the effort to bring something to fruition. It doesn’t make sense that I can write two entire novels and still feel inadequate, then turn around and assure everyone else that there is no time limit to accomplishment. Why can’t I apply that logic to myself?

Also, there are students at NYU better at writing than I am, big shocker. I see that every day I sit in a creative writing class, and before the disheartenment sets in, I force that fact to motivate me instead. I get more passionate, and I become a stronger writer.

What people actually love to hear is you talking about why you care, what you’re passionate about, the things that make you happy, whatever that might be. Not once have I experienced judgment or scrutiny for not looking to write the next Great American Novel, but I preempt my explanations in anticipation of that. It’s more pathetic, I think, than actually facing judgment. If someone does not want to hear about your dreams, they will not be privy to their fulfillment. That is their loss, not yours.

I can go on and on about this, prove with receipts what you can learn by understanding your merits and embracing your shortcomings, but the truth is, I’m still working toward practicing the certain, unadulterated self-confidence I preach about. I can be awful about taking compliments from other people, and even worse from myself, so I imagine it will take a while to talk myself up to other people without feeling the weight of unease. Even during interviews, when I enumerate my skills and qualities, I am simply performing. If I get the position, it isn’t me I have to thank, it is that facsimile of myself. The city and its endless opportunities can at once make you feel like a star and an imposter.

But I am the one who wrote those books. I am the one meeting those people, getting those internships, putting myself out there. I am the one experiencing the countless rejections, and I am the one who breaks down and picks myself back up to try again.

Whatever it is that you do, if it is something you are passionate about, the people worth your respect will respect your passion in kind. But more importantly, you will learn your own value once you set aside the impression that you must be uniquely expert in all that you do. Someone will be better than you, more reputable than you, and receive accolades you’ll take years to touch, but that’s no excuse to stop.

The people you meet are not looking to rate you but to learn about you. So tell them, and leave nothing out.

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By Oshmi Ghosh

Tags:creative writing, english major, imposter syndrome
Posted in Creativity, NYC Student Guide, on Writing, onTalent, Writing | No Comments »

Dreamland Ch. 2: Surefire tricks to get your relatives to stop asking you about school

Wednesday, June 18th, 2025

Money. It makes the world go round, or something like that. I may have decided my passion from a young age, but I hadn’t decided on a job, not in any practical way. The hard lesson everyone learns between ages 17 and 21 is that choosing your dream is different from choosing your major, which is yet again different from choosing your career. I learned this lesson the moment I fostered my love for creative writing, and I keep learning it every day.

It’s not so bad, really. I’m studying English, which is very transferrable to a number of different fields, no matter what people will tell you. You only have to engage in a quick cursory scroll through any social media platform to understand that people lack writing skills, communication skills, and critical thinking skills. People lack empathy and can’t formulate nuanced opinions. I’m not suggesting that everyone become an English major, but I do encourage a reworked perception of what the field can offer.

So I don’t regret what I’ve chosen; I only regret not pushing myself out of my comfort zone far sooner, all the way back in high school, in order to learn the skills I’d need to shape my career in English. In freshman year of college, I unfortunately hesitated to join extracurriculars and attend general meetings that would allow me to meet new people and find things I might be interested in. I’ve since overcome that hesitation, thankfully, and now I know that I enjoy journalistic writing, marketing, communications, and more generally, learning new things.

That doesn’t mean the insecurity doesn’t creep in every once in a while. Every month, I spend at least one evening freaking out about what I will do after I graduate, and I panic-apply to a million jobs that I ultimately don’t hear back from. My parents are incredibly supportive and love to hear about school, but I’ve noticed that my family friends, the aunties and uncles, aren’t quite sure what to ask or if there is anything to even discuss. I get it, truly, but I can’t help but compare myself to my sister and others in our family who’ve chosen something more recognizable.

If you’re in the humanities, you probably understand this feeling—the tugging sensation that suspends you between your wildest dreams and the real world below. The Icarian knowledge that either side will damn you. Most of the time, it doesn’t feel quite this theatrical, but I don’t think anyone is immune to the chilling realization, even if inaccurate, that the things you do as a teenager determine the rest of your life. Such is the condition of being a teenager in the first place. Why can’t we all just do what we love, right?

NYU’s Silver Center for Arts and Sciences, home to English majors and others. Image Credit: https://meet.nyu.edu/locations/silver-center/

The divide between your passion and your career prospects might feel chasmic now, but there are ways you can reconcile even the most distant of pipe dreams and the most mundane 9-to-5 jobs.

I used to work for NYU’s outreach and fundraising organization, which was often the bane of my existence, but I took every shift as an opportunity to learn about other people and their backgrounds. I learned about their fields of interest and the ways they used their schooling to propel them into careers that suited their niche interests. I once spoke to someone that illustrated tarot cards. I still quit that job after a semester, but I have plenty of stories to tell. which makes the semester of asking strangers for money sort of worth it. I don’t intend on continuing that sort of work full-time, but I know that if I keep collecting stories and experiences like that one, I’ll find joy in any job.

My ultimate goal is to have a job that sustains me financially and doesn’t make me dread it every night and morning, but I think eventually I’ll come to accept that your job won’t and probably shouldn’t be your life. If I completely turn creativity and writing into my source of income, will I still covet them as I do now?

If you siphon all your passion into the thing that you have to do or you lose your stability, is it still passion?

My hope is that I can look down that cavernous gap and feel security in traveling between both sides of it. My hope is to make just enough money that I feel content waking up each morning—though I certainly wouldn’t be mad if I made a little more. Money might sustain you, but your passions will keep you alive.

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By Oshmi Ghosh

Tags:choosing a major, college, creative writing, english major
Posted in Creativity, NYC Student Guide, on Writing, onCollege, onTalent, Writing | No Comments »

Dreamland Ch. 1: A thousand empty notebooks

Wednesday, June 11th, 2025

Every year, without fail, someone will gift me a notebook. It’s not exactly a secret that I love to write, though I tend not to advertise it all the time, and I can’t blame that first instinct to give the writer a place to journal her thoughts and ideas before they vanish. Unfortunately, I was born in 2005, which means I started using laptops in fourth grade and haven’t stopped since. Kids these days, right?

But my first ever story was written in a red notebook.

I was five years old, and I didn’t know how to spell all that well, but I’d learned the word spectrum fairly recently and wanted to do something with it. So I pieced together something about rainbows and other worlds. An adopted little girl who plants flowers in an apocalyptic wasteland. I illustrated the cover and everything. With little fanfare, I realized I wanted to be an author.

Since then, that was my Thing. Once I got a handle of Google Docs, it was over for everyone. I wrote silly stories throughout my childhood, once with a friend in sixth grade just because we finished our English quiz early. I centered my personality around the fact that I enjoyed reading and writing, because these were the formative years nobody knew who they were so they picked an archetype for themselves. I could’ve done a lot worse than The Writer, I think, but that stack of notebooks is still growing.

It was a natural next step for me to conceive a full-length novel when I was eleven. That is, I thought vaguely of this story in idle moments and the liminal space between sleep and consciousness, but I didn’t suck it up and start drafting until I was twelve. It was pretty terrible, because I was twelve and all, but I owe everything to that decision. It’s that same story that I rewrote in high school and self-published when I was sixteen, and whose sequels I’m working on right now.

My first book. Do you get the blog title now? Image Credit: https://www.amazon.com/Dark-Reflections-Land-Dreams-Book-ebook/dp/B09KKXPK39

The thing is, it’s exceptionally rare to decide your lifelong passion before you’ve graduated high school, let alone before you’ve learned your times tables. But it’s not as though I’ve approached the rest of my life with absolute certainty or that I now have telescopic vision of the next twenty years. I may have chosen what I like, but I didn’t know who I was, not really. Often, I don’t have the faintest clue of the next five years, or even the next two. I still oscillate wildly between that wonderful surety and a debilitating fear of the future. Especially since that aforementioned lifelong passion happens to be creative writing and not, you know, hedge fund management. You’ll learn soon enough about my less-than-fully formed productivity habits and my monthly crashouts about jobs and internships.

Indeed, I happened to form the nucleus of my interests and aspirations from a very, very young age, but that passion has evolved with me in the same way someone might start out wanting to pursue acting and then realize they’re better suited for behind-the-scenes work. I still feel a certain catharsis from writing fantasy fiction like in the pages of that red notebook, but I see myself switching genres someday, and I also see myself doing a lot more than creative writing as an adult. Over the years, I’ve looked into work in fields like publishing, PR, academia, journalism, social media marketing, and so on, and I don’t want to box myself in even if I will always be writing no matter what.

For instance, I write articles on movies and music for NYU’s newspaper. I’ve picked up minor marketing internships and taken business classes to learn about the professional world. Some things I like more than others, and I’m sure one thing or another will fall to the wayside once I graduate. For every notebook I fill, another remains unfinished. The easy part is figuring out how I can use my ability to write wherever I work, but the scary part is that it’ll never look the same way as it did as a child, when I could just tell myself I would be an author and leave it at that.

That’s the thing they don’t tell you about choosing what you want to do at five years old. You’ll have to keep choosing—and wisely this time.

TL;DR: If you picked a lifelong passion as a child like I did, you still have endless opportunities to figure out who you are. If you didn’t, don’t worry. You’re probably better off anyway.

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By Oshmi Ghosh

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Tags:creative writing, english major, self-publishing, Student Life
Posted in Creativity, NYC Student Guide, on Writing, onTalent, Writing | No Comments »

Chapter 1: Two Dreams, One Me

Tuesday, June 10th, 2025

A picture of myself at my favorite restaurant

Hey, welcome to my first-ever blog! I am Marzia—part engineer and part writer, but a full-time yapper. Stick around—it might get messy, but it’ll be fun!!

My childhood was filled with countless ferry rides from my city to my grandma’s house. As the ferry cut through the gloomy water, I would always stare at the buildings along the shore. They didn’t seem just like structures—they seemed like interesting designs. I would spend the entire time staring at them, the windows, the colors, the shapes, the balconies, and the way they stood next to the water. Sometimes, I would even take wild guesses about the materials used or the money spent on building them, and at other times, I would be too busy wondering how the design could have been better.

It wasn’t long before I started experimenting on my own. On my eighth birthday, my parents gifted me a Lego set. It was more than a toy to me; it was a door to my imagination. I was building hundreds of buildings in a day, experimenting with each one. Each structure was a new challenge—could it be taller, stronger in the base, and more color-oriented? Every time I finished one, I would run around the house to show off my masterpiece. When I was done being showered with compliments, I would take it apart and start over, hoping to come up with a design even more intriguing.

The more I built, the more I began to believe that I could be an engineer. And the more I believed, the stronger my desire to be one became. So I did everything I could to be an even better engineer. The math geek that I was, I tried to skip every basic arithmetic lesson and dive into the math involved in making real buildings.

As a full-on math nerd, I used to hate writing. But when COVID-19 hit and I was stuck at home with the same three people every day, I started to go a little crazy. That’s when I was struck with a shocking desire to journal. I wanted to write down everything I was doing in the day as if I was going to suffer from memory loss the next day. I still don’t know why.

The more I wrote about my days, I more I discovered that damn I can write?!?! I would try to be poetic and use insanely long formal words to describe simple things. Instead of writing “I took a sip from my cup of coffee,” I would try to write some ridiculous, thing as “I delicately sipped from my cup of coffee, allowing the warmth and bitter aroma to settle before continuing with my thoughts.” Before I knew it, I was writing stories, editing them, and proofreading them.

As the days of the lockdown extended, my writing habit turned into a ritual I couldn’t live without. The engineer in me couldn’t believe it: I was falling in love with writing. When my works finally got published in physical books, I knew I couldn’t turn my back on writing anymore.

Just like that, my dream of being an engineer expanded—I wanted to be a writer too.

Funny how the worst times can bring out parts of you that might’ve stayed hidden. Without COVID, I don’t know if I would’ve ever met the writer in me. I was so set on being an engineer, I never even thought about writing. But when everything shut down and the world got quiet, I had nothing but time and thoughts. Writing became my way of making sense of it all. What started as something to pass the time turned into something I loved. Now, I am someone with two dreams, two passions, and two identities.

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By Marzia Seemat

Marzia Seemat is a sophomore at NYU studying civil engineering and creative writing. She loves being close to nature, especially at the beach. Her favorite things include good food, morning tea, hour-long movies, and spending time with the people she loves.

For over 20 years, the Campus Clipper has been offering awesome student discounts in NYC, from the East Side to Greenwich Village. Along with inspiration, the company offers students a special coupon booklet and the Official Student Guide, which encourages them to discover new places in the city and save money on food, clothing, and services. At the Campus Clipper, not only do we help our interns learn new skills, make money, and create wonderful e-books, we give them a platform to teach others. Check our website for more student savings and watch our YouTube video showing off some of New York City’s finest students during the Welcome Week of 2015.

Tags:engineering, food, identity, passion, writing
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Work-Life Balance Actually is Your Problem to Figure Out

Thursday, May 15th, 2025

“The emancipation of the working class must be the work of the working class itself.” – Marx and Engels, Strategy and Tactics of the Class Struggle (1879)

Here me out.

The uproar around SKIMS Co-Founder Emma Grede’s comments regarding employees’ work-life balance responsibilities has brought on a lot of thoughts and feelings I want to discuss.

Last week, Grede stated in an interview with “Diary of a CEO” podcast host Steven Bartlett that a healthy work-life balance is a problem for employees “to figure out.”

Concerning employee attendance and micromanagement, Grede validated her statement by saying her company has changed with the times to accommodate personal life events. “You come in, you have set hours, but there’s flexibility within your working life. It’s not like ‘Oh my goodness, such and such is not at their desk.’” she said. “The way we run organizations now is that no one misses dentist appointments or a doctor’s appointment or a haircut or their kid’s parent-teacher conference.”

While Grede received a lot of pushback for her comments and lack of sensitivity as an employer, I have to agree with her… to a certain extent. The optimist in me wants to say it was giving unintentional Marxist queen.

It’s no shocker that Americans struggle with work-life balance. Our capitalist society literally thrives off of our clocked-on hours and has trained us to believe that we are important if we are good at our job, that we are valuable, even better than others, if we sacrifice ourselves to do more for our job. It’s one thing to be a small business owner living the dream of running a bookstore cafe. It’s another to be working for a company where you’re at the hands of a manager, who is at the hands of their manager, who is at the hands of their manager, and so on.

I don’t know why anyone would expect a large corporation or sector of the workforce to ever take into consideration their employees’ work-life balance. In a utopia, surely. But it doesn’t look like we’re headed towards Marx’s wet dream any time soon, no matter how much I, too, fantasize about it.

Like so many aspects of our lives, it is our responsibility to do what’s best for ourselves, especially when it’s hard. Classload too exhausting this spring semester? It’s up to you to change that for the fall. Feel like you’re spending too much time on social media? You should probably put a lock on the TikTok app. Worried about not exercising enough? I mean, honestly, who isn’t, but who is going to fix that besides you? Not your boss, that’s for sure. It’s HARD to set these kinds of boundaries, especially because it means working towards bettering ourselves for us (how selfish!), rather than bettering a company for profit.

It reminds me of a quote by John Green: “I took some pride in ‘not fulfilling my potential,’ in part because I was terrified that if I tried my hardest, the world would learn I didn’t actually have that much potential.” I’ve seen a lot of people fall into this rabbit hole at one point or another, myself included, because there is a comfort in settling. “I guess I could get used to just being a teacher,” I used to say to myself before I applied to grad school. And the truth is, I probably could’ve just slumped into that routine of having a steady pay and set schedule despite being irritable all the time. But I knew I was stunted as a person when I was teaching, following a path that would leave me feeling limited. That doesn’t mean, however, that there wasn’t still fear in stepping outside that box and pursuing myself first.

Because of this, I do agree with Grede that, when it comes to work, no one is going to look out for you except for you. And this sentiment goes against everything a generalized American workplace wants you to think. It’s hard to stand your ground and set boundaries with work because we’ve truly been programmed not to, and doing so is frowned upon by everyone who is too far in, especially those who profit the most from your labor. If more working people start to be more strict with their work-life balance, institutions will eventually be forced to reckon with a new norm. I firmly believe this is true, as even Grede alluded to such changes in her interview. “That’s just not how we work anymore,” she said regarding an outdated lack of flexibility in work hours.

TBT When I used to go to work sick only for balding women to talk about me behind my back.

This is one thing I love about Gen Z. If any generation has learned to stick it to the man in terms of work-life balance, it’s ours. For most of Gen Z, you literally could not pay us enough to go into work unless we really have to. I enjoy my new job right now, which is actually a rather huge thing for me to say, but at the end of the day, I will always prefer to not work. I know my value doesn’t come from a job. I know my happiness won’t increase if I overwork myself for the sake of an institution. I know any notion of “making the world a better place” can be done without a monetary profit involved. At the end of the day, I work to have money to pay for the things I need and hopefully a little extra. If I didn’t need to be an employee, I wouldn’t be! I would do pilates, volunteer, buy expensive coffee from a small business owner who runs a bookstore cafe, and run my own magazine, AKA become my own boss. I mean, that’s kind of the dream, isn’t it?

I often see people overextending themselves for jobs that don’t even align with their passions and/or come at the cost of their well-being. Even if you love your job, you shouldn’t be risking your physical or mental health, your relationships, or your interests for the sake of work. What is the benefit? So other work-obsessed people will identify you as “good at your job”? So you’ll be known around the office as “dedicated and dependable”? That’s just sad. If you have PTO time, please take it. If you have sick time, PLEASE take it, even if you just have a cold. And if you have neither of these things, but you feel burnt out and can spare a day of work without getting fired, just take a day off. “I won’t be able to make it in today. I apologize for the inconvenience.” End of discussion.

On the flip side, I know many people do not have a choice in terms of improving their work-life balance. They have to work a 40-hour work week to pay all their bills. Especially for those who live in a big city like Boston or New York, most of the time, they’re just working to pay rent and utilities. Add being a student on top of that, and it’s truly like someone materializing in front of you every two weeks with a vacuum, sucking up your entire check. If you can’t take the city out of the girl, you also definitely can’t take the girl out of the city. It’s something I’ve learned to accept. While there are ways to balance work and life, no one can say it isn’t difficult, and self-care during this time looks different for everyone. Take it easy, take a break whenever you can, and just remember, even if you are working long hours day after day, labor laws exist, and rest is eventually required!

“Disappear, babes,” Adele whispers when you clock out.

I can’t believe I used to spend so much time complaining to friends and family about how burnt out I was as a teacher when I was actually the only person who had control over changing that part of my life. Once I did, I became so much happier. Not only that, but I opened up space in my life to actually lean into my passions, such as becoming an editor and writing these blog posts (with no worry or remorse, I might add).

Until the world is ready to stop dehumanizing working people for profit, you have to watch out for yourself. I can assure you, your job will always ask more of you, and it’s on you to learn how to say no. Sometimes, saying no comes with what may look like a consequence. You may have to set boundaries and say no. You may piss people off. You may even have to give up your job and search for something better. Others may not understand your decisions. But if you’re putting yourself first, you will almost always come out on top, and the right people will stand by you. Secure the bag, and then leave! What are you waiting around for?

“A schoolmaster is a productive labourer when, in addition to belabouring the heads of his scholars, he works like a horse to enrich the school proprietor. That the latter has laid out his capital in a teaching factory, instead of in a sausage factory, does not alter the relation.” – Marx, Capital, Volume I, Chapter 16 (1867)

Boston Students! Grab a nice book and head over to Caffé Bene for 10% off with this coupon and a student ID!

Brenna Sheets is a graduate student in Emerson College’s Writing and Publishing M.A. program. Her hobbies include going on long walks, watching bad television, reading, and writing.

Tags:blog, onJobs, self-care, wellness, work/life balance, working student, writing
Posted in onJobs, onLife, Writing | No Comments »

Where Are Women Allowed to Be Hot?

Thursday, April 10th, 2025

Like everyone else, I’ve been thinking about Bad Bunny’s Calvin Klein promotion for about three weeks. I am all for men in their tiny little undies looking all scrumptious for clothing brands, and it’s not just because the sight is easy on the eyes. Campaigns like Bad Bunny’s and Jeremy Allen White’s do more than just give the people what they want. When men take up sexualized spaces that have been historically imposed upon women, they highlight the gender discrepancy within partial-nudity reception. That’s what I’m also for.

Calvin Klein’s Instagram page has an audience of nearly 26 million. Bad Bunny appears in the most recent Calvin Klein campaign wearing just his Calvins, partially nude—something that’s been normalized for men in media but is often critiqued and policed when women do the same.

Bad Bunny received overwhelmingly positive feedback from the internet for posing in his Calvins, with many comments thanking Calvin Klein for giving them such a godsend of photos (I don’t disagree here). Audiences reacted the same with Jeremy Allen White and many of the other men who have posed in their tighty whities, such as Jacob Elordi, Michael B. Jordan, and more.

Bad Bunny’s Calvin Klein ad, cropped to your displeasure.

What happens when we compare the reception to JENNIE’s Calvin Klein campaign, which featured comments from viewers such as “She has a nice body, but is it sexy?” What about Disha Patani’s? A follower wrote, “Nowadays, showing partial body is the next way to get popular and attention.” Maya Jardon’s more conservative shapewear post didn’t miss getting hit either: “Why are you naked?” And then, for Lily Collins’ full-clothing campaign, a backhanded comment that almost had me hopeful, “This woman is sexy without showing anything,” plus a “this is not on brand.”

We can’t forget what happened to FKA twigs, either. In April 2023, Calvin Klein released an advertisement featuring FKA twigs wearing an unbuttoned denim shirt draped over her body, exposing parts of her butt and her breasts. It wasn’t too long after that the UK’s Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) received two complaints alleging that the ad objectified women. Consequently, the ASA banned the ad, stating that it “used nudity and centered on FKA twigs’ physical features rather than the clothing, to the extent that it presented her as a stereotypical sexual object.”

FKA twigs publicly contested this ruling, expressing disappointment and highlighting double standards in advertising. She noted that similar campaigns featuring male celebrities, such as Jeremy Allen White, did not face the same scrutiny. In her statement, she emphasized her pride in her body and the empowerment she felt during the shoot, questioning why hers was deemed inappropriate:

“I do not see the ‘stereotypical sexual object’ that they have labelled me. I see a beautiful strong woman of colour whose incredible body has overcome more pain than you can imagine,” she wrote a day after the ban. “In light of reviewing other campaigns, past and current, of this nature, I can’t help but feel there are some double standards.” It’s still lost on the committee, which eventually responded that although they were concerned their “rationale for banning the ad was substantially flawed,” the photos were still overtly sexual, and thus the ban remained.

One of the FKA twigs Calvin Klein ad photos that wasn’t removed

As Summer approaches and Amiee Lou Wood’s White Lotus Bikinis sell out online, I’ve come to wonder, where are women allowed to be hot?

Campaigns like Bad Bunny’s indirectly highlight how algorithms and moderation policies on platforms like Instagram, TikTok, and others unevenly censor content based on gender and sexualization. Because of this, it seems women are not allowed to be hot in the Calvin Klein campaigns, which are quite literally designated spaces for partial nudity to be accepted. Online platforms as a whole tend to sexualize and censor women’s bodies far more than men’s, especially in similar attire. If we take modeling underwear out of the picture, there must be other spaces where women can be confident and attractive while not being policed for it, right?

Certainly not at the gym, where sports bras and biker shorts have become demonized by men who don’t know how to confront their own wandering eyes. “It’s practically narcissistic, if someone has a great six-pack and young girls have amazingly shaped bodies that they are showing off basically, they should cover up a little bit, you know,” said a gym owner on Irish radio whose comments have since gone viral and irritated plenty. Men can work out shirtless and semi-shirtless—for when those muscle tanks are cut up so much they show both the nips—but women can’t have a matching fit that highlights their physique? Are they just upset because men’s clothes aren’t as thematic and interesting as women’s? Do the guys just want cute matching sets, too? I’m trying to find an attainable solution.

What about at work or school? Hilarious question. We’ve all seen Legally Blonde. Next.

Women also can’t be hot on the beach, where they’ll be reprimanded for wearing bikinis no matter what age they are. A council in Greater Sydney announced recently it would be banning G-string bikinis at its public pools without providing further details about how the rule will be policed. Last summer, actress Sydney Sweeney received criticism for posting photos in a long-sleeve one-piece wetsuit because it had a bikini bottom: “Didn’t she say she didn’t want to be sexualized anymore?” and “Who on earth made this mid famous?” In her op-ed, “Women – don’t get larger, don’t get older, don’t have fun, don’t dare to wear a bikini” for The Guardian, Barbara Ellen described the array of ridicule women get for showing skin: “Is she wearing a bikini? At her age? At that weight? Shouldn’t she be in a one-piece? Isn’t it all a bit undignified? On and on it goes.”

It definitely takes a toll on the mental wellness of women. What spaces are we left in to just be hot in peace? Where can we go where we won’t get bullied into wearing something we don’t like, only to still receive slander from the opposite end where we’re not hot enough? The scrutiny of women’s clothing and skin exposure is just a breeding ground for shame, fear, and self-consciousness. How often do we feel unsafe or objectified on a daily basis, not even during times of shorts and tanks, but when we’re fully clothed head to toe? How often have we dealt with anxiety and reduced self-worth because some man opened his mouth? This pressure to dress “modestly” or “appropriately” undermines self-expression and contributes to internalized misogyny, ruining our mental health and body confidence. It’s something we’ve experienced for years before and will continue to for years to come.

It seems women are allowed to be hot anywhere that straight men are not present. If there are to be hetero-men present, there should be just one, and it should be your husband. If you’re single, and there are multiple men in the space, you’re still permitted to be hot, but in consequence, you will also have to be thirsty, immature, narcissistic, dumb, attention-seeking, and, above all, disreputable. And that’s just the way it goes for people with half a brain cell, apparently.

I do think, however, that getting men some more matching workout sets could be onto something. Maybe a lavender 5-inch inseam short and crop tank? Can we get a Nike collab with Ryan Gosling on this? Asking for a friend.

Boston Students! Head on over to Chivo in Cambridge and get free chips and salsa with a coupon and student ID 🙂

Brenna Sheets is a graduate student in Emerson College’s Writing and Publishing M.A. program. Her hobbies include going on long walks, watching bad television, reading, and writing.

Tags:body positivity, celebrity, cultural critique, entertainment, Fashion, self-love, Social Media, Summer, wellness, Women, writing
Posted in Fashion, onBeauty, onHealth, Writing | No Comments »

Archive for the ‘Writing’ Category

Dreamland Ch. 7: Why you should send that cold email

Dreamland Ch. 6: The Notes App, and other holy grails

Dreamland Ch. 5: Worldbuilding at 2am, breakfast at noon

Dreamland Ch. 4: You are not a sellout, you are just 20 years old

Dreamland Ch. 3: Humility, and how the city of dreams can make you feel like a nobody

Dreamland Ch. 2: Surefire tricks to get your relatives to stop asking you about school

Dreamland Ch. 1: A thousand empty notebooks

Chapter 1: Two Dreams, One Me

Work-Life Balance Actually is Your Problem to Figure Out

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