If you had asked me just a few weeks ago if there existed a series of possible events that, if triggered in the proper sequence, might make my beloved Notre Dame football seem to a broader national audience both sympathetic and maybe even cool, I would have said that no…

In the spring of 2016 I was in my second semester of my current round of graduate school. …

I need to start here: I love pop music. At pretty much any point since getting my driver’s license, if you hopped into my car, you stood a non-zero chance of hearing me jamming along to whatever was currently populating the Billboard Top 40 list. There are many things that…

When I used to work in college admissions, I would get frequent questions about topics for admissions essays. Having read thousands of these, I would always offer (and would still offer) the same advice: tell me the most interesting thing about you. …

I was in probably fifth or sixth grade when wrestling’s popularity was at a fever pitch in my grade school. With a level of commitment that only idiot children can ever generate, my classmates and I created a “wrestling league” wherein each member of our class was assigned an identity…

This Easter season, I find myself considering a scene from a movie that is, by all accounts, deeply important to just about any person of faith regardless of tradition: the Devil Wears Prada. …

This is an expansion of something I wrote at the beginning of our pandemic quarantine. It didn’t feel finished then, but I think it’s finished now. As 2020 fades more rapidly in the rear-view mirror and we push deeper into 2021, I don’t know many who mourn the passing of…

I’ve gone and reproduced this piece from a few years ago, because I’m thinking and writing about grief during these first days of 2021. Maybe not the most traditional start to the year, but, I hope, a productive one. Today my family and I said our final goodbyes to my…

Unwilled Inheritances and Terrifying Passengers: On Depression, Entropy, and Systemic Inequality On Pentecost Sunday, the pastor at my Catholic church referred during his homily to racism as our nation’s Original Sin and called on us to work to eradicate it. …