The brush of your steps.

I wrote this while awaiting a ferry to go to my friends' wedding in Poros, Greece. It was an enlightening moment fueled with a bit of travel exhaustion -- but at this point I'm happy to say that's become the norm. Maybe it was never about the traveling. I mean, don’t get me wrong, this is my drug of choice, but maybe the initial thought of traveling, of visiting new places and cultures, of immersing yourself into the curiosities of centuries of great and poor decisions that create what we call cities, maybe that was just a facade. I begin to realize this as I type away in some bench at a bus stop in Athens, Greece. My flight into Athens landed at 4:00am, which was essentially the worst time one can arrive at any city, although i’ll give New York and Barcelona props on being one of the few places i’d leave the airport knowing the city was inexplicably still alive. Anyways, back to my point: as I sit in this bench, I observe people from everywhere, some rushed a...

My name is Daniel Castro and I've been a part of the Georgia Institute of Technology for 4 years but I will be a yellow jacket for the rest of my life. I studied my undergraduate career in Computer Science under the College of Computing, and am now pursuing my doctorate within the same institution. I am an avid supporter of our Athletics department because I love cheering for the school that has made me grow as a person, and taught me everything that I know today. I go to football games drenched in yellow paint, ready to scream our glorious fight songs to cheer the brave and bold. I love this school. But not everyone does. In a recent discussion I was having with a colleague, we joked about how Georgia Tech students often bond over the fact that they went through similar amounts of pain and suffering. To paraphrase what my friend mentioned, "we talk about Georgia Tech like we had been to Vietnam together." I was very confused and began to talk to my peers about the...