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What is Experience?

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That’s our motto, our credo, our exhortation. Experience is a digital magazine that examines the power of experience to spark ideas, solve problems, transform industries, and drive personal growth. Our stories will invite readers to understand the experiences of others, challenge assumptions, and break through the bubbles that too often persist in culture and civic life. They’ll promote a spirit of doing, growing, taking leaps, embracing the new. Experience is published by Northeastern University.

Have an idea for an Experience story? Check out our submission guidelines.

About Northeastern

For more than a century, Northeastern University has placed experience at the heart of its mission, in teaching, research, and global engagement. That’s because experience is the push that gives learning and discovery connection, insight, and impact. Experience is how people learn over their lifetimes, staying nimble and relevant. Experience is education. Learn more about Northeastern.

Staff

EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
Joanna Weiss @JoannaWeiss

DESIGN DIRECTOR
Michael Workman @MichaelWorkman

SENIOR EDITOR
Schuyler Velasco @Schuyler_V

EDITOR, PARTNERSHIPS AND ENGAGEMENT
Ceci Menchetti @CeciMenchetti

© 2019 Northeastern University
First Person

Performing my first opera — al fresco

Singing in the Mile-Long Opera in Manhattan's High Line park, I felt connected to my fellow New Yorkers like never before.

By Maryann De Leo

What are public libraries for?

By Schuyler Velasco

I Tried It: Ghost hunting

By Alison Stevenson

The Experience Questionnaire: Mike O’Malley
First Person

A night on a hunt for the homeless

The moral dilemma of a well-intentioned search

By Ezra Haber Glenn

Finding the cheese that speaks to you

By Julia Beck

The Experience Questionnaire: Desi Lydic

Stories in Career Day

Finding the cheese that speaks to you

By Julia Beck

She’ll sell you Springsteen’s guitar or dancing with Madonna

By Alix Strauss

Stretch, stay alert, and avoid raccoons

By Tracy Staedter

Trophies, ‘Chambongs,’ and food, of course

By Alix Strauss

From a basement office, she made the White House bloom

By Julia Beck

Getting inked is just part of his job

By Julia Beck

Ideas

A blind spot in medical data? Sometimes, it’s race.

Black patients have good reason to question data-driven medicine. Here’s how to restore our trust.

By Rochaun Meadows-Fernandez

Ideas

When protest came dressed in a tiara

Before Beyoncé and Colin Kaepernick, there was Mlle Bourgeoise Noire

By Heather Kapplow

Stories in Ideas

She’ll sell you Springsteen’s guitar or dancing with Madonna

By Alix Strauss

A day in the life of a zero waster

By Jenni Gritters

Stories in I Tried It

I Tried It: Ghost hunting

By Alison Stevenson

I Tried It: Group piano class

By Evan Judd

I Tried It: Sensory deprivation tank

By Allen Strickland Williams

I Tried It: Self-defense class

By Erin Kennedy

I Tried It: Swimming with whale sharks

By Amy Sutherland

I Tried It: ‘Tinder for friendship’

By Margaret Eby

First Person

Alone on the mountain — where I belonged

Nevada's bristlecone pines are the oldest trees on Earth. I needed to see them by myself.

By Andy Pepper

Stories in First Person

That’s not my name

By Schuyler Velasco

I Tried It: Sensory deprivation tank

By Allen Strickland Williams

Ideas

What would you do? Take an immigrant’s journey.

Here are eight immigrant stories, told through composite characters but based on real laws and historically documented scenarios. Follow their paths, and see how you would respond to the choices they faced.