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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

To get across Hanoi, you have to go with the flow

What crossing the street in Vietnam's capital has in common with physics and thermal convection

By John Fox

I Tried It: Food cooked by robots

By Heather Kapplow

The Experience Questionnaire: Irvine Welsh

The sex robots are (almost) here

By Glenn McDonald

Ideas

Cornhole (yes, cornhole) is going pro

Born in Europe — or maybe China — this simple game took hold in the American Midwest. Now, it’s aiming for the Olympics.

By Glenn McDonald

The strange satisfaction of a sports injury

By Jim Sullivan

I Tried It: Ax throwing

By Megan Johnson

Red, white, blue, and black

By Rochaun Meadows-Fernandez

A park built for protest

By Erick Trickey

Kick the doors open

By Joan Anderman

Stories in I Tried It

I Tried It: Food cooked by robots

By Heather Kapplow

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

Ideas

Here comes the bride — and 150 cellphones

In the debate over where devices belong, weddings are the last frontier

By Alix Strauss

Stories in Ideas

Backstage at ‘The Lion King,’ he handles beads, harnesses, and sweat

By Margaret Eby

Inside the shadow world of scooter chargers

By Megan Koester

Stories in Career Day

Backstage at ‘The Lion King,’ he handles beads, harnesses, and sweat

By Margaret Eby

All the beauty products he could ever want

By Alix Strauss

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

First Person

The grownup who vapes

I don’t want my teenage son to see me vaping. But I really don’t want him to see me smoking cigarettes.

By Glenn McDonald

Why your favorite barista looks like your grandma

By Hattie Bernstein

The (old) new hire

By Schuyler Velasco

First Person

Pulling the trigger

I always hated guns. Then I learned to shoot one.

By Tracy Hahn-Burkett

First Person

This is what it’s like to ski the half pipe

Olympic skier Annalisa Drew walks us through her routine, flips and all.

Stories in First Person

The most dangerous part of scuba diving

By Christina Wood

‘A mirror made out of sound’

By Thea Breite, Nicholas Pfosi, and Sofia Adams

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.