Vignettes

Dishes

Riley Peters

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I’m over the sink with a sponge in my hand doing my least favorite chore. 

I’ve always hated doing the dishes — wet food left on the plates, milk rotting in cereal bowls. 

My mother actually enjoys it. She says it’s “calming.” That never made sense to me. 

I always thought that when I liked to do the dishes I’d start to become a grown-up.

I last saw my parents when they helped move me into my very first house. My name was on the lease. I made the rules. I had the code to the front door. From the outside, I looked like a true grown-up.

But I felt like an imposter. Like I was living in someone else’s house who would soon come home and hopefully take care of everything. 

A call to my mother: “How should I wash a comforter?” 

A call to my father: “My car is making a funny noise.”

A call to my mother: “How do I make a doctor’s appointment?”

A call to my father: “Can I have that one recipe?”

All of the unnoticed, unspoken things my parents did were now left to me. I was stuck in limbo — not yet a grown-up, but not a kid anymore.

I wondered when I’d finally become an adult and how I would know it had happened. It wasn’t until one day, months later, when I was washing the dishes and humming that I caught myself thinking … 

“This is nice.” 

A quiet transition into adulthood.

I was no longer stuck between adolescence and adulthood. No longer an imposter in someone else’s house. Calls to my parents were now about the material of my classes, the jobs and internships I wanted, and my plans for the future.

And suddenly, quietly and peacefully, doing the dishes a few times a week didn’t seem so bad.

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Building Her Body

Evan Stefanik

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Nickole Sandoval hurls a final rice cake wrapper into the trash can backstage before going on stage for her first bodybuilding competition. 

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In her dressing room mirror, she looks for proof of the only food she ate for half a year: ground turkey, egg whites and chicken salads. Her perseverance shows when she flexes. 

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An expensive tan from head to toe makes her shine like a bronze statue. She beams with the same passionate smile as her bodybuilding idols on Instagram. Nickole’s coach approaches and instructs her how to pose before adjusting her $450 bikini to fit tighter around her muscles. 

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Once her coach manipulates her posture and lets her relax, Nickole tries to stretch out any tension in the next-door gym space.

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Although she is thick-legged from cardio and buff from lifting weights, she maintains a nationally-qualifying hourglass figure. She had to tone her body to the extreme for this competition and now survives at her leanest.

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She used to face frequent near-paralysis on her couch, suffering intense physical fatigue from her constant exercise. Training meant spending many of her nights rehydrating and staring at the ceiling instead of partying with friends.

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As an educational psychology master’s student and lifelong athlete, Miami University’s recreation center has allowed Nickole to meet fellow bodybuilders who have encouraged her to compete.

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When she feels ready, Nickole takes one triumphant breath, raises her chin, and steps onto the stage. Along the way, she catches a whiff of the uneaten box of donuts that waits for her on the vanity. 

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Forefathers

Shr-Hua Moore

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“You know, the Puritans were pretty brutal,” he said as he looked up from a gray hardcover titled “New England Legends and Folklore” and uncrossed his legs. 

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You would instantly believe him if he said he was a direct descendant of the Puritans. His curly brown hair, his freckles and his skin — only slightly tanned because of a parks job he worked over the summer — say it all.

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He was aware that he was descended from New Englanders, but there were so many things he didn’t know about his heritage until he researched with the help of Ancestry.com and Google.

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He didn’t know that his ancestor from 11 generations back was the second wife of William Bradford. He didn’t know that three of his ancestors were signers of the Mayflower Compact. He didn’t know that his mom had known about his heritage for ages and had never bothered to tell him.


He didn’t want to know about his father’s ancestors. 

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His dad left before he was born. However, he didn’t notice until he was six and realized that all his classmates had two parents instead of one. Besides a phone call every once in a while and a birthday present that’s always a few days late, his father is just another stranger.

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While he isn’t mad at him anymore, he also isn’t eager to meet him.

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“He’s just a person that I happen to share 50 percent of my DNA with,” he said, leaning back in his chair.

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Maybe his obsession with the Puritans was a way to get out of doing his chemistry homework — or perhaps it was easier to learn about forefathers long gone rather than the father who had never been there for him in the first place.

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Back in Session

Lexi Whitehead

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After building up a 4.3 GPA throughout his first three years in high school, Ryan Helms ended the first quarter of his senior year with a 0.6.


Ryan had been skipping school and not doing his work.

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Having been accepted into the University of Alabama with a full-ride scholarship, he saw no end-goal in continuing to try in school, so he started avoiding class and missing assignments.

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Between six Advanced Placement classes, an after-school job and having to study what felt like a random spattering of subjects, Ryan didn't feel focused.

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After years of being in his school’s gifted program, taking the highest-level classes and competing with his peers for the best grades, Ryan was burnt out and realized he no longer wanted to suffer for his grades.

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Things got slightly better when he made it to college in 2014, but they still weren’t perfect. He was glad to take a more focused set of classes for his engineering major, but he couldn’t break the habit of skipping classes.

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Ryan spent three years at the University of Alabama, then he took three years off to figure out what he wanted to do with his life. He spent his time working at a rock climbing center and thinking about what career would fit him best. 

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He thought about attending trade school during that time, but after people in trades dissuaded him, he decided to go back to college for a business degree. 

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He got a two-semester associate degree from Cincinnati State Technical and Community College, then he transferred to Miami University this year. He didn’t get into the Farmer School of Business like he wanted and is currently a University Studies major. 

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Although he isn’t in Farmer, he can still take business classes and focus on reapplying.

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The focus of his business classes and his choice of a thematic sequence in geography means he’s taking classes he likes. After almost 10 years, Ryan feels like he has an end-goal. Sometimes he still struggles to motivate himself to study, but day by day he’s working to build better academic habits.

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Behind the Counter

Jake Ruffer

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Students foraging for pretzels, Gatorade and ramen noodles wander into the Emporium market in Armstrong Student Center. They seize upon their finds then plunk them down onto the counter.

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“Go ahead and tap whenever you’re ready,” the blonde girl working the register says.

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The customers pay and walk their snacks out the door while she remains a cashier.

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They won’t learn that she doesn’t really think of herself like that — she actually prefers stocking the shelves and making sure all the drinks face forward in the refrigerator.

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They also won’t learn that for the rest of her time, the sophomore from Columbus, Ohio, doesn’t stop.

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She wakes up early most days. That’s her time to herself: when the world is quiet. She often does her homework first thing in the morning. She’s majoring in zoology and picked up a second major in environmental science. Her Spanish minor comes naturally.

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On Saturday mornings, she gets up before 10:30 a.m. to help clean up trash around town with Zero Waste Oxford. She plays guitar, swims breaststroke for Miami’s club Redfins and likes to watch anime.

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She loves her mini labradoodle Cooper and her betta fish Bubbles. She says it’s always a good day if she’s seen some bugs. Sometimes her friends send her pictures of the insects they see on their walks to class to help her out. 

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The best day of her life was when she hiked up Cadillac Mountain in Maine and watched the sun rise over the bay with her mom.

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She says that the people she helps out at work can become like regulars, coming in during her shifts each week. And yet, with everything there is to know about Emily Davidson, many of them won’t even stop to learn her name.