Please, don’t challenge me to a game of spikeball. It’s not that I don’t like it. In fact, I love it. I love it so much I’m scared of what you’ll think of me afterward. I get mean in spikeball. I’ll call you names and taunt you and get really, really mad when you start to beat me. I’ll bloody up my knees and rip my leggings, but it’s all worth it to me if I win. At the risk of sounding cocky, I’ll say that this is part of what makes me a good volleyball player. I have an inner drive (maybe comp

Greta Sowles pictured outside the Fairview South Emergency Room while on shift during Thanksgiving weekend. In her profession, there is no such thing as being off for the holidays. “But holidays aren’t usually too busy,” Sowles said. | Photo by Hannah Hobus Emergency room physician associate works at the front lines of COVID-19 pandemic. The case count doesn’t stop rising. Greta Sowles has been watching it slow down over the past six months, but it still rises. Ebbs and flows, like the waves on

The city of St. Paul looks to pay reparations to African Americans, affecting several Bethel students. Diameshia Ford sat in her seventh grade geometry class, looking around the room. All white faces. Hers was the only one darker than the rest. She stared at her worksheet, unable to figure out the problem staring back at her. Math had always been hard for her, but determined to solve this problem, she walked up to the teacher’s desk to ask for help. Her classmates had been going up to ask for

I have a confession: I don’t know what I’m doing, I don’t know how to small talk. When someone asks me “How are you?” I just smile and say “Good!” despite the dark circles under my eyes and my wrinkled, coffee-stained T-shirt. My shirts are always wrinkled. I don’t know how to hang clothes. Even when I iron them, I just create new wrinkles. Maybe I don’t know how to iron. How do clothes get in style? I still wear things that I’ve had since eighth grade. Occasionally, I’ll get new stuff, but ne

Ripley Smith sat in a cold, plastic folding chair in a North Minneapolis church library in late April, surrounded by shelves with kids’ bibles. Snacks and a some bottles of water sat on the formica table in front of him, its legs pushing into a worn-out olive carpet. The church looked nondescript in comparison to the ornate, historic buildings surrounding it. Smith mentally prepared to conduct the seventh interview of his summer research project, with a man named John. This was the same church,

Senior Kjeirstin Carlson shares how a heart condition rarely experienced by young people affects her life as an ambitious college student. Kjeirstin Carlson shut her eyes. Under her bed covers in Bodien Hall, she tried to fall asleep, exhausted after another busy day as a Bethel freshman. But her heart wouldn’t let her. As she lay there, she felt her heart pulse with a powerful, irregular beat, like her heart was working harder than it should. She waited for it to stop, and it refused. She gr

Alumnus and Professor of Bethel University shares how his time at this school has shaped him. Chris Carroll knows these halls. He’s been walking them nearly every day for 20 years. The blue and gold paint everywhere, posters of Roy, the lion mascot and big letters in the gym spelling out “BETHEL ROYALS” have almost started to blend into the old, red brick of the school. There’s that classroom he met his wife in. The doors he walked out of every day to go to hockey practice. The office he int

Zion stares at the blank paper. What will she draw today? She gets inspiration everywhere. Landscapes, things in her house, or whatever imagination can concoct. Zion likes drawing, and she’s good at it.

Nonprofit organization Treehouse adapts to the challenges of the past year to serve their students. Jake rubbed his tired eyes and opened up his computer, logging on to yet another zoom call. In the age of the coronavirus, he was getting used to them. But this one was different. It wasn’t for class. It was for the community. He didn’t quite know what to expect when he clicked “join”, but he wanted to see what this Treehouse stuff his friends at school wouldn’t stop talking about. He’d seen the

Someone had seen it first on a phone. Rumors quickly started to circulate around the bench. Unease was tangible for those in the dugout. But on the field, it was still game time. The Bethel baseball team was in the middle of it’s second game of their Florida tournament, but only two games in they were faced with the hard news. Their trip—and season—would be coming to an end. “Everything just changed in the span of five minutes,” Malcolm said. “But we were still playing in the middle of the gam