Everyone needs a support system, a person to talk to when you feel like shit or to ask for advice when you’re really lost. Someone you trust, someone who’s got your back. Maybe it’s your parents, or the people you live with. Maybe a sibling, maybe your dog. (I definitely consider my miniature schnauzer to be a part of my support system.)

Because it’s really, really hard to do this alone. It’s hard to go through the misery of midterms alone. It’s hard to live alone. Sometimes it’s hard to go home alone. So we surround ourselves—or we try to, at least—with support, and at Yale we’re especially fortunate in this regard: from FroCo to college Master, we’re pretty much encircled by support systems just waiting to be tapped.

But not everyone is looked after in this way, and, for many, midterms are far from the direst struggles of the month of October. Julia Calagiovanni, SM ’15, looks at the difficulty of being a teen mom in the City of New Haven, examining along the way the various support systems available to teen parents.

In Features, we’ve got just what you’re looking for. David Rossler, MC ’17, dives into the groundbreaking research being conducted at Yale’s Center for Emotional Intelligence, which is attempting to redefine what it means to be smart, and Cody Kahoe, CC ’15, takes us from New Haven back to Turkey in tracing the origin stories of the owners of some of Yale’s favorite pizzerias.

Jessica McHugh, SY ’15, puts on the earphones for some Fall Out Boy, which we remember from middle school, and Noah Remnick, ES ’15, sits down with Drew Rubin, SY ’11, founder of Blue State Coffee, to talk brew and politics.

Read it all. Soak it in. We’re so close to break I can taste it. I’m itching to get home and see my schnauzer for some much needed support.

Love,

Kohler Bruno

Features Editor