When I first heard that “Superstorm Sandy” was going to come and wreak havoc on New York City, I thought that the weather reporters were probably just overreacting. As Sandy began to approach the city, l was working on my computer, still skeptical that this storm would have any significant impact. And that’s when the power went out.

For me, it actually started out kind of fun. School was cancelled, which was kind of nice. During the days, my mom and I walked up to a Starbucks with power on 34th Street to recharge our devices and ourselves. We explored the post-Sandy city, talking about what had happened and observing the damage. And during the evenings, I spent a lot of time with my friend and downstairs neighbor. We used various flashlights and lighting-up Harry Potter magic wands to illuminate the apartment and recorded a little radio show called “Crazy No Power Times” in which we talked and made jokes about Sandy, among other topics.

But eventually, it began to get tiring and a little stressful. We weren’t sure when our power and heat would come back, and we heard about other neighborhoods in the city that had been hit even worse. When Halloween rolled around and the city still hadn’t recovered, I was disappointed that the storm had ruined a holiday I really enjoyed (and a chance to get lots of candy). I started looking foward to going back to school. I just wanted my life to start up again.

When the power returned, I was relieved that the whole experience was over. But I was glad to have been through it, because it taught me about how to make the best of bad situations and made me grateful for the everyday pleasures of electricity.

I take the 6 train almost every weekday, so I tend to see a lot of homeless people. They don’t usually bother me if they are just sitting, taking the train. Sometimes though, they ask for money, often quite loudly. This bothers me for two reasons. First, while I’m on the train I usually try to do something productive like read from a digital textbook on my phone. This becomes much harder when someone, homeless or not, is talking loudly. But second, and maybe more importantly, hearing homeless people talk on the train about how hard their life is and how much they need just a little money will sometimes make me feel bad.

I know I won’t give them money, I never have. I’m very stingy with money. I barely even buy things for myself. And so sometimes I wonder, when I hear a homeless person asking for money, “am I a terrible person?” I guess I never really conclude that I am, because I never do change my behavior. I find reasons to justify myself, like “I don’t have that much money to begin with” or “would giving one dollar to a homeless person really make a big difference?” or “what if they’re just a crook making up this whole sob story to get some extra cash?” It’s kind of funny, because I strongly support laws that make the rich pay more taxes that will go to help the poor and homeless. And I’m not poor, I could give a homeless person a few bucks, and it would probably cost less than paying extra taxes. But on a day to day basis, I never help the homeless with my own money. I tell myself it’s because the city could run an organized operation with our tax money: they could open shelters, feed the homeless, and maybe even help them find jobs. Maybe though, I just want to keep my precious dollars to myself. And maybe that’s why it’s especially important for the government to get involved with these issues. Because individual people, now matter how moral and fair they think they are, just don’t care enough to willingly part with their money.

As a white female who lives in a middle to upper class area, I have never had a scary or dangerous encounter with the police. But one time, I did have an interesting, even somewhat amusing encounter with them. It was this past summer during “Manhattan-henge” when the light from the sun was hitting the buildings of Manhattan in a pretty way, and my mom and I went outside to see it. As we walked towards 23rd street, we passed an area that seemed swamped with police. My mom was curious about what was going on, so she asked one of the policemen. He said they were just “hanging out”, there was nothing going on and we should just keep going. We did keep going, but we found the whole thing a little odd.

Later, after we had gone and taken pictures of the Manhattan-henge light, we found out there had been a protest right there where the police had been “hanging out”. In some ways, it seemed kind of funny to my mom and I that this policeman had straight up lied to us (and not very well at that) about something that really was not such a big deal. But it also goes to show that there is a lack of trust between the police and the communities they serve. Obviously, this isn’t the most dramatic example of this lack of trust. That specific policeman could have been at the end of his shift, ready to go home, and not wanting to explain this protest to some random person on the street. But that’s really the only experience I ever had with the police that sticks out to me.