In my five years in New York, I’ve eaten at Shake Shack quite a number of times not necessarily because I had a craving for these burgers, but rather because it’s something that visiting friends want to do, plus I have a number of native East Coast colleagues who think that there is no greater burger than Shake Shack. So let’s all be honest with ourselves about our preferences – when we grow up knowing particular flavors and smells, over time, we consider them our comforts, stay devoted to them, and every time we have them again, a warming sensation comes over us that is so satisfying. This applies to everything, from the smell of the laundry detergent your mother used, to the Americanized General Tso’s chicken that you grew up eating, and though you know it’s not “authentic,” you love it anyway.

This same thing applies to the In-N-Out vs. Shake Shack burger. If you are used to one and love it, once you have the second one, you probably aren’t going to like it as much because of your (perhaps subconscious) loyalty to the first – this is your own bias. I can’t genuinely say which one I prefer because the last time I had an In-N-Out burger was 15 years ago (a bit shameful since I am a San Francisco native), but what I can say is that the Shake Shack burger, while tasty, is nothing remarkable. It’s not particularly juicy, doesn’t have any real meaty complexity, and will never be what I imagine first when I think of the “ideal burger.”

Everyone loves to make up excuses whether they are legitimate or not. The best way you know that someone is making an excuse that has no merit is when they begin their argument with, “I don’t have time to…” When people meet me, one of their first things that they learn is that I love to cook. The usual response (especially in New York) is, “I’d love to cook, but I don’t have time to.” Granted, this is usually something Millennials say to me. You guys think you don’t have any time with your full time jobs and social life? Well, your parents had time to cook a homemade meal for you most nights with their full time jobs, your siblings, and other responsibilities, so I’m pretty sure what you should be saying is that you prefer to do other things with your time. We all have time; how we choose to spend it is a completely different issue.

I just finished watching a YouTube video about a 17-year old who died of cancer, yet every day from the moment he found out he has cancer until the day he passed, he lived life as though every single day counted – he obsessively made music, spent quality time with his friends and family, and even started a romantic relationship with someone he fell in love with. It’s a cliched, easy thing to say that we should “live life to its fullest,” but it’s the most inspirational when we learn stories of those whose clock is truly ticking in the scariest way that we all fear. If we held onto each day as though it could be our last, we’d probably all be a little more honest, a bit more affectionate, and a lot more real.

Being a “millennial,” I live in an age where information is constantly at my fingertips. I don’t need to wait for the morning newspaper or the 10 o’clock news; everything is constantly being updated every second on Google News, Twitter, the nytimes.com – everywhere. The problem with this, though, is that anytime I am not online or reading news, it seems as though I am “out of the loop,” unaware of the hyper current events that are happening around me in the world, and it makes me feel ignorant. Lack of awareness is unsettling – when other people know things that you do not know, regardless of what it is. But there are only so many hours in a day, yet the constant stream of information never stops. How do we prevent ourselves from being completely drowned in this incessant news flow and still be a knowledgeable citizen of the world?

Past the age of 14, I’ve never felt like I really belonged to any one “group.” I tend to be the person who has friends who identify with different friend groups, and thus have pretty much always felt like the floater – in other words, the loner who didn’t belong anywhere. Sometimes it’s been a bit liberating in that I’m not completely defined by the group I am with, and other times, it’s invariably been a bit lonely. And when I have tried to get these different friends of mine together, they never seem to “click.” My last birthday party made it pretty clear to me. So now, as we are all getting older and more set in our ways and in our people, it seems harder to make friends who want more than just superficial associations and people just “to do stuff with.”

This weekend, we learned about the whistleblower Edward Snowden, who revealed to the world the National Security Agency’s real dealings. It’s scary to think that someone like him would risk his comfortable life to share the truth with his country about its government. He gave up his lucrative career, a beautiful home in Hawaii, his partner, and his family to tell the public about what the NSA was doing behind the scenes, making the statement that he would not condone it. While what he did was noble, I’d never be able to do what he did and give up everything for the sake of my country knowing “the truth.” I can’t imagine never coming home again.

We currently live in a world where it’s pretty much impossible for a family to live comfortably with a single income, yet despite that this is a fact as opposed to an opinion or a preference, some men really are resistant to it, especially when they have babies at home that they are too terrified to be left alone with. So to deal with the work dilemma, they decide to put more pressure on their wives to quit their jobs and to stay home with the kid. While I am all for women choosing a work life, a stay-at-home-mom life, or some combination of both, I will never be for men trying to make those decisions for their wives either directly or indirectly. The real problem in this case is not a single or dual income household; it’s men refusing to acknowledge their fears and weaknesses and not taking responsibility for this.

I first read of the concept of an “urban tribe” when I took a sociology course in college on marriage and family. In its strictest definition, a “family” is your nuclear family – you, your parents, any siblings you have. Because of the blood that bonds you, you are connected for life. If you stay in the same city the rest of your life, you will probably all be physically bonded, as well. But today, a lot of people leave their families for school, career, pursuits of seeing the greater world around them. Among my three best friends from the Bay Area, only one is still in San Francisco. The need to form new families, or “urban tribes” in our new lives away from home, becomes greater. How do we find people we can trust like family in areas that are less familiar?

The latest big topic in the last few months about Millennials, aka Gen Y, has been “FOMO” – the Fear of Missing Out. The meaning behind it is that in our new generation that is obsessed with social media and keeping up with what everyone is doing, we are more obsessive about constantly checking Facebook and Foursquare because we are scared that if we do not check, we are missing out on “vital” information, and we are scared we are missing out on that same fun. It sounds pretty shallow, but sadly, I don’t think that this is just about Gen Y. I think it’s about society in general just becoming more shallow and of course, measuring themselves against what everyone else has and has accomplished. It’s a futile road to happiness.

Once upon a time, the world regarded New York City as a dangerous place to be. Graffiti was strewn all over buildings and the subway, rapes and homicides were frequently mentioned in local news, and young women were often advised against going home alone at night. Lucky for me, I will never know what that is like since I moved to New York in 2008, long after the city cleaned up, and because no one really sleeps here, you’d rarely be on any block at any hour of the night and be alone. I was briefly reminded of my ignorance of this when a friend warned me to be safe during our planned trip to St. Louis, Missouri, because the city, though a cosmopolitan area, is still struggling with poverty and does not have even a fraction of the racial diversity that New York has.