Assalamu Alaikum! My name is Noor Hasan. I'm a rising junior at Northwestern in the Creative Writing Poetry sequence with a Legal Studies double major. This Ramadan, I am working a full-time summer job (9 hours a day, 45 hours a week) like many college students. I'm also taking 8 hours of evening classes two days a week. This intense schedule will certainly make this Ramadan challenging and frustrating, but there is a strange unspoken solace and peace that is found during this immensely difficult yet rewarding month. My memories of Ramadan as a child are often associated with cold weather and short *rosas*. I think it was my sophomore year of high school when Ramadan lined up almost perfectly with various other winter religious holidays. The magic that I often associate with that Ramadan is its universality. Everyone around me in my community was celebrating some sort of festivity. The concurrency of these events made the the difficulties more manageable, the temptation easier to avoid, and patience easier to harbor within myself. Ramadan in years past has been cushioned within Thanksgiving and winter breaks or lonely summers away from friends. My interactions have been limited to my family, close Muslim friends also celebrating the holiday, and the neighboring sister in her *salat *at MEC Taraweeh. This year, I've made it a goal to engage with the surrounding Muslim community in a way that I have not before. As I'm entering my third year of college, I'm also entering a sort of pre-professional mindset. The beauty of Ramadan, especially in the Chicagoland area, truly lies within the myriad of opportunities available to you to engage. Use this blessed holiday to engage, to inspire and be inspired, to relate, to understand, and to learn from the people and communities that surround you. Attend an "Iftar in the Synagogue" program. Forgo Taraweeh at your local Indo-Pak mosque and attend a prayer that attracts Muslims of a different race, culture, or ethnicity than yours. That said, I'm looking forward to a lot this Ramadan. Special iftar celebrations with the Niagara Foundation, YourDil Chicago, and even the morose, pathetic ones that will be spent cooked up in NU's Main Library on Monday and Wednesday nights. This excitement and anxiety is just another example of the peace and patience that can be found just about anywhere during this holiday--nudged between your sister-in-law and a younger sibling at a crowded family dinner table, alone in an employee lunch room after a late night at work, or in InfoCommons (come join me--seriously). JazakAllah khair--and may you and your family have a blessed, rewarding, and inspiring Ramadan. - Noor Hasan