Returning to the things that once made you happy never quite seems to work the way that it should. Be it a person, a place, an ex or a job, taking time apart inevitably changes how you interact with that environment. And if you don’t learn to love that person or place or job in a new way, for what it is now and for who you are now, you're going to have to stop loving it all together.
We’ve been back at Penn for three weeks, and now that the dust of NSO has settled, I don’t think I like what I’m seeing. All of the things about this school that used to excite me no longer do. None of my classes are interesting (shoutout to all my intro level classes I never took), Smokes’ is painfully boring…for the first time in my life Penn feels incredibly small.
Some asshole once read my letter and told me that it was a cry for help. My dad read the same letter and told me that I like to make other people feel better by being open about myself. I think we can all agree that the latter is much closer to the truth, but the reality is that I like writing my letters because they force me to reflect. It’s cathartic.
I’ve had a bad week (it happens) but I am not going to have a bad year. I always say that the thing to do at Penn is to keep changing. I think this is still true, albeit significantly harder to do as a senior. What I think is harder to do is to find ways to love old things in new ways. And while that is perhaps not the best idea for exes, it feels like a pretty good idea for Penn.
In this issue, you will find a WOTS about gaining a new perspective on the New York club scene (p. 4), a guide to eating dining hall food in new and better ways (p. ) and a review of a book that seeks to memorialize Penn at one single point in time (p. ). As you read, let these inspire you to look at Penn differently. Just because you’ve done something before, doesn’t mean you can’t enjoy it the second (or fourth) time around.
