Disclaimer: This letter, this one right here, has been particularly difficult to write. In fact, even amidst all the term papers and stupid class blog posts and application essays, I've never dreaded writing something more.
I set out, at the beginning of Thanksgiving Break, determined to compose the best last "From The Editor" to ever grace the pages of any publication — bold and poignant and touching and smart.
I feel drugged. Really, on a cloud, different–than–drunk, numb–to–the–world, drugged. And, as someone who (believe it or not) hasn't ever touched a drug beyond the Benadryl and Epinephrin required by a severe allergy to peanuts, I have to say — it's quite a fascinating state of being.
This past week seems like a blur.
I was innocently sitting in my bed, procrastinating by reading an article on New York Magazine's Vulture about the female characters in Boardwalk Empire (I haven't managed to get through a single episode on On Demand yet). "…when women were more likely to be thought of as sex objects or mothers than equals…" Click.
Ohhh, Wawa Coke ICEE.
It doesn't take a lot to make me happy. Really, all it usually takes is 22 ounces of you — or 32 ounces, if Wawa is out of the small bubble lids or it's icky and misty out.
At around 5 a.m. on a particularly late night in architecture studio this past week, I deliriously announced to a room of several other archi–geeks, “I think it’s better in life to be silly and happy when on the brink of exhaustion than to be sad and cranky.” One responded, not so jokingly, “It’s only when you get silly and happy that we get cranky.”
After nearly two and a half years of all–nighters together, the seniors in the architecture major are particularly close.
Dear Penn: you are a bunch of very forward–happy people.
If we over at Street wanted to really, truly print a life–wrecking, gossip–inducing, controversial article, all we'd have to do is copy and paste half of the emails I’m regularly forwarded directly into Highbrow's Gutter.
Back in the days of AIM, my friend and I had a code. If I ever IMed him something sarcastic, I would alternate the case of the letters so as to make my tone absolutely clear; ‘I absolutely can’t wait for practice’ became ‘I aBSOlutELY cAN’t WAit fOR prACTicE.’
Maybe he was a tad behind in his ability to detect cynicism (he ended up at Princeton, after all), but the difference between how I write online or on my phone and how I write in Street or for papers has only grown since getting a BlackBerry and becoming obsessed with GChat.
I’m not talking about abbreviations like ‘ur’ and ‘tho’ and ‘c u’ (So 2000!
This is just a weird week. Jews went home for a while, and now aren’t eating yeasty things. KFP is an acronym recently incorporated into my vocabulary.
Ah, the mid-semester crunch: the week or so before Spring Break when professors refuse to acknowledge the demands of other classes, TAs are overwhelmed to the point of becoming useless and Penn students become notably hermitic.
It’s not so much that we never leave the house; it’s that we never leave our respective corners of the Penn community.
Most of my friends don’t know where the Charles Addams Fine Arts Hall is.
“It’s the glass and brick building on 36th and Walnut,” I attempt to explain.
“Annenberg?”
“No.
I have never seen so much snow fall in an urban setting in my entire life. Not even close. Sure, I had snow days in high school — but in Atlanta, snow days mean a half-inch of winter white and a city of Southerners scared to drive while it’s flurrying.
I'm all for supporting good causes, but there is little that gets under my skin quite like those pesky volunteers that stand on corners around campus soliciting money for various charities.