Coming of age
By Elizabeth Stonehill | September 24, 2012Sorry to about three-fourths of my readership if I am being insensitive, but being 21 really is the best thing ever.
Sorry to about three-fourths of my readership if I am being insensitive, but being 21 really is the best thing ever.
In recent years I’ve solidified my response to the question: “Do you speak French?” I respond: “Sure, I speak conversationally, but I probably couldn’t talk confidently about (insert extremely political or historical fact here),” for example, seventh-century Babylonian advances in astronomy. Although it’s questionable I could even have that particular conversation in English, the point is that my French vocabulary does not exceed that of a fourth-grader.
I walk into my sister’s room on a Sunday morning. She’s left for work in her Redskins t-shirt and baseball cap, jeans and blue tennis shoes.
In many ways, a 21st birthday is a rite of passage into a new world. You can get a horizontal license, you can show the bouncer your actual I.D.
There are some things they don’t tell you about dorm life. They tell you you’ll have to adjust to living with someone unlike you.
For some people, fourth year is their chance to show off. That’s cool, guys. I get it. You don’t have anything else to worry about, you’re coasting, you have time to pick out what you want to wear.
Being back this fall has led me to realize I have a case of Peter Pan syndrome. If there were a Neverland for college students I — along with every frat boy — would definitely be there.
Growing up, I considered myself a regular tomboy. Looking back, I suppose this was mostly attributable to the one miserable afternoon I spent watching NASCAR with my dad and the plethora of worn jerseys passed down from my cousin. With this warped self-image came a lot of false confidence in areas that I cannot claim to have any real knowledge.
I have a nickname from childhood, coined and used solely by my immediate family. I’ve probably mentioned it before: Maisie.
To continue the trend of masking my own life crises as journalistic endeavors, I decided to write about my experiences attending a wedding this weekend.
Dear Class of 2016, Some of you reading this column are already in love with college, Grounds and all things U.Va.
Much to the dismay of my father and grandfather, I don’t know a whole lot about football. If I did, you’d probably be reading about this in the sports section.
I was in Europe this summer. I could tell you what I learned at the Tate Modern, what I realized in Normandy, what I came to understand on the Underground.
This year at the University has had a bit of a different feel for me. I am entering my fourth year, forgive me for being sentimental, but I have a lot of feelings about it.
It’s unfortunately easy to lose faith in humanity. Everything’s going alright for a while until, suddenly, one event begins a downward spiral that usually ends with me hating everyone and everything.
When I was 14-years-old I decided to put “flying in large treacherous metal machines at 30,000 feet” at the top of my “greatest fears” list.
Although I always claimed to understand how great this college town is, I never really understood until I went to a place where most people associate 14th Street with the Union Square subway station. While I was away, I learned not only about New York, the magazine industry, and myself; I also learned a lot about Charlottesville.