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(01/29/18 6:02am)
Like so many others this past holiday season, I spent a lot of time unwrapping things — slicing tape off brown boxes, digging through packing materials and unearthing items from layers of paper. Unlike others, however, my mother and I had first removed these boxes from a freezing cold storage unit off of Route 78, where they had been deposited nearly six months ago. After boarding with family and friends since we sold our house in the beginning of December, my mother was finally able to move into her new condo, a few miles away from the town where my sister and I grew up. We were determined to make it feel like a home by the time Christmas rolled around.
(10/30/17 2:38am)
In the weeks leading up to course registration, especially after Lou’s List had been published, walks between buildings or class changeovers with peers are often spent answering the same question — what are you taking next semester? The 15 minutes before my 4000-level seminar on memory distortions last week were no exception. About 20 psychology majors were frantically discussing how we were planning on spending our last academic credits now that we had essentially completed our majors.
(10/17/17 3:11am)
I’ve never been a particularly confrontational person. When faced with fight or flight conflict, I most often pick the lesser-known third option — shut down entirely. Rather than choose between two extremes, I do neither and instead nod benignly along to whoever is doing the fighting or wait it out until they fly. It’s been my go-to strategy for as long as I could remember. It doesn’t matter the context — whether I am getting scolded by my mother for leaving my childhood bedroom a mess or someone cuts me in line during the morning Starbucks rush — I do not engage.
(09/19/17 3:11am)
Nothing is worse than trying to catch up with an acquaintance at a crowded bar. No matter how uncomfortably close you may be standing to your conversation partner to avoid being elbowed in the rib by someone trying to buy a drink, you must still shout whatever pleasantries you are trying to communicate if you want any chance of being heard. But strangely enough, I’ve found recently that volume control and extreme proximity to another person’s face aren’t my biggest challenges when it comes to bar chitchat — it’s knowing what to say.
(09/05/17 3:32am)
By now, the drive is an equation. At the inception of my fourth year of higher education, I suppose it isn’t too strange that I would start finding formulas in my everyday life, but I was still a little shocked to discover the calculations now come second-nature as we hurtle down the highway. If we stop for gas and snacks separately, we’ll have to incur increased probability of a speeding ticket to make it down in less than six hours. It’s three hours from the signs for the Lion’s Den Adult Superstore — two hours once we pass the billboard that promises to tell me if I am going to heaven or hell with one call to a toll-free number.
(05/08/17 4:41am)
A couple of weeks ago while running down McCormick Road in one of late April’s torrential downpours, I watched, disheartened, as the Outer Loop I had planned on riding to Gilmer Hall pulled away just as I was crossing the street. Almost immediately, I found myself tracing back the steps of my morning — if only I hadn’t snoozed my alarm or indulged in that second cup of coffee, I would have made the bus. However, I had done both of those things and thus was left standing on the sidewalk as my bag filled up with rainwater.
(04/25/17 4:29am)
I made my first mix tape when I was in the sixth grade. It was born of a moment of music elitism, after I had discovered my dad’s collection of vinyl and the turntable he got for Christmas that could convert analog records into MP3s. I gave it to my best friend, having decided that he needed a lesson in what my 11-year-old self considered “the classics.” At the time, this included but was not limited to “Carry on Wayward Son,” “Burnin’ for You” and some selections from Foreigner and Boston’s greatest hits albums.
(04/11/17 4:13am)
Someone stole my car from the parking lot of the church in my hometown I had attended my entire life. I ran inside for a moment to drop something off, left it running and then it was gone. I picked up my phone to dial 911, but for some reason, they were sending all of my calls to voicemail after one or two rings. Suddenly, the thieves drove back around the street, waving at me from the window and taunting me. I woke up just as they peeled away down the quiet street.
(03/28/17 4:29am)
I’ve never been the kind of person who feels at home in the great outdoors. As a child, I found no joy in looking for bugs in the back yard, and on a class fieldtrip to a well-stocked lake, the only things I could catch on my rod were clumps of grass when I somehow managed to cast the line behind me. The closest thing to camping I’ve ever experienced was setting up a pop-up tent in my living room when I was eight. I am, and have always been, an indoor cat.
(03/15/17 5:42am)
Over winter break a friend convinced me, after some arm-twisting, to visit a psychic in Manhattan. She had always been intrigued by astrology and mediums — she is a devoted subscriber to her daily horoscope, and recently began dabbling in Tarot reading — and as her most skeptical friend, she recruited me to come along. All throughout our train ride into the city, I made that skepticism known, saying that the only thing a psychic could read was body-language for the better part of an hour.
(02/21/17 5:24am)
As the second semester of my third-year at the University picks up speed, I’m finding it hard to ignore the ways in which the responsibilities of the real world are also hurtling towards me. By far, the most pressing reality is that of the all-important summer internship. These past few weeks have found me scrolling endlessly through pages of search results: Internships.com, Indeed, Idealist and the University’s own “Handshake.”
(02/07/17 3:42am)
This past weekend was full of bittersweet memories for me. I traveled up to Manhattan to attend a cocktail party celebrating the dedication of the Bennett A. Murtha Bones Gate Fund, a Dartmouth scholarship that my late father’s fraternity brothers created in his memory after his passing this fall. My mother, sister and I were so moved, not only by the amount of money they had raised in such a short time, but also how many of the brothers had taken time to celebrate my dad’s legacy.
(10/18/16 2:45am)
Sitting down for coffee with a friend this past Sunday afternoon, our topic of conversation briefly turned to class registration for next semester. I say “briefly,” because almost as soon as the words “Lou’s List was just updated” came out of her mouth, I informed her that the subject of my schedule in the spring was the last thing I had time to think about at the moment, and that we would promptly be moving on to a different topic of discussion. It wasn’t the first time I have been so quick to veto a line of conversation. I recently shut down conversation with a friend who, while planning to take the LSAT next semester, was worried about grade point averages and percentiles for law school admissions, and his concerns about graduate programs hit a little too close to my own. A few days ago, I all but covered my ears with my hands when one of my housemates brought up the subject of parents’ weekend plans, when I was still unsure if mine would be in attendance only 36 hours before they were scheduled to arrive.
(09/15/16 3:51am)
Reading Days, Oct. 1-4
(09/15/16 1:12am)
1. The Hawaiian shirt
(09/06/16 1:02am)
When my dad travels, he travels logically and efficiently. He makes sure my sister has her charger, I have my headphones and my mother has her glasses. He always leaves two and a half hours — not counting the drive to the airport — for check-in and security. He wears whatever blazer he plans on bringing to our destination, so that it won’t wrinkle in his suitcase. He keeps all passports, boarding passes and any other tickets or itineraries in his briefcase carryon, to be distributed at security checkpoints or airport gates. The routine is always the same before we leave for any family vacation, and has even been immortalized in a physical checklist. As you might expect, travel almost always went smoothly with him leading the pack.
(04/26/16 12:18am)
Last week, I found myself, like so many others, stretched out on the Lawn with friends, soaking up the sunshine and absolutely saturated with love for this place. Something about the breakthrough of the spring weather and the buzz of activity around was making me unbelievably happy to be a part of such a special school. Surrounded by the history and tradition of the Academical Village, our conversation naturally turned to the subject of secret societies.
(04/12/16 4:19am)
Last week, a friend of mine sat down next to me in our research methods and data analysis psychology lecture and let out one of those discouraged, exhausted sighs we all know so well. When I asked her what was bothering her, she recapped a conversation in which her TA for the lab section told her that she would not be admitted to graduate school unless she began working in a research lab before her third year.
(03/29/16 3:23am)
Over spring break, I filled time with day trips to the beach club, golf center and long bike rides under canopies of Spanish moss — I was in and out of the house multiple times a day. But every time I stepped through the door to my grandmother’s home in Hilton Head over spring break, I was greeted by the dulcet tones of various Fox News talk shows dissecting the latest Republican debate. For hours a day, while she puttered around the kitchen or sat painting at her easel, she was kept company by a selection of conservative talking heads.
(03/11/16 4:37am)
On the second day of spring break, I received a Snapchat from a friend of mine who was spending the week at a resort in the Bahamas. It was a picture of a crowded pool, with an arrow drawn pointing to a boy in board shorts and a pastel t-shirt, captioned, “I recognize this guy from Clem 2!” Even thousands of miles away from Charlottesville, it seems students at the University can’t seem to shake each other.