As a fourth-year student, the time has come for unapologetic nostalgia. The end of my college career is approaching and I find myself looking back at all of my great experiences.
I love Charlottesville. I especially love it in the fall when the leaves are changing and everything has a golden glow and smells kind of like apples and pumpkins and Halloween.
We are obsessed. We are completely consumed. There is a force within and around us which is unconsciously propelling everything we do.
Whether you're a concerned parent hunch-backed from hovering, or a nervous student desperately reading and re-reading your admission essays, the college search and application process is a stressful time for everyone.
I am fairly certain that November is the season of love. It cannot be autumn or winter for the former is the season of lust and the latter of resigned contentment.
It is officially fall, slowly creeping its way into winter. Several of my friends have told me how excited they are for the season.
'Tis the season. What season, you ask? Well, that is a really good question. Given that the worst of all forms of precipitation, the "wintery mix," fell on Halloween, it could be winter.
Date: Sunday, 0ctober 30 Time: 7 p.m. Location: Marco & Luca
Do you ever count calories? How about counting the calories you burn on the elliptical? Compulsive dieting, excessive exercise and poor body image may feel like just a darker side of the college experience for many U.Va.
I hate to admit this in such a public forum, but usually in my "American Society and Popular Culture" class, the only time I take really good notes is when my professor references the show "Friends" to highlight his point.
In the beginning, there was food. At the start of the school year, as my roommates and I moved into our new apartment, we each brought along the fruits of a Kroger shopping trip.
It's a familiar scene: In the post-class hubbub of everyone getting up and putting their bags together and streaming toward the door, the cell phones emerge from the cool shelter of pockets and purses and migrate upward until they are inches away from a face.
How long have you been working at the University? This is my second year. Which classes do you teach? I teach "Rise and Fall of the Slave South," which covers the colonial era through the late 19th century, "American Intellectual & Cultural History," from the Revolution to World War I, and a research seminar on gender and the American Civil War. Tell me about your childhood. I grew up in Fairfax, Va.
Along with seemingly the entire first-year class, I travel to O-Hill every Monday and Wednesday. As I stand in the line, which pretty much backs all the way to Alderman Road, I focus on two things - avoiding eye contact with tablers and eavesdropping on first-year conversations. Last Wednesday, while I listened to the latest dormcest updates from the first-year roommates in front of me, I contemplated my feelings toward their entire class.
"Step on a crack, break your mother's back." I think I first heard this one sometime around first or second grade and not wanting to be responsible for fracturing my mother's spine, I avoided cracks wherever I walked for about two weeks.
Biases and preconceived notions generally harm our own critical decision-making. It is often easier, especially when it comes to complex issues, to buy into someone else's opinion rather than formulate your own beliefs and convictions.
Date: Friday, 0ctober 14 Time: 7 p.m. Location: Lemongrass
Stacking up vodka bottles is not usually an indicator of good lifestyle choices. That is until last summer, when a group of University students traveled to the Mongolian countryside to build a greenhouse out of the discarded glassware. The project began during the 2010 fall semester in "Development on the Ground," a class tought by Robert Swap, environmental sciences research associate professor. Students in the class create project proposals during the semester and then submit them to the Jefferson Public Citizens program to apply for funding if they wish to go through with their proposal, Swap said. Fourth-year College student Sarah Culver said the group formed out of a shared interest in rural development and quickly became focused on waste management and Central Asia when Tashi Dekyid, a Tibetan exchange student in the group, brought it to their attention.
I used to avoid coming home. I didn't want to be the kind of person that needed to come home. I didn't want to want home either.
Once upon a time, in a place called the Fine Arts Library, there sat a young woman trying to be scholarly.
