I’m sitting on a bus that I’m pretty sure is the North Line, praying that it’s going to drop me off anywhere at all close to New Cabell Hall within the half hour window that I’ve left myself to get to my next class, and there’s a guy hardcore staring at me from across the aisle.
My dad is the epitome of going with the flow.
“I love this song!” I shout over the howl of the wind as my best friend and I cruise down 14th Street.
Near the beginning of Vampire Weekend’s self-titled debut album, the singer asks a question that will no doubt echo through history, “Who gives a [crap] about the oxford comma?” I like this album, but the question has always felt like a personal assault since I am an English major.
As a thoroughbred Northeasterner, I am well acquainted with the seasons. I have learned to recognize and welcome these quarterly changes not only through the shifts in temperature, but also through societal signifiers – the presence of heavy coats around grounds, the changing colors of storefronts and interior decorations, or advertisers’ reminders that customers should update their seasonal wardrobes appropriately.
I gaze into the majestic evening horizon from the top of the Empire State building. Biting my lip, I peer down at the thousands of feet beneath me.
When darkness creeps into our lives, it’s hard to have faith.
As I gazed into the dancing flames of a beautifully piled up bonfire this weekend, some friends and I began to realize that there is some element of fire that elicits the best conversations.
I finally know what “sunken eyes” look like. After having thoughtlessly skimmed past the overemployed phrase in works of writing and repeatedly dismissed it as a feature that only exists in the reality of ink on a page, I learned what it means to have sunken eyes when I sat across from a homeless man on the free trolley.I sat and studied the man in front of me – a dingy, bandana-clad ellipse with a white tufty beard who might’ve resembled Santa if he were even vaguely jolly (or just less asleep.) At one point, the shrill driver stopped the bus to implore bandana man to stay awake because sleeping is apparently not a permissible activity on the trolley.
I was going to submit an article about something lighthearted this week.
We walk quietly together, the lights and warmth of the Lawn behind us, through the construction and past the deepened slopes of Mad Bowl to our homes.
A couple of weeks ago in class, I seriously thought I might have to tackle someone. It happened in an “Unforgettable Lectures” class — and it was unforgettable, though not entirely for the reasons advertised.
Some may claim my sluggish behavior is a sign of senioritis — a virus difficult to diagnose. Contrary to popular belief and student-perpetuated myth, senioritis does not affect only those students on the cusp of graduation. I would hypothesize we are all born with a small dose of this poison and, unfortunately, there is no cure. No amount of illegal study drugs will save us.
I was having dinner with my friend the other night when she casually mentioned a childhood friend of hers had committed suicide recently.
Sitting in a folding chair next to neat piles of saffron, cumin and sumaq, a portly man with an unbuttoned linen shirt looked me over as I lingered to take a photo of his vibrant spices.
It is 10:11 p.m. and I am running. The sun set hours ago and my eyes are already beginning to droop from exhaustion, yet I move as quickly as my feet will take me.
The idea behind writing the honor pledge is fairly simple; it both affirms the student has not somehow failed to notice the concept of honor during his time at the University and requires the student to explicitly give his word. To me, however, the pledge is a ceremonial act.
In the past three months, I have started blushing. You’ve probably heard of it — it’s that thing stuffy old women did during the 17th century, except back then they could just faint to hide their shame, have their manservant Gregory bring over their smelling salts and blame it on their weak feminine constitution.
New York may be far from Virginia, but it’s not a “thirteen hours” kind of far. Over the summer, I drove my 1995 white Ford Taurus – a pretty little car with a turning radius comparable to that of a tugboat – from Charlottesville to Long Island for my brother’s high school graduation.
Coming to college, I had no idea how much I would miss being around real people. Now, we are all, of course, very real and I don’t mean to depreciate our value as University students, but I mean real people as in mothers and fathers, babies and grandparents, little sisters and big brothers.
