- start classes on a national holiday: labor day and martin luther king jr. day.
- play misery poker.
- watch the graduate.
- make s’mores at a bonfire in crum meadow.
- sneak into the faculty lounge.
- make friends with the shuttle driver on the way to bryn mawr.
- use the word “hetero-normative” during a lunchtime conversation.
- get locked into a library overnight.
- walk through Crum Woods after the first snow.
- hit “the beach.”
- wander south street on a friday night.
- wait in line 10 minutes for the pasta bar every wednesday and sunday night for four years.
- try “pasta wrestling” at pub night.
- run the mcCabe mile—18 laps around the basement to win a roll of scott toilet paper.
- lie in the grass and listen to the “worthstock” concert.
- yell, “safety school!” at a haverford-swarthmore basketball game.
- be clueless about what you want to do after you graduate
- snuggle with friends at an outdoor movie night on parrish beach.
- assemble a costume at goodwill and hit the mary lyon halloween party.
- read foucault.
- sail or sink your homemade boat at the crum regatta.
- try to get eight hours of sleep one night a week.
- dance in terpsichore, a dance recital in which students choreograph pieces for other students. no experience required.
- eat a phoenix while reading the phoenix.
- learn that it’s ok to get an a-.
- eat soul food and listen to spoken word at the black cultural center’s soul shack.
- get to know a professor well.
- shamelessly score condoms from worth for 20 cents apiece.
- have an instant message conversation with your roommate while she sits right next to you.
- leave a party early to do homework.
- read edward said’s orientalism.
- eat sushi at the science center coffee bar.
- interview a candidate for a teaching position at the college.
- drop everything at 4:30 and go to practice.
- read, write, or dream about “deconstruction.”
- fall onto the ice, or slap the puck into the net, at a motherpuckers game.
- attend a strange new play in the frear ensemble theatre, a “black-box” experimental studio.
- freak out about your high housing lottery number.
- randomly run into other swarthmoreans in exotic locales around the world.
- let out a “primal scream” - along with everyone else on campus - at midnight on the first day of finals.
- kiss one of your friends. joke for the rest of the year about how incestuous your group of friends is.
- ask for an extension on a paper.
- ask for an extension on the extension.
- climb onto the roof of at least one building [parrish, mary lyon, willets, kohlberg, ware pool, martin, etc.]
- get “screwed” at the screw your roommate blind-date dance.
- borrow a sharples tray and sled down the hill from the bell tower.
- be in a class discussion that runs more than four hours.
- go to the gender-bending sager dance in clothes your parents wouldn’t like.
- wield foam bats for the pterodactyl hunt.
- take an honors seminar whether you’re in honors or not.
- sing all the words to madonna’s “like a prayer” at a party.
- study abroad junior spring or fall.
- Buy 14 candy bars and five chais on the last day of finals to use up your meal points.
- get an internship that makes your humanities major more marketable after graduation.
- go to first and last collection in the amphitheater. appreciate closure.
- take a course in a department you never thought you could excel in.
- use the word “hegemony.” all the time.
- chalk the sidewalks around campus with socially responsible propaganda.
- have a picnic in the dean bond rose garden.
- bring your paper to a student writing associate to get “wa’d.”
- play your favorite music and gossip into the microphone on your own wsrn show.
- go to a lecture on “the element of surprise in egyptian art”—just because you can.
- pull an all-nighter to finish tomorrow’s paper, due at 10 a.m. Skip your 10:30 a.m. class to sleep.
- go to jamboree, a three-hour a cappella concert held each semester, because you have a friend in each of the eight groups performing.
- point out the “inherent contradictions” in an author’s argument.
- learn the pizza man’s life story.
- shower post-practice with 12 of your closest friends.
- re-evaluate your basic assumptions about the world.
- take a dance class for academic credit: african, kathak, tap, yoga, ballet, modern, or flamenco.
- sing by yourself in the bell tower.
- read plato.
- hunt for eels in the crum creek at night.
- be awakened by the buzzer signaling closing time in mccabe.
- watch the sun set over the amphitheater.
- do something good for the world.
jul 1 2010 ∞
apr 22 2014 +
