Let it snow, let it snow: the magic of the day off

It was a Wednesday morning like any other. The alarm beeped petulantly, far too early. The blankets had managed to wind their way around me in bizarrely tight and complicated swaddles. I stumbled into the shower with all the joy and enthusiasm of a soulless corporate hack going through the 9-to-5. A classic case of the dreaded midweek doldrums, the pandemic condition comprised of one part stress, two parts sleepy inattention, and one part seasonal affective disorder.

Things got a lot more interesting when I had made my way outside, as exhaustion, my iPod and the cold worked in tandem to render me completely inarticulate. Ambushed by an unnaturally perky friend, I could only respond, "Unhhh," to her greeting.

Then it registered.

"What do you mean, `Classes are cancelled today?'" I whooped.

Suddenly it was Christmas morning, and I was 8 years old. "Do you know what this means?" I whispered conspiratorially. She shot me a look. "No linear algebra?" she suggested. "Nooooo," I mused impatiently. "It means c9 I get to go back to bed."

It was a Valentine's Day gift better than any wilted drugstore rose. An unexpected miracle had occurred. Back in my New Jersey high school, snow days required cajolery, crossed fingers, Calvin and Hobbes-inspired entreaties to the snow demons. I had never even considered a collegiate snow day. In Maryland? Was there actually weather below the Mason-Dixon line? In one night, my snooty northeastern meteorological cynicism had been upended by the immaculate drifts that coated all the marble-edged walkways on campus. I promptly returned to my room, shucking off layers of flannel and wool in a messy thermal path to bed. "Just a little bit," I promised myself. "Just an hour, maybe two, and then I'll start outlining my history paper and -- yawn -- reading for philosophy, and doing my -- stretch -- political science assignment, and c9 and c9"

I woke up at 3:30 p.m. to the sounds of North Face- clad Neanderthals engaged in snowball guerilla warfare. Garbled shrieks carried from the Beach to my Wolman window overlooking North Charles Street (prime real estate for overhearing loud, drunken conversations at 3 a.m. on a Saturday). The sight of my roommate still supine and drooling quieted my self-castigation. Sleeping till 3:30? On a Wednesday? A week before midterms? I was showing suspicious signs of normal collegiate behavior, a dangerous anomaly at Hopkins. OK, I said to myself, Asian Roomie's still out, so it stands to reason that no one else did any work today either. Content, I pulled a novel from the tottering, nearly untouched stack on my bed, and settled down to neglect my homework.

It was a glorious feeling, one that Hopkins students shared. "During the snow day, I slept in late, watched a couple of movies, and walked around in the snow," freshman Zoe Block reports. "I didn't really do anything. I think I slept and that was more or less it," senior Daniel Kushner recalls. "I SLEPT!" crows Justin Jacob, a freshman. Absent from snow day itineraries were the expected entries of "did work, cured cancer, saved world, played Warcraft III for 18 hours straight." Freshman Manessa Riser admitted to conscientiousness. "I had a presentation the next day," she said, shrugging. Still, the snow day lived up to all its mythic connotations: splendid masses of icy precipitation, spread out pristine and abundant for students' amusement; warm beds and hot chocolate; a feeling of lazy satisfaction.

The next morning, despite the chilly air and obnoxiousness of my alarm clock, I faced the school day with actual vitality. Grinning snowmen waved their twiggy arms at me from across the quads, abandoned snow forts loomed ominously from the Beach, transforming an ordinary knoll into a place of deserted wonder, scene of noble and historic battles. The ice on the sidewalk caught the sun and flung it back sparkling. A Thursday morning like any other, perhaps, or maybe just a little bit brighter.