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Hopkins, as far as I can tell, is not a particularly cheery place. Despite the best efforts of student life groups to combat the dour presence with free hugs and pumpkin smashings, the source of this cultural campus malaise has deep-rooted seeds.
I have a problem — a very real, pressing problem — with falling asleep. Always. In any position: seated, standing, leaning casually against a doorframe. No matter the temperature of the room or the volume of the environment; no matter how socially acceptable sleeping may or may not be, a tired Lily (though let’s be real, a typical Lily) will always be found asleep.
I’ve been asked a lot lately how it feels to be a senior, and I give everyone the same response: It feels good, but I love college and don’t want it to end.
Spring break came and went, and despite our new tans and the monster of a hangover, we’ve been thrown back into the Hopkins minefield.
Spring break is usually the time where you see only bikinis and burns for miles. For me, however, I’m always in Ireland during break, getting paler and staying indoors. The one benefit to my overcast country is getting to see the trends across the pond and how radically different they are than the ones here. The outfits are tighter, the hair is voluminous and jeans are rarely on the horizon.
The author of the poem “Candy is dandy but liquor is quicker” got it all wrong: any self-respecting dandy would agree that liquor trumps candy when it comes to dandiness — so does sartorial elegance, quick-witted banter and quoting “The Flowers of Evil,” probably.
There’s an odd, pervasive murmur that seems to follow myself and many of the seniors that I know. It sighs, “I’m tired.” It whispers, “I feel diluted.” It moans, “Get me out of here.”
Last week, we got not just one, but two days off from classes, and so what did we do with our last-minute four-day weekend? If you’re like most Hopkids (Hopkins + kids = Hopkids), you spent your class-free day studying for the classes you didn’t go to.
Netflix is everybody’s favorite recent pastime. It’s the easiest thing to do, requiring little-to-no effort and boasts a variety of high-quality programs that can entertain for hours. It’s incredibly easy to become addicted — it’s an insidious process really. You set out trying to procrastinate for half an hour, and four hours later you wind up in a bevy of confusion wondering what happened to your Monday night and, more broadly, what you are doing with your life.
This past Intersession, I went to Cuba. The trip meant so much to me and it has taken me a while to write about it. I went with eleven other Hopkins students for the Intersession study abroad class. The fact that Hopkins even had the trip was one of the reasons why I chose to come here. I had been itching to go to Cuba since I was a freshman (and maybe even before then) when it was a class on Hemingway. I am glad that I took this class instead, which had a much broader artistic focus. After spending a semester in Rome, a place that I have studied since I was in the sixth grade, I was ready to go somewhere that I knew very little about but that had some sort of hold on me.
We’ll just put it right out there: Dooby’s is worth the trip. While our lunchtime noms could not surpass the dinner meal that simply ROCKED, we enjoyed the space for its laid-back vibe and convenient Charles Street people-watching. (This, by the way, is the perfect homework distraction.) Dooby’s turns off its Internet from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. to accommodate the lunch crowd, so we worked in the beautiful and awe-inspiring Peabody Library (we’re sure studying in there actually makes you smarter) and then headed to Dooby’s for a late laptop lunch around two.
Hear your voice on tape, or watch your face on screen, and it’s alien. Unnerving. Disturbing.
