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see above.
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The outside of my apartment.
So technically, it’s been finals week since Monday, but my first and only exam begins at 3:30 today. I feel like I’ve studied to the point that my brain can’t really hold any new information. At this point anything I try to put in through studying seems to bounce back out. This is why I’ve pretty much stopped studying at this point and am blogging. If I were going to do badly on this exam (Linguistics), I’d know it; my friend Sarah, who’s in the class with me, figured out that even if we (at this point we have the same grade) get a B- on the final, we’ll still have an A- for the class. So I feel okay about it.
My roommate Marcella and I in our apartment.
I’m actually really sad about school ending. This year was very new for me; I was living with one of my best friends, I have an awesome boyfriend who goes here (at least he did first semester), I joined an a cappella group and met a ton of new people, and I genuinely enjoyed all of my classes. I’ll be more sad about moving out of my apartment than anything else. Suffice it to say I had the most fun this year at school than I ever have before. I even have grown to love Linguistics, something I never even considered studying. If I had more time at UConn I might have considered minoring in it; but unfortunately, I won’t be able to.
My only complaint is with Residence Life. They have been completely unhelpful in sorting out housing matters for me and my future roommates next year. Because of their shortcomings we are going to have a random roommate and my friend who was meant to live with us first semester has nowhere to stay. It’s frustrating, but I’m guessing lots of students have experienced the same problems with them.
Today I’m particularly sad, because it’s a lovely day and campus looks particularly nice right now. All the trees are green and budding and there are only some puffy clouds in the sky. It’s sunny and warm and so beautiful I could almost cry, I don’t want to pack up my things and say goodbye to my friends and be four hours away from Jan, I don’t want to sit around every day at home looking for something to do. I wish I could take a class up here or just lengthen the semester so my friends could stay here too. So many of my close friends are graduating; I can’t really imagine how they feel right now. I don’t know what I’d do out in the great expanse of the future. Driving through Newport this past weekend I felt like I haven’t really accomplished much, partially because I know the people there are richer than I’ll ever be, and also because it reminded me of my favorite book, The Sirens of Titan by Kurt Vonnegut. The book opens in Newport, with a crowd around a mansion’s concrete wall, desperate to see the spectacle within. I want to be inspired by something like Kurt, my favorite author, was inspired by the tall gates and marble homes of Newport. I want to see everything.
One of the mansions in Newport.
This summer, as cruel as I make it sound, may actually be one of the best. I’m going to Block Island for two weeks as per usual, staying in the house my family has been renting for years. Right after my 22nd birthday my family and I are going to Provence, in the south of France, for two weeks, to stay in an old farmhouse on 40 acres of lavender farms. It’s the type of thing most people only dream about, and I do too, I just don’t want to know how I’ll feel after I get back and the whole of August stretches before me unkindly and I have nothing to fill it with.
I want to make art this summer and run and do all the things I think about but never go through with. This means I’ll have to motivate myself somehow. If Jan gets his job in Newport then I’ll be up there fairly often, I’m hoping, with plenty of time to just wander. I plan on doing the entire cliff walk, a 3 mile hike around the cliffs on the edge of town. I want to sneak into mansions and find the haunted rooms and do cartwheels on their finely manicured lawns. I’ll get there, I’m sure, it might just take a while.
For now, though, I’m just sad to leave this place. I’m sure I’ll feel the same warmth and safety of being back on campus in September, but I am still adjusting to letting go of the time I’ve had here recently and saying goodbye to good friends and places. It was a very good year.
Robin
I will admit that I first started watching Lost because of Lord of the Rings. That might not make sense to most people out there, but it did to me: Domanic Monaghan, who played Merry in the famous trilogy, was a prominent cast member in a pilot that, as far as I knew when it began, was about a plane crash.
I’ve stuck with Lost through thick and thin, hungrily watching each episode, waiting for clues and researching online message boards. I followed all the viral videos and websites, the subliminal hints hidden in each frame, things that most people might not pick up on but the online Lost fan community did in a second. There’s the essential Lostpedia, a wiki-site containing most of the knowledge about the show that exists. There’s lost-tv, which contains an always useful message board. I’ve followed them all, faithfully taking mental notes and remembering tiny details.
Blacklight picture from the hatch.
I was dumbfounded and unbelievably intrigued by the Dharma Initiative and the Others; they were such a mystery to me I couldn’t even begin to wrap my head around their mere existence or presence on the island. Walt’s supernatural powers drove me crazy with questions of why and how. Desmond and the machine he controlled filled my thoughts all the time, constantly questioning what he was doing. What did the stations mean? What was that crazy blacklight writing all over the wall in the hatch? Why were the animals stamped with the Dharma logo? Who was Charles Widmore? Who was Marvin Candle? What the hell was going on?
I might not have known what was happening, but I was hooked. I breathed and slept Lost and spent my free time online searching for answers. I went through every single aspect of the “Lost Experience,” and immersed myself in the mystery. I dove deep into the oddities of the Hanso Foundation Website, part of the “experience” (which has now been officially dubbed a “game”), and tried to decode its meaning. I watched all of the “Rachel Blake” videos and followed along.
There was even a fake book with a fake author, all a metaphor for the show. There are mysteries Lost has never even bothered to explain to us, things they’ll probably never explain to us, but that’s been okay with me. What isn’t okay is that the show has completely lost its shit now. I get it, the whole time-travel thing. It’s exciting, it’s weird, whatever. But it explains too much. It’s a catch-all, just as if they had shown Desmond waking up at the beginning of this season saying, “thank god it was all just a dream.” I don’t want the answer to everything to be, “oh, they could time travel. Duh.”
Never forget!
I do feel to some degree that the show “jumped the shark” after they left the island. They were never supposed to leave; I say “supposed” not in the sense they mean on the show, I mean to maintain any mystique they weren’t supposed to leave the island. They were supposed to deal with being on the island and the mysteries it held. I don’t care about Juliet and Sawyer, I don’t care about Miles and his ability, I just want answers and more mysteries and answers and more mysteries. I never want to stop being confused and enthralled by the show, and I don’t want to feel pissed off at the end of every episode, saying, “but they can’t do that!”
At least we know who Marvin Candle is. And at least we know who Charles Widmore is. But who is Alvar Hanso? What is the Hanso Foundation? What was that giant foot of the statue? What’s up with all the different stations around the world? I never wanted to know what the smoke monster was. I just wanted it to keep working its magic. Just the same, I never wanted to know about a lot of things on the show that they decided to reveal; by doing so, they chose to ignore the more important questions I still had. Lost, I’ll never forgive you if you blame every single thing that’s ever happened on the show on time travel. You don’t get a free pass on everything that you made up and wanted people so desperately to become invested in. Now that we are, those of us who stuck around through the hard times deserve better from you.
Robin
Since I transferred to UConn, I’ve always felt just a pinch removed from it as a community member; I never had an orientation, I only know the teachers in the Journalism department, etc. But that all disappears on spring weekend, that most carefree of weekends when everyone is drunk and walking around parking lots every night. Here’s a play-by-play of my experience this year- I have to say, it was better than those in the past. But I also apologize in advance to my parents, if they’re reading this! I promise I was responsible and safe. It was spring weekend, I had to go out! Ok. Don’t be mad. Anyway.
Thursday
Jan (aka Yon, aka boyfriend) gets here around 4. I bought this terrible mixer-syrup drink thing called “buttershots” that’s supposed to be great for making cocktails. It tastes like a pancake, which I thought was great, but everyone else hated.
Don't try this.
Jan and I have a couple of drinks at my apartment and then take the bus to the music building, where I have a half hour of Chordials rehearsal. All of the Chordials are drunk and rehearsal falls apart, so we walk over to St. Mark’s church to hear some of the other groups sing before we head off to Carriage (official location of spring weekend Thursday). In St. Mark’s, Jan laughs loud and alone in the middle of a quiet song; more of a bark of “HA” really. But it’s so funny and loud that I start laughing
uncontrollably. I’m pretty sure everyone in the church was drunk, except the priestess, who was knitting on the stairs.
After the a cappella concert, we all walk towards the rape trail together. Once there, we all kind of disperse. Carriage is probably the easiest night to be with your friends as all the houses are numbered so you can find everyone easier. Jan and I go between three or so houses throughout the night, get exhausted, and leave around 11:30. On the walk home on the rape trail, he picks up individual leaves and lights them on fire, explaining that the smell reminds him of his childhood and that he loves the “nostalgia” of it. We are promptly laughed at by people walking in front of us for this explanation. Once we get back to my apartment, we eat DP Dough and listen to Beyoncé. Good start to the weekend.
Carriage on Spring Weekend
Friday
Woken at 10a.m. by some kind of street-cleaner contraption noise outside my window. Jan and I go grocery shopping and then head over to Willington Oaks, where our friends Liz and Nick and Kelly live. I wasn’t ready for all the heat and am wearing a black shirt and jeans, and Kelly has to loan me a sun dress because it’s about 80 degrees out. We spend the day sitting on the stoop having a barbecue, which kicks off 3 days of eating nonstop for me (basically). Surprisingly, I don’t get a sunburn, and am so full of hotdogs and hamburgers I don’t even feel like drinking. After napping on the couch I’m rejuvenated and have my second wind, so Jan and I go back to my apartment. No one is there so we make our own drinks, which are pretty disgusting because I tried to conserve money and buy the cheapest alcohol available. We walk across the street to my friend’s apartment, and then we all walk the rape trail.
The Rape Trail on Spring Weekend
Celeron was maybe the most crowded I’ve ever seen it, and I pretty much had to run to keep up with Jan, who is so tall that he can leap through crowds like a gazelle. It was the eve of one of the Chordials’ birthdays, so she was walking with us too. The 3 of us lost everyone else we were with, but miraculously found my friend Caroline under a tree. There’s no service at Celeron on spring weekend, which I’m guessing is due to the overcrowding and the thousands of people trying to make calls at once. We lose Caroline soon after finding her, but run into two of Jan’s friends and wander with them. Around 12:30 we’ve pretty much exhausted our aimless-walking capabilities and head back up the rape trail to my apartment.
Celeron on Spring Weekend
It’s already my friend’s birthday by the time we get back on campus, so we stop at Sgt. Pep’s and I get us a pizza to celebrate. The five of us devour it as soon as we get to my apartment, even though Jan and I had been eating cookout food all day. His friends leave after eating and I tuck my friend in on my couch. Everyone is so tired that we all just pass out. I’m just glad I got out of Celeron alive and without stepping on broken glass or anything.
Saturday
Had to wake up at 9 to meet the Chordials so we could sing at Oozeball (UConn’s traditional “volleyball, but with mud). Everyone is exhausted and none of us can really talk, let alone sing, from yelling over the noise of the crowd from the night before. I thought I was being weather-smart by wearing jorts and a t-shirt… turns out it was too hot for that. Either way, we all feel very awkward because the throngs of people playing oozeball clearly are enjoying the rap blasting out over the field, and they probably don’t want to hear us sing all-female a cappella during their weekend of debauchery. We’re uncomfortable, but really too tired to care too much, and no one can really hear us anyway because there are only 3 microphones. I’m not trying too hard to impress anyone anyway because Jan is still asleep and anyone I know who would be up at 10a.m. probably isn’t playing oozeball.
But soon everything is okay as we realize there’s tons of free stuff on the field. After singing we rush up to the food area and eat hot dogs and hamburgers and brownies and chips. And lots of water. Because all of a sudden it’s 90 degrees. I drive back up to my apartment, wake up Jan, and we head back down to the field so he can get some free food and schwag they’re giving away. We take some fun, but cheesy, but free photobooth pictures, which I would scan if I could. There are people riding around on rented Segways and stilts. Before we came back I changed into a tank top because it was so hot outside. Guess what! My roommates and I don’t have any sunblock. I figured I’d probably get a little burnt, but nothing more than a rosy glow.
We call some friends and they come hang out with us for a while. We go back over to Willington Oaks with them and hang out for a while, and then head over to Margarita’s for my friend’s birthday dinner. Jan and I are both exhausted from walking around all day, and the soles of my feet are covered in blisters from my sandals. We sit in the Mexican restaurant surrounded by 10 of our friends and acquaintances, both of us feeling kind of funny. Also I’m out of money by this point so we just order an appetizer and share one soda. Cool.
Totally exactly where I want to be when I have sun poisoning!
When we get back to my apartment we realize why we both felt funny; because of our friend the sun. Jan is just burnt a little on his neck and cheeks. The whole of my back, chest, shoulders and upper arms, as well as the back of my knees and the top of my feet are covered in the worst, most raw sunburn I’ve ever had (sidenote for my mom: this will never happen again!). I can barely allow clothing to touch me without feeling the worst pain I’ve experienced in a very long time. Plus I’m hobbling around like a grandmother because the soles of my feet are blistered.
OW
We go back to Willington Oaks and I don’t even feel anywhere near in a drinking mood. Probably because of all the sun poisoning. Anyway, the only booze we have left is the gross syrup stuff with nothing to mix it with. My friends are celebrating the birthday still and they live right across from our other friends with whom we barbecued. Throughout the night Jan and I walk back and forth between the two apartments until we get so tired that we just give up and head back to Hilltop.
We watch 3/4 of Notorious and pass out. Except he just passes out at first, while I am in excruciating pain and searching desperately for the sheet of paper that tells us how to change the temperature in our apartment. It’s currently set to 70 degrees for some horrible, horrible unknown reason, and I can’t find anything online to fix this. I’m scurrying around the apartment and rifling through my roommates’ drawers trying to find the number when Marcella gets home and loans me her fan. After plugging it in and pointing it at my face I pass out too.
Sunday
We sleep late and my roommates and Jan and I all go to the dining hall for breakfast where we gorge ourselves on pancakes and sausage and eggs. The sunburn is so bad that I have to cover it up with a t-shirt because the heat of the sun, even with sunblock on, makes me feel like I’m frying eggs on myself. Jan has to head back home and after he leaves I run to CVS to pick up aloe and strong sunblock with the $8 or so that I have left. Ari and I spend the rest of the day recovering inside and watching shows about the best sandwiches in America. Marcella miraculously returns home with a leftover grinder which Ari and I eat ravenously. More sitting around happens, then we watch Rachel Getting Married. Now we’re all tired and I feel so out of it because of the sunburn. I’ve been chugging water and trying to apply aloe every hour or so, but I still am in so much pain.
Basically, the weekend was alright, but there’s no way I could keep up with doing spring-weekend like stuff every weekend. I skipped the final night of partying at X-Lot (Saturday’s designated party area) because I just don’t feel like standing in a parking lot, pretty much ever, and I knew that out of the tens of thousands of drunk people there I would only probably want to be around 10 and I would only actually be able to find maybe 1, not including Jan.
But besides that, I learned a valuable lesson about sunblock. When I get home for the summer I think I’ll go to the dermatologist right away for a mole scan, just to check everything out. For now, I’m going to try to sleep despite the pain in my upper body, with the fan pointed at my face, slowly recovering my normal skin and dignity.
Robin
In this spirit of April being awful so far, here’s an excerpt from T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land. I heard recently that Eliot actually plagiarized much of this poem, which makes me very sad, but it’s still a great read.
I’ll update with an actual blog sometime later today but I’m still stuck borrowing laptops because I don’t have a computer again yet!
Robin
internet interest 