Dispatches From The All-Night Reading Room

Oh, look, it’s midterms.  Oh, look, I am miserable and consequently desperate to do anything except study.

How are your exams going?

xo, Robyn

How to Fail at Failing

Have you ever done sort of shit on a first exam in a course, realized that you made a careless error on a question worth something like 25% of the total score, and known that you would do better next time?  Well, that happened to me in Organic Chem II, and so I studied like a madman for last week’s exam to make up for it.

Cue last week’s exam of horror, based not on what we had learned in class but on some other hellish demon far worse than electrophillic aromatic substitution reactions.  When the professor posted an exam key online over the weekend, I almost ripped up my Medical School Admissions Requirement 2009 guide on the spot.  I hadn’t gotten a single question right.  Ehhh, maybe part A of page 3.  Maybe.

Today, as I sat through OrgoDos in a mild panic, knowing that the box behind the front lab station contained our graded exams, I started to hallucinate.  I pictured the lines of the NMR spectra on the board writhing into demonic shapes and snarling at me, calling me a failure.  I pictured the 165-even-though-I-needed-170-range scores on all my wasted LSAT practice tests from my two week “time to become a lawyer” freakout over the summer.  Suddenly, those scores were going to decide my fate.  I needed to pass-fail OrgoDos immediately.  Register for the LSAT.  Picture myself sitting behind a corporate desk with files and files of dense legal documents, because this was where my life had led me.

When the professor ended his lecture, he grinned at the class in an “I’m sorry for the loss of your bright, charming dreams” way and said, “So, people generally did pretty well on the exam.  The mean was 71.”  We all groaned, since the underground consensus of that same mean had estimated it at around a 43.  And then the professor placed our exam booklets on the table.

I thought I’d gotten a 2/100.  Once, on an exam, I really did score a 10/100, so it’s not like I was picturing something that was impossible. I picked up my booklet and flipped it open to the first page.  I’d beaten the mean by a decent amount, at least a letter grade.

What had happened?  Apparently the exam had so traumatized me that I instantly forgot how to do the problems and the fact that I’d supplied the right answers the moment I turned in my test.  Post-traumatic stress disorder, baby.

But yeah.  I’d been completely panicked that my first crappy grade wasn’t a fluke, that I was actually the sort of failure who tried and still didn’t make it.  That I would work hard and know what the professor was talking about in class and still be weeded out of med school.

But that’s what it always feels like when you’re an English major taking hard sciences.  Maybe that’s the crux of what I’m talking about: how English majors are generally considered to have chosen their major because they would fail the fuck out of chemistry or calculus classes.  Not to mention those same classes with an Ivy-League curve, full of Ivy League premeds.  On both Spec and IvyGate this past week, commenters are disparaging articles that mention English majors saying, They act so superior but they don’t even know what an intergral is, or Wouldn’t it be hilarious to see an English major try to do the hard sciences?

And I get that generally, this is a bit of a deserved stereotype, but it’s so pervasive that I’m almost buying into it myself.  I’m not a straight-A student at the sciences–more like mostly B’s.  But that’s not terrible, even if I do sometimes consider anything below a B+ a “smart-kid fail.”  So why did I panic that I’d failed that exam?  And would I have had the same deer-in-the-headlights reaction if I’d majored in chemistry instead of concentrating in creative writing?

Exhibit A: a page of my exam.  Exibit B:  a section of my bookshelf.  The two are not mutually exclusive.  And yes, I do collect Victorian editions and rare books.  Shut up.

The Lady Who Eats Cheesecake In The Bathroom, and other stories

Recently, I’ve become a magnet for the strangest ladies who use public bathrooms.  Last week, after a particularly epic stint in the stacks at Butler followed by an even more epic coffee and sugar-pastry binge, I stopped to use the bathroom in Café 212 in Lerner.  There was a line, which was further evidenced by the girl who entered the bathroom behind me, just in case the ladies occupying the stalls didn’t get the memo.
“Are you in line?” the girl asked.
“Yes,” another girl and I said.
Finally, a woman walked out of one of the stalls and made a beeline for the sink, where she proceeded to wash her hands with soap, enthusiasm, and feigned ignorance of why I was standing there, frowning.
You see, the woman, who clearly knew that there were people waiting, had not bothered to flush after herself.  Yet she had made it her business to wash her hands.  I found myself in the particularly awkward situation of having to walk into that stall and come face to face with exactly what that woman had, erm, left behind.  And she was not embarrassed of this in the least.
“Um, you didn’t flush,” I mumbled, and then, as she continued to scrub her hands, a little louder: “Excuse me, Ma’am, you didn’t flush.”
She chose not to acknowledge this, squelching another pump of soap between her wet palms.
I entered the stall with a sigh, flushed her pee and liberal use of toilet paper with a grimace, and wondered what exactly had prompted the lady to, well, put her business on display.

I had considered this encounter a single incident until this afternoon, when, as I sat at a table in Magnolia Uptown with a bunch of friends, a woman entered the single-person bathroom with a cheesecake.  A round, cup-sized cheesecake, on a ceramic plate.  She had yet to take a bite.
“Did she…”
“No…”
“Did that woman just take a cheesecake into the bathroom?” one of my friends asked.
The entire seating area of Magnolia was talking about it.  All ten of us had indeed seen a woman, a plate, a fork and an uneaten cheesecake disappear into the bathroom.  Ten minutes of polite conversation later, a line had formed outside the single-person unisex bathroom.  A mother with her two, miserable, squirming sons frowned.
“Is that woman still in there?” someone asked.
“The woman with the cheesecake?”
“I wish she’d hurry up, I’ve been waiting nearly five minutes to pee,” someone in line said.
The entire seating area collectively rolled their eyes.  And that was when I could no longer help myself.  Like a woman possessed, in my most sarcastic, carries-to-the-back-row-of-the-theater voice I said,
“Lady in the bathroom with the cheesecake, we know you’re in there, and we know what you’re about.  And frankly, most of us suspect bulimia.”
The seating area dissolved into titters and snorts.  One of my friends looked at me like I was either brilliant or nuts, and she couldn’t decide which.
“In case you are wondering, lady in the bathroom, we all saw you go in there with that cheesecake.  You are fooling no one.  You are simply making a lot of people uncomfortable, mainly people who are waiting to pee,” I continued.
My friends looked ready to die, even though mostly everyone was in hysterics.
“Oh my God, Robyn,” one of them said, standing up.
“What?” I asked.  “Like she’ll come out of the bathroom and know who was talking?”
A muffled flush sounded from inside the bathroom.
“Let’s go,” my friends said, all of them getting up.
“Seriously?” I said.  “You don’t even want to see how much cheesecake she has left on her plate when she comes out?  Wait, guys, I’m coming too.”
And we all stood in a guilty circle outside the bakery, pretending that the cheesecake bathroom lady would not haunt the rest of our weekend.

Pants Off Dance Off

Some people have a problem with girls not wearing pants to class.  They find spandex extraordinarily offensive – as though they’d never seen legs or an ass before.

I often wear nothing but spandex.  Not really as a fashion statement…I wear basically the same thing most other days: dark jeans, black boots, black shirt, black eyeliner, gold jewelry.

like so.

Instead, it’s more of a testament to my laziness.  Or, rather, warped priorities.  I’d rather go without pants than eyeliner.  Without a collar than earrings.  See, I’m the messy, easy, comfy kind – with a glint of gold, if it’s a good day.  (The one thing I’ll never do is the gray athletic sweatpants combo.  Never!!)

It’s slowly turning into fall – that time of year when you can wear almost anything and get away with it.  Sneakers?  Fine.  Sandals?  Sure.  Uggs?  Ugh… go right ahead.  Today I was walking along Mass Ave and decided that next year I want to be in a place where pants are a non-issue.  You know, I’ll wear those big baggy pants that bloom like flower petals in southern India, or don dresses all day in Dubai.  Something along those lines.  My life will be an eternal pants off dance off!

The Return of An Inconsistent Blogger

This always happens.  I say I’ll call or write and pretty soon its constant midterms (at least one a week for the next month) and I’ve spent all my cash on library coffee and all my days in the stacks and then I remember that I’ve forgotten to do something.  Usually the something I’ve forgotten is a relationship with a boy who is now incredibly pissed at me, or to check my voicemail for two weeks, so now everyone is incredibly pissed at me, or to do my reading for that one class in which I don’t have a midterm (but who cares about that?).

This time, I’ve forgotten to blog.  Like male pattern baldness, even my posts over at IvyGate have grown noticeably thinner in the past few weeks.  But I’m back!

What have I been up to, you may wonder, besides studying?  The short answer: not much.  The long answer:

• Procuring a cheapie student ticket for next week to see Equus, the play about Harry Potter’s dong horses and religion and stuff.

• Contemplating the purchase of a DSLR camera

• Playing the stock market to justify the purchase of a DSLR camera

• Obsessing over MY FUTURE, aka the fact that I am STILL WAITING TO HEAR BACK ABOUT GRAD SCHOOL, Damn you, Penn

Question: I’m too lazy to google this, so tell me if it’s an actual line from some rap song or if I am actually so weird that I thought this up on my own:

Baby got more curves than a roller coaster-

She’s hotter than bread straight from the toaster.

The Happy Masochist

I’m trying something kind of new this year: exercise.  I’ve never consistantly been able to keep a work out regimen.  My excuse is a lack of time and the fact that going to the gym is just not any fun.  I would run if I wasn’t a vampire and didn’t hate the sun and heat.  But what’s the fun in standing in the same place doing the same thing over and over again on a machine?  This fall I’ve slowly been cutting my out-of-school obligations, and am determined to have some time for myself.  I’m going to indulge in the things I’ve wanted to do for a while but never had the time to try.

So this year I’m determined to stay in shape and also have fun while doing it.  I’ve signed up at a local Bikram yoga studio, and will also be taking belly dancing classes.  Belly dancing starts tomorrow, and is something I’ve done before a handful of times.  It’s a ton of fun, and really great for the stomach.  I’ve done yoga off and on for the past five years, and I really love it.  But I hadn’t tried Bikram yoga til yesterday.  If you don’t know about Bikram – it’s the one where they turn up the heat in the room real high and you hold a series of balancing, strenghtening, and stretching positions.  There is a lot of sweating involved.

The teacher looked at me as I was signing up and asked if I’d ever done Bikram before.  I thought about it.  I’d been to the Baptiste studio in Porter a few times, and they turn up the heat there too, so I said, Why yes, I’d been to the Baptiste studio in Porter a few times.

“Honey,” she scoffed, “that’s not Bikram.  It’s gonna get a lot hotter in there.  More than you’ve ever been used to.  Your goal today is just to try and stay in the room.”

Now if there is one thing I hate more than somebody telling me I cannot do something, it is when they call me “honey.”  Honey, dear, sweetheart, love.  All equally irritating, demeaning, and cheap.  I am not your honey!  I am not your sweetheart!  And I will stay in that room for the full 90 minutes and do every single move instructed!

I got inside the studio and I thought I was going to faint.  I think it was literally 100 degrees in the room.  I was starting to sweat just by sitting still on my mat before class started.  Strangely everyone around me was peaceful and calm.  Even stranger was that these people were all generally overweight.  (Is that the sign of a bad studio, or is it a sign of society on the turn-around??)  Maybe 4pm on a Sunday is not prime yogi hour.  Tomorrow I’m going to the 8am class.  Perhaps they may be more svelte.

We started moving and things got a little better.  After what seemed like an eternity of hitting positions and holding, my shirt was entirely soaked, my legs were shaking, and my poofy hair was falling out in every which direction.  The instructor announced on her headset mic, “For the beginners, we’re about half an hour in, and have about an hour left to go.”  I almost got up and walked out.  But then she laughed, “Just kidding!  We’ve got just about ten minutes left.”

I probably could have cried with happiness.  Probably would have if my right foot wasn’t twisted up and under my standing left leg and my forehead wasn’t touching my knee.  After the ten minutes, class ended and I had resisted the temptation to stop and rest!  It was hot, but I was starting to get used to it.  I left the studio, sweaty, proud, and completely detoxed.  This morning I woke up and every muscle in my body was sore.  I love that feeling!  I lay in my bed, slowly moving each one of my limbs, digits, revelling in the pain.

Tomorrow I’m headed to the studio again.  This, unlike my chocolate addiction, is something I could afford to get used to.  Hey, I might as well acquire some good habits before my twenty-year-old metabolism decides to quit on me!

Friday Night Lights

What is it about football that brings college students together?  As a generally academic misanthrope who hasn’t stepped into the gym since sophomore year, personally I could think of only a few reasons for attending Harvard’s first football game of the season tonight: athletic boys in spandex, cute roommate photo-ops wearing cut-off college paraphernalia, and the need to fulfill some sort of so-called “college experience.”  Now this need has plagued me throughout my time at college.  I dislike beer (preferring flavored vodkas!), dislike frat boys (preferring antisocial academics, or the occasional corporate type), and would rather play a game of chess with a stranger in the Harvard Square Au Bon Pain than witness a game of football. This has not deterred me from trying all of the above.

Harvard beat Holy Cross in a last minute lead of 25-24.

But tonight was surprisingly fun!  Maybe it was just the sight of muscle in spandex, the excessive photo-ops, the self-appeasing fulfillment of another obligatory college experience.  Maybe it was the unifying act of demonizing the enemy, Cold War Russia-like.  Whatever it was, I found myself invested, cheering loudly for The Crimson, holding my breath at every fumble, and counting down the clock at the end of the fourth quarter, squealing with joy when the team unexpectedly won and rushed the field (pictured above).  It was the spirit of the event – the thousands of bodies shivering with energy – that simply got me excited about being a “college student” again.

So we got back to the dorm, our bellies swirling with cheap beer and our heads swooning from victory.  We were tired, but hey, it was the first real Friday night of the term!  It was our responsibility to hit the parties, wasn’t it?

One of my favorite parts of going out with the girlfriends is the prep that happens before: trying on outfits, applying makeup, consulting on accessories, pumping hip hop on the stereo, discussing expectations.  Put on a cute outfit and everything suddenly seems right with the world; every possibility seems approachable.

View from room, early evening.

Soon, however, I was disappointed.  The parties tonight were filled with freshmen desperately downing shots of gin and “inadvertently” grinding their sweaty bottoms on my bruised leg.  Now don’t get me wrong: I love dancing and I love parties.  Some of my most memorable nights at Harvard have included a shot too many and an inappropriate dance with a sweaty stranger.  But tonight was just too grossly desperate.

I hit my forehead with the palm of my hand (doh!) and left with Alyson.  It was time to crawl back into my hole.  And that was when I received a text from my friend: “so and so party is completely packed and impossible.  Come to Daedalus.”  (Daedalus=one of the nicer bars in Harvard Square, always linked pleasantly in my mind to Joyce’s Ulysses.)  So I went.  I ordered a White Russian.  I met some friends of friends.  The night was saved by engaging talk about everything from Obama, TFA, the sub-prime market crash, and the loss of ‘ignorance as bliss.’  What was I thinking, trying to re-live freshman year in a contrived attempt at good ol’ college fun?

Blinded by the Friday night lights, I thought I saw myself reflected in the crowds surrounding me in the stadium.  I am, it seems, still looking.

“Can You Tell Bearded Brooklyn Hipster Journalist Boy to give me back my graphic novel collection?”

This week, at a press conference with Hillary Clinton, I sat next to a girl who worked at the same newspaper as a boy I used to date.  Maybe, if the thing began on time, I wouldn’t have asked, but with a thirty-five minute delay, I somehow found the balls (or borrowed Hillary’s) long enough to ask the girl, “Hey, can you tell Bearded Brooklyn Hipster Journalist Boy to give me back my graphic novel collection?  Seriously.”

I’m dwelling on boys lately, especially those I aquired from shameful forays into the world of online dating.  The first boy-from-the-internet was Bearded Brooklyn Hipster Journalist Boy, BBHJB for short, with whom I had too much in common.  You know that its probably not going to work if a guy travels in the same circles as you do, professionally.  Especially if he’s known to have dated girls who have slept with one or more of your Park Slope Writer Guy Friends.

At least, I know that now.  But last year, I was willing to give it a chance.  And I lost my best graphic novels thanks to that awkward telephone break up, which wasn’t really me breaking up with him, since we never “defined what we were” in the first place.

It’s not like I lie in bed pining for BBHJB.  We dated when we would have made better friends, and we ruined that by dating.  I haven’t de-tagged him from my Facebook photos.  To tell you the truth, I don’t really care that much.

Relationships with boys-from-the-internet are like Chinese food, so unsatisfying and un-earth-shattering that you’re over it and ready for something else so fast that it surprises even you.

Which is why I have no idea why, last month, I got back on my Trojan horse and met another boy on the internet.  He was a lawyer, the kind who dearly wished he were a badass blogging Brooklynite instead of a corporate tool and thus contented himself with John Varvatos casual wear and three-thousand-dollar guitars.  I wore my sexisest Parisian lingerie, and he looked but didn’t touch, and I resolved to tell him that it wasn’t going to work.

I sent unenthusiastic text message responses for a week, dodged his calls, and tried to think how to say it that wasn’t going to be super-bitchy.  I saved a voicemail of his for three days, and, that Monday morning, as I waited for the elevator in my building while checking my voice mails, I accidentally deleted his unheard.  Too embarrassed to call and tell him it was over in case he had done the same thing in that mystery voicemail, I never called at all.  It’s been two weeks.  I’ll never know what was in that voicemail, but then again, if I’d really cared, I would have listened to it in the first 72 hours.

Like I said, Chinese food.

So I’m not sure if I’ve sworn off men specifically, especially since I just met my new neighbor, a Columbia B-schooler who invited me to play Wii with him this weekend, or if I’ve just sworn off boys-from-the-internet.

Actually, what with OrgoDos kicking my ass, I’m pretty sure I’m going to have to swear off my entire social life pretty soon.  Crap.

p.s.: new shoes!!! new shoes and going-to-be-late-for-orgo means I had to bike in four-inch heels. this is clearly a skill that needs to be on my resume.

Octopus, Bravo, Panties, Cambridge

Not eating food is not fun.  For the past week, I’ve had a face the shape of a perfect square, with the bottom two corners turning a light shade of mauve, then bright blue, then fading into a dull green.  Currently it is a pleasant shade of lime.  And my face is just beginning to deflate.  I’ve been recovering from the wisdom teeth operation slowly but steadily, and all I’ve been eating is yogurt, oatmeal, and banana smoothies.  I find myself craving every kind of chewable, substantial food – macaroni, steak, broccoli, octopus.  Yes, even octopus!  Last night I dreamt I was a guest judge on Iron Chef, and the mystery ingredient was octopus.  All sorts of silly looking chefs (there’s the requisite bad boy chef, the fat belly chef, the ironically lanky chef) were doing all sorts of illegal looking things with octopus.  There was stuffed octopus, fried octopus, even an octopus cake!  Of course that funny looking Asian host was there too, doing his backflips and all.

favorite of all time: dukmandoogook: soup w rice cakes and dumplings!

My recovery treatment also requires lots and lots of TV.  Did you know that there’s a reality show on Bravo called “Million Dollar Listing” that follows three real estate agents going around selling homes in California?  I sure as hell didn’t!  I also never knew how interesting it could be to watch three people literally walk around.  Today’s goal: get a real estate license!

In other news, I’m back on campus this evening, have stealthily recovered a few kidnapped and ransomed boxes from the ex with the help of three friends, and am still currently without towels.  Where the hell did they go?  Towels aren’t the type of thing you lose all the time, like socks, or panties (does anyone still use the word panties?  It’s got a sweet Russian-like diminutive quality about it I like, sort of like the word dumplings).  I need to take a shower soon and am considering drawing my blinds shut and just running from the bathroom into my room full speed, air drying in the nude.  That, or I guess I could just borrow a towel from one of the girls.  I guess it depends on how exciting I want my Saturday night to get.

I am sorely missing my best friend Li and our crazy/lazy adventures in Cambridge, and on the subway ride from South Station felt an intense nostalgia for New York in the summer.  Boston is uninspiring.  Classes start Monday.

“I think that your hairstyle is very special”

Juli, I can’t believe that you haven’t even started school yet, and I’m already through my first exam!  Today was a bit monumental.  I woke up early to find out the results of the Obama-McCain lottery at Columbia (the deal: 15,000 students entered in a lottery for ~200 tickets).  Okay, so I wasn’t picked.  I figured as much.  But then my press credentials weren’t approved by the not-for-profit organizing the event!  Seriously, I was supposed to be covering this on Friday (which seems to have become my default day over at IvyGate.  Hmmm).

Of course the world had to mock my rejection from the Obamacain event by turning the lobby of my apartment building into a voting hub for some local election, complete with multi-lingual  “vote here!” signs and electronic voting booths.  Seriously.

Did I mention the rainstorm?

Finally, I got to campus 90 minutes before the test and realized I didn’t have an eraser.  Cue my waiting in a line of 25+ people purchasing textbooks and umbrellas at the CU bookstore with a freakin’ $1.99 mechanical pencil in my basket.   After that fiasco, I was sitting in Cafe 212, a sort of our-seating-area-is-also-a-pedestrian-walkway-to-the-campus-ATM-and-our-cheese-sandwiches-cost-$6.50 place with my coffee and my notes when the most charming, amazingly sweet exchange students asked to share my table.  They were two guys, one Korean and one Japanese, and their English was hilarious.  They kept wanting to talk to me about the diene reaction mechanisms I was studying, but they didn’t know the words and were reduced to simple pleasantries and frustrated hand waving.  As I was getting up, the Korean guy said to the Japanese guy, “I think that your hairstyle is very special.”  OMFG!

The exam was okay–I’d been doing the problem sets and it’s mostly just review of key reactions from Orgo I at this point.  After the exam, I was supposed to entice freshies to join Philo at the club faire, which was cancelled due to rain, so I killed time between classes in the computer lab, and found out that

1. My application to UPenn for grad school is now complete (last letter of rec arrived this morning) and will be sent to the committee.  Eek!
2. Bwog seemed to want me to comment about IvyGate not having been accepted for press credentials
3. The short forms of my TV show (which is so never going to happen) contract are on their way and
4. I am so, so screwed with my creative writing elective and might have to do an independent study.

Awesome.  I also had the balls to call the people who rejected my press credentials and let them know our daily readership and asked if I could resubmit our proposed coverage (I had been angling for photography as well as summary and commentary) if that was the reason for the rejection.  The woman I spoke to was really apologetic and confused as to why I was rejected, so they’re re-examining everything and hopefully I will get to cover Obamacain after all.  Fingers crossed!

So that’s it for my eventful Tuesday!  Hope you enjoy the crappy computer cam shots of my weird outfit and also that your face is less marshmallow-like and your hair is still just as cotton-candy awesome.