The weekend here at Yale begins for many students on Friday. The air decompresses. Corners of mouths turn upwards. Cross campus populates with people soaking in the sun. Meet-ups transpire with the pretense of “doing work” and the secret hope that no work will actually be done. After all, you have the whole weekend to start that P-set, make that study guide, and write that blog post.
My Friday starts out like all of my weekdays do–French class at 9:25. We discuss a short story about colonialist sentiments in France through the lens of a black female servant’s apparent suicide. I think about how this French class is becoming an English class spoken in French. Then, I meet with my computer science professor about dropping his class. He gives me his blessing (which isn’t totally necessary, I just wanted to be completely sure of my decision), so I submit the drop form at my dean’s office. Weight=lifted.
Afterwards, I run to lunch with my friend Eric, spending the entire meal persuading him to get a flu shot despite his fear of needles. He makes a litany of excuses en route, but eventually we receive the coveted stickers that say “I Got My Free Flu Shot at Yale Health.” I then do some homework at the library and go to office hours for a class that I have a midterm for on Monday. I pet the professor’s dog and get roasted for flip-flopping some formula name with the name of a different model. Then, I yeet out of there because I don’t want to get roasted again because I have a mission to complete with my friend Fiona.
Academic obligations complete for the day, Fiona and I meet at Saybrook, where she wields a scooter at the ready. We scoot and bike to Ikea, which is fifteen minutes away by non-motored vehicle. Ikea is one of those places where you completely lose track of time and space. Every mass-produced poster and cute Swedish ottoman call my name and demand to be looked at, stroked, sat on. Yet the salespeople take one look at Fiona and I and know that we are not shopping for hard-to-put-together furniture. No–we are looking for these bucket hats:
We had first come across the hats while we were shopping for dorm furniture during move-in. Instantly, the dopest Halloween costume idea you’ve ever seen was born. Halloween is kind of a big deal at Yale. The celebration usually spans two weekends, leaving much room for creative costume ideas. Unfortunately, the store associates now tell us that the hats are sold out! Not ones to have our ideas hijacked by lack of materials, we decide to improvise, picking up some other things to stitch together. We split a cinnamon bun to quell the minor disappointment and skrt back to campus just in time for dinner.
