Hello recent admits to the Class of 2024! I’ve had a great time talking to some of you on the Admitted Students Network. Many of you have asked what some of the most surprising positives and negatives of Yale are, which got me thinking long and hard about what I take for granted and what I actively appreciate about school. Of course, any college has its downsides, but I realized that especially in this time of pandemic-induced departure from campus, many of the things I found annoying about school are now things that I would opt to return to in a heartbeat. So here’s the short-list: 5 things I’ll never complain about again (okay, maybe not never) when we return to campus.
1. Being woken up by my suitemates bustling about the room
I’m a light sleeper to begin with, yet now I really miss being woken up whenever my earliest-rising suitemate would rise, which was usually before my alarm would go off. Honestly, it’s way more pleasant to wake up to someone going in and out of the common room and turning the kettle on than the iPhone “chimes” ringtone. Plus, my suitemates’ good company is more than worth the unwanted noise in the wee hours of the AM!
2. Harkness Bells
Along the same vein of “sounds you can’t control”, the Guild of Carilloneurs plays the Harkness bells at 12:30 pm and 5:30 pm every day. Sometimes this would be a tad of a nuisance when I was trying to do work in the SayBrary (how we affectionately refer to the Saybrook College library). Now I can’t wait to go back to getting distracted by “The Rainbow Connection” carillon arrangement while trying to write a reading response.
3. Sprinting to Durfee’s at 4:59 pm
Durfee’s is a snack shop conveniently located in Durfee Hall on Old Campus. You can use your lunch swipe there, but the swipe expires at 5pm every day. There have definitely been times where I’ve glanced at my watch minutes before 5pm, bolted out of my seat in Sterling, booked it across Elm Street, grabbed whatever I could off of the shelves and hoped that it added to $9. The vigor! The hunger! The edge-of-your-seat action!
4. The puddles on Cross Campus
After rain or snow showers, the paths on Cross Campus develop these massive puddles that you need to leap over in order to avoid wet socks. Imagine a built-in obstacle course / calisthenic exercise on your trek to class!
5. Smelling like the Squiche
The Squiche (squirrel + quiche, more on that etymology in another blog post) is what we call Saybrook’s buttery. Each residential college, as you probably know, has a buttery that serves late-night snack food at a very low cost. Every Saybrugian knows that you can’t go to the Squiche simpy to grab a quesadilla–you’ll want to hang out with whoever’s on shift at the moment, and maybe watch the political debate or football game, and maybe order a chicken tender for the road. Basically, you’ll probably spend more time at the Squiche than you intended to, and when you’re near a deep fryer for more than two minutes, your hair and clothes end up being INFUSED with the smell of fried food. Every visit to the Squiche, therefore, is coupled with a subsequent long shower. What I would do to be orienting my bathing schedule around late night Squiche visits again!
Let’s try to stay positive in these uncertain times. Soon we will all be on campus together, griping about these little things. Until then, congratulations to the recent admits and boola boola!
