Class of 2014: Freshman Blog

When you’re taking summer classes, the work and reading you’ll have to do is concentrated about three-fold compared to the norm. Doing well means spending a fair amount of time in the library. Inevitably though, putting your nose to the grindstone for too many consecutive hours will lose you one perfectly good nose.

Here are a few tips for blowing off steam in the MSE:

The Beach! The Summer! YES!

1. At night, the sprinklers turn on over the Beach. Huge jets of water spray all over the grassy slope, turning it into the perfect slip n’ slide! First, make sure that you’ve brought along a change of clothes and a towel in your backpack. Then, sprint up the stairs to M level, past the security desk, out the door and dive onto the Beach. You’ll go a whole lot farther and faster if you bring your own sled (say, a plastic garbage can lid).

***WARNING: EXPERTS ONLY*** If you want to really take your mind-soothing shenanigans to the next level, bring along some dish-soap and just cover yourself with it. Happy Sliding!

The Keyser Quad is bounded by Gilman to the West, the MSE to the East, Ames and Krieger Halls to the South, and Mergenthaler and Remsen to the North.

2. Have you ever streaked? Yeah, don’t do that. This is a family blog, come on now. Instead, you should just gather your friends and take a group lap around the Keyser Quad. Feel free to chant or sing or quiz each other on the relationship between the axon radius and the space constant. Whatever floats your boat.

There's an alligator in there. Don't believe me? Go see for yourself. Really. I'm not joking.

3. Come to think of it, there’s a pond with a fountain in the President’s Garden. When you just can’t read another page, take your party of study-amigos right on over and lay in the grass underneath the starry, Summer night sky. But be careful, legend has it that there is an alligator in there…Forewarned is forearmed! I mean that literally. Bring a weapon to fend off the carnivorous reptiles.

***DISCLAIMER*** Actually, this is a pretty awful idea. A concurrent legend has it that if one falls asleep by the President’s pond, one turns into a crocodile his/herself, and that in his/her transformation he/she liberates the soul of the last poor student who was trapped in a crocodile’s body. And that’s just embarrassing for everyone.

This is basically what I'm talking about. This picture is from SOHOP, the Spring Open House and Overnight Program, when Milkman came to Homewood.

4. There is nothing wrong with a midnight library rave. Find a study room in some deep corner of either C or D level, close the door, turn up the speakers, hit play on your handy-dandy dubstep playlist and just go nuts.

***ADDENDUM*** Your handy-dandy dubstep playlist is something that I feel should be on the University’s official list of what to bring to college.  But for some reason, my correspondence on the matter goes unanswered, and year after year it is excluded from the suggested packing list! Go figure…

5. Last time I checked, all of the library computers are equipped with the Paleo-Windows game Minesweeper. I think it pretty much goes without saying that you should make use of this often in order to temporarily shirk your academic responsibilities. But remember, library etiquette is key to ensuring that you aren’t reborn as something lame in the next life like a Californian banana slug, a Brazilian banana spider, an Ethiopian banana frog or, God forbid, a banana of any geographical origin.

To conclude, here’s a quick quiz on polite computer use:

Imagine that you’re playing Minesweeper (no, no don’t click that one! It’s a mine for sure!) and no other computers are open. A visibly distressed undergraduate rushes up to you and says, “I have 5 minutes to print my thirty-page thesis and make it all the way across campus for a final! I’m sorry to interrupt your game of Minesweeper–by the way, you should put a flag on that square; it’s a mine for sure–but I’m ever so visibly distressed! May I please use that computer for just a moment? You answer:

A. No.

B. Of course!

C. You have ten seconds! GOOOOOO!!!!

D. Are you kidding??? There’s no way that’s a mine! There’ a “1″ between those two isolated squares and a “1″ just to the right of the other one! Gah! Just for being bad at Minesweeper, heck no!

Obviously, the right answer is B, but if you want to have a high potassium content in your next life, be my guest! Fun fact: The banana is the most radioactive fruit!

Well, that’s all for now, Blue Jay Nation.

As always, Go Hop!