There's something about that first warm day of spring at Penn. I don't know if it's because, as my friend Jessy claims, Philadelphia's spring is a weird, humid warmth that's unlike the Manhattan spring I'm used to, or if it's just because even the short winter at school feels oppressive. What I do know is the feeling I get on the first warm day is visceral; time to begin another end.
Some people think that college is the most exciting period of one's life, and in many ways, this is the case. Some days I eat dinner at 6:30 p.m., like a normal American. Some days, I eat at 9 p.m., like a true New Yorker. Some days, I eat at 11:30 or midnight, like an insane person. Still, as time passes, even the varied exhilarations take on the patina of regimentation. Every year there are the incidents of drunken debauchery -- throwing up in bed all over a boy, throwing up hung-over in front of one's therapist's office, throwing up in Lord and Taylor after somehow getting ragingly drunk at the Olive Garden -- that are beautiful, and memorable, but a part of the pattern of drunken moments that make up our late- and post-adolescent lives. This is what a Saturday night looks like when you are hooking up with someone. This is what a Saturday night looks like when you are not. These are the places you eat dinner when you live on Spruce or Pine or Delancey, and these are the places you eat if you live on Walnut or Chestnut. It's not that each incident is predictable in itself, but rather very little isn't easily integrated into the schema of four years at Penn.
Right now, it's mid-February. We're somehow solidly in second semester. It's not over -- not even truly close -- but the end of the school year is as tangible as the beginning. We're entering that period of hazy warmth that I associate with cigarettes in front of Van Pelt, brunches in outdoor cafes, O.A.R.'s "That Was A Crazy Game Of Poker" and an excited restlessness. It is now that we can see the end, but still mold it.
As a junior (and I promise to wane nostalgic as infrequently as possible this semester, because I have a two-semester job, and I know next year I won't be able to control myself), I am in the February of my time in college. We still have plenty of months left; unlike the seniors, we're not horrendously close to done, but we are, for the first time, close enough to the end that it is as real as the beginning. We have semesters and LSATs and MCATs and new girlfriends and new ex-boyfriends and drug abuse problems and scandals to go before we're done, but we're coming into spring, and it's both great and awful. Everyone knows that spring is the best time of the year here -- it gets warm and everyone is happier, and parties are everywhere, and I stop beating myself up for choosing Penn over Duke.
But still. It's warm out. "Spring is close," this weather says. Fling, Hey Day, Graduation -- all of the bullshit events that define Penn as Penn are approaching, and they'll be fun and then over. How do I know this? Because I felt exactly this intense prescience last February, and the February before, and I bet I'll feel this way next February too.
And two Februaries from now? Chances are, after next year, I may never have a peculiar Philadelphia February again.
- Yona
