“Mommy’s on the floor and she won’t get up.”
Normally, I’d be mad at my sister for interrupting my homework, but on an otherwise regular Wednesday night of my junior year of high school, I knew that her tear–stained cheeks and panicked words overrode the importance of my A.P.
At some point during my freshman year, I found myself alone with a guy I’d just met. He had dark hair and eyes, I think, and his name was a generic one I soon forgot.
Admittedly, I started on this train of thought while I was high. The eating–Doritos–in–bed–alone, binge–watching–"Family Guy"–on–Netflix type of high [ed note: is there another kind?]. The fact that a lot of my peer group (basically my entire peer group) smokes weed is not news.
This past summer, I was just one of a thousand eager Penn students interning in New York. Four trains—and an hour and a half of smelling body odor—later, I commuted to the Brooklyn–based office from my boring Jersey suburb to gain “experience” and seize “opportunity.” I learned the ropes of tri–state area public transportation, hustled through the corporate crowds of Wall Street and hopped across the East River to be among the hipsters of Park Slope.
In the late spring of my freshman year, while poring over my Math 114 notes in one of those tiny "study rooms" in the Quad, a senior from my Italian class came parading down the hall.
Welcome to Penn, where students overlap in webs more complicated than that gross hook–up diagram from "Jersey Shore." Forget six degrees of separation.
Almost three years ago, right before I first came to Penn, the "good luck" and "bon voyage" that I had been hearing all summer from friends and other well–wishers turned into “don’t party too hard!” and “remember, school comes first!” I quickly learned that Penn is wildly known as “the Social Ivy:” the Ivy most affiliated with partying.
I have never been a partier, but I was curious to see the fantastic and potentially debauched social establishments for which my school was apparently famous. So, in the beginning of freshman year, my friends and I did as the Romans do: we stood outside frat houses and waited to be invited in.
During the last party we went to that fall, a friend and I left disinterested after only fifteen minutes.
New year, new me, new Highbrow. Highbrow knows that all of you lovely Penn kids take the start of a new year and semester in stride and use the opportunity to change something about yourself. And we wanted to know just what resolutions you guys had in store for the new year. So we asked and here are your responses: