Word on the Street

You know that Ego of the Week question, “There are two types of people at Penn …”? Well, after a little social experiment I took part in these past couple of weeks, I would divide Penn into BlackBerry users and everyone else. It’s no surprise that smartphones took over campus long ago, but I didn’t realize the ubiquity of the BlackBerry in particular until I suddenly found myself without.
January 28, 2010 at 12:41 am

If I had a nickel for every time a Penn student complained that classes started the week before Martin Luther King Day, I could stop using BURSAR.
January 21, 2010 at 1:46 am

When I was a freshman, my Intro to Sociology professor began a lecture with the following question: “By a show of hands, how many of you agree with the statement ‘I am a feminist?’” In a room of over 100 students, only three hands went up.
December 3, 2009 at 12:23 am

I didn’t go to class last week. A disclaimer: I’m not one of those people — the kind who view lectures and seminars as obstacles to “experiencing college.” I love my classes.
November 18, 2009 at 10:29 pm

If, like me, you are silly and female, then you most likely walk home alone in the dead of the West Philadelphian night.
November 12, 2009 at 12:17 am

When I think of Homecoming, I don’t necessarily think of football games or seeing old friends. I don’t think about tailgating or special alumni receptions or anything related to Penn, really. I think of high school dances. You know what I’m talking about.
November 4, 2009 at 7:00 pm

Remember R. Kelly’s soulful jam “I Believe I Can Fly”? It was really big circa 1996. 1996, now that was a good year.
October 28, 2009 at 9:36 pm

I have several nicknames — none of them good — that I would like to share with you: Negative Nancy, Pessimistic Polly, Debbie Downer and Fatty McLovehandles.
October 21, 2009 at 5:36 pm

Last Friday night, a mere 12 hours before I would sit for the impending doom that is also referred to as the LSATs, I called my mom for the requisite night-before-the-exam confidence booster.
October 1, 2009 at 1:10 am

When I was in elementary school, one of my favorite parts of the year was pre-Christmas fundraiser season.
September 23, 2009 at 8:42 pm

New Student Orientation: the best week of the academic year. Giant parties, free (albeit watered-down) booze and no nagging schoolwork to ruin all of your fun.
September 16, 2009 at 10:54 pm

When I was in middle school, folks from the local Christian college came into my English class to convince us not to have sex until we were married.
August 5, 2009 at 10:16 pm

April is my favorite month of the year. Another bleak winter is washed away by daytime showers. All of us who hibernate through the winter come out, and you are able to witness campus waking up from a deep sleep.
April 23, 2009 at 1:21 am

I rarely got in trouble as a kid. Sure, I received the occasional detention for talking in class, but those ended shortly after I began copying lines from the blackboard.
April 15, 2009 at 11:40 pm

What’s wrong with kids today? It’s a question that has followed us from our jelly shoe-clad childhoods, to our MTV/TRL/TGIF loving adolescence, to our Not-Penn-State and definitely Not-Berkeley-circa-1960 University of Pennsylvania.
April 8, 2009 at 10:53 pm

I went to Mecca last year. I skipped out on a couple of Friday classes, packed a backpack with a change of clothes, and hopped on a train to New York.
April 1, 2009 at 7:23 pm

I recently asked a friend if she knew a guy I’d met. “I think so,” she said confusedly. “Oh wait, no.
March 25, 2009 at 8:51 pm

I discovered at the tender age of five that I was in possession of a very vivid imagination. I never hung upside down on a jungle gym, but rather from a tight rope in the middle of a floating circus in the sky.
March 19, 2009 at 2:47 am

For students who develop a Big Three inferiority complex as soon as acceptance letters roll in, the desire to perpetuate a “Work hard, play harder” Social Ivy image seems contradictory.
February 25, 2009 at 11:57 pm

As I write this, there are several other things I could, or rather should, be doing. I should, for example, be writing my 10-page paper (D-Day minus 2), doing my 200 pages of reading (D-Day minus 1) or studying for my midterm (D-Day minus 4). What I should not be doing is watching reruns of Full House or taking multiple naps.
February 18, 2009 at 10:43 pm