PURDUE
Dorm Sweet Dorm - May 4, 2019
Yesterday around 1 pm I shut the door to my freshman year room for the last time. It only took me four hours to pack up everything in the limited square feet that had served as my home for the past school year. So, now that the room is empty and bare, and I have left it, allow me to give you a quick tour of my little piece of Honor's South as I knew it.
It's the little things that make my room feel more homey. Specifically a light up "H" that I received as a grad gift, my (second) "H" mug, a sting of LED lights, and of course Purdue Peter, the official guardian of my snacks.
A canvas that my big painted for me. I thought it fit well here because of the food theme.
Last, but certainly not least, is my Polaroid wall. I added many pictures during my freshman year, and it continues to be a work in progress.
It's the little things that make my room feel more homey. Specifically a light up "H" that I received as a grad gift, my (second) "H" mug, a sting of LED lights, and of course Purdue Peter, the official guardian of my snacks.
"So, What Do You Do For Fun?" - April 24, 2019
When I initially told my friends that I planned to attend Purdue, there was celebration. I had finally broke free from "the bubble" (the not so affectionate nickname of my hometown). I was also, for the first time in my life, going to be living somewhere that was not Ohio. Then came the confusion, what exactly was in Indiana. Was it really just cornfields? Did it have any real cities? Did this mean that my dream car was now a tractor? I patiently fielded my friends' questions and concerns. I was only moving a state over, not to a new planet, after all. How different could it be? Eventually the questions died down, at least until I had been at Purdue for a few weeks. Then, the hot, new question became, "What do you do for fun at Purdue." And I didn't really have an answer.
Part of the reason behind this is because on the surface, there's not really much to do at Purdue. It's a relatively small campus surrounded (for the most part) by farmland. There was no amusement park like King's Island. The nearest mall and movie theater required a car or navigating the confusing bus system. If you look closely however, there is a lot to do on campus. My friends and I attended almost every home football, volleyball, and basketball game. I joined intramural teams for indoor volleyball, indoor soccer, turf soccer, and sand volleyball, and I could usually find someone to play pick-up games with. My honors friends and I could usually commandeer a lounge to watch a movie on the weekends. I joined a sorority that gave me countless activities from painting pumpkins to volunteering with dogs. Additionally the honors engineering program provides countless opportunities to do stuff for free. In the fall we visited a local corn maze, we were given free tickets to go see Bill Nye as well as the newest Marvel movie. After attending Purdue for almost one academic year, the problem isn't so much finding things to do, it's finding time to do them, and I think that that's a pretty good problem to have.
Walking in a Winter Wonderland - January 24, 2019
The Snow Arrives
There's an old adage that goes something along the lines of "If you bring an umbrella, it won't rain. But if you don't it will pour." It's this adage that likely inspired the Boy Scout motto "Be prepared", and Big Brother's slogan, "Expect the unexpected". (Don't quote me on that.) It's the inspiration between Sod's law, the British version of Murphy's law. Sod's law says "If anything can go wrong, it will, and at the worst possible time." However in modern culture, Sod's law has come to encompass the idea that the Universe will leap at any chance to make a fool out of, and mock you. Despite these countless examples of why I should not have made a post admiring the unseasonably warm early-January weather that Purdue was having, I did just that. Needless to say, Miss Mother Nature decided to make me eat my words.
When I went to sleep on Tuesday January 7th, my head was filled with dreams of breaking out my shorts, stringing up a hammock by the engineering fountain, and relaxing. However, by Wednesday morning there was the distinct chill in the air that signifies that snow is on its way. Still in denial that this was just a morning chill I slipped on my light coat and started the trek to my first class of the day. I arrived with frost in my hair and blue tinting my ears and the tips of my fingers. Defeated, I resolved to break out my gloves, hat, and winter jacket. For the duration of the week, the temperature only continued to drop, accompanied by gale force winds that only made it feel colder. By Friday the temperature had dropped to a single degree, and the weather forecast promised a blizzard. Exasperated, I piled on layer after layer until I could have easily been mistaken for an onion, and set out about on my day.
The only thing keeping a smile on my face Friday was the knowledge that snow wasn't the only thing headed towards Purdue. At 5pm I was attacked by a flurry not of snow, but of the hugs and shrieks of my good friends Kaelyn, Paige, and Gwyneth (much to the amusement of the lady walking past us on the sidewalk). I ushered them back to my dorm and gave them a quick tour. That night as we were catching up, the real "blizzard" hit, and Purdue was coated in a thick blanket of white. Having made breakfast plans across campus, the girls and I bundled up and stepped out into the storm. Fat flakes drifted lazily down, sped up only by the strong gusts that I was coming to understand plagued Purdue this time of year. We marched past the Bell Tower (avoiding having to pass under the Math building), past WALC, across Memorial Mall, and into Stewart.
Our journey halfway over, and our faces halfway-frozen, I directed us into the safety of Purdue's tunnels. Little did I know that the worst was yet to come. Over confidently, with a stride rivaling that of a soccer mom's on Black Friday, I made my way down the polished stone steps into the tunnels. I realized my mistake as my feet came out from under me and my arm connected with the corner of the steps (resulting the next day in a bruise that ran all the way from my wrist to my elbow). Down but not out we trooped on, making our way through the Union and Chauncy. We finally reached our destination, Greyhouse Coffe, and the reward was sweet. We sipped toasty coffees and enjoyed a variety of crepes. The whole time, Gwyneth kept us updated on the storm that we were caught in. As we made our way back, Gwyneth hustled along, wanting to get on the road in one of the gaps in the storm. We spent no more than 5 minutes back in my dorm before my friends were rushing out, ready to get on the road.
It's the Great Snowball Fight, Charlie Brown
I had just gotten back to my dorm and sat down when there was a knock on my door. Not expecting anyone, I looked through the peephole to see my friend Kelly standing in the hall. She came with an urgent summons to a snowball fight. Quickly I bundled up, and together we rushed outside. We joined Gabby, Ryan, Mark, Jessica, Nisha, Andrew, Yourong, and Maitree in the snowball fight to end all snowball fights. It was every man for themselves as frozen projectiles came flying from every direction. Yourong was dubbed the winner for her signature move of picking up chunks of snow from the plow pile, and dunking them over people's heads. Worn out, we made a few snowmen, and then collapsed on the ground to make snow angels. We parted ways, our clothes soaked through, and our fingers numb, but smiles plastered on our faces.
I Finally Make it to Slayter Hill
As soon as the first flakes stuck to the ground, a murmur arose across Purdue. By the time the ground was covered in a good layer, the message had reached everyone on campus. Acting as one mass, the students of Purdue bundled up, grabbed assorted items, and migrated to Slayter Hill to carry on one of Purdue's great traditions. There, no less than a quarter of the school's population assembled determined to conquer the hill. The task was simple enough, to sled down the hill, but for college students who maybe had a dozen sleds between all of them, it was daunting. As a renowned engineering school, Purdue's students tackled the problem head on. Across campus, boxes were pulled from dumpsters, pans were
through the rest of Winter. "borrowed" from kitchens, the back door of Sigma Pi was ripped from its hinges and paraded across campus on the shoulders of giddy frat bros, and the plastic clapboard sign in front of Windsor Dining Court that told students where they could use their meal swipes on campus mysteriously vanished. Not even the dining hall plates were safe (Purdue having long ago gotten rid of all its trays after most of them made their way to Slayter Hill one way or another).
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I was the proud owner of a sled of sorts, my mother having shipped me a "portable sled" last December, though it was more accurately described as a sheet of plastic with two holes to hold onto. I was itching to give it a test-run after the snowball fight, but as my friends watched the snap stories of those who had gone directly to Slayter, they became disheartened. There were too many people and not enough hill. We parted ways with promises to go sledding some other time.
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On Sunday the 20th, I made them make good on their promise. It was the night of the "Super Blood Wolf Moon", and I argued that if my friends could drag themselves out of bed and into the cold to stare up at the overcast sky with the hopes of catching a glimpse of the moon, then they could go sledding. So, at 10:30 pm, Kelly, Gabby, and I made our way across campus to Slayter. The hill was abandoned except for a small group of frat bros. We struggled to keep our footing on the slippery slope, but finally we summited. We then climbed on our "sleds" (my sheet of plastic, and two plastic tub lids that Gabby had brought), and pushed off. We screeched with laughter as we picked up speed, skidding to a halt a few feet from the street. We had gone down a few more times when another pack of frat bros arrived. We watched an eerily human shaped trash bag come rushing down the hill towards us before it skidded to a stop. Before we could process what we had just seen, the bag leaped up and screamed "YEAH!!!" The battle cry echoing over the empty intramural fields.
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Instead of removing the back door of their frat house, it seemed that this particular group of frat bros had decided to sled down head-first in a trash bag. It was not an intelligent decision in the slightest, if not for the risk of asphyxiation, then for the small groups of trees that scattered the slopes, or any other multitude of reasons for that matter. We watched them warily as they tested other methods of sledding down, including but not limited to using another brother as a sled, snowboarding down on their shoes, collectively tumbling down as a dog-pile, and a comically small pan. The pan was the most effective, and would have been somewhat effective if not for the fact that it was barely large enough for the frat bros to put both their feet in. The frat bros did not let this fact stop them, and instead adopted the attitude of the common house cat, "If I fits, I sits". We watched the brothers cram their feet into the pan, squat as low as the could, and then going careening down the hill.
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One frat bro, the self-proclaimed pan-sled-expert, coached one particularly wary frat bro through the ordeal:
"To turn, carefully shift your weight, but not too much because there are trees right there, and then it's all over."
With these words of wisdom, the wary frat bro pushed off, picking up speed. He made it no more than a few yards down, before the pan veered towards a cluster of trees. The frat bro nearly avoided certain death, jumping out of the pan at the last moment, with the same sense of swagger as an action movie hero jumping out of a car seconds before it explodes. The pan hit the tree with a dull thud, before continuing on its way down the hill.
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One one fateful run down the hill, I reached the bottom without Gabby or Kelly anywhere in sight. Confused, I made my way up the hill trying to find them. I found them sitting in the middle of the hill, Gabby in tears. As it turns out, a frat bro in a trash bag moves surprisingly silently. Gabby and Kelly's sled had gotten stuck on the hill, and at that exact moment, trash-bro came wooshing down the hill, no idea what, or who, lay in front of him. His feet collided with the back of Gabby's head. We decided to call it a night. I helped Gabby down the hill, and we hiked back to honors. A quick test ruled out the possibility of concussion, but that didn't mean that Gabby's head wasn't going to hurt. Up until trash-bro ruined our night, we had had the time of our lives sledding. We decided to not let trash-bro ruin our memories of Slayter Hill, but it taught us to be wary of fellow sledders in the future.
The Here and Now
At this point you're probably wondering about the summary of this article. You have just read through three anecdotes and in none of them did I appear to "hate (almost) every moment" of the winter. This is because I have spared you the misery that is my daily experience with the weather. I came to Purdue with an idealized image of winter. I grew up in a city whose hills blocked the brunt of the wind. In addition, I grew up in a city where the snow crew was so effective at their jobs that the citizens theorized about whether or not the streets were heated. Coming to Purdue I new that it was unreasonable to expect these same conditions, but still my expectations were too high.
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Purdue adopted a series of ineffective methods at clearing snow. First, when the possibility of snow arose, a fleet of modified golf carts took to Purdue's sidewalks to spray them with some liquid mixture that theoretically was supposed to keep the walkways clear. Then, once the snow arrived a sparse scattering of salt was placed on the walkways. If the snow persisted the "ice polishers" came out. Instead of plows, Purdue employed another small fleet of golf carts with rapidly spinning brushes to clear the walkways. In Purdue's defense, these carts cleared the snow incredibly, they did not, however, clear the ice underneath the snow. When the walkways got particularly slippery, and Mitch Daniels felt the threat of a potential law suit, then the golf carts once again made their rounds, this time armed with sand. I, along with my fellow freshman, awoke one morning confused as to why the once pristine, white snow had suddenly been tinted an ugly, muddy brown. Our wizened, upperclassmen friends made sure to inform us that instead of clearing the ice on the sidewalks, Purdue decided to dump sand on it to give us better traction when walking.
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Not only was the winter aesthetic of Purdue's grounds ruined, but so were the floors of its buildings. The white linoleum became covered in a layer of dirt that looks like it climbed out of the nightmares of Purdue's janitorial staff. Having grown up with the idea that snow simply didn't fall on sidewalks, I was unimpressed to say the least. However, the sidewalks were nothing compared to the streets. While Purdue had dedicated a fleet of golf carts and what appeared to be a full time staff to keeping the sidewalks clear, they had dedicated maybe one plow to the entire campus's streets.
When the first snow hit, the plow didn't hit the streets until 4 in the afternoon, and the streets weren't clear until well into the night. Shrugging it off as them being unprepared for the first snow, I carried on with my life. When the second snow hit, the same thing happened. It was the day of the IU basketball game, arguably the biggest event to take place on Purdue's grounds this year, and the streets were coated in a thick layer of snow. My friend, Katie and I, l watched warily as cars inched over the dangerous roadways, expecting at any moment for one to go sliding off the road.
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Besides the obvious safety dangers, this winter has been particularly miserable because of the relentless winds that whip across the almost completely flat Purdue campus. The wind bites and burns any exposed skin that it can find. It drops the temperature several degrees. It drives snow and ice into ones eyes. And it threatens to make you lose your balance as you make your way over the already icy sidewalks. After two weeks of this unforgiving weather, I am fed up. I am ready for spring to come in all her glory (though after a few days of drenching rain I will likely change my mind). The only thing that the weather is good for is keeping the lotion, chap-stick, and hot cocoa industries in business. I leave you now to go cocoon myself under the pile of blankets on my bed and to hibernate