Sara Brenes-Akerman | Four good years
I will miss Penn the most in the fall — the way it is warm but breezy, the abundance of orange and the start of classes.
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I will miss Penn the most in the fall — the way it is warm but breezy, the abundance of orange and the start of classes.
I have spent the better part of the last four years dreading the idea of going back home to Costa Rica permanently.
I always impose things that I like on other people. Music, YouTube videos, movies, websites, you name it. I’m always eager to make people like what I love. Admittedly, it’s a flaw in my character. But the neediness that this stems from is something we all share in one form or another. We all want to be heard and we all want to tell others about what we think is important.
I’m having an affair. I never thought I would be the type to engage in such pitiful behavior but then, unexpectedly, I found myself in the middle of a whirlwind romance that I couldn’t put an end to.
After five minutes on a public bus I have fallen in love with the boy sitting a couple of seats in front of me. He is listening to music through bright blue headphones, wearing orange shoes and glancing out of the window with intent.
For the first time last fall, I made pancakes but ate them alone. All I wanted to do on Friday nights was stay in, watch a movie and fall asleep. In the morning, I would wake up and not want to get out of bed because of how long the walk to the shower felt. This happened week after week.
I was never one for Disney princesses or Prince Charming. They were never quite to my taste — the princesses seemed too conceited, and the princes struck me as too old-fashioned. But the truth is that I never needed them; I had Meg and Tom. It would take me many years to realize that their characters were as implausible as any Disney creation. But, by then, the harm had been done.
You are only as good as your GPA and only as valuable as the first job you land after college. This might seem harsh — I would be the first to agree that it, in fact, is. But it is also the only logical conclusion to draw from the way in which we seem to evaluate ourselves. It is hard to ignore the mounting pressure that becomes apparent around this time in the semester. Everyone is looking tired and anxiety is commonplace. Yet the magnitude of the pressure is not solely determined by how busy we are, how many papers are yet to be written or the amount of projects that need to be completed. It is almost as importantly about the value that we assign to the results of these many assignments and the misguided way in which we let them determine our definition of personal success.
As I walked into the theater lobby, I was flabbergasted. Right there, less than a couple of feet away, sat the man himself. Signing books, smiling and schmoozing was the writer that I had grown so immensely fond of over the last few years. My love began, as for many others, with the “SantaLand Diaries”: colored with biting observations, unexpected depth and the best impression of Billie Holiday ever, this recollection of days spent as a Macy’s elf won me over immediately. Since then, I have laughed to tears reading “Jesus Shaves” and “Six to Eight Black Men” and have sent links to his pieces to anyone who has cared to click. Which is to say that I have granted him the title of faultless personal hero. And this is where my problem lies.
Every time I tell someone that my father died it makes them uncomfortable.
Fidel Gamboa died on August 28th. It is hard for me to explain what this means to anyone who doesn’t find the sentence striking at first glance. In short, it was a tragedy of epic proportions. He was an astonishing musician, by all accounts a great man and someone who cherished his home.
Every sound increases tenfold when it’s 11 o’clock at night and you’re the only one awake in the house. I go quietly about my business, look at the time and start wondering how I’m going to make it out of bed when the alarm goes off at 5:30 a.m. tomorrow. It won’t be easy. I’m back in Costa Rica for the summer and, by now, have fully readjusted to my “at-home self.” Here, I get at least eight hours of sleep every night, usually starting at around 10 p.m.
Until a couple of hours ago, I was a junior without a summer internship. It’s late May and, by now, I had gone through all of the expected phases: denial, anger, guilt, hopelessness and, finally, acceptance.
All classes should be about something more than just doing well on the exam. Sure, it sounds simplistic put on paper, but I can assure you that, despite its apparent obviousness, it is a fact frequently overlooked. It is very likely that you have had the experience of sitting in a large introductory class in which all anybody cared about was getting the notes to eventually get a good grade.
Our love affair started with an oatmeal chocolate chip cookie. Okay, cookies. Both unfamiliar and unbelievably good, they were reason enough to ignite what I anticipate will be a lifelong relationship with their place of origin.
Two weeks ago, I went to Sabbath services for the first time in three years. It was also the first time that I had done so voluntarily. Religion is a part of life that I have systematically ignored since age twelve.
When I first stepped on campus during Penn Previews three years ago, I was impossibly wide-eyed and spent those first couple of days in a state of constant disbelief. My visit hit its peak when I was given the first flyer that I ever got on Locust Walk — a piece of paper that informed me that John Legend was giving a mini-concert on campus that very day. Being a big fan of his since high school, I couldn’t believe my luck. I rushed to the venue, excited and eager.
A question from my 12-year-old tutee’s homework: “Why is life worth living?”
There is this movie that I love called In the Mood for Love — a romance about two neighbors who fall in love but can’t say it to each other because they’re both married. He tells her about a wall in Cambodia into which you can whisper your secrets and let go of the things that you are unable to reveal to anyone else. At the end of the film, we see the man doing exactly that — pouring his heart out to that quasi-magical wall and telling it what he couldn’t tell her. Sigh.
My sister, a lawyer, has told me the following story on a couple of occasions — often at my request and always with laughter.