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(07/22/10 7:06am)
If college students woke up tomorrow morning to find the drinking age had been lowered to 18, the resulting weeklong party would be the most impressive in the nation’s history, followed by an equally impressive revolution in responsible drinking. I say this with confidence because this is the trajectory I have followed during my summer in Beijing, where the drinking age is 18. Now that the novelty of easy alcohol wore off, I have quickly fallen into more responsible drinking habits.
(07/08/10 6:50am)
This is a particularly painful column for me to write. Not because I have to expose unpleasant truths, but because I have to do something every 20 year old hopes to avoid: admit my parents were right. Since high school, they told me that study abroad was a vital part of college education, but it has taken a summer working in China for me to believe them.
(05/27/10 8:02am)
If you ask a graduating senior for advice about Penn, you tend to get
some truly heartwarming pieces about slowing down and enjoying life
more. To that I say, its easy to slow down when Van Pelt Library is
no longer your kitchen, study and bedroom. “Slow down and enjoy the
journey” is good advice, but as a freshman — scared, confused and
wondering what on earth quantitative data analysis means — my response
would be, “Slow down? How do I start up?” With that in mind, I now
present everything that I wish I had known as a freshman.
(04/13/10 7:59am)
Every year the Rhodes Scholarship is awarded to a cross section of students from around the globe. One of the oldest and most prestigious educational fellowships, it provides them with a grant to study at Oxford University for one to three years. Since the award’s creation, Penn has produced 19 Rhodes scholars. The University of Oklahoma has produced 26, Stanford University 82 and Princeton University 192. Now, I am not an elitist who thinks that the Ivy on Penn’s walls means we are far superior to the rest of the world, but when we are losing out to other institutions by such large margins, we have a serious problem. That’s why the Center for Undergraduate Research needs to step up its efforts to let students know about fellowships and assist them in applying.
(03/23/10 8:06am)
One stormy night, my Boy Scout troop was attempting to cook a meal when we came up against an insurmountable obstacle: our camping stove. While it was a cutting-edge model, its instruction manual was also far too complex for a pack of 13-year-olds to figure out. So we sat, cold and hungry — feeling like the stove was useless — until one of the adults, having despaired of teaching us a life lesson, took over. The Penn writing seminar is a little like that stove: it can be a wonderfully effective tool, but only if its applications are made more clear.
(02/23/10 11:04am)
Every morning, I check up with some old friends from high school, tell some Penn friends about my new column and coordinate studying with some classmates. Then I get out of bed. The digital revolution is all around us but if we are not careful, the issues of technology and space will isolate us right out of what makes Penn special as a University.
(02/09/10 10:42am)
A few weeks ago, the Penn Democrats had Congressman and Senatorial Candidate Joe Sestak come to campus for a town hall. Eager for a look at the man who might well be representing me in the Senate next year, I attended, ready for some hard hitting, substantive questions. And indeed, I got to hear a few that were well balanced and clearly articulated.
(01/26/10 10:38am)
So your student group is all out of funding and your treasurer just lost your Student Activities Council request. If you are all out of ideas and getting ready to inform your membership that events for the year are over, think again. The University, much like the federal stimulus bill, has money for all sorts of events; you just need to know where to look and whom to talk to. Groups should work together to make better use of Penn’s many lesser-known funding sources.
(12/14/09 3:28am)
As you get ready to make sure this year’s finals are the rousing success that will impress your parents into a new iPhone, remember that nothing puts presents under the tree like an A+.
(11/24/09 10:12am)
For most, Halloween Friday is a bacchanalia of wild parties and scandalous outfits; I saw Shakespeare. Love’s Labor’s Lost to be specific. Put on at the Annenberg Center by the famous Globe Theater Company, the play revolves around a series of romantic misunderstandings and revelations that cumulate in a moving message about the meaning of love. I, however, was mired in my own revelation — namely, that I was one of the only Penn students there. The performance began and ended well before the night’s festivities, and yet, unless the School of General Studies has dramatically expanded, there were few students to be seen.
(11/10/09 9:41am)
Exclusive clubs are fun. Members get their own inside jokes, their own handshakes and most importantly, the fun of excluding people and getting that warm, elitist feeling that comes from looking down on others. That’s why I am proud to exclude most of you all from the venerable People-Who-Voted-November-3rd Society, because statistically, dear reader, you are almost certainly not a member of this club.
(10/27/09 8:16am)
Tunnels. MIT and Columbia are famous for their intricate systems of underground passages. Indeed, a quick Google search of college tunnels would suggest that the University of Pennsylvania is almost unique in the lack of secret structures on campus. But just because they aren’t well-known does not mean they do not exist.
(10/06/09 8:44am)
There is a fundamental difference between partying in your friend’s house and at a club downtown. Though you can do essentially the same thing at either place, a club is a destination, a place that people travel to, that they seek out. But that does not mean you should try to turn your house into a club. This is something the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology would do well to remember as it considers the addition of dining and other facilities in order to turn itself into a “destination.”
