Mara Gordon

On the last day of classes, I ran into my freshman advisor on Locust Walk. She and I had a quick catch-up as we walked together before the mayhem of Hey Day began. The last time we had really talked was my sophomore year, when I had just declared my American History major and thought I wanted to be a political journalist.

It may have slipped under the radar, what with all the election news dominating the headlines - but at a little school to the north of here, a very different sort of controversy has been brewing. My friends at Yale haven't been talking Barack vs. Hillary.

I started off Fling with a bunch of relative strangers. I had only met most of them the week before, but there we were last Wednesday, crammed into a house on Baltimore. I only knew a handful of their names, but I wouldn't have begun my last Spring Fling any other way.

Lorenzo Buffa is like a lot of young people in West Philadelphia. He wears skinny jeans and carries a messenger bag; he takes art classes and does face painting for kids to earn a living. And of course, he doesn't have health insurance. I've written columns before about what it's like to be a twenty-something without insurance.

There was a minor crisis on Friday. It was 12:05 p.m., and my spinning instructor was nowhere to be found. Class was supposed to start at noon, and the girls waiting in line at Pottruck were wasting precious time. In those five minutes, we could have burned about 60 calories.

When I met Bob Bark outside of Fresh Grocer last week, I thought I'd be writing a simple pro-union column. Bark had handed me a flyer that announced: "Newsflash! Campus Apartments has decided to hire an electrical contractor who does not pay what the government says is a fair wage.

Last week, I went to my commencement. Or at least I'm pretending I did. It was everything I wanted in a great graduation speech. A famous, influential speaker. Inspiring rhetoric. I left with a sense that no matter what I set my mind to, I would be able to change the world.

I have a confession to make: I'm a Hillary Clinton fan. I'm always a little reluctant to tell people about my love for the former first lady. It seems so tragically uncool - the kind of thing that Midwestern soccer moms do, not urban college kids. Obama-mania has hit Penn, and it's hit hard.

It seemed like the kind of high-powered event you'd expect during "Women's Week." There were women sporting power suits and Hillary hairdos. There was a spread of catered fruit trays. There was the official logo of the Trustees' Council of Penn Women, promising us college girls wisdom from generations past.

Last week, Katie Derickson got sick. Really sick. The kind of sick when your throat hurts and your fever is soaring and all you want to do is feel better. It was only Derickson's third day at her new job at Penn's School of Social Policy and Practice, but she knew she had to see a doctor.