Mara Gordon | Finding my way

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.

Mara Gordon | Risking women's rights for art

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.

Mara Gordon | A toast to practicality

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.

Mara Gordon | A dose of nonprofit medicine

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.

Mara Gordon | Keep on spinning

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.

Mara Gordon | Unionization isn't the issue

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.

Mara Gordon | Power of rhetoric

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.

Mara Gordon | Catching Obama fever

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.

Mara Gordon | Feminism - 'Cosmo' style

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.

Mara Gordon | A sickening situation

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.

Mara Gordon | Finding the perfect person

I was almost beginning to think that Penn doesn't deserve its inferiority complex. My fellow seniors and I have spent three and a half long years convincing ourselves that our Penn education actually is as good as our friends' at Harvard, Princeton and Yale.

Mara Gordon | Getting green for going green

Every week, my roommates and I start out with the best of intentions. We place our bottles and cans neatly in our bin marked "recycling," ready to make the world a little greener come next trash day. Then, the bin starts to overflow. By the end of the weekend, our kitchen is filthy and somebody takes out some of the bottles with the trash.

Mara Gordon | Teaching, one meal at a time

It was the best chicken sandwich I'd had in a long time. I got it at a little cafe nestled along a nondescript block of Fairmount Avenue, kind of a hike for an ordinary weekday lunch after class this week. But what made this one chicken sandwich so good was the people who made it.

Mara Gordon | Sex ed: an hour doesn't cut it

They just seemed too young. Too young to be pregnant, too young to be worrying about HIV, too young to be making the kinds of choices they were making. It sounds like a cliche, or a tool of the right wing to illustrate the decline of American morality. But, to me, they're just kids who are falling through the cracks of Philadelphia's inconsistent sex-education policy.

Mara Gordon | Working with 'The Rules'

It's what every 21st-century woman doesn't want to hear. "The Rules - they actually work," a friend of mine told me over coffee last week, referring to the infamous dating book that teaches women to play games, be passive and above all, wait for him to call.

Mara Gordon | Apologizing for past wrongs

Back in 1964, a man named Edward Anthony's life changed forever. He was in jail at the time for dealing marijuana; only a 23-month sentence. While behind bars, Anthony enrolled in a clinical trial for a Penn dermatologist named Albert Kligman, a giant in his field who made millions developing the popular acne drug Retin-A.

Mara Gordon | Can you hear me now? No.

Mara Gordon is a College senior from Washington, D.C. Her e-mail is gordon@dailypennsylvanian.com. Flash Gordon appears on Thursdays.

Mara Gordon | Making the campaign count

Penn certainly puts on a good show. The capital-campaign kickoff party this weekend pulled out all the stops. Free food, free beer, lots of red and blue. It was a party worthy of an ambitious $3.5 billion fundraising goal, the amount the University hopes to raise by 2012.

Mara Gordon | A ride on the 'fun bus'

It was sort of an urban safari. They were young professionals, clad in business casual, intrepid explorers of Philadelphia's concrete jungle. They sipped champagne as they boarded the bus, ready for an adventure into uncharted territory. "With drinks in their hands," the driver chuckled, "I gotta be careful with the brakes.

Mara Gordon | Good treatment is good sense

It's every woman's worst nightmare. She's rushed to an emergency room after being raped or sexually assaulted. She's been physically hurt, she's disoriented and humiliated, too. She has to undergo countless interviews and tests before she can even go home and take a shower.