Chances are, if you were having a conversation this week that did not revolve around your break, the Hunger Games or your thoughts on nihilism, you were talking about how great it is that spring is finally here. In no particular order, here is a list of reasons why you were wrong:

  1. For girls, having to shave your legs. I have been dealing with the transition by dressing exclusively in floral skirts so long I might be mistaken for an extra on the set of “Little House on the Prairie.” I recommend you do the same.

  2. Suddenly, Yale seems more disorienting than it has since the first weeks of school, when everyone was literally a stranger anyway. Since then, I’ve gotten used to waking up to find the courtyard of Silliman a windblown, deserted wasteland. Now I wake up, look outside and ask myself, who are all these people? Apparently there’s an entire floor of sophomores in my entryway I did not know about. It’s possible they didn’t leave their room for the past four months. With the warm weather, it feels as though the Yale I’ve gotten used to has gotten lodged inside a much bigger school. Walking back and forth to classes all winter long, I got used to seeing pretty much the same strangers day after day. Now it seems as though I don’t recognize anyone, not the guys deeply absorbed in a game of chess outside of WLH, not the people in the weed circle on Old Campus, not the partially naked, entirely orange girl tanning outside of LC (does she even go here?) and I’m not sure how I feel about it.

  3. Allergies. Whether or not you get them, know that they are caused by breathing in pollen, which is basically tree sperm, which is basically really gross.

  4. Studying just became that much more unpleasant. I used to race down the stairs into Bass, grateful just to escape the wind tunnel on Cross Campus. Now, going to the library means walking past, not just the occasional Sunday morning Quidditch match, but at least four Frisbee games, a tightrope walking tournament and even the occasional game of croquet. And with such constant reminders of everything else you could be doing, it’s even harder than usual to sit in the library wondering how you could possibly write this art history paper, in which you use words like “peripheral” and “abstraction,” without sounding like a complete asshole.

  5. Daylight savings. Except this time the loss of an hour somehow translated to a weeklong feeling of jetlag.

  6. I just bought five new sweaters.

  7. No longer having a good excuse to not go out at night. If you really just want to spend your Friday night knitting elf clothes or watching YouTube videos of deep sea creatures (seriously, stop reading this and search “goblin shark” right now) — and if you’re here there’s a good chance you do, in the winter you have an excuse readymade. Unlike polar bears, or Qpac kids, you weren’t born with some sort of natural mechanism that allows you to withstand sub-zero temperatures. Toad’s is far away, and you’re worried about losing your coat. Now you just sound like a loser.

  8. Gradually building up weird sandal tans before summer even starts. While it seems like the sun isn’t actually doing anything right now, it really, really is.

  9. Transitional jacket season. Enough said.

  10. An increase in the frequency and size of tour groups. This results in a few things: A) Making it extremely difficult to get into Commons when you only have 10 minutes to eat lunch, B) Extreme backpack envy, and C) The nagging fear that somewhere, somehow, a Japanese woman has your picture on her hard drive.

And, now that everyone knows I’m basically a grouchy old lady with a penchant for pioneer fashion, I’m going to go build a blanket fort, watch videos about the mimic octopus and hope for snow.