Author Archives: Liz Gunnison

When I was in middle school I went to an all-girl’s summer camp in Maine. The camp offered a seven week session in which the most popular activities were sailing, swimming and competing amongst each other for the most and most devoted best friends. As soon as you had racked up 10 or 20 BFF’s »

There are times in life — for instance, when I am perched at the bar at Hot Tomato’s listening to other peoples’ private conversations — that I wish I could pull a Zach-Morris-style “Time Out” and freeze the moment to provide unsolicited yet essential commentary. Like when recently over Flirtinis, I overheard one fine Yale »

A writer only becomes a writer because she gets so fed up waiting for someone to talk about the big issues that one day she just up and decides to do it herself. For me, these are issues like voter fraud, the corporate glass ceiling, gay-marriage bans and gym etiquette. But especially gym etiquette. Today, »

I’ve only had one summer fling in my life and it happened when I was 16. Christian was a tan, skinny and totally negligent Southern Californian who had begrudgingly moved to New York for his first summer internship. I was much like I am today: I sunbathed wearing SPF 45 and a baseball hat out »

Adulthood doesn’t really begin until the day you start making the annual trek back to campus without parents in tow. One of the biggest perks associated with studying abroad is being free from my first year of solo schlepping, so I gave the ultimate gift of friendship and volunteered my last summer Friday to help »

If I were writing this column from behind an abandoned Jeep you’d find it a lot more compelling. Just bear with me and read it anyway. I used to pick up the New York Times every day. Now, I just pull out the Arts section and leave the rest. This really annoys my friend Chris, »

When I was in kindergarten, my boyfriend Graham had an affair with a model. Jeanette was seven (but didn’t look a day over six), competed in youth beauty pageants, and had a preschool entourage bigger than P. Diddy’s. Ever since the day I caught Jeanette and Graham in a lurid embrace behind the teeter-totter, my »

When I was growing up, snowfall was a pretty divisive event in the Gunnison household. I always loved it (I was that kid who during the first snowstorm of the year ran outside insufficiently clothed, proceeded to dive head first into snow drifts for several hours, and then caught Strep a few days later). My »

When I asked my boyfriend for advice on my looming Valentine’s Day column, he told me I should make fun of sluts. At the time, I thought it was the gin talking, because what does that have to do with Valentines? After a couple days of my own sober reflection, however, it has all started »

There are precious few things that can happen when you reach into your pocket that are worse than finding out that your cell phone is missing. Those things include finding a severed body part, getting bitten by a spider, and discovering someone has left you a death threat. Make that a poisonous spider. This was »

I rolled up to campus last Sunday hauling five suitcases of laundry and a “to do” list longer than my December credit card statement. That night, I did what any reasonable gal with a lot on her plate would do on the eve of a brand new semester: I ran to BAR as fast as »

I live 48 miles from campus and in my time at Yale, I’ve gone home less than my friend Hashim from Syria. Of course, I have valid excuses for being a deadbeat daughter: too much work, can’t miss watching the Bulldogs give it up on the gridiron to yet another junior college, trains smell funny, »