Anna Chamberlin
Mayday, mayday, Yalies. It’s finally getting cold out. As we approach the 80 percent of the year where everyone kind of hates being here and it’s justifiable to wear really horrible multi-layered outfits publicly, here are some expert tips on making it through the New England chill without transferring.
- Hang out in the inside of the frat houses.They are clean, well-furnished and overall really cool places to spend multiple hours at a time. Play a game where you try not to get mysterious brownish-black stuff on the bottom of your favorite pants; You’ll fail!
- Consistently hook up with someone whose personality and/or general vibe you don’t like that much! Since it’s kind of chilly, it’s #strategic and not pathetic or compromising of your morals and needs. Human beings are warm!
- If you’re in Franklin or Murray, shut up. You guys have AC and non-1920s heating systems. Seasons aren’t real where you live.
- Cry publicly. Look out your common room window at the dreary New Haven winterscape in contemplative despair. Get into fights with your friends. You’re all sad now anyways, and you can blame it on seasonal depression. Anything goes!
- Think long and hard about the Sisyphean hell that your life has become ever since you started running through the tunnels of your residential college like a little mole-person to avoid going outside, and then make concerning jokes about it at dinners with people you aren’t close enough friends with to reveal your inner destitution to. Make people worried about you. Revel in the attention. It’s all you have left!
- Do not breathe out of your nose. It’s conformist.
- Stand as long as possible on the stairs on High Street in the freezing cold in your shitty Zara fracket because the frightening hired bouncers don’t want to let you in. It’s a great locale to trauma-bond with new friends or lose sensation in your fingers!
- Lose said fracket in the maelstrom of outerwear that has become the front staircase of each frat house e. Take someone else’s and mute your Yale class GroupMe. There are no laws here anymore. There is no God.
- Forget what your body looks like; it doesn’t matter anymore. Cover up the mirror on your closet door until after spring break –– I can tell you right now that you’ll look pallid and tired til then.
- Stand in the shower for a really long time. Just stand in there. It’s okay. Inside the shower stall is the new hoppin’ spot on campus for people who enjoy being warm.
- Be so horrible to your parents on the phone. Yeah, sure, you applied here and chose to go, but they don’t understand how hard it is for you to actually go here now that the summer camp part of the year is over.
- Get COVID-19. I did it twice last winter. Great excuse to stay inside!
- Resent your friends as you stand in the cold outside of their residential colleges waiting for them to collect you. Why doesn’t your ID swipe you in? Who came up with this system?
- Revel in the disorienting sadness that accompanies leaving your dining hall at 6:20 p.m. to discover a completely black sky outside! Nature is so beautiful <3
- https://studyabroad.yale.edu/. This is it. This is the link you were looking for. It’s alright, just take a peek. Just think about it.
- https://www.stanford.edu/. This one too. Don’t lie to yourself.
Winter is coming, and it’s going to be a chilly one. But we’ll get through this, Yale. And hey – at least you’re not sweating in your sleep anymore.