harvard-yale

I don’t think I’ve ever danced so hard in my life.

By the end of the week we were all completely exhausted. After churning out two papers, I began the insane memorization for the biology exam, which meant doing the bulk of my chem problem set the afternoon it was due and turning it in fifteen minutes before the deadline. This probably doesn’t sound that bad to most college students, but I’m not a procrastinator. I hate being behind and last minute. But it all got done, and though I have to essentially go backwards and forwards now, catching up on old work and moving ahead with new material, this weekend was enough (maybe too much) of a break to compensate. My point: this weekend was well-deserved.

On Friday night I abandoned the plan to start my junior essay and went to Lansdowne for the pre-game party with the girls instead. We loaded on to the shuttle (which was really a yellow school bus that made us feel like elementary school kids, which was a little strange in that it felt natural). The gimmick is that they open five clubs and you can go from club to club for the price of one—but when we got there the only one open was Avalon, which isn’t that much fun. But we did fulfill Amy’s lifelong desire to dance atop a table (well, it was really a stage meant for dancing, but any elevated surface will suffice). When the others finally opened we went to Embassy, which played really good music but was too hot (temperature-wise…haha). We ran into Maciej, who is such a cute dancer. I will forever think of him as our little freshman buddy (despite the fact that he’s a foot taller than us and now a sophomore). After Embassy we encountered bathrooms, exits, and abandoned bars, trying to find the connecting clubs. We finally made our way to Axis, which was nice and cool (again temperature-wise) and whose DJ said he hated Harvard because he was broke (at which point I thought…so are we). After Axis we took our hip school bus back to the Square. I somehow mustered the energy to read Little Women before heading to bed, so instead of going to sleep with remnants of the sketchiness of the whole Lansdowne experience in my mind, I was left with wholesome images of the sisters knitting and acting out scenes from Pilgrim’s Progress…

The next day was anything but wholesome. Melkis and I got into the tailgate around 12:15 and didn’t leave until 2:30. Those two hours felt like two minutes. The first thing we did was get food—clam chowder, chili, sausages, hamburgers…warm food in cold weather has a wonderful capacity to make me incredibly happy. Then we found Amy and Jen, already intoxicated, at the Adams tailgate. The atmosphere and energy of the tailgate is so amazing. Thousands of people are just swarming over the fields; strolling outdoors among so many people is such a simple pleasure. Clubs, houses, organizations had their individual setups, food, drinks and music. Once we got our fill we danced nonstop for about an hour and a half. In a moment of impulse we climbed a high wooden table, where I got some nice aerial photos of the crowds, and where we got to dance on yet another elevated surface (to Mo’ Money Mo’ Problems too!…Sigh, favorite dance songs) before police officers made us get down. That was a first. Also for the first time in awhile, I didn’t find myself thinking that I could make a better music mix, because they played my favorite Britney Spears song ever (Crazy)...and BILLY JOEL. Who else but us would go crazy for We Didn’t Start the Fire? And a lot of junior high and high school dance music, which everyone knows I have a soft spot for. I must say that we were the craziest dancers there; I don’t think we cared that most of the time we were surrounded by people who weren’t dancing. At one point Amy backed up on me so aggressively that she spilled punch all over my jacket. And proceeded to yell repeatedly, “I’ll wash it with SHOUT!” (with loud emphasis on SHOUT). And so it was that we were able to keep quite warm in the 40-degree weather. I had five upper layers, two lower layers, three pairs of socks, two scarves, and three pairs of gloves (overcompensation for freezing every part of my body freshman year) but I shed most of this after a little while. I would post pictures of the girl-on-girl dancing action but I’m afraid Amy and Melkis would kill me.

It was perfect.

Oh and…yes, we made it to the actual football game…briefly. We watched five minutes and saw our team score a touchdown, then went home to recover (in case you’re curious, we beat Yale 35-3). Later I went to Amy’s to try to do work, though we ended up talking about everything from minesweeper and eggplant pizza to friendships and college experiences. Tailgating in the morning and trying to write about Kafka at night—not easy.

Tonight was the Bob Dylan concert. None of us were too familiar with his music and his voice has been going downhill for a long time now, but it was worth it to see that woman in her thirties, way in the back, totally alone, and dancing like mad to every song, no matter how slow and mellow it was. I don’t care if it was drunk or sober frenzy; that kind of unrestrained passion can be so admirable.

Friday afternoon in stats section, before all the excitement and while I was still bogged in the long stretch before relative freedom, we were comparing the happiness of students during childhood and their happiness after coming to college. The inspiration for this was a hypothetical situation where a girl just celebrated her birthday and starts talking to her friend about how they’re getting older and how things are just not as simple and carefree as they were when they were younger. Melkis and I read about this, looked at each other and said, “This is exactly what we talk about all the time.”

So yes, we had to go back to studying after all the fun and there’s so much work ahead…but I don’t think what comes before and after matters as much as I feel sometimes. Sometimes these moments can be purely carefree, untouched by what you need to accomplish the next moment.

I love this picture because no one looks normal.