Doc Fest: In Which We Experiment With New Technology

Shameless Plug

It's senior week at Bryn Mawr right now, a full recap will come on Friday, but right now I need to make a shameless plug to all of you creepy Bryn Mawr seniors that I KNOW read this blog. Vote for me for class notes editor. Paige and Nicky nominated me as punishment for going home one night instead of going to senior cocktails. As much as I like to be modest and pretend that I'm embarrassed by this nomination....come on, I'm the person who wrote an entire blog bragging that I won 7 medals at dorm olympics. I can't even lie, I would LOVE to be class notes editor. It combines everything I love in life, attention, praise and attention. Also a little bit of gossip and writing thrown in there. 

Here are my official promises to you, the glorious class of 2009, if you make me your class notes editor. 

• Unlike the class of '83s class notes, ours will be funny
• While not nearly as scandalous as the class of '59s notes, all scandalous stories will be put first in the column 
• I promise to not only write  about myself
• Every column will end with a running total of how many people Paige "Music Box Killer" Safyer has killed. 
• I will create a cuteness scale with which I will rate all new baby photos sent in so that we can have a definite answer as to who has the cutest baby in the class
• Every column will contain one lie. If you write in to me and are the first to guess correctly then the next columns lie will be about you
• If its a slow news period I will use the column to insult the other classes and challenge them to rivalries to be settled at reunions (Class of '63, you're up first)
• It will be like a semi-annual published blog devoted solely to the Class of 2009, and who wouldn't want to read that!
• I promise that if elected I will finally succumb to my professors wishes and learn the difference between its and it's. I might even learn how to spell. Hell I might even learn how to properly use commas. 

What are my qualifications?

• This blog.
• I have read class notes from various colleges, universities and prep schools since I was able to read. I may have even learned to read by reading these notes. The amount of alumni magazines that we get at our house is mind blowing. We get magazines for schools that no one in the house even went to. I know how these things work.
• mariannasadventures.blogspot.com (which I reread the other day and realized that it was an INFINITELY better blog than this one)
• I write a semi-annual newsletter for my summer job. Examples available upon request. 
• Again, if you are a senior reading this blog it's because you enjoy my work. Let me write about you!

It's going to be a heated battle in which I am up against a bunch of my friends. This makes me angry. I have been approached twice about running on a joint ticket and have declined. I work alone. I am funnier than my friends, it's just a fact. They might be "better writers" who are able to "spell" and "use commas correctly" but come on, they're boring! It's a proven fact, if your writer is boring then no one will send in class notes. They've done studies on this. If your writer is fun and exciting, everyone's going to want to send notes in. Again, they've done studies on this. At...some...place. But it's a proven fact. 

Best of luck to my competitors, however I intend to approach this competition with the same intensity that I approached the dorm olympics. I'm not sure if you remember, but I walked away from that one with not one, but seven medals. I go balls to the wall when random competitions of minor importance come up, and to quote Michael Scott "Our balls are in your court". Game on.

Tool Update: In which Penn tries to ruin my sanity one last time

I handed in my last paper at 3:30 in the afternoon on Saturday. I had stayed up all night finishing every last bit of work that I had, desperately squeezing it in before the 5:00 deadline. After breathing a sigh of relief I checked my e-mail to see what's new. There I see a message from my Penn professor claiming he can't open our project. Of course. Of course just as I was about to celebrate Penn brings me down. I e-mailed him every piece of information that we had ever written in any type of format I could save it as and closed my e-mail. I had finished college and not even Penn could bring me down.

My Future as a Nun

We had a senior dinner with our department today. It was going to be at our professors house but at the last minute it was inexplicably changed to our dorm common room. Let down. Anyway, it led to fantastic awkward conversation with my advisor

Advisor: Marianna, what are you doing next year?

Me: No clue. No idea, no goals, no skills.

Advisor: You have plenty of skills that you just don't realize

Me: Such as.....

Advisor: You can do Excel

Me: Actually I can't, but that's your lead off?

Advisor: You can spell

Me: Excel and spelling! Those are my skills?

Advisor: Jeff, help me out here, what are Marianna's skills

Professor: She's a good listener

Me: I'm doomed.

Advisor: Have you thought about the church

Me: Are....you suggesting I become a nun?

He was in fact referring to my thesis and was wondering if I had explored employment with the church (I most definitely have not). Needless to say, not a good dinner for the confidence level. 

Tool Update: In Which We End on a Fairly Good Note

Twitchy e-mailed us all last Friday to set up a make-up presentation time. As none of them e-mailed me during Fling I made an executive decision to not e-mail them back until after May Day. I assumed that come Monday morning I would open gmail to find Tanner and Twitchy to have arranged a meeting time that I could agree to and all would be fine. On Monday morning I find that Tanner also chose to ignore Twitchy's e-mail and that Twitchy had not followed through to find out why we had both been failures. Oh well. I tried. Oh wait, I didn't.

Eventually it was decided that we would meet the professor at 3 on Wednesday to present. Tanner suggested that we all get together at 2 in order to go over the presentation one last time, look at him taking initiative. I eagerly agreed. I took the earlier train in so as to guarantee I wouldn't be late. As a result I was REALLY early, so I wandered around the Penn bookstore for awhile. I'm definitely now on their creeper list. It turns out I was even earlier than I thought as when I got to our meeting location, neither of them were there. After waiting 10 minutes I texted Twitchy who claimed that we weren't meeting until 2:30. I assumed that I had read the e-mail wrong and settled back to do some quality waiting. I would later check the e-mail when I got home and see that they clearly said "2:00pm". Once again, Twitchy did not correctly use the reply all feature and I was not informed of the change of plans. 

Once we all met up we went over the presentation a couple of times, each time Twitchy was very concerned that I wasn't going to be able to speak for 5 minutes. This may come as a shock to most of you, but I try not to talk in this class. When I talk that means I'm taking talking time away from others, and when others in that class talk I am amused. Twitchy thought that speaking for 5 minutes would kill me, ha, that makes me laugh. 

We walked over to our classroom and found two guys in there watching soccer on the projection screen. It was around this time last year that I got really into soccer in Ireland and so I felt a rare twinge of "study-abroad sickness". Twitchy and Tanner looked angry that they were using our classroom, I pulled up a chair and asked the score. Just as the two guys were about to tell me Tanner asked them to find another room and switched the display over to powerpoint. These two honestly do make an effort to ruin all of my fun. 

The three of us sat in silence for awhile, occasionally making fun of the other groups presentations before the professor arrived. Giving a presentation to a single person, when the the goal of the presentation is to present to a group of people, is a very strange thing. I didn't know whether to look at the professor the whole time or to pretend like there were other people in the room. Very awkward. Tanner started it off before tossing it over to me for my bit. As I began my section I heard Twitchy mutter to Tanner "Wow, look at her go! Unexpected....". Damn right, there's nothing I enjoy more than a good presentation. Twitchy stepped up, contradicted everything I had said in my part and then brought us home with finances. A few moments of silence passed before the professor launched into a series of questions. Overall? We did pretty well. I was impressed and I think the professor was too.

After the presentation was done the professor asked me when my grades had to be in again, as it was earlier than Penn. Upon hearing he needed the grade by Monday he said that as long as we got it in by Friday (the due date) we would be fine. Twitchy got a little huffy and said I never said it had to be due by Friday for us. I told him that since the project was DUE on Friday I didn't think that would be a problem. Twitchy mumbles something about how we could have dragged it out over the weekend but generally seems to realize that he doesn't have an argument here.

At that point I considered the project over. I still had to complete a write up for the final product but all of my interaction with the tools was done. The rest could be completed over e-mail. Until Twitchy said, in front of our professor, "let's meet on Friday to make this thing". You can't really say no to that in front of the professor. If he knew we put the entire thing together by e-mail I think that would affect our grade. I sigh and agree, but only if we meet in the morning at a time that would allow me to get back to Bryn Mawr for a meeting at 12. Tanner, full time alcoholic, looks pained at the idea but agrees. We go our separate ways, I try not to punch any Penn students in my way on the way out. 

This morning I chose to drive to Penn so that I wasn't at the mercy of the SEPTA schedule and would be able to make it back for my meeting. After circling the block I found the perfect spot right outside our meeting location. I pulled in and went to the meter only to find the message "Out of Order, see time limit". What the hell does that mean? Does that mean I can stay here for 3 hours without paying? That would be incredible. Or does it mean I can't park here. Only one person will know the answer to this, mom. Mom doesn't know the answer but she's more than willing to call the Philadelphia parking authority. Hooray. We're put on hold. No hooray. As we wait on hold I see a Penn public safety guy on a bike coming down the road. I rather rudely hang up on my mother and jump in front of him and begin wildly asking if I would be towed. He tells me to hold on and returns to his phone call with his friend. OH COME ON! I really, really hate this place. After finishing his phone call he tells me "yea, no problem, just no more than 3 hours!". No problem with that!

I run inside to meet Tanner and finish this beast of a project. Tanner pulls up what he's been working on for our write up and I have to admit, it's pretty. While he rarely e-mailed us back and could be a flake at times he really pulled it together in the end with the presentation and write up, and he's also a nice guy. Twitchy comes flying in, having overslept and pulls up the write up I had sent him last night (ideally for him to have read last night, but oh well). He frantically scans through it then looks at me astonished "This last line is perfect! Such bullshit but perfect for our marketing plan" (for the record the last line was referring to diversity). Damn right, I can bullshit with the best of them. We put it all together into our write up and it looks great. Honestly, truly great. I'm proud of what we've created and am amazed that we managed to pull this off.

I had to run to my meeting so I said goodbye to the boys, going with the awkward "see you around" (yea right). As I pulled out of Philadelphia the Schuykill Expressway was stopped, so I turn onto the Vine St Expressway and headed for I-95. Right before I got on I-95 I was face to face with the Camden waterfront. Staring me in the face was the gaping hole in that waterfront where we were going to put our building. I couldn't stop, clearly, but I have to admit I took my eyes off of the road to stare. I could see our building there. It fit so nicely. I looked over to Old City and imagined two neighboring districts along both sides of the river. This project could work, it really could. 

As much stress as this class gave me, it was so refreshing to take a class that actually had a practical outcome. At Bryn Mawr we study the history or the policy of locations. It felt good to take a situation and create something rather than study something. I went into this project wanting to be a good person and create something that would help the people of Camden. What we created is a fairly upscale development that really won't be marketed at all to the people of Camden. It felt good to let my inner evil real estate developer out. If I had suggested this in a Bryn Mawr class I would be stoned. Instead I would have to have created eco-friendly community centers. The idea to create luxury condos just isn't an option. Not to be hokey, but the fact of the matter is, for the first time in my life I looked across the river at Camden and didn't see the past, I saw the future. I had a little laugh and said out loud to myself "holy crap....this really could work". I then looked to my right and saw that a truck was trying to merge into me and decided to never take my eyes off of the road ever again.

I hated this project with all my heart but I love what we created. Minor upgrade for Penn. 

Their basketball team still sucks.

Doc Night-In Which We Watch Multiple Docs

10:12-We will be viewing two films tonight. The first, a Werner Short on sculpter/skiier Walter Steiner. "The Great Ecstasy of Woodcarver Steiner". I introduced this film and gave quite a fantastic speech where I gave personalities to the great Netflix movie reviewers. I'm hilarious

10:13-Oh crap, this movie is in German! Unexpected obstacle.

10:15-Nicky finagles english subtitles onto the screen. This will be the first film where I will have to blog and read subtitles at the same time. Also, many of you know my feelings on subtitles. I hate them. 

10:16-Paige: Quick! Timothy Treadwell or this guy! We all unanimously agree on this guy, mainly based off of the qualification of being "not dead" and "not crazy"

10:17-Paige wonders if Michael Phelps carves wood in his spare time

10:18-OUCH. Skiing is painful

10:19-Somehow we've digressed to the regulations on beauty pagent entries. Paige claims it's harder than becoming president. We think that's a stretch.

10:19-Alright people, even though it's subtitled doesn't mean we can talk over it"

10:21-He appears to be ice fishing while talking to the camera

10:22-OMG Werner circa 1974 has appeared on screen. 'Stache and all. Even in German....his narration is fantastic. 

10:23-Paige deems Swiss people "sooooo attractive". Her back-up? Characters from Igmar Bergman films. Let's see how long it takes her to figure her mistake out.

10:23-We're now divided Team 1970's Werner vs. Team Walter

10:24-We've digressed into wondering how Werner might narrate a night of passion. "At this moment...on this spot....this is where I have exceeded my wildest expectations and performed beyond my abilities". The subtitles lead to far more snarky comments

10:26-Oh lord! Wiping out on the jump itself seems like the scariest thing ever! Not only do you crash but you then fall off the edge of the jump.

10:27-Paige just realized that I actually got everyone to watch a sports documentary

10:28-They keep mentioning countries that don't exist anymore. I start cracking up. Elizabeth accuses me of being insensitive to the genocides that occurred in these countries. Just once I'd like to get through Doc Night without being accused of racism or any other sort of insensitivity to other cultures.

10:29-1970's Werner speaking German provides a level of entertainment previously unknown.

10:30-Cell phone usage needs to be gotten under control at Doc Night!

10:35-Werner, out of no where, pulls out a giant walkie-talkie. He proceeds to have a conversation with the guy on the other end about himself, even though the guy wants to talk about Walters injuries. It's always about Werner. 

10:36-Apparently Walter wiped out and now can't remember anything and is bleeding profusely from the head. Werner doesn't seem too concerned

10:38-Werner warns us that we are now about to view the crash in slow motion. Thank you for the warning Werner

10:40-They left a concussed Walter alone then found him a half hour later in the woods. Way to almost lose your subject Werner

10:41-Walter goes to put his goggles on before realizing that it's going to hurt...a lot...

10:42-Paige: Wait! Is Swiss short for.... (We all stop and listen intently to what she'll say next)....Sw....shit, it's Switzerland isn't it, not Sweden. Giggles, Paige is an idiot

10:43-Elizabeth had been holding out for Campus Corner until Megan got here but can't wait any longer

10:46-Walter decides to start at a lower starting point than his competitors because he's just that good. Not going to lie, that's sort of a douchy move.

10:48-Ah, the ceremonial releasing of the pigeons

10:55-We look up what Walter Steiner is up to now. He now lives in Sweden, so Paige is....sort of right. We look up his town, sadly he's not a "notable resident" two mass murders, a paleontologist and "Susannas sister" are more important than him.

10:56-Now we're listening to some terrible story about a bird he tried to raise as a child and then release into the wild. When it didn't adapt to the wild he had to shoot it, it was the "only thing that could be done". Quite possibly the greatest 2 minutes in any documentary we've ever watched

10:57-Nicky counters that story with "One time my mom jumped into the duck pond to save a duck that was being attacked by another duck" You win again, Nicky

10:58-We start discussing the Doc Night t-shirts. Katelyn suggests we put our favorite quotes from my blog on it. I support that idea

10:59-Drew interrupts our t-shirt discussion and demands that Nicky finish the story about the duck. It gets better. Nicky was against saving the duck as it being attacked was "eh, natural order". After it was saved they brought it home and tried to raise it in a tub. They named it after an educational film they saw in school about smoking and cancer. Apparently they took it outside to walk it and it flew away. It did not appreciate the Belletier family generousity.

11:00-In researching this movie we keep finding Werner docs that we wish we watched. Apparently one is called "Werner Eats His Shoe"

11:02-Werner doc ends, time for Vernon, Florida. Recommended by Dr. Bill Crescoe of the University of Oregon. He studies something mol bio related. He came to Bryn Mawr to give a talk and Nicky was the only person to show up at his lecture. They decided to talk about Doc Night rather than mol bio. Strangely enough, this happens a lot. 

11:03-This is a documentary by acclaimed filmmaker Errol Morris. We realized we had not watched an Errol Morris doc and that's just wrong. Nicky claims it's perfect for us as we like movies where we can laugh at others. 

11:05-Nicky asks for questions about molecular biology. Paige asks why her speech sucked.

11:06-Now we're discussing saved AIM conversations. Apparently Drew is a creeper who saves AIM conversations. Let it go on record, Drew is a creeper.

11:07-Shit, lightening. Liz wants me to drive her to Batten after this is done. I refuse, I have a good parking spot.

11:12-We need subtitles to this one as well. Deep southern accents are impossible to understand with any background

11:14-I really don't know what's happening here...

11:17-Paige is bored with this movie and has decided to take the "which color is my aura" quiz on facebook instead. Elizabeth asks her to "report back soon with the answer"

11:18-It's green.

11:19-Megan's arrives. 

11:21-I wonder what color my aura is...

11:22-Is this the most boring movie ever made? Megan wonders

11:23-It's orange....oooo, there's one called How New Jersey Are You!

11:24-What we've learned so far. In order to catch fish you must kill your mule and drop it in the lake

11:27-That NJ quiz was North Jersey centric

11:29-I took my attention off of the tv for too long and now there is a guy pulling opossums out of a box. this is maddness. 

11:34-Nicky just flipped a shit about the fact that we are facebooking during her documentary. We are all shamed. 

11:35-Paige just points out that there are no women in Vernon, Fl. Interesting....

11:36-Drew is getting cranky and wants to watch another Werner one.

11:37-Apparently we haven't taken down the patriarchy yet and Drew gets his way

11:39-We will be watching La Soufriere about a volcano on Guadelupe

11:45-Paige has lost it. 

11:46-In La Soufriere, Werner explores the island of Guadelupe, abandoned after a volcano warning. He meets the few who have chose to remain

11:47-Oh god, unexpected dying puppy. Not ok

11:48-Seismic crisis

11:52-Werner defies warnings and gets as close to the volcano as possible. Reasons unknown.

11:58-"He only survived because he was the baddest guy in town" Ari nominates that as Drew's nickname. 

12:01-Katelyn has just revealed that she speaks French and that Werner is not correctly translating the subjects words

12:09-The volcano never erupted.

12:10-Whoa. minor racism. unexpected.

12:11-Did Werner save the island from destruction? Maybe. Is Werner God? Yes.

Next week we will be holding Doc-Fest from Noon until 8 at night. I'm working on big plans for it. Something spectacular. 

May Day!

Bryn Mawr has 4 major traditions. I've covered some of them on this blog and avoided others. I believe Parade Night occurred before this blog was formed. Nothing too big there, just some freshmen getting stuff thrown at them. I briefly mentioned Lantern Night as being creepy yet touching and then I think I mentioned Hell Week had happened but I was too exhausted from the events of the week that I never mentioned it further. 

The fourth major tradition is May Day. On May Day we all wear white and enjoy a lovely day filled with dancing and alcohol. It's always the most beautiful day of the year, with sun in the sky and flowers blooming all around. Rumor has it that past president and general crazy mothereffer M. Carey Thomas had a deal with the devil so that it never rained on May Day. She also apparently had a deal with the devil so that Mawrtyrs didn't die from the flu.

I could drag this out for paragraphs but I think we all know what happened, it rained. A lot. So not only was our senior May Day a wet one, but I'm also a bit creeped out that the supposed first rainy May Day ever comes during an outbreak of the flu. I had assumed I had immunity. Let's hope that deal with the devil was real.

We were all bummed that it was going to be a rainy May Day but we held out hope that the sun would break through. May Day festivities begin for the seniors the night before with the delivery of May Day gifts, tokens passed down to underclassmen. These gifts can also be classified as trash. Since these are technically supposed to be delivered while the underclassmen are sleeping so that they wake up to them, the delivery must be done in the middle of the night. We made it until 11 pm before we decided screw it, we want to go to bed. Once in the hallways we noticed that most people had given up long before we did. Oh well. 

Morning came quickly as the seniors are supposed to go wake the president up and then climb to the top of Rock in order to wake the sun. I spent the entire night coughing (oh crap....quickly check for fever and lack of appetite...negative, alright) and passed on this in order to get an extra hour of sleep. After getting a call from Paige I threw on my pretty white outfit....and Northface raincoat...and ran over to senior breakfast at the restaurant on campus. There we dined on strawberries and champagne, like classy Bryn Mawr women should. Paige asked me if this was how we ate breakfast every morning in Princeton. I replied yes, but it was finer champagne and the butler brought all of our food to the table rather than us having to get it from the buffet. 

After we had drunk our weight in school sponsored alcohol we got ready to go to the parade. I ran back to my room to grab my festive hat before securing a spot on the parade route. I make it sound like spots were in high demand....that's a lie. 

Check out my hat!

Before the parade began there were the traditional performances by the Morris Dancers and....other dancers. Drew, who was experiencing his first May Day, groaned and said "No one told me I was going to a renaissance faire". Quiet Drew, just wait until it's time to take down the patriarchy. You're lucky we let you in today. The Morris Dancers are always enjoyable. You want to laugh, but they are good at what they do. The fact that they wear funny costumes and bang sticks isn't their fault....is it?

The shows finished and it was time for the parade. This year's theme was circus so the parade consisted of a bunch of random circus performers. I always laugh when I think about our school contacting them "Alright, we're going to need you to perform in parade. The parade is going to to be about 100 yards long and will involve you walking through a group of women dressed in white. Some of them might be wearing capes, do not be afraid". Ari and Nicky, may pole dancers this year, came at the end of the parade. I asked Drew if he was proud that his girlfriend was in the parade. He just shook his head and said "No. No not really". 

After the parade passed us Paige and I decided to join in the parade. Really it seemed like the right thing to do. So while maybe we should have gone around the parade to the may poles we decided to walk through the parade and wave. A little bit of a farewell to Bryn Mawr if you will. Other people soon joined us and we had an honest to goodness parade going. I act like I started a revolution here but really it was the most direct route to the poles and most people got the idea pretty quickly. 

The may pole dancing is always fun to watch, but it was HILARIOUS this year that Nicky and Ari were "dancing". It's not dancing so much as running as you race the other classes. Once the president gave the word to start Paige, Megan and I started screaming at Nicky and Ari to run faster. FASTER! FASTER! Over in the corner the freshmen were making a remarkably perfect may pole. In the middle the juniors were royally screwing theirs up. Nicky and Ari, not our most coordinated friends at all, did their best to race around the pole and didn't fall once despite our bets. Eventually by some corrupt judging system it was determined that we had won. Our prize? Graduation. I assume at least. 

The may poles, so pretty!

Ari runs around the may pole

Nicky takes a shot at it

Hooray! We...win? Somehow?

After the may poles comes a humorous speech from our president. Our president this year is new and widely believed to be not funny. Her opening words? Bryn Mawr terrifies me. Hey-o! Truer words were never spoken. It terrifies me too, J-Mac. Her speech then turned to talk of mounting horses and we dissolved into giggles. Good try, J-Mac, start writing next years. A humorous rap by our class presidents followed, leading to the senior hoop race.

The hoop race down senior row is supposed to determine who is going to be the first to get their PhD. I'm 99% sure it used to determine who would get married first, but like everything else at Bryn Mawr, that has changed. By this point it had been steadily raining all morning. We were in a bit of a lull but the ground was still muddy and slippery. The first line of people were those who were actually going to be racing. We said screw that and stood behind them, in the group of people who were going to leisurely wander down the row while everyone cheers for them. It's sort of like the end of Titanic or GS graduation. It's great. I assume someone reached the end first and that nameless person will have much success in life. If I had to place a finishing order on us I'd say we probably finished around 30th. A respectable showing I would say. 

I should note that while most people are either gifted a May Day hoop or buy one for an obscene price, the Paiges and I got 2 dollar hula hoops in our class color. 

Usually at this point we would then rush to claim spots on the green where we would sit for the rest of the day drinking ourselves silly. Unfortunately the skies opened up and everyone scattered for cover. The May Hole (we'll get to that later) would be at 11 and it was only 10. We ran back to Rock and settled in our alcove for some celebratory cocktails.

A little before 11 we left Rock to go to the May Hole. The May Hole is the counter part to the patriarchal May Pole. Think about it. Think about it. Yes. This is Bryn Mawr. The May Hole consists of a parachute covered in rose petals then we all stand around it with linked arms and shout "Hey! Hey! Ho! Ho! The patriarchy has got to go!". Next year I will vehemently deny I was ever a part of such activities but come on, it's awesome. We got to the May Hole and no one was there. Within 3 minutes of our arrival people flooded out of buildings and raced over to be a part of it. This is something you're only going to see at Bryn Mawr people! By this point it was pouring. The ground was a mess. It was sloppy to the extreme. We got the chant going until eventually someone broke free and we all rushed towards the tarp. On one side of me I see Amanda hit the ground, victim of the mud. 2 seconds later Shannon goes down and slides about 3 feet ahead of me. I managed to stay on my feet and make it to the parachute where we lift it up and water and petals rain over us. Dar Williams starts playing and we dance in the mud and merriment until we can dance no more. By far the greatest May Hole of my four years here. 

Getting ready

Linked up and ready to go

Wooooo!

Best.May Hole.Ever

Paige is PUMPED

Dancing on the chute
Shannon and I go in
Andrea is overjoyed
Paige is WET

We're all soaked and loving it

As much as we'd love to May Hole forever, we were hungry. We trekked out soaking wet bodies down to Erdman to grab some May Day lunch. The best part about a woman's college? The fact that you're walking around in wet white clothes doesn't faze you. May Day lunch is typically great. This year however, like every other special meal this year, it was clear that Bryn Mawr was feeling the economic crunch. Hamburgers and hot dogs and for dessert something called a "lemon stick". I kid you not it was half of a lemon with a peppermint stick sticking out of it. Bizare. 

Someday Bryn Mawr will be rich again....right?

We love chewing on lemons just as much as the next person, but our buzzes had long warn off and it was time to get them going again. We retreated back to Rock to our little alcove that we had taken over and began an afternoon of leisure. We had started off in the Paiges room but realized that May Day was all about public drinking and we weren't going to let a little rain stop us. At this time I'd like to take a moment to thank Andrew who graciously provided the recepticle for our beverage. Thank you Andrew, I look forward to doing business with you in the future.

We brought out some speakers and cards, got some games going and spent the next two hours generally enjoying life. We built up quite the crowd, making me feel quite popular. The housekeeping staff came by and we were concerned that they were going to kick us out of the hallway but they just laughed and wished us a Happy May Day. Only at Bryn Mawr. 

After awhile (and 7+ text messages from a certain someone) we decided it was time to head to the gym to see the bands play. Usually Bryn Mawr hires a bunch of cover bands to play on the green while everyone lies around. Because of the rain they had to move it to the gym, on the opposite side of campus. When we got down there the first band was about to perform but there were only about 20 people there. It was the saddest thing I've ever seen. 

My school is so lame

We decided to dance extra hard so that the band didn't feel bad about no one showing up. It wasn't hard as the cover band was excellent. I love any and all cover bands. Ask anyone, my iPod has just as many covers on it as it does original songs. I. Love. Covers. This band played a lot my favorite type of music, late 70's/early 80's rock. It was awesome. I'd like to say that gradually more people joined us but that's just not the case. No one really showed up after us. But that didn't stop us from having a good time.

It was getting dangerously close to dinner time and we're never late for a meal. After dropping our stuff off at the dorm we trekked through the rain over to Erd for another meal of...food of some unmemorable kind. I think we actually got cake this time, rather than lemon halves. We sat ourselves down and the exhaustion hit me. I quickly ate my dinner before announcing that if I didn't get a nap I was going to fall over. I was excused from the table and made my way back to my room where I passed out in my bed for what felt like 5 seconds before Nicky woke me up by banging on my door. It hadn't been 5 seconds but rather 2 hours and it was time to go to Step sing.

Step sings are Bryn Mawr traditions where we get together and sing a series of songs. Some Bryn Mawr specific, some parodies and some just regular songs. The final step sing of the year is traditionally emotional where everyone cries. I had such a headache at this point that I just sat in my spot and tried to make as little movement as possible. Everyone seemed to have this idea. It was a surprisingly great turnout, despite the weather. At the end where we all line up to do our final song the line stretched around the path and down the road through campus. Longest line I've ever seen. 

The final song is the Goodnight song. Everyone lines the path while the seniors (on Parade Night the freshmen) walk through the line. All the while everyone sings "Goodnight, goodnight, time sends a warning call, sweet dreams descend on all, time, time sends a warning call". It can get emotional, especially during this final step sing. I was prepared to cry however when I saw the juniors crying I started to giggle a bit. After that all of the emotion was lost on me. It was nice, but it still didn't give me that sense of completion that I thought I would have after I walked through the line. 

The juniors are supposed to rush the steps after the seniors get through the line and let out their first Annass (Bryn Mawr cheer) to symbolize their rise as seniors. Out of courtesy they didn't rush the steps until all of the seniors had gone through the line. By this point I was back in my dorm and right as the door closed I heard a giant cheer and a loud Annass and I realized that they had finally made it to the steps. At that moment it hit me that I am done with Bryn Mawr. A sense of calm rushed over me. The cycle has been completed. The traditions of Bryn Mawr provide this sense of connection to every class that has passed. The fact that I have completed the traditions cycle was oddly more symbolic of my passage into being a Bryn Mawr alum than anything academic. 

Part of me never thought I'd make it to senior May Day. I was pretty convinced that somehow the world would end before I made it. I'm not particularly sad or happy to be graduating. I'm relieved. Bryn Mawr has been hard, there is no other way to describe it, this school is hard. I've pushed my way through and I'm graduating with my head held high. I thought that a rainy May Day would be the worst thing in the world. I had a great time through all of the mud and rain, just being with my friends without a care in the world. Bryn Mawr has been a wild ride and this was a fitting last thrill.