I still maintain that, if in the tender, carefree days of kindergarten when naps were frequent and (toy) dinosaurs ruled the land, you had told me that the most complicated math I would ever see would only involve numbers below ten and a whole bunch of letters, I would call you the most graphic explicative my 5-year-old mind could compute: probably something along the lines of "Poopy Pants." Yes, I have been staring at math in the form of letters, upper- and lowercase, Greek and Roman, symbols and syntax, for the past 2 weeks in preparation for finals, so I thought I would take a brief repose and play with some actual words again-- and NOT just numbers in disguise. One doesn't realize how much one misses the Written Word until a dorm mate asks one to read and edit a paper, and one finds oneself having far more fun thinking of five different words for "influence" than calculating one's net income in the present game of "Illuminati." OR, until one realizes one's poetry analysis papers are shit, because one knows not how to write anymore. Writing was my BS ticket in here (thank you, admissions essays!), and I'm not giving it up until I have a BS ticket out. (We get Bachelor of Science degrees here, even if you're a lit major. SCIENCE!!!)
A poem for the Festive Season:
"The Interdenominational Winter Solstice Break is coming,
The myriad chances for free food is making freshmen fat.
Please drop 80,000.00 dollars in the
Collective college student's financial planning hat.
"Our retirements are fading, our dividends shrinking, economy's in the hole,
At least until we need breadlines, we've got nightly pizza in our cereal bowls."
"For the GRT's are caring, and offer lasagnas, Chinese-- Finals dinners for free,
But only a few offer the consequential open heart surgery
To unclog our aortas, our blood vessels, our brains,
It's course 9 meets course 15: These're Economic Pains!"
What's meter? What's diction? Enjambments for EVERYBODY!!!
By this time tomorrow night, the semester will be OVER. CAPUT. NO MORE. CEASED TO BE. If you hadn't nailed it to the perch, it'd be pushing up the daisys, THIS is an EX-
Sorry. And now for something completely different. Winter break.
I'm looking forward to seeing my dog.
I'm looking forward to seeing people.
I'm not looking forward to the fact that my smelly glider in the basement is gone.
I'm not looking forward to feeling like I'm visiting Hotel Rosser after (this is exact, I counted) 6 MONTHS and 1 WEEK away from home.
I'm not looking forward to not being able to cook what I want, in whatever atrocious amount of butter I want it in.
I'm not looking forward to being griped at for not wearing a coat.
I am looking forward to snow--Boston is astounding us with 60 degree (F) days!
I am looking forward to woods and frolicking in them.
I am looking forward to not having to wear shower shoes to avoid the FUNgus monsters.
I am not looking forward to going to a place with no murals and no Sport Death hoodies (although THAT could change....).
I am looking forward to getting blank stares in exchange to the first internet meme, calculus, or bad Chem joke.
I will have to adjust to not having everyone burst into peals of laughter with any "That's what she said" moment...
I will have to stop referring to things by number, as EVERYTHING is here. (Ex: I'm sitting typing on Athena in level 0 of building 14, getting ready for a 18.01 final at 0900 in 24-620, important for course 2, but a GIR so it's hella-important. And feeling 1337...)
And we come full circle (that's a^2 = x^2 + y^2 for those parametric semantics out there) to the primary topic, "Words, Not Numbers", and why I still need to blog.
QED.
The End.
