Remember, Remember, The Start of November

Walking around campus in late October, it was clear that summer had given way to autumn. T-shirts and shorts were replaced with sweatshirts and hooded jackets. Midterm season was upon us, and it seemed that no one was immune from the litany of papers and tests. And speaking of seasons, I experienced a real change in seasons for the first time in my life. The entire campus became characterized by varying hues of orange, red, and yellow...except for this stubborn tree in my residential college’s courtyard that refused to adjust its exterior with the times as quickly as the others. I could understand the defiance, though. Yale still captivated me just as much as it had the first week of school, but I was sure things would begin to slow down with the changing seasons and my experiences would become a bit stale. I cannot believe how wrong I was.

On a Friday afternoon near the end of October, my roommate and I, like seemingly every other Yalie, made a mad dash to various stores to purchase clothing for that night’s Safety Dance. To be honest, we had no clue what we were getting ourselves into, but like most things at Yale, you simply have to experience them for yourself. We spent the rest of the day brimming with anticipation and listening to the famous Men Without Hats song, aptly titled “Safety Dance,” on repeat until we could no longer stand it (check out the video here, and you'll either see why or you'll wonder why we couldn't find anything else to do to occupy our time: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HcOZ6xFxJqg). Once we got dressed, we made our way to the dance.

It’s hard to imagine a more awesome scene than what we encountered en route to Commons. As we walked through Old Campus, we ran into our friends dressed in even more ridiculous outfits than we could have thought up in an afternoon. The suite that lived on the first floor of our entryway even designed their own t- shirts for the event. We felt we were underwhelming in our cutoff t-shirts and makeshift bandanas made from those shirts’ sleeves-I mean, at least I had on my white pants from high school graduation that I never thought I’d wear again (those pants were the last vestiges of my high school's proud military tradition, but that's another story). In the end, most people didn’t even look like they were dressed in eighties clothing at all. It was a joint exercise in craziness, and I loved every minute of it. No one was immune to the excitement either, for even seniors in my residential college were dancing all the way to Commons. That night, I felt like I had finally become part of this incredible campus community, a community united by common experiences but fashioned and defined by rich differences.

With Halloween the following week (which I won’t discuss in detail because it would probably necessitate a description of my costume, and it was so abysmal that the embarrassment of recounting what I wore might be too much for me to handle), and the Harvard-Yale game a few weeks after that, I could no longer sympathize with that stalwart, unchanging tree in my residential college’s courtyard. I thought that autumn would bring a more subdued, less personal aspect to my time here, but it only meant that the time had come for me to take part in experiences that I will always remember as a Yalie. Looking into Yale as a pre-frosh, I remember reading the famous quote by F. Scott Fitzgerald in This Side of Paradise where he describes Yale as being like “November, crisp and energetic.” He couldn't have been more right.

Travis Gidado and the Snow Owl on Old Campus

It was a Saturday night in early December, and I was returning from a concert in New York City with my a cappella group. At this point, the weather was extremely cold (at least for a Floridian like myself, although I started complaining about the temperatures in October), but it wasn’t quite cold enough for us to experience snowfall. I was one of the few Yalies who never experienced (or cannot remember experiencing) a legitimate snow event before arriving on campus, and I admit I was eager to finally watch snow descend slowly upon Yale’s many beautiful buildings. We were 45 minutes away from campus when I noticed what appeared to be raindrops falling from the sky in large, crystalline clumps.

“Why is the rain accumulating so weirdly on the windshield,” I asked a member of my tap class sitting next to me in the backseat.

“That’s because it’s not rain…it’s snowing outside,” he responded rather flippantly, until he realized that I was being completely serious.

I’m not going to lie…I was pretty embarrassed. I mean, I joked about probably being unable to recognize snowfall the first time I saw it happening in front of my eyes, but I never once believed that would actually be the case. Once my embarrassment subsided, I called my roommate to find out whether or not it started snowing in New Haven as well. He simply responded, “Everyone is playing in the snow. Get back as soon as you can.”

I returned to a scene that was nothing short of pandemonium. A thin layer of soft, white snow covered my residential college. People were running around tightly bundled up in several layers of clothing. I forgot to mention that the concert we did was in black tie, and so I found myself inadvertently sliding around in my tuxedo and traction-less dress shoes trying to get back to Old Campus before I fell on my face. I dodged a few snowballs as I entered High Street Gate and discovered most of my peers walking around outside, making snow angels, or taking pictures of the contained chaos.

When I finally got to the front steps of my entryway, a few of my friends were in the middle of making something out of clumps of snow they collected prior to my arrival. I asked them what they were planning to create, and of course, they

responded, “we’re making a snow owl…and we’re probably naming it Hedwig.” Now, I know we Yalies commonly joke about Yale being like Hogwarts, but this seemed kind of excessive. However, as I was grabbing my red-and-yellow Trumbull scarf, which was too reminiscent of what Harry Potter might wear in Gryffindor, I embraced the comparison more than ever. I ran out the door to meet my friends, and was promptly greeted by a snowball to the chest.
That palatial scene was followed by about a week of intermittent snowfall, culminating in a massive snowstorm that left me stranded in Hartford's airport the night after my final examination of the semester. Snow and I have developed a complicated relationship since then, but I won’t soon forget that first snowfall I experienced here at Yale and the ridiculous larger-than-life-sized owl my friends made to commemorate the event.

From Paris With Love

At 10:30 AM, I got a text from Emily that read: “get to the JE tailgate now! Move move move!” (Note: I maintained the typos to preserve accuracy…it was a text, after all). At the time, I was doing my best as a member of the Trumbull College Council to help man my college’s crowded tailgate…oh, who am I kidding? I was chilling underneath the Trumbull flag hanging from the U-Haul truck while eating burgers and remarking upon how well the other members of the council were handling the hungry masses. I had no shame, but it was the morning of The Game, and everything is subordinate to The Game…even responsibility. What wasn’t in that instance, however, was getting to the JE tailgate as soon as I could.

I weaved through the disoriented crowds, swerved around a meager tailgate hosted by a nondescript fraternity from that school in Cambridge we were going to annihilate on the football field later that day, and eventually found myself in front of the JE tailgate. Waiting there, decked out in all manner of Yale attire, were five of my friends from the study abroad program I did in Paris the previous summer. Emily, the mastermind of the operation, was holding a blueberry cake with one of those novelty party horns one often sees at New Year’s Eve parties sticking straight up from the center. It was ridiculous, but then again, so were the friends I made from the Yale Summer Session.

We only spent five weeks together in the City of Lights, but it didn’t take long for us to forge bonds that would last long after the program ended. Our final meal together as a group abroad led to routine Wednesday dinners when we returned to Yale. My inbox has been inundated by emails from them more than once this semester. So, it was no surprise that on the morning of the most important game of the year-the only game that mattered-we found time to come together again, but this time to celebrate a birthday. When the birthday girl arrived, we sang a rousing but horrendous rendition of “Happy Birthday” followed by hugs and laughter all around. It was a pretty messy sight, but once again, it was The Game, and when coupled with my friends, we weren’t particularly concerned with how ridiculous we probably looked.

It would be so easy to talk about how much I learned about myself from the study abroad program, how much I now understand about French culture, how many baguettes I ate…or croissants…etc. but when those memories fade away, as moments in time often do, I will still have those friends I made in that short time and the new memories we continue to create together. Time has already blurred my recollection of what took place the day of The Game, and I definitely don’t want to remember the score, but I won’t soon forget coming together in that instant with the once-random group of people that I now call some of my closest friends.