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.