Senior spring is hilariously weird. We’ve tried to understand it and the way it makes us feel, which means that we have spent much of the past week sitting on our bed (Amanda) and futon (Seanie), thinking. Which also means that for once, we have no stupid occurrences or behaviors to write about, not because we didn’t do stupid things, but because we truly didn’t do anything.
We did nothing. It’s our senior spring; we’re supposed to have bucket lists and get sentimental about the napkin dispensers in FoCo and carpe diem and such. Yet here we lie, like two sessile animals who are friends. (Seanie just learned the word sessile and wanted to use it instantly.)
Here’s our question: is there time for this, too? We’ve got less than 10 weeks left. Is there time for sessility? T. S. Eliot once said there will be “time yet for a hundred indecisions, / And for a hundred visions and revisions.” How much longer will we be allowed to remain English majors while wildly misusing beautiful and famous quotes in our column?
So many questions. Instead of answering any of them, we will depart from our usual content and tell you about some of the big and probably flawed thoughts we’ve been pondering this week.
Amanda: Over the years, Seanie and I have uncovered a treasure trove of quirky qualities and fun facts we share. For instance: We both wanted to go to Brown University. We both got rejected from Brown. We both almost went to Washington University in Saint Louis. We both actually came to Dartmouth.
My high school friend Jack developed a life theory that may or may not have been inspired by a Chinese legend. He calls it the “red rope” theory. The Chinese legend calls it the “red thread of fate.” I cannot remember the significance or meaning behind the color red, or why Jack decided that the ropes should have a color other than prototypical rope color, but Jack has red hair. Perhaps this is why.
Anyway, the fortune cookie explanation of Jack’s theory is that every person on Earth is connected by at least one imaginary red rope. Some are naturally connected by more than one red rope. I believe that this was the case for the two of us. Whether this is true does not matter much. Neither does the fact that this explanation would not fit into a fortune cookie.
So as the clock ticks on and our situations become increasingly more desperate, we have discovered new (yet hopefully temporary) ropes that bind us. For example:
1. Our futures are uncertain.
2. We recently received Bank of America notifications that reminded us (not that we needed reminding) how broke we are.
3. We were both unaware until Wednesday’s New York Times crossword puzzle that Victoria’s Secret carries two different types of garments that begin with the letter “T.” What is a teddy?
4. We both really need to stop spending so much time on our respective beds/futons and start filling our buckets with lists to check.
Seanie: I spent last summer living with my grandmother in New York City, where I find it easy to be lonely. But my grandma loves it. When I got home from work and asked how her day was, she always said some version of the same thing: “Good. I always have a good day.”
To me, that’s a novel and unfathomable concept. Many a Dartmouth student has described her or his undergraduate years as “a roller coaster.” Sometimes thrilling, other times soul-crushing. Never all-the-time good.
But no one is all-the-time good because they have a deficit of bad things on which to ruminate. My grandmother grew up in North Korea and has seen more bad things than many. So I don’t think it’s the absence of bad that makes for good, but the ability to let the wonderful and the awful mash up together, to see them as interconnected and essential.
I don’t do this. No one I know well here does. We compartmentalize stuff instead. There’s a time when it’s cool to work and a time when it’s cool to play, big weekends and finals periods built into the schedule, places where you can cry and others where it’s better if you’re stoic. There’s no built-in time here to lie in bed humming to yourself under your laundry fresh out of the dryer and wonder what it all means and if the blah days will add up to something and whether you can wait another day before showering. If you’re doing that, as we all must do sometimes, it probably means you’re shirking something else.
I don’t mean to say the compartmentalization is all bad; in fact, in many ways I think it’s good and necessary. What I’ve been wondering on my futon, though, is if there’s another, maybe happier, way. Blitz me if you know about it.
That’s all we have to say. Who knows if we have a point. Senior spring, dear friends. All we can do is laugh.
Yours, sessile,
Lucy & Ethel
