Beyond the Bubble: College and Snow
As TV’s Alison Brie once bitingly said, "Well, well, well, Harvey Keitel." Entering my second month in the city, I find that I’m missing Hanover more and more. My homesickness was massively exacerbated by the Geisel-authored snowball fight blitz (It’s hard to have a snowball fight when all the snow is entirely liquid, to use the Bristol stool chart’s terminology).
Speaking of snow, we received rather a lot of it this past weekend (something like 30 inches worth, if memory serves). Rather than exploring the museums and attractions of New York City, I got a first-hand view of my building’s wall after the intrepid Mayor Bill de Blasio (you know, the guy selected above the other guy who sent dick pics to random girls half his age while married) banned all non-urgent travel. So that was an enjoyable experience. I must say, though, being trapped indoors in NYC is somehow much worse than being trapped indoors in Hanover. When you’re in New Hampshire, there’s a romance, a traditional New England excitement to being snowed in. The hot cocoa will flow freely, a book will be propped open and read cover to cover (by candlelight if need be) and the winds will batter away outside, unable to touch you.
In Manhattan, by contrast, the winter winds attack endlessly. They drive you into small apartments indoors, aggressively seizing upon every bit of exposed flesh that remains outside and tearing into it like an Arctic beast, all while confining poor denizens of college students to indoor hovels, reduced to watching "Archer" and "Community" for the umpteenth time ("You're not my supervisor!")
Unlike New Hampshire, however, the snow here melts quite quickly. Less than a week after Blizzard Jonas, almost all of the snow has disappeared, first into slush, then back into concrete. So now everything is just depressingly glum and wet, like cities are much of the time.
As the title suggests, this installment of Beyond the Bubble may be lacking in clear purpose, it’s true, so I’ll leave you with this: Take the winter editorial internship in Manhattan, but only if it gets you one step closer to fulfilling your life-long dream of being a creative non-fiction writer living on a farm in Vermont. Which is your dream. Because it is everyone's dream.