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theantiyale
1 day, 2 hours ago
I grew up in a world full of GUILT,
especially
about anything which brings erotic
pleasure to the
flesh.
especially
about anything which brings erotic
pleasure to the
flesh.
Now, we (in America
WITHOUT GUILT,
especially about anything
which brings
erotic pleasure to the flesh.
WITHOUT GUILT,
especially about anything
which brings
erotic pleasure to the flesh.
Which world is better?
Which world is
safer?
Which world is healthier?
Which world is
safer?
Which world is healthier?
I do not have answers to these
questions, I merely
pose them.
questions, I merely
pose them.
·
River_Tam
1 day, 1 hour ago
This is you at your best, PK.
·
___________________________
___________________________
TAYLOR
Ditch your high school sweetheart
Tuesday, September 25, 2012
·
Okay, freshmen, listen up to the croaky old
voice of reason: You need to break free of your long-distance relationship.
It’s been four weeks. You’re not using your
map to get around campus anymore. By now, you know your way to every building
except TD, which with luck you’ll discover sometime during your sophomore year.
You’ve seen what this campus has to offer. I’m not saying it’s fantastic, but
admit it — you dig a guy in a cable sweater.
Also, those ROTC guys! Holy cow!
But this isn’t about comparing options, or
the crew cuts and biceps of boys who look deceptively old but are — please
remind me — barely 19. I have no doubt as to the depth and authenticity of your
high school relationship. I’m not trying to tell you you aren’t in love with
her. I’m not even arguing that, if someone doesn’t put some sense into you, you
won’t make this relationship last until your sophomore year. I’ve seen plenty
drag on even longer.
This isn’t about you and Whatshername. It’s
about you and Yale. This is about how you’re spending your evenings, your
nights, your spare thoughts and moments — how, slowly and subtly and without
your noticing it, your significant other is dulling your social impulse, making
you complacent.
You should come to Yale starving — for
friendship, for experience, for (ahem) stimulation. You should spend this
semester glutting yourself on overcommitment — joining three bands, doing four
shows, writing columns about topics you know nothing about. Your free time
should be stretched between lunch dates and dinner dates and coffee dates, with
late night roommate bonding and park bench conversations that defy convention
and New Haven’s disgusting weather, with ill-advised public make outs, but not
outside my entryway, please God, not there.
Your free time should not involve constant
texting, two-hour Skype calls, or weekend trips to some inferior campus.
I’m not saying you should go for the
12-college challenge. I’m just saying that freshman year is your one and only
shot to be a complete idiot and not regret it for the rest of your college
career. There is nothing you can do, no commitment you can make (and break) and
nowhere you can wake up for which you will be faulted a year from now.
Trust me: freshman year means no shame. To
the contrary — you will cherish your poor choices. You will delight to see that
hook-up — whom you will not acknowledge — eating in your dining hall. You will
laugh to remember his horrendous misuse of tongue. Savor your misfortunes — the
awful screw dates, the hapless hook-ups, the gay guys you’ll continue,
hopelessly, to fall for. Learn from them. Grow from them.
Because (in all paltry seriousness) this is
the time when you should be discovering yourself. There are sides of you that
you didn’t know existed. There are things you love — people you could love —
that you haven’t yet seen or heard or done. You need the freedom to grow out of
the person you were when you entered this relationship.
Most of my friends regret staying with their
high school sweethearts. They wasted time. Things grew sour. They lost
potential friends. They lost a best friend.
You might be the exception. You might be the
one person I know who is still with his high school girlfriend. You might have
already met your soulmate. There’s a chance, even, that I am totally wrong,
that this relationship is a good thing. Maybe you’re balancing this the right
way. Maybe that person is just what you need right now. Maybe he’s not tying
you down but pushing you forward.
Maybe, but probably not.
Consider, finally, serendipity — that amor
omnia vinct, that love will guide you to the right person in the end, even if
it’s back to where you started. Consider letting yourself go; consider giving
yourself to Yale; consider making the very most of this place and the four
fleeting years you have here.
Consider that you, and that cute girl from
your econ section, will thank me later.
Michelle Taylor is a senior in Davenport College
Comments
eli2015
1 day, 10 hours
ago
some inferior campus
Wow...
·
Reply ↵
River_Tam
1 day, 9 hours
ago
There is nothing you can do, no
commitment you can make (and break) and nowhere you can wake up for which you
will be faulted a year from now.
What a ridiculous thing to say. One of my
friends got pregnant her freshman year of college (not Yale) and ended up
getting an abortion. She used a condom, and it she only had sex twice with the
guy. That stuck with her for way more than a year.
I know one guy who got herpes her first week
of Camp Yale
One girl I know got doubleteamed by SigEp
boys during her sophomore year. She was fine with it at the time (being
schwasted will do that to you), but spent about a year talking it over with her
therapist, trying to convince herself that she hadn't been raped (or that she
had, and it would be okay).
Sex is intimate - sex leaves scars.
·
Reply ↵
wtf
1 day, 9 hours
ago
You better call Kenny Loggins... because
you're in the rape culture.
·
Reply ↵
theantiyale
1 day, 9 hours
ago
"Sex is intimate - sex leaves
scars."
Sex USED to be intimate when it involved the sacred possibility of
procreation. But for thirty years now, sex has been recreation. And besides
which, we ALL know that in the heat of the moment (pardon the pun), MEN LIE,
and WOMEN BELIEVE. That's been a constant for three thousand years of
literature. Liberation hasn't changed that a jot. PK
·
Reply ↵
basho
1 day, 8 hours
ago
let's put the book down and think
·
Reply ↵
River_Tam
1 day, 8 hours
ago
No, for thirty years we've been TOLD that
sex is recreation, but when it comes down to it, it doesn't really feel all
that much like a game. Sex - even the most casual of sex - is still a hell of a
lot more intimate than dinner and a movie.
·
Reply ↵
theantiyale
1 day, 7 hours
ago
A HOOK-UP is intimate? Consult the Oracle-Wiki:
An intimate relationship is an interpersonal
relationship that involves physical or emotional intimacy. Physical intimacy is
characterized by romantic or passionate sex and attachment, or sexual activity.
The term is also sometimes used euphemistically for a sexual relationship.
Intimate relationships play a central role in the overall human experience.[1]
Humans have a general desire to belong and to love which is usually satisfied
within an intimate relationship.[2] Intimate relationships involve the physical
and sexual attraction by one person to another, liking and loving, romantic
feelings and sexual relationships, as well as the seeking of a mate and
emotional and personal support of each other.[1] Intimate relationships provide
a social network for people that provide strong emotional attachments, and
fulfill our universal need of belonging and the need to be cared for.[1]
·
Reply ↵
LtwLimulus90
1 day, 4 hours
ago
Awesome column
·
Reply ↵
Branford73
LIke PK I may be a hopeless fuddy-duddy to
today's undergraduates (even though I had, without controversy, a mixed-sex
triple Branford room my senior year). I was stuck on my home-town honey all of
freshman year and we didn't break up until the summer following. I don't regret
that at all. We are still friends and kept up a bi-annual correspondence
through multiple marriages and children on both sides.
Often it is the growth of each person in the
couple, in different directions, that spells the doom of a relationship. That
can happen in long or short distance relationships. Or people can maintain them
over time and distance. My closest h.s. friend went to Dartmouth
Most home-town romances die of their own
accord as each partner's experiences and horizons expand. There's no reason to
push that to occur nor is the last year of such a relationship necessarily a
waste.
·
Reply ↵
yalereadertoday
1 day, 2 hours
ago
Pathetic Advice!: "trust me: freshman
year means no shame"!
Ha, wake up freshman! Hookups do create
shame and lifelong scars. How sad that a senior is giving out this kind of
advice. Don't fall prey to their mistakes and those of the upperclassmen ready
to prey on you! I do not disagree that you should use your very limited four
years to explore what Yale has to offer, but do so and practice ways that will
provide success outside of Yale. Even if your relationship doesn't last, it
could become a valuable lesson if you have to live apart from your spouse due
to work commitments.
Hook-ups equal personal failure in college
and beyond. I can't imagine that a hook-up at Yale is more meaningful than high
school sweetheart love. Hook-ups are failure for all parties within Yale's
gothic walls and especially if that practice continues into the world outside
of Yale.
When is it really a good idea to be a
complete idiot? I don't know anyone that would like to carry that label around
and feel good about oneself. College is a time to learn to become a responsible
adult and not act like an idiot.
Yalies: Don't believe and fall prey to everything
presented to you!
·
Reply ↵
theantiyale
1 day, 2 hours
ago
I grew up in a world full of GUILT,
especially about anything which brings erotic pleasure to the flesh.
Now, we (in America
Which world is better? Which world is safer?
Which world is healthier?
I do not have answers to these questions, I
merely pose them.
·
Reply ↵
River_Tam
1 day, 1 hour
ago
This is you at your best, PK.
·
Reply ↵
ygrd 23 hours, 39
minutes ago
Please tell me this article is a joke. Part
of being an adult is realizing actions and choices have consequences, many of
which are long-term and unforeseeable. Mature adults understand the need for
responsible decision making and careful consideration, especially in matters
involving personal relationships. The hedonistic and care-free behavior
advocated by this column, and the condescending and spoiled-adolescent tone it
strikes, suggests to me a lot of undergraduates still have a lot of growing up
to do.
·
Reply ↵
anonymousyalie8879
20 hours, 15
minutes ago
Sounds like the author didn't get any action
as a freshman, and is attempting to find justifications by projecting her own
self-esteem issues onto freshmen in the form of 'wisdom.'
·
Reply ↵
hounie09
18 hours, 17
minutes ago
While I don't disagree with the author that
long distance relationships can raise stress, hurt your social life, and be
generally soul crushing, it's hard to find columns like this anything but
disheartening.
I was in a long distance relationship
throughout my four years at Yale, and heard this message all the time. I don't
imagine that its peddlers were trying to make my love life more miserable than
it already was, but that's pretty much the only effect they had. In the end,
I'm glad I didn't listen to them: living through a long distance relationship
caused me to mature more than anything else I did at Yale, and today, having
been married to that sweetheart for two years, I'm pretty sure it was worth the
misery and lost opportunities.
·
Reply ↵
inycepoo
11 hours, 38
minutes ago
This is actually pathetic. Encouraging
freshmen to slut around campus in lieu of trying to establish a long-term
connection with someone, be it long distance or not? I thought Yagoda graduated
already.
·
Reply ↵
River_Tam
8 hours, 49
minutes ago
You can pay for school but you can't buy
class.
·
Reply ↵
ldffly
8 hours, 21
minutes ago
Administrators, do you have a comment on
this article?
·
Reply ↵
theantiyale
6 hours, 51
minutes ago
I doubt that administrators allow their
bubble to be pierced by the Yale Daily News and its posting board.
Benign neglect and intransigent equivocation
are administrators' favorite tools.
Administrators count on a third tool, TIME
to solve all problems: one quarter of the student body washes out to sea
through graduation every year, and a new one quarter washes in through freshman
admissions.
Administrators pray that the middle half of
the school won't make too much trouble in the meantime and stroke those
sophomores and juniors with benign neglect and intransigent equivocation.
PK
M. Ed. (Student Personnel Services and
Administration in Higher Education)
·
Reply ↵
ldffly
6 hours, 2
minutes ago
I'm sure they won't have a comment. Just an
indirect way of pointing out that at various points those people have aided and
abetted the hookup culture
·
Reply ↵
84
6 hours, 9
minutes ago
And now for a different opinion from somebody who has
woken up to the “hook up hangover”:
Sorry for referring to that ugly orange and black
school……….
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