Yet again, a totally reputable and non-arbitrary ranking from a sterling publication (Newsweek, in this case) has made it official: we are the happiest school in the universe, and if you’re not happy for every single minute of your Yale experience, there’s something seriously wrong with you.  We have 204 sunny days a year (204!!!) and we’re only graduating with $10,717 of debt (10,717!!!!).  WHY AREN’T YOU SMILING????  BE HAPPIER.

Alexandra Addison as Georgia in "The Hickey Chronicles"

Alex Klein as Tom in "The Hickey Chronicles"

Justin Dobies as Max in "The Hickey Chronicles"

Alexandra Addison, CC ’12, Yale’s very own rom-com auteur, is making a splash presenting original stories of young women weathering the bumps of life and love–stories that are unique, heartfelt, and have a reach far beyond that of the average boy-meets-girl fare.  She wrote and starred in The Sad Girl’s Guide to Wallowing Professionally, a “romantic comedy about depression” that was at once hilariously funny and achingly affecting, staged at the Morse/Stiles Crescent Theater April 13th and 14th as her senior thesis for the Theater Studies major.  She’s also the driving force (creator/writer/director/actor) behind The Hickey Chronicles, a new web series about the joys and pitfalls of the hook-up culture at a university not entirely unlike this one.  A few weeks before Addison bids farewell to her Bright College Years and heads off into the real world, the Bullblog grabbed coffee with the enthusiastic senior to discuss her inspirations and the culture of creating new work here at Yale.

The Bullblog: We really loved Sad Girl!  Do you have any plans for the show after graduation?

Alexandra Addison: Thanks so much!  I’m so happy you liked it.  There’s going to be a reading of the play at an Off-Broadway theater in June, and I’m hoping something will come of that.  I love that play, and I hope it does have a life beyond Yale.

BB: Where did your inspiration for The Hickey Chronicles come from?  Were there any specific events relating to the sexual climate at Yale that pushed you to make the show?

AA: The Hickey Chronicles really didn’t begin with any grand aspirations; it wasn’t meant to coincide with the dialogue already occurring around hooking up.  I’m an avid romantic comedy lover, but the reality of life is that oftentimes the girl doesn’t get the guy, or vice versa.

The web series Casual was definitely an inspiration.  It begins with this great scene of the awkward morning-after, and the feeling of being trapped by a one-night stand.  I really wanted to see what happened to the girl after the guy left, but [Casual] didn’t show that.  That’s definitely part of what The Hickey Chronicles set out to do…It’s meant to be a story for all the people who don’t always have the happy ending.

BB: Would you say that, overall, Yale is a conducive or a difficult environment to present new work?

AA: Overall it’s a wonderful place to present new work; it’s a safe environment, and people will always be honest with you, which is rare and critical [when you're making new work].  That being said, there’s a leap between support for creating and presenting new work, and having a place to do so.  There was no curricular support for The Hickey Chronicles.  For theater, there’s a stronger, more structured way of presenting new work, but a web series is still unknown territory, especially at Yale.  Ultimately, if you have a project you feel passionately about, you just have to do it; you can’t wait around for something to happen.

BB: If you had to give advice to the prefrosh who were here a few weeks ago about navigating the hook-up culture that The Hickey Chronicles portrays, what would you say?

AA: Self-respect is definitely the most important thing: do what’s going to make you feel good.  If you’re the kind of person who can really enjoy a one-night thing and feel good about it the next day, go for it; you’re in college, and you can do things here that don’t fly as much [out of college].  But if you don’t necessarily feel good about [hooking up] and won’t emotionally benefit from it, respect yourself and don’t do it!  That’s where Georgia, the main character of The Hickey Chronicles, is at.

To reiterate, this show isn’t meant to make an overarching judgment–this is something that’s deeply personal–but just to chronicle it, one hickey at a time. At the end of the day, The Hickey Chronicles is about people surviving life’s hickeys, both physical and emotional, and that’s something I feel we can all relate to in our four years here.

Lionel Beehner

YH: You say you want to get rid of bad writing in the world. What do you mean when you say that?

LB: In journalism, there’s a lot of sloppy writing—lack of fact-checking, lack of triple-sourcing, lack of due diligence. In academia, there’s a tendency to repeat yourself and write very long, and use 100 dollar words, or 10 words when five will suffice. It’s a different style, and it’s hard to go from one genre to the other. Every subfield has its own jargon; if you go into law, if you go into medicine, if you go into P.R., policy—they tend to have their catchphrases. On the side, I’m teaching an op-ed writing class on how to cut through that and how to write as you speak. Use active instead of passive verbs, use simple, quick easy sentences, no 10 dollar words that show off…. One of the good things about journalism or op-ed writing is that nobody cares that you went to Yale. All they care about is your idea. And it’s about being able to execute your idea. You have to be timely, you have to be forceful, you have to make an opinion.

YH: What do you think about finding the ways to communicate the ideas that one has in academia and in academic writing into public media?

LB: I think it’s hard. Let me give you an example. My sister is a biologist at the University of Michigan, and she thinks op-ed writing and journalism is absolute crap. She gets calls from reporters all the time—she studies baboons and evolutionary biology. She really hates the trendy, pop-science industry. If an article runs in Nature or Science and it has a little bit of a pop culture angle or something, that’s kind of catchy or kitschy, it’ll get published in the science section of the New York Times, and people will start talking about it. But among scientists, they think, well that’s total crap. It’s just not very good science. And she kind of looks down at that, and says she’d rather write and get at the truth. (She’s a good writer.)

YH: What are your views on Syria?

LB: I had a recent op-ed in the LA Times looking at the nomenclature of war, the idea being that when Hillary Clinton calls [Syria] a civil war, the idea is that it’s supposed to galvanize the international community to intervene—by intervene, I mean do something beyond just send Arab League inspectors or whatever—do something, maybe military force or whatever. But what we’re seeing is the exact opposite—when you call something a civil war, it’s not like calling it a genocide. If there’s a genocide, you have to do something. There are R2P principles, and ideas that we can’t let a genocide happen on our watch. But with a civil war, there’s a feeling like, whoa, whoa, whoa—that’s a civil war, let’s let them settle it. We don’t have a dog in that fight. (That was the famous line from Baker during the Balkans.) There’s a feeling that these things are messy, and that’s actually the opposite of what you’re trying to do. And so in some ways calling something a civil war can actually backfire, and that’s what my op-ed is looking at. Like, if you look at Libya, nobody called it a civil war. They called it a civil war once it became one—but when they were trying to get the U.N. Security Council resolution last spring, they didn’t call it a civil war. If they’d called it a civil war, they probably wouldn’t have gotten the resolution, because there’s less of an onus to intervene once you call it that.

YH: You follow Russia closely. How did you become interested in that country?

LB: I got my Master’s in Russian—in International Affairs but I focused on Russia. I did both journalism and academia. I went back to school in 2000 to do my Master’s. My B.A. is in history, and I taught English and worked at a think tank in D.C. I didn’t know what I wanted to do when I graduated. The think tank I worked at was a Russian policy institute. When I got out, I didn’t know what I wanted to do, so I went back to get a Master’s at Columbia. I really got into journalism there. I was editor of a newspaper and an editor of a magazine (called Slant). They gave us 15,000 dollars to make a magazine, full color, whatever we wanted. The kids who I worked with at the time are working for the New Yorker and the New York Times right now covering Libya. 9/11 happened when we were the editors of this paper, and we had to handle that and cover this. We were studying international affairs and suddenly, 100 blocks south there’s this crazy thing. So that was a really exciting time to be studying to be a journalist. The summer before, I worked in Russia as an intern for CNN and there was just nothing going on. Putin had just come to power; he was considered the latest in a string of prime ministers. It was a dull time to be studying Russia, so I gravitated more towards journalism, but not knowing what I was going to do. And then after Columbia I ended up at the Council of Foreign Relations.

YH: You were covering very sensitive subjects in countries you didn’t have any previous knowledge of. Were you concerned about the accuracy of your reporting?

LB: We had in-house experts and fellows, and we had them check our stuff. On the other hand, we were given a lot of leeway, and it was exciting because we were just starting podcasts and doing these interactive media guides, and blogging, which was just starting up. (This was before Twitter and Facebook.) There was a lot of excitement about new media, and about how we could teach international affairs to a lay audience through new media. And it was interesting, and I got to cover the biggest story of the time, which was the Iraq War, without ever having been to Iraq. I eventually went to Iraq to do some reporting and it was not until the height of the surge. But it was funny because I would have journalists who were in the Green Zone calling me and asking me what happened five miles from them, because I had bloggers and sources on the ground and I was constantly writing. And they were in such a bubble—to actually be there, you were less informed than if you were writing it from the outside.

YH: What’s your take on  the Arab Spring?

LB: I think the most interesting question to come out of that is, “Why are liberals so good at getting people onto the street but so bad at getting people to vote?” You can get 30,000 people on a roundabout in the capital of Bahrain, but when it comes time to vote in Tunisia, they got their butts kicked. I have a couple of theories; I have no idea if these are right. Whether or not because liberals are seen as broad, they have a tendency to be disorganized, maybe the Islamist parties have a perception of being less corrupt. Whether or not they’re able to mobilize, because there’s preference falsification: whether people would prefer to vote for the liberal party, but they vote for the Islamist party because there’s social pressure to do that. I don’t know. I think that would be an interesting question, though. Even in the post-Soviet space, which I know better than the Arab world, the liberal parties are a joke. They’re just disorganized, they can’t agree….

YH: What would you advise aspiring writers in universities what to do?

LB: The main thing I tell people is: don’t go to journalism school, don’t waste your time, because you’re not going to learn anything. I mean, journalism is one of those professions you have to learn on the job. You have to make the mistakes, and you have to just go and do it. And you can’t replicate that in a classroom in New York City, or in Missouri, or in Northwestern. If you want to be a foreign correspondent, go to the place that you’re interested in, but don’t go to the Paris bureau; go somewhere where nobody else wants to go.

YH: For instance?

LB: Like, southern Philippines, or northern Sri Lanka. Those are interesting places, and there are no journalists there. If you email an editor and say, “Hi, I’m here, are you interested in an article?” and you give them a batch of three pitches, they’re probably going to take one. They might not take it at first, but if you keep pitching them, and you show that you’re hungry, it’ll work. So right now I write a column at USA Today. I spent over a year pitching them, getting rejected every single month. I would pitch them an op-ed every month and get rejected over and over again. And then finally, they accepted something. When I was at CFR, the current editor of Foreign Affairs, Gideon Rose, gave me a great piece of advice. I was like, “I’m leaving, I’m going to become a freelance writer. I don’t know what that means. What do I do?” He told me that the key is that all of these people that you see published—you never see all the rejection letters they get. All you see is their name in lights, and you think, “Wow, everything they touch turns to gold.” And it’s kind of like the guy at the horse track who shows you his winning horse ticket, but underneath that ticket are 20 losing tickets. I think there are a couple of maxims of journalism to go by. One is: you need to read a lot, and you need to understand the currents of what people are talking about, and be knowledgeable about the zeitgeist. I hate that term, but… The second thing is, you need to go places and talk to people, because there are a lot of story ideas you get from just going out there and meeting people that you don’t get just by reading magazines. The third thing comes from an old saying that for every good idea, you should get three published pieces. So if I have an idea about an article, I’ll try to publish and op-ed, I’ll try to publish a long-form piece.

YH: When you teach students, what do you teach them?

LB: The main thing I teach is how to think like a journalist…. You have to think like a journalist and be ahead of the news a little bit. You have to find patterns and make an interesting point that nobody else has made. And that’s really hard sometimes, because a lot of people want to write that op-ed that says, “Terrorism is bad,” or, “I think bullying is bad.” But if you look at Time magazine last week, the main headline was “Bullying is not that bad.” It’s one of the trends in journalism—I’m not saying this is a good thing… It’s almost the Christopher Hitchens approach to journalism, which is contrarianism—if everyone zigs, you should zag…. Second, you have to be able to use a very direct style, and every word has to count. Third, you have to be timely. I think this is the thing that most people don’t get. The news cycle moves very fast. In academia, if you send an article out, two months later you get a response, and it goes back and forth; two years later you might get another response; by then, there’s people living on the moon. In journalism, you can have an idea in the morning, you can write it after lunch, and you can publish it by evening. For better or for worse, it’s immediate.

Something that a lot of people don’t realize is how to package a pitch. A good pitch answers three questions: why this? why now? and why me? And a lot of times, people can’t answer those three questions. Or they try to show more than one opinion in a 650-word piece. As soon as you have two opinions, you have two op-eds. There’s a tendency among academics to show off everything you know, and what you’re trying to do is—you only know one thing, and you’re trying to make that point. I’ll use Hegel’s dialectic where you have your thesis—with evidence, anecdotal or systematic—and then you have your antithesis. The antithesis is what in journalism we call a “to be sure” paragraph, which essentially is saying that you don’t have a monopoly on truth, but other people out there, who are going to disagree with you—you’re trying to steal their thunder. And so whenever you read an op-ed, about three-quarters of the way down, you’ll see, “To be sure,” and you sort of say the opposite of what you just said. You’re throwing a bone to your opponents. But then you have to debunk that.

YH: What do you think of rejection?

LB: It’s part of life. If you don’t deal well with getting rejected, don’t go into journalism. Go into basket-weaving or something.

"That's why I chose Yale"

Yale BUTANE (apparently, it’s the Yale Bureau for Undergraduate Tradition And Nostalgic Enrichment…) just sent out an email that the first annual Yale Hunger Games takes place in two days.

From the email:

The rules of the Hunger Games are simple. Each of the twelve colleges must provide one girl and one boy, called tributes, to participate. Over a period of several hours, the twenty-four tributes will take part in tests of mental and physical skill. The last college with a tribute standing wins.

 

Each student may submit up to two names — one male, one female, to be entered into the reaping. The more times a student’s name is entered, the better chance that student will have of being chosen as tribute. You may enter yourself into the games, or you may submit names on behalf of others in your college.

Submit tributes into the reaping here. May the odds be ever in your favor!

if it rains enough, he can sing "I'm On A Boat"

• SPRING FLING IS TOMORROW! In honor of Spring Fling, you got Dean Gentry’s email, aptly titled “Important information regarding Spring Fling 2012.” In a nutshell, Dean Gentry urges students to stay safe during Spring Fling, which will occur rain (unfortunately this looks like a possibility) or shine tomorrow from 2:30 – 10:00 pm. The most important line: “Parties in individual student rooms on the Old Campus are not permitted during Spring Fling, and for this day, parties are defined as any gathering in a room that includes more than the residents assigned to that room.”
• Classes are over… unless you have a language/chem/other class that meets during reading week (ha). The course evaluation email was sent out earlier today–they are available online starting 4:00 pm. If you feel so confident about a class that you can evaluate it before finals, go ahead and contribute to the classy, elegant alternative to Ratemyprofessor.
• Help improve Box 63! - The survey email was sent from boxvstoads@gmail.com, an address we all wish we’d thought of first.

I was stoned when I saw the eskimoed figure crunching down the street with a flashlight and cocker spaniel. The iced trees hung in on the road and my dazed synapses made suburbia look like a cave. The figure trudged ahead as I flexed my stiff fingers, watching her from my hot box of dry heat and public radio. I’d forgotten Michigan’s stillness while I was at school—the way houses slept and trucks made patterns in the snow. So I turned off the speakers and let my car slow to a stop. All that moved was the yellow beam of my mother’s flashlight, flicking up and down as she walked, jerking my dog away from pinecones and driveways and someone else’s pee.

I told my parents I’d be getting in at 10 so I’d have time to visit Sam before they knew I was home. When I got to his house we went straight to his room and got in bed with our clothes on, pressing our faces together without even kissing. “I’m here,” I’d say, and we’d curl in disbelief. It was our first long distance reunion and I finally understood the addiction of self-deprivation.

We stayed there for an hour before I dragged myself out of bed and back into my car, lingering with him in the passenger seat as the windows frosted and we passed a thin joint. “Don’t leave,” he said, biting at my shoulder. “You’re always leaving.” I exhaled and leaned my head against his neck. The thought of sleeping in his bed tore at the image of my mother waiting in the kitchen with baked goods that were already cold. “Tomorrow,” I said, squeezing his hand and sitting up. “I have to spend my first night at home.”

For a while, she didn’t see me. I’m not sure why I waited in my car but for some reason I didn’t feel like moving. Winters turned our town into a black and white wonderland and I liked watching my Mom pad through its tunneled core. She was overdressed; peering out from an astronautic parka, two scarves and a pair of thick leather mittens. Yet she managed a kind of middle road grace, unconcerned that a car could disturb her migration. She did it three times a day. Strapped up my spaniel and circled the block. When my brothers and I begged for the dog, we’d sworn to switch off in rotating shifts. But by the time it was big we were busy with homework or friends or that project we had to start now.

I rolled down my window and felt a flood of cold air on my face. My dog let out a small howl, twigs cracked in the woods and something about the stillness or my state of mind reminded me of the world’s remarkable capacity to carry on in every place at once. I thought of my mother circling suburbia while I drank in dim fraternities or video chatted with Sam or slept lazily in my dorm while it snowed out my window. I loved her at that moment in a way that twisted my stomach.

“Mom!” I shouted from the side of my car. The dog barked and she snapped around, frozen like a deer in my car’s white light. She stared for a second, struggling to see through the blinding headlights. I saw something then that I hadn’t seen before, or if I had, I’d chosen to ignore it. There was a frailty to her posture, a thinness in her cheeks. She looked tired and cold for the instant before she lit up in motion, jogging slightly towards the hum of my car. But I didn’t think about it because I was happy and I loved her and for the most part, I don’t like the kind of revelations I make when I’m high.

***

When I woke up the next morning, my Mom was in the basement sorting socks. I was glad to be home and it was nice to be reminded of the places. Our floors creaked. But this was the time when I found everything romantic. I granted the world a kind of strange generosity. Ideas convinced me and ordinary activities had an almost giddy newness. Part of it was probably the pot. Smoking before anything gave an excuse for a good time. We could go skating or bowling without feeling lame. So we passed bowls in the back of my car and alternated between over analysis and blank stares. In July I’d get home late and my Dad would be in the kitchen, drunk and eating. Microwavable sausage links, cold cuts, tubs of ice cream with the ring of measuring spoons. Sometimes I’d warm up some pasta and sit with him as he watched CSI.

***

I went down and sat on the rug next to my mom. My trash bags of dirty dorm clothes were already folded in neat piles by the shelf. She looked young for fifty—thin, blond and still able to twist her legs behind her while she searched for striped blues and the nuances of whites. We talked for a while about classes and food. At little party things or parent teacher meetings, people would tell us our expressions were the same. I’d never really noticed it on my own—I just thought the way she smiled made sense.

“So tell me about Sam,” she said. “I hardly got to meet him before you left for school.”

“Yeah you did,” I said. “We hung out here all the time.”

“Maybe.”

“Not maybe, yes.” I pulled back my hair. “I dunno. It’s nice to have someone around all the time. Not around, around, but like, texting me and thinking about me when I was in class or like, at some party.”

“That’s romantic.” There was genuineness in her eyes that I felt in my throat.

“Where’s Dad?”

“Asleep.” She shrugged. “You should try to play with your brother at some point. He’s been asking when you’ll get home.”

***

My family was like anyone’s, just functional enough to be functional. My older brothers worked in Chicago and Kyle was the only kid home. Our parents didn’t fight in the conventional way, mostly because I don’t think they thought it was worth it. For as long as I can remember, my Mom woke up at six to work out and on her 10 thousand projects. She ate lettuce and soy things but cooked real food for the rest of us. My dad had a job in real estate and was really fat.

As for me, I didn’t know what I wanted. Cigarette holes had started spotting the sides of my skirts and the semester had refined a profundity to the world that I could photograph or turn into a bad poem. Everything seemed worthy of retelling and I’d struggle to stop stories before I started. Wide-eyed and coiled in bed, Sam and I would be convinced by the dramas of 46 minutes—idealizing the pursuits of doctors, politicians, astronauts in space. Bored or exhausted with regularity, we’d envy House and Law and Order, cuddling away our apathy until we were reminded that all we really wanted was to lie in bed. I was in love for the first time and my mother could tell.

***

I passed Kyle’s room on the way back upstairs. He didn’t have any lights on, and was buried with headphones in a game of World of Warcraft.

“What’s up?” I said, leaning in his doorway. He didn’t hear me so I said it again. “What’s up, geek?” He turned around in his swivel chair.

“Hey.”

“What are you doing tonight?” I asked. He’d gone back to the game, shooting some blue whirlwind of a spell out of his character’s hands.

“Nothing.”

“But didn’t you just get out for winter break?”

“Yeah.”

“Cool.” I stayed leaning in the doorway, remembering the basement parties I’d attended in eighth grade. When we’d sip on Evian bottles of vodka and gag through truth or dare.

“Do you want to jump on the trampoline later?” He was still facing the screen, sliding and clicking his left hand as he typed hard with the right. “I got all the snow off on Tuesday.” I looked at his mop of brown hair, glowing slightly green from his monitor.

“Ugh, I can’t,” I said, walking towards his desk. “I promised Sam I’d go over.”

“Ok.” He took a swig from a root beer by his keyboard. I couldn’t leave.

“Wait, so who are you fighting? Is that a troll or something?”

“It’s an Ogre. But my usual character is a Blood Elf.”

“Nice,” I said. “That dude reminds me of Avatar.”

“Not really.” He half scoffed. “Are you going to be here tomorrow?”

“Yeah, yeah,” I said, “I’m coming home in the morning.”

“Nice.” I waited. He killed something that looked like a fanged bull. “So how’re mom and dad? Bothering you enough?”

“I guess.” I was annoying him at this point. “Mom’s obsessed with my homework.” I laughed.

“What about Dad?” He waited for a minute until he started clicking again.

“Um, the same. He’s kind of drunk a lot.” I hadn’t expected this. But I knew he was smart and it was stupid to think he didn’t know what was going on. I waited by his computer for a few seconds until I punched him in the shoulder and walked towards the door.

“Keep the lights on in here,” I said, pausing in the doorway to hit the switch. “It’s creepy if you hang out in the dark.”

“Ok.” He stayed looking at the screen as I went into my room to change into sexier underwear before I left for Sam’s. Then I was gone.

***

That night we went to the lake and walked out to its center where we passed a spliff and talked about the fate of humanity. Sam had a lot of opinions about the universe shrinking back up and banging again but I didn’t really have a view one way or another. I liked listening to him, though. The ice was thick enough to hold the fisher trucks but there was still something sexy about lying down where we used to canoe.

“This is good,” he said.

“I know.”

“I wish it was just us.”

“I know,” I said.

We waited there for a while until our heads cleared and our butts froze. He didn’t need to explain what he meant because he knew I knew he was talking about everything. When we got back to his house we took a shower and fell dizzily asleep before our hormones could even take over.

***

The next day I dragged him with me when I went back to my house. He wanted to stay at his place for the day because he had a bigger TV and his parents weren’t home. But I told him that I’d left at lunch and gotten in late and besides, we’re always at your house and you know it. When we pulled into my driveway my Dad was shoveling the steps, which was surprising. He had on a giant windbreaker and we could see the spots where it darkened under his arms. I felt the familiar twist of sympathetic embarrassment and then embarrassment that I’d felt that in the first place.

My mom came out from the computer room and we all talked in the kitchen for a while. She lingered even after my Dad went back out to shovel, rearranging papers and mentioning cool articles she’d read online. She was watching us, and I knew she was soaking in our every expression.

“What do your parents do, Sam?”

“They work at the school.”

“Addie tells me you’re studying science.”

“Yes, ma’am, at least for now.” He looked teasingly at me and I reached a hand at his stomach, pulling his shirt so he moved closer and put his arms around my sides. I meant it as a gesture of trust, to show my mother we were comfortable around her. But she looked at us for a second, lost, and then went to check something on her phone.

“I need to make a call anyways, so you two can go upstairs.” She was moving now, looking in the pantry and opening some drawers. “But thanks for talking to your old mother.” It was an honest joke and she stopped her motion to smile.

“I love you,” I cooed, laughing as we moved out the kitchen.

“You don’t.”

“I do! I do!”

***

Winter break passed us with trips up the stairs. We slept in woolen socks and woke up sweaty. Most of the time, I slept at Sam’s because his feet poked out the end of my twin-sized bed. My mom was usually asleep by the time I drove over there, but I could tell it bothered her anyway. I knew because she’d mention breakfast foods I might like around nine. I think my Dad found the whole thing vaguely inappropriate—uncertain how to respond to his daughter wrapped up in something serious. But he liked Sam okay and whenever he came by I made sure they had at least ten minutes to talk about hockey. One night when he was staying over, my Dad walked in while we were watching Planet Earth. It was episode two and our interests were shifting from vampire squids to my bed but my Dad asked if it was okay if he joined us. He was drunk and had a bowl of sugar-free jello.

“Sure,” I said, shifting up so Sam’s arm was merely around my shoulder.

“Cool,” he said and sat down on the opposite couch. This kind of thing never happened at Sam’s because his parents were usually doing work or downstairs. We started episode three and our thoughts turned back to the weird things that glowed in the bottom of the ocean. But my dad fell asleep after 10 minutes, snoring loud enough that I would have laughed if I were still in high school. Sam and I shut off the TV and I placed a blanket on my father, throwing away his bowl of Jell-O when we walked upstairs. There was an awkwardness to the way he’d asked to join us that I couldn’t get out of my head. Some kind of cafeteria-table solitude that made me want to throw up. I thought then about how most things are not really anyone’s fault. I almost shared this with Sam but he was already in my room taking off his shoes. It was nearly two but I could see the glow of Kyle’s monitor as I passed by his door.

Sometimes we’d take a day off and I’d spend time alone or with my family. My mom and I went shopping a few times at the mall in Hammond Bay and I helped her make a cheesecake with lemon and ginger. On a cold Tuesday, my older brothers lumbered home in a carpool from Chicago and we all went out to buy a Christmas tree. Toby and Zach were older and immune to the islands they left floating in our house. So they laughed and teased and Kyle and I lurked behind them, refreshingly reduced to our attempts to impress.

On Christmas day, my family slept to an embarrassing 9:30; though I suspect my little brother woke up earlier to look at the stockings before creeping back upstairs until the rest of us woke up. Sam bought me a necklace with a tiny silver acorn that my mother held off my neck more than once that afternoon. I gave her a crème brulèe torch and fleece jacket that felt both perfect and stupid the moment she gasped with gratitude.

My anxiety came back on the 26th and I started dreading the idea of phone calls every time I saw Sam. The vacation had seemed an eternity, but something about the other side of Christmas made college slip back on my conscious. Once, when Sam was at school, he’d texted me that he couldn’t talk because his roommates were sleeping. Smiling to myself, I’d called him anyway – speaking one-way for a whole eight minutes. This is what happened today. This is how I’m feeling. This is why I love you.

Toby and Zach went back to the city and my house returned to its hidey-holes. I went to this horrible yoga class a few times with my mom, but we giggled about the instructor’s adjectives, which afterward made us feel like sisters. My dad would accidentally fall asleep on the couch a few times a week, and I cringed to think what kind of clichés this spawned in Kyle’s head. Dad and I would talk sometimes when I’d get home late from my smoky sedan. There wasn’t much to say but we could get at least ten minutes if I asked him to fill me in on the episode that was on. Once when one had ended and we’d finished a bowl of popcorn, he paused for a minute and looked down at our dog.

“So your mother seems to think you and this Sam kid are awfully happy.” She must have brought it up.

“Yeah,” I said. “We are.”

“She said he bought you that necklace.” He gestured loosely at my neck.

“Yeah. For Christmas.” He nodded, almost got up, but then stayed in his chair.

“I thought that bird feeder I got for her was good.” He looked up at me expectantly. It’s silver, my mom would have said. He bought her something silver.

“No, it was,” I cleared my throat. “That was a really cool gift.”

“I’m going to build that tomorrow.” I nodded this time.

“Yeah, you totally should. That thing’s supposed to be cool.”

“I’ll do that tomorrow,” he repeated, walking over to the sink.

He didn’t. And by the time either of us woke up my mom’s banana bread was cold.

***

Sam’s uncle had an annual New Year’s Party in Canada, and in a gesture of romantic formality suggested we dress up and drive there instead of getting drunk in someone’s basement. I decided to spend some of my campus job money on a dress and went back to a store I’d seen in the Hammond Bay Galleria. I stood alone in a three-way mirror, unable to choose between a green and two blacks. So I angled the panels and took pictures of each on my phone, sending them one by one in texts to my mom. I had to call her twice to explain how to open them, but she’d said the green made my legs look good so I went with that.

On the day Sam and I were supposed to leave, I found her again folding socks downstairs. I came in wearing the green dress to model it in person.

“What do you think?” I said, spinning around.

“You look beautiful,” she said. “He won’t be able to keep it on you.”

“Mom, come on!” I laughed, turning around. “Can you unzip me?” She unzipped me and I went back upstairs to pack it away, returning in a pair of jeans and a grey sweater.

“So you’re driving up tonight?

“This afternoon, yeah.” I reached my hand into the basket and started searching for a sock with two black stripes. “Don’t worry, I’m driving.”

“Ok.”

“Are you doing anything?”

“Probably not.” She smiled. She waited for a second but then continued. I knew what was coming and hated that I hated it. I wondered for a moment who else my mom might confide in but I wasn’t actually sure how close she was with any of her book group friends. “I don’t know, Addie.” She sighed. “Seeing you with Sam, you seem so…”

“I didn’t mean to…”—but I trailed off too. I wasn’t sure whether this time was different. She paused.

“You know your father didn’t used to…”

My phone vibrated and I flipped it open to a message from Sam. I didn’t mean to but it was reflex.

“You can take that if you want,” my mom said, looking down.

“Oh, no, it’s fine, it’s not a call.”

“A text message?” She took pride in knowing the term.

“Yeah.” She paused.

“What’s it say?” I pressed Open and waited for a second. It was a heart, followed by a message that said ‘thinking of you.’

“It’s from Sarah,” I said. She looked at me again.

“It’s not from Sarah, Addie. It’s from Sam.”

“No it’s from Sarah. It says: ‘Hey what are you up to later?’” She smiled.

“When are you leaving?” Her tone was different. It was cheery, bright. I looked at my watch. It was 1:40 and Sam was picking me up at two.

“You know, Mom, I don’t have to—” But she cut me off.

“Addie, come on.” She pulled her hair back into a bun. “Three more pairs and I’ll let you free.” So I made three more pairs.

***

Sam and I smoked two joints on the drive, listening to airy playlists titled with combinations of our names. Three miles from Canada, we parked the car in a field and let the smoky air out just to be safe, sitting on the hood and holding hands. The air was crisp and the sky seemed determined to be bluest on this last day of the year. We could see mountains from where we were sitting and only climbed back into our seats when the sun started tilting west.

I made Sam leave our room while I put on the green dress so it would be a surprise when I came out. It did make my legs look good and I had to take it off and put it back on again before dinner. Sam smiled at me while we met aunts and old high school friends, our glances exchanging thousands of inside jokes. The night was a whirl of champagne and stupid hats and explaining where and why I went to school. At midnight, everyone gathered in a room with a fire, counting down in an iconic chant. Sam had one arm on the small of my back and I could smell the alcohol and perfume and fire that filled the room. I looked down at the fingers squeezing mine and something about the noise or his smile filled me with a kind of sick understanding of what our hand holding had done. Of what she was trying to tell me before I got in his car. I tried to focus on the lights of the drying Christmas tree and the shrieking faces of guests I didn’t know. But in those final throbbing seconds my mind wandered to my dad who was probably sitting alone in the kitchen, drunk and watching the ball drop on TV; my brother, shooting spells from the depths of his bedroom, his small face green with the glow of his computer; and my mother, crunching down the street with a flashlight and my cocker spaniel, moving through the snowy darkness as the clock hit zero.

The annual post you’ve all been waiting for… This year’s members of the top three Yale societies and the activities that got them in. Who are they? Will they be President one day? Are these really the most talented people in the junior class? What? How the hell did he get in? All these answers and more below. We’ve been madly researching them for the past few weeks but if you see any mistakes feel free to send them to tips@thebullblog.com

SKULL AND BONES

Jacob Paul
Went to Alaska last summer, is very serious about the trumpet (actually!), did National Quiz Bowl in high school and is in the band Jamestown.

Dakota McCoy
“Once discovered several strange skulls that were classified as rodent-like”.

Julian Reid
Head of the “Julian Reid Jazz Trio,” plays in Stiles once a week with Orlando Hernandez (Keys ’13).

Meredith Potter
Miss Teen North Carolina first runner up 2005!!!!!!!!

Ilana Harris-Babou
Former Bullblog Crush of the Week, excellent at knitting.

Yishai Schwartz
Won the DS prize despite thinking they should make more time for the Hebrew bible. 

Amalia Skilton
Apparently her friends believe her to be a superhero. 

Fatymatou “Tyma” Dia
A Senegalese member of Asempa who is currently studying abroad in Jordan.

Max de La Bruyere
An adorable Canadian ginger who “wouldn’t call himself a writer but loves trying.”

Teddy Collins
Andover class of 2008 president whose real name is Tantum and has a vaguely foreign accent.

Maddy Sharp
Is  ”proud to be a Bulldog“!

Elizabeth Asai
Hosted an end-of-summer Yale-in-Washington pool party.

Bay Gross
Hacked his way in.

Lawrence Lim
Wanted to be in the teacher prep program.

Samer Sabri
Wrote a majority of the content on the “Useful Applications” page of the Yale Wiki page.

Wolf’s Head

Katie Ballaine
A St. Ann’s graduate and a squash player.

James Campbell
Once played a highly contested game of croquet, dating Hope Weissler (WH ’12).

Gus Steyer
A legacy and a BD.

Omar Njie
Once attended a Super Sweet Sixteen party that was on MTV.

Nathan Yohannes
A Pierson Master’s Aide who has been to Indonesia.

Victoria Buhler
Is rumored to have dated James Franco.

Adriana Ortiz
A slam poet.

Ellie Morse
Made a super helpful video about radiators.

Sanjena Sathian
Needs help with her cover letters.

Michael Solotke
A carillonneur. 

Kevin Lunn
Heartthrob cross country runner (and blogger!)

Diana Enriquez Schneider
Don’t call her Die-ann-uh.

Nolan Becker
6’6”!, was on the varsity bowling team in high school

Brian Ruwe
Father was a football captain, Wolf’s Head member.

Efe Chantal Ghanney
Considers herself a “citizen of the world”.

Leeron Tur-Kaspa
Still has a myspace! 

Scroll and Key

Henry Gottfried
Attended the same premiere for “It’s Complicated” as Allison Williams, did puppet theater with Willa Fitzgerald.

Willa Fitzgerald
Dramat diva!, was in the straight-to-DVD film For the Love of a Dog, Cory Finley (Keys ’11) is her  boyfriend.

Orlando Hernandez
A tap dancer and drummer who once played in the Ezra Stiles dining hall with Julian Reid (Bones ’13).

Nicolas Medina Mora
Has an accent, thinks everything is fascist. 

Diana Saverin
Rae Bichell (Key’s 12)’s protégé.

Aaron Feuer
Thinks that “Making copies on the Senate floor is the coolest place to make copies.”

David Carel
His parents wish he’d be “more respectful“.

Adele Jackson-Gibson
Wants to be a DJ next year.

Jessica Oddie
Violinist.

Cassius Clay
Took a semester off to be Kanye West’s stylist.

Xiaosheng Mu
Apparently a math genius.

Sinye Tang
“Lives to make people challah”.

Christy Nelson
The Softball captain who, “with ten homers in two years is more than halfway to the school record of 17,” and has only been caught stealing once.

Josh Penny
50 most 2012!

Natalia Emanuel
Rahm’s niece!

have been “figuring
out.”

It is Borges’ Labyrinths
(labyrinth, a convenient

metaphor for anything
you can think of)

I am searching for
something

inevitable about
the words underlined

in pencil.
Mirror, circled,

instead of time or soul
cartouched on the yellow

paper. “Hardly a soul
on the platform.”

That, or the dreaded window.
Secret, busy, multiform,

Madden stalks alone
through the garden, and I

am thinking about the razor
blade of the mirror slicing the object

into twin hemispheres, carving
new futures from

dead possibilities.
A gun will, at some point, go

off—political, not passionate,
merely the chance of one name

for two selves, both a man
and a city. The book and the labyrinth

are one and the same. Here,
an exclamation point in the margin.