Warm weather brings false hopes

    Last week was quite a week. After much anticipation from political pundits and activists alike, Super Tuesday exploded in a blaze of indecisive glory; the Patriots’ devastating loss to the Giants in the Super Bowl brought women and men across the country (or, me, at least) to tears; and word on the street, and in every media outlet that cares to report the thrilling goings-on in Williamsburg, is that some sort of performance art show came to campus.

    p. So, like any conversation that has over-exhausted its key topics, I will default to a subject anxiously on people’s minds, on the tip of everyone’s tongue, longing to be set free in campus discourse — the weather. It’s hot. Also, it’s February. Excitement abounds!

    p. Aside from all the obvious downsides to freak weather phenomena — fear of global warming, prophecies of the apocalypse, wardrobe confusion — it seems like warmer temperatures beget warmer dispositions. I feel like I’m on top of the world when I can walk out of my house in just a T-shirt. Everything is at peace and all I want to do is sit in the grass for hours, nonchalantly sipping a delicious Odwalla and daydreaming away the rest of the semester.

    p. What’s more, I feel like everyone is so much friendlier. Instead of continuing the default mode of most College students, awkwardly shuffling through campus and avoiding eye contact at all costs, people have been saying “hello.” It’s as if the unnatural warmth has melted everyone’s uncomfortable, socially awkward exteriors and united us in a bond of summer love.

    p. Despite all the usual complaints students have about living in Williamsburg, we all came here for good reason. Yes, the College is a fine academic institution, alluring to anyone desiring a solid liberal arts education, but let’s be honest — many of us just took a tour of campus on a gorgeous spring day and fell in love. The flowers, the trees, the perfectly aligned colonial brick patterns, all of the cutesy characteristics that make my mother beam with aesthetic glee. On warm days, we all love Williamsburg. We get transported into a reverie of Sunken Garden ultimate frisbee, of spontaneous acoustic guitar performances on the UC Terrace, of sunbathing in Sorority Court — all the fun activities that unrealistic brochures represent as “college life.”

    p. The only flaw in this attractive fantasy is that, as we have already determined, it is, in fact, February. In about a week we’ll all be bundled up in hoodies and scarves again, dying of the bubonic plague and sullenly awaiting Williamsburg’s signature swampy spring season. The sneaky batch of warm weather that snuck upon us this week brought with it illusions of summer and, unfortunately, the illusion that I don’t have any more papers to write.

    p. But, alas, we are only four weeks into the semester — I haven’t even taken my first midterm (hell, I haven’t even started reading the books for some of my classes), and here I am, already daydreaming of a carefree post-grad summer celebration.
    Curse you, warm February days, for giving me a false sense of hope, for veiling my all-too-real responsibilities under a guise of carefree relaxation and for tempting me with your long, glorious afternoons of napping in the grass. In a few short months, I will finally have my true day in the sun.

    p. __Devan Barber is a senior at the College.__

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