Cate (she/her) is a government and philosophy major from Richmond, Virginia. Outside of The Flat Hat, she is a member of the Kappa Alpha Theta sorority and a peer advisor for the conduct and honor councils. She enjoys getting to be a part of W&M life through the paper as well as sharing the college experience with her friends. You can almost always find her dragging them around campus and CW on an unprovoked side quest.
The views expressed in the article are the author’s own.
The first full week of shorts-weather has hit the College of William and Mary! With that, we can now officially claim the start of the true spring season here on campus. The trees are dumping pollen, and as it turns out, you actually do have spring allergies! Fall course registration is upon us. Everyone, brace yourselves for whatever PATH has planned for your 2026-27 schedule. Do you think that if we wear our pj’s inside out and put spoons under our pillows it will stop the ever-daunting 8 a.m., or does that only count for snow days? Speaking of 8 a.m. classes, that extra credit you tacked on this semester looked really good on your DegreeWorks, but with finals on the horizon and the mid-semester slog well underway, it’s sure not feeling so great.
Spring is finally here, and the long-awaited end to the College’s winter stretch has brought with it, you guessed it, more work. If you weren’t already convinced, here comes four separate tour groups all bottlenecking on the skybridge just in time to make your late morning start even later. Don’t forget to smile so they know how much you love it!
As you trudge through a half-inch of pollen to get to your 80-minute COLL requirement class, and your brain feels like it’s swollen twice its size, stop and take a minute. This is cliché, but take a deep breath and remember where you are in that very moment. Listen to the world around you (tune out the construction if need be) and listen for the sounds of spring.
Try picking your head out of your final paper for the class you doom scrolled through most of, and go check out the farmers’ market. While you’re at it, walk down to the Capitol Building or go see the lambs and calves in Colonial Williamsburg. They’ll have grown up to be sheep and cows before you know it; your Instagram story deserves to see them in their prime!
The daffodils have been blooming like crazy, and now here come the dogwoods and the azaleas. Yes, there is plenty of pollen, but c’mon, look at nature — they deserve to get back at us a little. Enjoy the blooming of spring and stop by the Student Health Center; already, my roommate and I have both gone to get allergy meds.
Tanning on the Sunken Garden has hit its stride; go lie out on those towels in bikinis and hope that your 70-year-old humanities professor doesn’t walk by in full business casual attire. Bring your backpack so you can take your readings out to justify all the ‘outside studying’ you’re doing, but promise you won’t actually ruin the energy by doing real school work. Stay for golden hour, and in between Snapchatting your situationship and hometown link, take a moment to appreciate being alive.
My point is, life is strange, especially here. It’s strange and hard, and sometimes it all feels like too much to get a grip on. However, it’s springtime! There is an intrinsic whimsy to this thawing out of the world; don’t let the College crazies keep you from taking full advantage of the warming weather. There will, of course, be times here when you simply must get that paper done, but please don’t let the baby animals grow up before you get the chance to see them. The readings might not all get done, and that one random from that party a few weeks back might stop texting you, but the flowers won’t always be in bloom either.
Choose the way you live your life, and choose to live it with some of the same excitement that spring breathes into the rest of the world.
