Princeton, IL

March 7, 2013

I Am Not What I Be

“I’m NOT!” I bellow. Not going to school, that is. My homework isn’t done, it’s already 9 am (school started at 8), and I’ve yet to shower. But my mother is up and worried, and my father is done yelling, and I’m about to break. Soon, I’ll remove myself from self-isolation and go down to breakfast. I’ll wash my face, talk to my father, and head to fourth period photography.

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Our Brains, Ourselves

It’s been hard to miss the photos from the “What I Be” project popping up on our newsfeeds and around campus these past weeks: up-close and intensely personal shots of fellow students staring unapologetically into the camera, with their deepest insecurities scrawled onto their skin in capital letters.

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Consider the Lobster Club

“Lob-what?!” Preston bellowed. “-ster club?” I ventured. I was backstage before my first Lobster Club performance and was unfamiliar with the club cheer. Everyone else had been through this before, but the response was far from unified.

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Shaking Down the Shake

There’s a new dance craze sweeping the nation, folks, and it puts all the rest to shame. Look around: no one’s “wobbling” anymore, the “Cupid shuffle” is long gone, and the “one-two step” died with Ciara and Missy Elliot’s music careers. Right now, it’s all about the Harlem Shake.

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Real World Anthem

While it was released in early October, the video “First World Anthem,” created by the nonprofit organization Gift of Water, has only recently started going viral. The video shows children and adults wearing slightly tattered clothes while standing in front of destroyed homes and desolate fields, reading phrases such as “I hate when my phone charger won’t reach my bed” and “I hate when my mint gum makes my ice water taste too cold.”

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A Day in This Life

Beep Beep. Sun’s up 9:32. Ugh. Going to hit snooze button—where is snooze button? Let’s just palm entire alarm clock and see what happens. Beeeeeep. 9:41. Was that really nine minutes?

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Sunday Matinee

Blind Guy sits on park bench, looks out, the day reacts: A Man jogging by with his buxom new Bride envies a Widower, lonely old fat— propelled by gravity, on a skateboard he glides sips a milk-shake, hits a hidden … Read More

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What’s in a Name?

My full name is Lily Rosalind Offit. It sounds relatively neutral in terms of nationality, but I am 100% Jewish. The Offit clan hails from Lithuania— Benjamin Ofceotowitz came to the U.S. in 1888, to escape persecution. Immigration officers changed his name at least five times due to misspellings: Ofsiowitz, Ofseoyowitz, Ofgeoyowitz, Owseverwitz, Ofsavitz…. Finally, in March of 1917, Benjamin settled on the simple spelling “Offit.”

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Throwback Soundtrack

I don’t remember why I started listening to RadioNow 93.1, Indianapolis’ Top 40 radio station, but I know exactly when. I was nine, and it was the summer after third grade. Before this, I had basically stayed away from pop culture. I didn’t really get it, or like it, and there was a girl in my school who told me she was receiving shots to delay puberty because she had watched too much Britney Spears with her older siblings and it had somehow tricked her body into pressing “skip” over the last part of her pre-preteen years.

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Facial Hair, Don’t Care

While brainstorming what to give up for Lent, my friend Spencer suggested foregoing facial hair. This would probably be an entirely inconsequential Lenten sacrifice for the vast majority of the male population. For a stubborn, barely post-pubescent boy such as myself, however, this is no easy endeavor. For some inscrutable reason, and to the consternation of friends and family, I persist in growing absolutely disgusting facial hair.

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What I Like

I like full lips. Not so that the mouth looks large, just lips that look a little heavier than mine, so that they fall almost into a pout, curling, hanging. I like lips that say, “I’m here, I’m here to do something,” and spread to reveal a smile of wide, white teeth.

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Making Sport

The world is fascinated by sports, and this fascination has become easier to explore in the age of the Internet. Every day, organizations like ESPN and Sports Illustrated generate tens of thousands of words to feed our desire for information about our favorite teams and athletes. This never-ending information surge has inevitably shaped our perceptions of famous athletes.

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The Lapse

When a boy reaches a certain age, he can make mistakes that stay with him for much longer than one night. It was the third day of frosh week, and I was a wide-eyed freshman reveling in the newfound freedom of college life.

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Verbatim

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Overheard at Terrace

CJL regular, indignantly: Sometimes I look at the Instagrams of my high school friends and I’m like, that is NOT what an
Instagram is supposed to be.

Overheard in a text conversation during writing seminar

Unrequited lover: His brow protrudes such an appropriate amount he has a really striking quarter profile also I’m texting this from the bathroom I wonder how he would feel if he knew I’d thought about him while pooping

Overheard in Whitman

Tower senior: After unprotected sex all I can think about is my semen inside a girl. When does it leave?

Overheard at Late Meal

Ivy Theta: I mean sorry I, like, can’t afford to be an Art History major.

Overheard in a Basement

Press Club member: Have you seen The Carter, like the documentary?
Angelic Ivy sophomore: Yeah that’s why I’m so interested in the purple drank.

Overheard in Spelman

St. A’s sophomore: I cry when I’m happy. I cry when I see high definition television... I had to explain to my mother what ‘whiskey dick’ was the other day.

Overheard in Frist

Disillusioned international freshman, after learning what a corn dog is: I thought they were like vegetarian hot dogs.

Overheard on University Place

Mother, to adult son: Phis-i-o-log:-ic-ally they have different bodies, guys and girls.

Overheard at the Center for Jewish Life

Future Bridgewater employee: Martha’s Vineyard is better.

Overheard at Terrace

Nass editor: I wrote my college
essay about a Tool song. It was about the Fibonacci sequence

Overheard in Frist

President of Panhellenic Council, to Ivy Asian: [with respect to her origin] What are you?

Overheard at the Cloisters

Tour guide: So, about monastic life—
Joking-not-joking grad student: Think ‘graduate student.’

Overheard at Terrace

St. A’s sophomore: Black Beauty would’ve been a better book from the horse’s perspective. Y’know, chronicling the abuse.
Terrace junior, excitedly: Fifty Shades of Horse!

Overheard in Wilson

Nass Freshman: There was this kid last year who wrote his thesis in a week.
Freshman Theta prospect: How long does it usually take?

Overheard in Forbes

Curmudgeonly Forbesian: I don’t think my family would ever speak to anyone who purports to be press.

Overheard in Frist

Ivy junior, on Ivy aenior: He’s
totally American analytical, but you have to understand the
structuralist inheritance.