Waltz N’ Grind

February 28, 2013

Hacking a Lung

Marlboro Reds. The choice cigarette of cowboys and cattle ranchers, of healthy corn-fed Westerners with tanned skin and rugged faces who dexterously smoke with their thumb and forefinger. In the October of my senior year in high school, this was … Read More

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J-Biebz as Jay Gatz

Late one Friday night, buzzed and carrying packs of sour candy from the Wa, I wandered to a room in Whitman. As my host and I sat on her bed, alternating handfuls of Sour Patch and some other Technicolor monstrosity, her roommate decided to show me a video for “Beauty and a Beat,” performed and directed by everyone’s favorite cultural punching bag: Justin Bieber.

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This Week in Sports: Baskets and Balls

My dad always joked that he encouraged me to play sports because I was supposed to be born a boy (I am the youngest of three girls—his final, failed attempt at contributing a Y chromosome to the world). After trying … Read More

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Remembering Dre

Brian introduced me to rap music on bus #177 in what I think was fourth grade. I know it was 177 and not 181 or 161 because this memory is accompanied by a host of other unique sensory inputs: the … Read More

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A Wolf in Your Clothing

WHO IS THE PRINCETON COAT THIEF? If you’re like me, then you have received countless emails from your residential college listserv that sound something like this: Hey Guys! Sorry to spam, but I lost my coat at (insert eating club … Read More

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Honesty

[I] food [A] star_luvr : spicy fries at terrace fourth course are so obviously made by students they are so overspiced star_luvr : when i cook i put a shit ton of spices on it to test the limits of … Read More

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The Tunnel

People start asking some time around kindergarten. It’s the fault of those LL Bean monogrammed backpacks, so ubiquitous to the elementary school experience. “What does the E stand for?” I asked a friend as she set down her Nacho Cheese … Read More

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Peer Review (Part 1)

Susannah Sharpless edits Andrew Sondern’s Common App essay.

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Peer Review (Part 2)

Andrew Sondern edits Susannah Sharpless’s Common App essay.

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Beyonce Ever After

From the opening scene of, Life is But a Dream, it’s clear why The Washington Post criticized the documentary for having “no linear narrative…like a hallucinatory advertisement for success.” The recurring interview with Beyoncé takes place in an unnaturally well-lit … Read More

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Life Is Not a Dream

It is difficult to call the new HBO film “Beyoncé: Life Is But a Dream”—which debuted February 15—a documentary.  More than anything, it comes across as self-promotion instead of an objective or illuminating take on its subject’s life.  Beyoncé is … Read More

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Primal Scene

Rorschach tests and free-association exercises seem to me too well known, too expected to be useful for psychoanalysis. But I have found a new test to capture the shallower motions of our subconscious: the words of students childishly bumbling and … Read More

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Humble Beginnings

Language classes are humbling. Unless you faked your placement test, you are exercising a skill you do not possess for an hour every day. Ninety percent of the thoughts you have during class are impossible to convey. This was my … Read More

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French 101

I’ll start this assessment of French 101/102 with a warning—one that applies to all first level language classes. If you ever find yourself longing to start a new language, know that you will have fifty minutes of class every day … Read More

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ARA 101

As I stood outside the door to Frist 212 on the first day of my freshman year, waiting for my Arabic 101 class to start, a bright-eyed boy in a polo shirt bounced up to the door. I smiled at … Read More

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Recommendations

Richard was one of my best friends in 6th and 7th grades. We fell out over a retrospectively trivial incident as we began high school and remained on distant, though polite, terms for several years. However, this changed at the … Read More

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Verbatim

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Overheard on Prospect Avenue

Drunken stranger to Nass Editor-in-Chief: You never fucking verbatim me. I'm never gonna be in verbatim. Fuck you.

Overheard in Cafe Viv

Girl 1: She has the tackiest wicker furniture at her house in Lyford Cay.
Girl 2: It can't be as bad as the faux-Medieval thrones in Ivy…?

Overheard in Forbes

Charter sophomore: What is Rack City?

Overheard in an email

USG: Drop by the 2015 tailgate from 6-7PM @ the Frick Chemistry Lab.

Overheard in Ivy

True artist: Only true artists can have highbrow sex.

Overheard in Frist

Nass social chair, '16: I'm trying to inherit my grandfather's lion and leopard skins.

Overheard outside Terrace

Bouncer 1: Did you hear about the naked thing?
Bouncer 2, fondly: Yeah, but at least they don't beat the shit out of each other.

Overheard in a room with Christmas lights

Girl: This menorah really needs to come down.

Overheard at the conclusion of a creative writing workshop

TI sophomore: Alright. I'm out. Gotta go get ma DICK sucked.

Overheard in a Verbatim email

Pi Phi sophomore: "Girl, trying to act affluent: … "

Overheard in Mathey

Girl, trying to act affluent: I don't think we ever have mortgages. My dad like to call himself the king of mortgages. So I call myself the princess of mortgages.

Overheard in Forbes

Curmudgeonly Forbesian: At the shooting club, everyone has a locker for hard alcohol.

Overheard in the Nass office

EIC: I emailed David Remnick once. He got back to me within, like, ten seconds.
Former EIC: What'd he say?
EIC: "The New Yorker is not hiring editorial interns for the summer."

Overheard in Canada

St. A's Male, to rapt Nass staffers: If a guy wants to come on your face just don't say it's gross…Like, I'm sorry my body creates this wonderful seed for you.

Overheard at Ivy

Smoking aristocrat: Sometimes I with I had bickered Terrace.

Overheard in ART 242

Esther de Costa Meyer: Now this is the "withdrawing" room, where ladies would resign while men smoked cigars and drank whiskey.
Bro, quietly respectful: Word. (offers fist bump to bro sitting next to him)

Overheard in Frist

Kappa sophomore: I’m not pretty enough to live in Beverly Hills. I would have to have so much plastic surgery.