Hi! I’m going home in a couple days, which is weird because I feel like my junior year just started. So here is the last letter I’ll be sending from school.
This week’s ADHOC categories are A Featured Subject, Dinner in One, Haribo Sour Gummy Bears, Opposite of Loneliness, and Challengers.
A: A Featured Subject
In March, I got an email from Yale Rumpus, a satire magazine with a staff of anonymous writers. They come out of hiding once a year to publish their 50 Most issue, a collection of profiles about the fifty most beautiful people at Yale.
I immediately texted all my friends about my nomination (even though Rumpus swears you to secrecy), flattered that this mysterious entity knew who I was, even if the premise was a joke. A month later, I went to a sophomore’s dorm room for my thirty minute interview. He asked me what was on my bucket list, what music I liked, my biggest regret. I answered as truthfully as I could given the very real possibility of my answers living on the internet forever.
The online edition came out last Thursday, and the print edition hit our 14 dining halls this week. I was nervous about Rumpus would write about me—past issues have called people boring, pretentious, arrogant, and greedy—but I shouldn’t have been! My profile recounts an imaginary conversation between guys on the rugby team, explains what men talk about when women aren’t around (LeBron and toxic masculinity), and gives a shoutout to a player on the men’s basketball team. For an article supposedly about me, the majority of it is about straight white men I have never met before.
Maybe I didn’t give them enough juicy content. I was not shocking nor revealing. So…I get it? I was tempted to intellectualize this semi-aggressive insertion of masculinity into a space specifically carved out for a woman, but I just hope they hire more female writers. And it is kind of funny.
D: Dinner in One
I’ve cooked dinner almost every day this semester since going completely off the meal plan. This week I made lots of things that require only one pan, which is my favorite kind of recipe. I also post most of my food on @ardenyummy.
Larb. A Thai dish with ground chicken, shallots, mint, basil, cilantro, fish sauce, sugar, and lime. Very fragrant, hard to mess up, and just as good cold.
Oyakodon. I followed Kenji Lopez Alt’s recipe. The key is letting the eggs steam just enough at the end that they are still a bit runny.
Kale Pasta. I made a sauce out of kale, peas, olive oil, salt, pepper, and pasta water. Then I added broccoli, sausage, and a leftover chicken thigh I had in my fridge.
Mapo Tofu. One of the best premade sauces you can buy at an Asian grocery store. I used ground turkey, medium-firm tofu, and green cabbage.
Except for the pasta, I served all of these with white rice. I swear by this Cuckoo rice cooker, and I rinse my rice soooo many times before it goes the pot.
H: Haribo Sour Gummy Bears (Chris Esneault)
I’ve been thinking a lot about these gummy bears recently because they are, hands down, my favorite sweet snack when I study (sorry for the unintended alliteration). To me, studying is incomplete without something to snack on. And so, since freshman year, I have been making the trek to Ghav (now Cook2Go – sry Ghav!) before sitting down to cram for my next bio exam. I start by eating all of the reds and greens, sometimes two or three at a time, sometimes mixing colors, but first only red and green. I’ll then move to the white ones, then yellow, but never orange – I hate artificial orange flavoring. Sometimes I eat yellow before white, but it really just depends on what mood I’m in.
I’ve also been thinking about these gummy bears for another reason. Last summer, I spent a good amount of time in Scandanavia for a study abroad program. While I knew little about Scandinavian culture before traveling to and living in Copenhagen for a month, I for sure didn’t know that Scandinavians pride themselves on their sour candy. But I’m not talking about the Trader Joe’s Scandanavian Swimmer-esque stuff. No no. Scandinavian sour candy is pretty sour, which is a general trend I learned after having run (or tasted?) the gamut of these candies.
Intuitively, it makes sense that candy marketed as “sour” should be pretty sour. What I find strange is that most sour candies sold in America really aren’t that sour. Then I began wondering if Big Sour Candy’s counterintuitive lack of sourness favors the American consumer. I can sit down and house a bag of these gummies in 10-15 minutes, easy. Why? Because they aren’t even sour. They don’t make me pucker or tear up or give me mouth ulcers. There are no consequences for my overindulgence.
But oh well. It’s reading week. I’m stressed. I think it’s about time to go get some Haribos.
O: Opposite of Loneliness
I discovered Marina Keegan’s collection of essays in 7th grade, long before even dreaming of going to Yale. In the titular essay, The Opposite of Loneliness, Keegan looks back on her four years at Yale and offers a message to her classmates of hope and gratitude and longing for a feeling that has not yet escaped her. The opposite of loneliness is “not quite love and it’s not quite community; it’s just this feeling that there are people, an abundance of people, who are in this together.”
I read this piece again for the first time in eight years, now understanding her references to campus landmarks, the postgrad pressure to flock to New York, and the once-in-a-lifetime chance to live on the same block as all of your friends.
Yale is full of tiny circles we pull around ourselves. A cappella groups, sports teams, houses, societies, clubs. These tiny groups that make us feel loved and safe and part of something even on our loneliest nights when we stumble home to our computers — partner-less, tired, awake. We won’t have those next year.
This scares me. More than finding the right job or city or spouse – I’m scared of losing this web we’re in. This elusive, indefinable, opposite of loneliness. This feeling I feel right now.
Keegan died in a car accident in May 2012, five days after her graduation. Her family and friends published her book shortly after. The portrait of Keegan used for the cover was taken on a path I walk on every single day. Her writing reminds me that the even the most special and serendipitous moments are not exactly unique—they could have been experienced by someone just like you, twelve years ago—and there is beauty in that. The dorm room I lived in housed someone before me, and before them. We never met, but we hung up and tore down posters from the same walls. We slept in the same bed.
C: Challengers
I watched Challengers with my friends last Friday. I came out of the theater saying that it changed my life, and I’m not sure if I was exaggerating. The writer is married to Celine Song, the director of Past Lives that I wrote about a few weeks ago. The story is gripping and experimental and intensely intimate without being explicit. The score made me like techno. The actors are beautiful. The gameplay is beautiful. I respect how much effort the three of them put into getting good at tennis. Go watch it if you haven’t!!!
That’s all for this week! See you next time.