Partly Cloudy, 64°
As a first-year, one of the main things that attracted me to Brown is its open curriculum. I loved the fact that, after hating math in high school, I would never have to do it again in college. Well, I found out too late that that’s not entirely true, because every night President Christina Paxson sneaks into my dorm room through the window and makes me do problem sets by candlelight.
It’s true. I was so excited to not have to worry about geometry or calculus anymore. I had thrown my textbooks in the trashcan. But I found myself digging furiously through that same trashcan after a week of President Paxson climbing in through my window in the dead of night and wordlessly handing me problem set after problem set.
I had heard Brown was the most laid-back of the Ivies, but I haven’t slept since I got here. No sooner do I climb into bed than President Paxson is halfway through my dorm window, dressed in an all-black pantsuit, shoving that night’s differential equation problem set in my face.
I am so tired.
I’m also concerned about my personal safety. If she can sneak into my dorm room, which I lock every night and pray it will stay locked until morning, then who else can get in? It’s great that this campus has blue light phones at every corner, but it doesn’t have a system of calling DPS if you find the head of your school in your dorm room at 3:30am.
Not to mention we’re not allowed candles in our dorms, yet every night President Paxson pulls out several candlesticks from her sack and lights them in the four corners of my room. My RPLs would be so mad if they knew about the melted wax dripping onto the carpet every night.
My health has taken a downturn. My parents think it’s because I’m not eating right, and I can’t tell them that it’s because the president of my university holds a lit candle close to my arm whenever I started nodding off until I jolt awake and continue solving math problems.
She won’t let me tell them.
Don’t get me wrong – I love this school. But I hate math. And I hate the fact that I have to do it every night because President Christina Paxson uses a grappling hook to climb into my dorm room under the cover of darkness and won’t leave until I solve a whole exam’s worth of equations.
Can’t wait for break.
