Confronting unfamiliar adversity in a rebuilding year — having lost five of 11 starters from last season — the men’s soccer team gritted out a 2-1 overtime victory over Middlebury this Saturday in the NESCAC opener.
After falling behind 1-0 on a questionable penalty kick late in the first half, the Jeffs responded with a spectacular goal from Greg Singer ’16 in the 64th minute, before Nico Pascual-Leone ’15 netted the decisive tally 3:34 into overtime.
I started my mornings around 7:15 this summer and with the hottest shower I could achieve in Newport House. While others might have found this heat to be excessive during a muggy Massachusetts summer in a college dorm without air conditioning, I needed it. As the heat rolled down my body, I stretched, preparing my muscles for another day chock full of physical labor at Book and Plow farm.
“The Spectacular Now,” which premiered at the 2013 Sundance Festival and hit theaters everywhere Aug. 2, is an honest and unapologetic depiction of love on the cusp of adulthood. Based on the book “The Spectacular Now” by Tim Tharp and directed by James Ponsoldt, the film stars Shailene Woodley of Golden Globe-winning “The Descendants” and Miles Teller of “Project X” as teens in their senior year of high school in Atlanta, Georgia.
The day after I finished The Last of Us, near the end of my summer vacation, I was talking to my sister, who had, on-and-off, been watching me play through the game. When my sister asked me to catch her up on what she had missed one day, I described a series of moments and images I had witnessed. The general themes were loss, bitterness and the dimming light of hope. I witnessed suicide, the loss of children and numerous other difficult moments. I described the profound depression and malaise underlying the game.
Statistically speaking, last year was not a stellar year for the College’s admissions. Total applications dropped from 8,555 for the Class of 2016 to 7,927 for the class of 2017, representing a decline of 8.2 percent. The overall admit rate increased from 13.3 percent to 13.7 percent.
Hey, first years. Here’s a welcome: a belated welcome, nonetheless, but a welcome, from a jaded, opinionated senior who’s entering her final year with a strange combination of disillusionment and yet a stronger belief than ever in the power of the sort of education you can get, should you make the right choices, from your four years at this College.
Perhaps many of you don’t realize this, but a social stigma of mental illness exists, and it is a very bad thing. This stigma is perpetuated by Hollywood’s alarmingly inaccurate conceptions of the mentally ill. They are portrayed in films and television as violent lunatics who are dangerous and should be avoided. A general lack of understanding of mental health also doesn’t help their case — people fear what they don’t understand.
